The Big Picture
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Wheatley and Jonathan Haidt did a study in which they hypnotized sub-
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jects to feel a strong sense of revulsion at certain innocuous words such as
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“often” and “take.” They were then told simple stories about people who did
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nothing particularly wrong from any reasonable ethical perspective. When
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those stories contained the words they had been primed to react to, not
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only did they feel disgust, but they also judged the actions of the people in
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the stories to be somehow morally wrong. Without being able to articulate
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exactly why, the subjects were convinced that the people being described
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were somehow up to no good.
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Clashes between universal ethical guidelines and our personal moral
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sentiments would be okay, if we thought that our sentiments were merely
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crude approximations to the more transcendent truths captured by those
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guidelines. In that case, so much the worse for our sentiments. But if we
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envision the project of moral philosophy as systematizing and rationalizing
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our sentiments, rather than replacing them with an objective truth, then
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such approaches have a bigger problem. Talking about morality might not
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be so cut-and-dried.
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Deontology and consequentialism, and for that matter virtue ethics and
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various other approaches, all capture something real about our moral im-
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pulses. We want to act in good ways; we want to make the world a better
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place; we want to be good people. But we also want to make sense and be
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internally consistent. That’s hard to do while accepting all of these compet-
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ing impulses at once. In practice, moral philosophies tend to pick one ap-
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proach and apply it universally. And as a result of that, we often end up with
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conclusions that don’t sit easily with the premises we started with.
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It may be that the kind of moral code that fits most people the best isn’t
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based on a strict construal of any one approach, but takes bits and pieces
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from all of them. Consider a kind of “soft consequentialism,” where the
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value of actions depends on their consequences, but also to some degree on
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the actions themselves. Or imagine that we allow ourselves to place greater
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value on helping people we know and care about than on helping those
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farther away. These need not be seen as “mistakes”; they could be part of a
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complex and multifaceted, but internally consistent, way of realizing our
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basic moral inclinations.
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Or— someone could be a perfectly moral person who based their behav-
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ior on a small set of absolute rules, whether it was a particular flavor of
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utilitarianism or adherence to the categorical imperative, because that’s
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what they felt was the best fit to their inner convictions. And that’s okay.
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The moral systems we construct serve our own purposes.
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Abraham was commanded by God to do something horrible. It was a
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great challenge to his humanity, but given his view of the world, the correct
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course of behavior was clear: if you are certain that God is telling you to do
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something, that’s what you do. Poetic naturalism refuses to offer us the
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consolation of objective moral certainty. There is no “right” answer to the
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trolley problem. How you should act depends on who you are.
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Ay, there’s the rub. We want there to be objective solutions to our dilem-
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mas, as surely as there are theorems in mathematics or experimental discov-
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eries in science. As good Bayesians, aware of our bias toward claims that we
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would like to be true, this desire should make us especially skeptical of at-
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tempts to found objective morality on a natural basis. But as human beings,
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it often makes us all too readily accepting.
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The worry is that, if morality is constructed, everyone will construct
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whatever they like, and what they like won’t actually be very good. It’s an
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ancient concern, usually directed at believers in the wrong religion or no
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religion at all. Tertullian, an early Christian thinker from Africa who is
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recognized as a Father of the Church, explained that an atomist like the
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Greek philosopher Epicurus couldn’t be a good person. The problem is that
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for Epicurus, life ends at death, so suffering is ephemeral, while Christians
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believe in hell, so for them it’s forever. Why should anyone strive to be good
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if there were no promise of an eternal reward, nor threat of eternal pun-
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ishment?
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Think of these things, too, in the light of the brevity of any
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punishment you can inflict— never to last longer than till death.
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On this ground Epicurus makes light of all suffering and pain,
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maintaining that if it is small, it is contemptible; and if it is
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great, it is not long- continued. No doubt about it, we, who re-
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ceive our awards under the judgment of an all- seeing God, and
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who look forward to eternal punishment from Him for sin,—
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we alone make real effort to attain a blameless life.
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The modern version of this worry is that, if we were to accept that mo-
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rality is constructed, individuals will run around giving in to their worst
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instincts, and we would have no basis on which to condemn obviously bad
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things like the Holocaust. After all, somebody thought it was a good idea,
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and without objective guidance how can we say they were wrong?
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The constructivist answers that just because moral rules are invented by
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sp; human beings, that doesn’t make them any less real. The rules of basketball
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are also invented by human beings, but once invented they really exist.
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People even argue over what the “right” rules should be. When James Nai-
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smith invented the game, the ball was thrown into peach baskets, and had
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to be retrieved by hand each time a shot was made. Only later did they real-
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ize that the game would be improved by replacing the basket with a hoop.
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That made the game “better,” in the sense that it did a better job at fulfilling
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its purpose as a game. The rules of basketball aren’t objectively defined,
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waiting out there in the universe to be discovered; but they aren’t arbitrary
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either. Morality is like that: we invent the rules, but we invent them for
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sensible purposes.
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The problem arises when we imagine people whose purposes— whose
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foundational moral sentiments and commitments— are radically at odds
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with ours. What are we to do with someone who just wants to play hockey
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rather than basketball? In sports we might seek out different people to play
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with, but when it comes to morality we all have to live together here on this
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Earth.
