by Greg Goode
Radical postmodernists like Jean-François Lyotard are sympathetic to the view that stories that explain all of reality are social constructions. He helps reduce our faith in grand narratives, the large-scale theories that are designed to explain the world objectively. Examples of such theories would include Marxism, the notion of Western Enlightenment, the progress of history and the idea that science will eventually be able to arrive at the objective truth. Social constructionist arguments refute these grand narratives on the basis that the narratives themselves came about through social factors, and that it makes no sense that the diverse phenomena of the world would fit under any such universalizing “absolute truth.”
How Can This Help?
The philosopher of science, Ian Hacking puts it beautifully:
...the idea of social construction has been wonderfully liberating. It reminds us, say, that motherhood and its meanings are not fixed and inevitable, the consequence of child-bearing and rearing. They are the product of historical events, social forces and ideology. Mothers who accept current canons of emotion and behavior may learn that the ways they are supposed to feel and act are not ordained by human nature or biology of reproduction. They need not feel quite as guilty as they are supposed to, if they do not obey either the old rules of family or whatever is the official psycho-pediatric rule of the day....
Hacking (2000)
Meditation – Social Constructions
We can easily create a number of emptiness meditations based on social constructionist insights by using the following observation: if X is socially constructed then X does not exist inherently. This is because something that is constructed does not exist from “its own side.” It does not exist independently, as it would have to do if it were inherently existent.
The following meditation is adapted from The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking. Hacking argues that when we take some X as “socially constructed,” we mean two things about it:
We mean that X is not determined by the world itself.
We mean that X is not inevitable.
And we can take advantage of Hacking’s two propositions to launch our own emptiness-related conclusion:
If X is socially constructed, then X does not exist inherently.
In other words, if X is socially constructed, then X is empty.
Now take a few minutes and see if you can find some object or fact that seems to be determined by the world in itself. Examples might be:
There is a self somewhere in me.
My mind and my body are two parts of me, and they’re different.
We should be successful in everything we do.
The music of Bach is better than the music of the Beatles.
It’s not OK to die until I’m ready.
Social constructionism doesn’t say that everything is socially constructed, even people, rocks, trees and planets. But we can begin to look for constructed elements and influences in things. If we can see that something has a socially constructed element, then perhaps that thing is not inevitable. If we can see that there might be historical or cultural contributions to things, then things will lighten up. And just maybe, they can be radically transformed in a way to benefit sentient beings....
Quotes for Reflection
If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?
Goodman (1978)
...“objective truth” is no more and no less than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is going on....
Rorty (2008)
Language speaks.
Heidegger (1982)
...history serves to show how that-which-is has not always been; i.e., that the things which seem most evident to us are always formed in the confluence of encounters and chances, during the course of a precarious and fragile history. What reason perceives as its necessity, or rather, what different forms of rationality offer as their necessary being, can perfectly well be shown to have a history; and the network of contingencies from which it emerges can be traced. Which is not to say, however, that these forms of rationality were irrational. It means that they reside on a base of human practice and human history; and that since these things have been made, they can be unmade, as long as we know how it was that they were made.
Foucault (1988)
Social Construction and Medical Science
The following excerpt is a long one, but we think it is worth presenting in full. It shows how social construction affects even medical science. The excerpt is from Emily Martin’s article entitled “The egg and the sperm: knowledge as ideology.”29 This article discusses cultural stereotypes and gender bias lurking in something that we normally think of as neutral and value-free, such as a science text book. Martin discusses a medical physiology textbook from 1979:
At a fundamental level, all major scientific textbooks depict male and female reproductive organs as systems for the production of valuable substances, such as eggs and sperm. In the case of women, the monthly cycle is described as being designed to produce eggs and prepare a suitable place for them to be fertilized and grown – all to the end of making babies. But the enthusiasm ends there.
By extolling the female cycle as a productive enterprise, menstruation must necessarily be viewed as a failure. Medical texts describe menstruation as the “debris” of the uterine lining, the result of necrosis, or death of tissue. The descriptions imply that a system has gone awry, making products of no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap. An illustration in a widely used medical text shows menstruation as a chaotic disintegration of form, complementing the many texts that describe it as “ceasing,” “dying,” “losing,” “denuding,” “expelling.”
