Chapter 3: Subjectivism in Ethics
Here's where I began to dislike Rachels's approach. He says that the main thought behind Ethical Subjectivism is that, "People have different opinions, but where morality is concerned, there are no 'facts,' and no one is 'right.' People just feel differently, and that's all there is to it." Now, this is something I believe pretty firmly. After all, if no tangible "right" or "wrong" can be found, then we have no reason to think they are anything but abstract ideas that we simply made up. Rachels, however, seems to think he can find problems with the theory.
He starts by talking about Simple Subjectivism, in which any moral statement is nothing more than a statement of approval or disapproval. When someone says "X is morally acceptable," or "X is good," what they are saying is "I approve of X." Rachels, for some reason, thinks this is a problem.
First, he points out that Simple Subjectivism "cannot account for disagreement." If one side is saying "I approve of this" and the other side is saying "I disapprove of this," then there's really no disagreement. They agree that one of them approves and one of them disapproves. He says, "There is a kind of eternal frustration implied by Simple Subjectivism: [they] are deeply opposed to one another, yet they cannot even state their positions in a way that gets at the issue." My thought, of course, is...so what? You could just change your definition of disagreement (they are on different sides, thus they disagree). Otherwise, does this really matter?
Second, Rachels says that "We are sometimes wrong in our moral evaluations. But if Simple Subjectivism were correct, this would be impossible." The exception he gives is if the person saying they approve or disapprove is lying (in which case, we're not always right, Rachels. Gosh, listen to yourself once). Again, I have to say...so what? Part of what annoys me so much about Rachels is that he doesn't seem to grasp that, within the context of the individual theories, such things as these make perfect sense, and don't pose any problem whatsoever. According to this theory, we are as consistently correct about morality as we are correct about whether or not we like a certain sports team, whether we enjoyed a certain movie, or whether we like certain foods. Does Rachels have a problem with us being consistently correct about these things as well? After all, unless we lie, we're always going to be right (and, similarly, it is possible that we may change our minds over all of these things, just as we may change our minds about moral issues). And, with those examples, you can argue the same thing about disagreement. I can think a movie is good, and someone else can think it's bad. We can agree that we both have our own opinions on it, but at the same time we are disagreeing about the quality of the movie. Neither of us can be right or wrong, since it's a subjective thing. Just substitute morality for movies, and there you go. Where's the problem, Rachels?
From here, he pretends that he's given sufficient reasons for the theory to be revised, and moves on to talk about the "second stage," called Emotivism. This philosophy basically starts by pointing out that language is used in numerous ways, one of which is to make statements: fact-stating language. Emotivism holds that moral language is not fact-stating language. Instead, it is akin to exclamations or commands. Rachels gives some silly examples. I'll give my favorite... Fact-stating language would be to say, "Gas prices are rising." An exclamation would (in parallel to that topic) be to say, "Aaargh!" It would make sense to say, "It is true that gas prices are rising." It would not make sense to say, "It is false that aaargh." See? Also, there are commands, such as Rachels's commonly mentioned "Don't be gay!" That sentence, a command, cannot be true or false. And according to Emotivists, that is also true of all moral language.
He goes into some crap about the whole disagreement thing, showing how Emotivism gets around that by showing we disagree "in attitude." I think the whole disagreement thing is ridiculous, though, so unless someone can give me a reason why that's even relevant, I'll move on. Right after that, Rachels makes a huge mistake by showing his presuppositions in the blatant fashion that made me want to write this in the first place. He says that Emotivism gets around the original problem about "always being right" by saying that no one's right or wrong, but just expressing emotion. He doesn't like this, and asserts, "Although we're not always right in our evaluations, we're right some of the time. Sometimes our moral judgments are true and sometimes they are false." My first reaction to this, reasonably, was "What. The. Fuck." Emotivism is a Skeptic philosophy. You can't evaluate it objectively if you work from the premise that an objective moral truth exists that we can be right or wrong about. It just doesn't work that way, Rachels.
As for his whole "Role of Reason in Ethics" section, I don't need much to shoot him down. He says, "A moral judgment--or for that matter, any kind of value judgment--must be supported by good reasons. Any adequate theory of ethics should be able to explain how reasons can support moral judgments." One word: Why? Emotivism points out that moral language is all about the expression of emotion. No right or wrong. Thus, no reason necessary.
He pretty much says, in the end of this chapter, that it is a logical fallacy to argue that ethics are either tangible or non-existent. He says that another alternative is possible: that ethics come from reason. This point is entirely superfluous, though. I'll explain later, in my last post about this book, what I think about ethics from reason (in some detail). For now, I'll just say that Rachels presumes a lot by saying that Subjectivism is somehow flawed for not including the possibility for reason-based ethics. Sure, we can use reason to direct our actions, but that doesn't mean we should. That is simply something Rachels approves of.
Chapter 4: Does Morality Depend on Religion?