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We might hope, in the spirit of Kant, that simple logical requirements
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of internal consistency would lead every rational person to construct the
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same moral rules, even starting from slightly different initial feelings. But
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that hope seems slim indeed. Sharon Street imagines an “internally coher-
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ent Caligula,” who takes pleasure in the suffering of others. Such a monster
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need not be illogical or inconsistent; they just have fundamental attitudes
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with which we cannot agree. We’re not going to reason them out of their
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stance. If they act on their impulses in ways that bring harm to others, we
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should respond as we actually do in the real world: by preventing them
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from doing so. When criminals refuse to be deterred, we put them in jail.
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As a practical matter, the worries associated with constructivism are
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somewhat overblown. Most people, in most circumstances, want to think
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of themselves as doing good rather than evil. It’s not clear what operational
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benefit would be gained by establishing morality as an objective set of facts.
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Presumably we envision a person or group who was relatively rational, but
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disagreed with us about morality, whom we could sit down with over coffee
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and convince of the mistake they were making. In practice the recom-
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mended strategy for a constructivist would be essentially the same: sitting
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down and talking with the person, appealing to our common moral beliefs,
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attempting to work out a mutually reasonable solution. Moral progress is
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possible because most people share many moral sentiments; if they don’t,
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reasoning with them wouldn’t help much no matter what.
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If instead the worry is that we can’t justify stepping in to prevent im-
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moral actions, that simply isn’t an issue for constructivists. If, upon rational
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reflection, we decide that something is deeply wrong, there is no reason why
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we cannot work to prevent it from happening, regardless of whether our
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decision is based on external criteria or our own inner convictions. Again,
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this is no more or less than what really happens in the world.
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Deciding how to be good isn’t like solving a math puzzle, or discovering
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a new fossil. It’s like going out to dinner with a group of friends. We think
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about what we want for our individual selves, talk to others about their
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desires and how we can work together, and reason about how to make it
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happen. The group may include both vegetarians and omnivores, but with
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a good- faith effort there’s no reason everyone can’t be satisfied.
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I once found myself on a panel at a large interdisciplinary meeting, attended
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by people from the worlds of business, science, politics, and the arts. The
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purpose of the panel was to discuss morality in the modern world. I had
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been invited not because of any particular expertise in moral matters, but
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it was a conference where most of the participants tended to be religious,
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and I was known not to be; my job was to be the token atheist. And when
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the time came for me to speak, the single question I was asked was: “What
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do you think would be the best argument against your atheism?” The other
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panelists, by contrast, were offered a chance to say something positive and
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constructive about their moral positions. There is a lurking suspicion in
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many corners that naturalists are objects of curiosity but not to be taken
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seriously when it comes to talking about values.
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Here in the early years of the twenty- first century, a majority of philoso-
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phers and scientists are naturalists. But in the public sphere, at least in the
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United States, on questions of morality and meaning, religion and spiritu-
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ality are given a preeminent place. Our values have not yet caught up to our
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best ontology.
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They had better start catching up. When it comes to deciding how to
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live, we’re like that first fish flapping up onto land: faced with a new world
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of challenges and opportunities, and not yet really adapted to it. Technol-
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ogy has given us enormous power to shape our world for better or for worse,
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and by any reasonable estimate we are only at the very beginning of the
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associated changes. We’re going to be faced with the kinds of moral ques-
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tions that our ancestors could not possibly have contemplated, from
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human- machine interfacing to the exploration of new planets. Engineers
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working on self- dr
iving cars have already begun to realize that the software
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is going to have to be programmed to solve certain kinds of trolley problems.
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Poetic naturalism doesn’t tell us how to behave, but it warns us away
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from the false complacency associated with the conviction that our morals
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are objectively the best. Our lives are changing in unpredictable ways; we
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need to be able to make judgments with clear eyes and an accurate picture
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of how the world operates. We don’t need an immovable place to stand; we
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need to make our peace with a universe that doesn’t care what we do, and
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take pride in the fact that we care anyway.
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Listening to the World
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t
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he idea of “Ten Commandments” is a deeply compelling one. It
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combines two impulses that are ingrained in our nature as human
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beings: making lists of ten things, and telling other people how to
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behave.
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The most famous such list is found in the Hebrew Bible. It’s a compila-
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tion of instructions for the Israelite people, handed from God to Moses
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atop Mount Sinai. The commandments are found twice, once in Exodus
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and once in Deuteronomy. In neither case is the list numbered, and the
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wording between the two appearances is slightly different. As a result, there
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is no agreement on what “The Ten Commandments” actually are. Jews,
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Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and different Protestant denominations
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quote slightly different lists. Lutherans, for example, don’t include the tra-
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ditional prohibition against graven images, and split the coveting of thy
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neighbor’s house into a commandment all its own, rather than grouping it
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with the coveting of thy neighbor’s wife and thy neighbor’s servants. What
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matters is that there are ten of them.
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Inevitably, schools of thought outside the traditional religious main-
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stream have borrowed the Ten Commandments idea, and proposed their