I teach philosophy. There\u2019s an interesting difference between\nyour first philosophy class and most of your other classes in college. When you\nwalk into your first college math class, for instance, you do so with lots of\nbackground math. And when you walk into your first college biology class, you\ndo so with some background science – unless, of course, you slept through high\nschool biology and still managed to pass! I might have done that\u2026 But\nphilosophy is rarely taught in high school, and so when you walk into your\nfirst philosophy class, you probably do so with zero background philosophy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, I\u2019ve found that just about everyone finds the first day\nof philosophy class intriguing. This, I think, is because philosophy asks some\nof life\u2019s most fundamental questions. Even though most of us haven\u2019t had any\nformal background in philosophy before our first class, we have all thought\nabout a lot of the questions that get raised in philosophy outside of the\nclassroom. And so when we walk into a classroom and are invited to say what we\nthink about some of these questions, we feel competent in coming up with our\nown answers. If you\u2019ve never taken a calculus class, but were asked on your\nfirst day of class how to solve a calculus question, you\u2019d likely keep your mouth\nshut! But on the first day of a new philosophy class, most people do not\nkeep their mouths shut<\/em>. Most people tend to have something to say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But philosophy is not just about saying what we think. We can be\nwrong about what we think. What makes philosophy so interesting is that some of\nour everyday intuitions about the world, after thinking about them rigorously,\nturn out to be wrong (or at the very least, not as obviously true as we might\nhave thought). In this post, I want to talk about one such intuition. It\u2019s an\nintuition I\u2019ve found that most people tend to have. The intuition has to do\nwith the branch of philosophy called Ethics<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ethics concerns questions about morality. There are many\nquestions asked in this branch of philosophy, but today I want to focus on just\none: are moral truths objective or are they subjective<\/em>? In other words,\nare moral truths (like \u201cdon\u2019t cheat\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t steal\u201d) objectively true and\nthus true independently of what our society says? Or are they subjective and\nthus relative to what our society says?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always poll my students and take a vote before diving into the\narguments. Out of around 160 current students from last Fall in my Intro to\nPhilosophy classes, about 95% of students answered the same way: they are\nsubjective<\/em>. And this is not atypical. The results for just about every poll\nI have taken over the last decade or so about this question have been similar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One might be tempted to think that this is a generational\nphenomenon: perhaps it\u2019s a millennial thing! But I\u2019ve found it to be much more\nwidespread. During the summers, I often\nteach college philosophy courses to intellectually advanced junior high and\nhigh school students (to qualify for this program, students must test into the\ntop 3% in the nation\u2026these students are incredibly bright). About 95% of them\nanswer the same way: morality is subjective<\/em>. And I am currently teaching\nan Ethics course at a prison here in Southern California. I always designate\nthe first week of the prison class to discuss the question of whether morality\nis objective or subjective. Once again, about 95% of inmates agree: morality\nis subjective<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that the fact that the majority of people think this way\nmight be a result of people having the right intentions. I\u2019ve wondered whether\nthe impulse to think that morality is subjective is rooted in some sort of\nintellectual humility. Perhaps people understand that there are those who\ndisagree morally, and so the tendency to think that morality is subjective is\nbased on the desire for individuals not to set their perspective on morality as\nbeing superior to those with whom they disagree. They want to exercise humility\nin positing that their perspective may not be the only right one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this view is false! Morality is not subjective or\nrelative-to-society. It\u2019s pretty easy to see, once you see it. In what follows,\nI will spell out two well-known arguments in the Ethics literature that I offer\nto my students. The majority of my students have reported to me that these\narguments have changed their minds (college students, younger students, and\ninmates alike). Here they go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, the argument from common sense<\/em>. If morality is\nsubjective (and thus relative to society), then there is really nothing wrong\nwith slavery. But that\u2019s nuts! Slavery is obviously wrong (and objectively\nso!). Therefore, it follows by logic alone that morality is not subjective.\nThis argument is short, but powerful. It gets us to see quite quickly that the\npervasive intuition that many have \u2013 that morality is not objective \u2013 is\nclearly false. This is usually enough to convince my students that they were wrong.\nBut just in case, I usually give them another well-known argument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, the argument from disagreement<\/em>. Consider a\nparadigmatic example of subjectivity: taste. I think vanilla is greater than\nchocolate. Chocolate is alright, but clearly not as good as vanilla! My wife\nwholeheartedly disagrees. She\u2019s convinced that I\u2019m wrong. Ask yourself this,\nthough: if we were to have an argument about which is better (chocolate or\nvanilla), would we really<\/em> be disagreeing about an objective fact in the\nworld? No. Clearly not. That\u2019s because this whole dispute boils down to a\nmatter of taste. And taste is subjective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s the argument. Analogously, if morality is subjective,\nthen no two people could ever really<\/em> disagree about a particular moral\nissue (in the same way that my wife and I don\u2019t really<\/em> disagree about an\nobjective fact in the world when it comes to taste). But that\u2019s ridiculous.\nJust turn on the news for a few seconds, and you\u2019ll see people clearly<\/em>\ndisagreeing about moral issues! Therefore, it follows by logic alone that\nmorality is not subjective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Philosophy is interesting. We can take an intuition that most\npeople tend to accept, think hard about what it implies (that slavery isn\u2019t really<\/em>\nwrong and that people can\u2019t ever really<\/em> disagree about moral issues) and\nshow that it\u2019s clearly just got to be false. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, as Christians we know that Scripture has declared\nthis for ages. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that God the Father\nis perfect (Matthew 5:48). Some 400 years later, St. Augustine (one of the\nearliest Christian philosophers), reflected on this truth and argued that\nmorality itself is rooted in the very essence of God. To suppose that morality\nis subjective flies in the face of common sense and leads to the totally\nimplausible conclusion that we can never really morally disagree with one\nanother. Morality is objective. It is independent of us and independent of what\nsociety says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many people think that moral truths are in the eyes of the beholder. In this post, Dr. Matt Leonard looks at how we should look at this question from a philosophical and theological perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}