Short answer: Pretty much. Our perspective on life comes from morals. Our morals comes from our philosophy. Our Philosophy comes from our logic. Logic works on absolutes. And absolutes come from our beliefs. Our beliefs about what is absolute, then, shape our perspective on life. It only follows that, as beliefs differ, so do moral codes. It's never that simple, though. No two Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Satanists, Atheists, Agnostics, Jainists, etc., are exactly the same. Everyone has very specific beliefs within their overt belief system. For example, my fiancée and I don't believe in God, but whereas I have no morals, she has lots of them (the way I act, though, usually follows a code similar to hers--I just don't see that code as being objectively correct in any way, and if I felt like deviating from it, I wouldn't consider that a bad thing). Specifics of how we view the world make our moral codes different. So, at the end of the day, yes, morality depends on religion, if you take that to mean beliefs in general.
As to what Rachels says, I mostly agree with him in this chapter. He provides two possibilities for morality coming from God, quoting Socrates: "Is conduct right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?". First is Divine Command Theory, which states that morality comes from God: "Whether something is right or wrong is perfectly objective: It is right if God commands it and wrong if God forbids it." It even gives you a reason to be moral: you will be judged in the end, so you should do what God says (of course, that's problematic in my opinion, since you'd have to give a reason for God's authority). But, of course, Rachels has a big problem with this philosophy.
That problem, simply, is that it doesn't give any reason why the actions themselves are wrong. In Divine Command Theory, all that matters is what God wants. If he says it's wrong, it's wrong. But why is it? No reason at all. Morality, then, becomes entirely arbitrary. Which is what I personally don't like about the theory. Though I still don't think that is technically a "problem" with it. It just makes God a capricious dictator. Divine Command Theory could still be right, it'd just make God look bad (and if Divine Command Theory is right, then all God does is good, so judging him by any other standard is pointless).
The problem I have with how Rachels approaches this is in his third problem with it. He uses the example of child abuse, saying, "First, notice something the theory implies: If God didn't exist, child abuse wouldn't be wrong. This is so because if God didn't exist, then God wouldn't be around to make child abuse wrong. However, child abuse would still be malicious, so it would still be wrong." No, Rachels, it wouldn't. If no rule exists, no wrongness can exist. While it is true that Divine Command Theory denies any intrinsic moral value to an action, the fact that we feel bad about certain actions doesn't mean they have intrinsic moral value. As he points out, Atheists have no reason to follow Divine Command Theory. No God and no afterlife means that morality doesn't matter in that capacity. The only real reason for morality outside of God's dominion is to keep other people satisfied, so they don't hinder you. In an Atheistic point of view, no objective moral truth exists. It is completely possible, then, that child abuse is not wrong. (Of course, all of this supposes that Divine Command Theory is true; if there is no God, then it's kind of pointless to even go into that. An objective moral truth could still exist, and non-religious Realist philosophy is based on that assumption.)
The second possibility is easier to swallow. The idea is that God, being perfect, merely observes objective moral truth in the universe, and commands us to follow it. God, being good, always follows the right moral code, and wants us to as well. Of course, this gets a little complicated when you think of how he goes about making us do the right thing. Is it morally right to send those who don't believe in you to Hell? Heck, it must be, if that's what he does. But besides that, if morality is outside of God, then that means there is something he doesn't have power over. He is not omnipotent. And he has no free will, forced to do the right thing.
Rachels goes then to Natural Law Theory, the idea that morality is inside nature already. Which I always thought was silly. It brings up the fact that some people call homosexuality wrong because it's "not natural." What I have to say about such things is that...if it happens, it is natural. Everything is in nature, therefore every action taken is natural. As such, "Natural Law" just seems like a completely nebulous idea to me. Whatever we do is right, whatever we don't do is wrong. To be fair, the theory is really about the idea that God created a natural order, and that should be the basis for morality. But that's a pretty simplistic, maintain-the-status-quo kind of position. Does it work? Sure, if we could strictly define what the natural order is. But that seems to always be changing. And if it's changing all the time (such as women becoming more equal to men), then how do we decide when something is wrong? Maybe it's just the next step in creating the new natural order.
I'll end this section here.
What I feel Rachels doesn't grasp in these first four chapters is something which I will refer to as "internal validity," a term used for experiments when the results are valid within the study itself, and not necessarily in other settings. Each philosophy given has its own internal validity--that is to say, they all "work" within their own set of founding beliefs. That is the nature of logic. You plug in absolutes, and you come up with a rational moral theory. The problem with Rachels is that he looks at these philosophies from a Realist perspective, and thus finds problems that aren't there. He hasn't done anything to debunk these theories, only shown us why a Realist wouldn't like them. As a complete and utter Agnostic, I have no absolutes. As such, I have no strict moral code. I can look at other moral codes with objectivity, and thus evaluate them upon their own merit, acknowledging their internal validity.
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