Male reproductive physiology is evaluated quite differently. One of the texts that sees menstruation as failed production employs a sort of breathless prose when it describes the maturation of sperm: “The mechanisms which guide the remarkable cellular transformation from spermatid to mature sperm remain uncertain. ... Perhaps the most amazing characteristic of spermatogenesis is its sheer magnitude: the normal human male may manufacture several hundred million sperm per day.”
In the classic text Medical Physiology, edited by Vernon Mountcastle, the male/female, productive/ destructive comparison is more explicit: “Whereas the female sheds only a single gamete each month, the seminiferous tubules produce hundreds of millions of sperm each day” (emphasis mine).
... The textbooks I consulted are the main ones used in classes for undergraduate premedical students or medical students (or those held on reserve in the library for these classes) during the past few years at Johns Hopkins University.
(op. cit., from footnote 2 to the same page)
Meditation – Your Own Emotions
Notice how your own emotions, such as anger, joy, pride, surprise, guilt, seem to be entirely naturally given to us, which suggests that every human must have them. Having these particular emotions seems an essential characteristic of being human. These emotions seem to exist intrinsically in us.
However, it turns out that emotions vary considerably across history and time. In other cultures and times, there are emotions that cannot be directly translated into our own modern, urban, Western set of emotions.
Kenneth Gergen discusses examples of emotions in other cultures that do not translate exactly to the way we modern Westerners usually think of as single, named emotions.30 The Japanese have the emotion of amae, which refers to a “feeling of sweet dependence on another person.” The Illongots in the Philippines have liget – an emotion that is equated with all that is vital, potent, energetic and intense. It can be the basis of violent action, confusion, yet is also highly celebrated. The Ifaluk in the South Pacific have fago, which is a form of liking someone, and can also be displayed in situations of grief.
The fact that the range of emotions available to a person are not thought of
the same way everywhere in the world suggests that there might be constructed, cultural influences at work. As an American, I don’t feel liget, but if I had been born to the Illongets in the Philippines, there would probably be days where I would feel it. This suggests a cultural dimension to what I feel. The range of emotions I feel is not inevitable, but empty.
Meditation – The Roles You Play
Take a few moments and notice the roles you play. Your roles of being a man, woman, gay or straight may seem to be an essential part of you.
However, if you investigate these notions in a way that is sensitive to historical and cultural differences, you will realize their rich and complex constructedness. The notions “man,” “woman,” “gay” and “straight” do not exist independently, as objective discoveries which are universal for all people everywhere. And they are also not imaginary or invented out of thin air. Instead, they are deeply dependent on historical and cultural factors.
When you can see roles that seemed essential and inevitable as being constructed, then you can see them as empty. The roles are there, but they are not inevitable. They were not ordained by God. They are empty of inherent existence. At a deep level, we are, as Stephen Batchelor says, “free to be no one.”
References
Foucault, Michel (1988). “Critical Theory/Intellectual History” in: L.Kritzman (ed) Michel Foucault – Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. London: Routledge.
Gergen, Kenneth and Gergen, Mary (2003). Social Construction: A Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Heidegger, Martin (1982) “The Way to Language.” In: On the Way to Language. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
CHAPTER 13 –REFUTING MORAL OBJECTIVITY
The target in this chapter is moral realism. This is also known as moral objectivity because it claims that there are objective moral facts out there about what is good and bad, right or wrong and what human beings ought to do. These facts are claimed to be opinion-independent. That is, they are supposed to exist without depending on how we happen to think about a particular situation. Moral requirements are simply supposed to be there, in the nature of situations. We will discover how moral requirements do exist, but not objectively. That is, we will discover how morality is empty.
Our approach is inspired by the work of John Mackie, Richard Joyce, Antti Kauppinen and others.
Coming to see moral phenomena as empty does not mean that we reject morality, kindness, and the sincere intent to help others. Rather, it means that we see deeply how these things are dependent upon various facets of ourselves. It means seeing morality more as constructed, and less as discovered. This actually serves to enliven our moral intuitions.
We feel that moral realism is an important target to investigate. If we see our particular kind of morality as inherently existent, then we are more prone to feel intolerant, judgmental and superior to others who may think differently. We may feel that everyone has an obligation to see things our way. And we may act on these feelings. But seeing morality as empty opens the heart. Personally, we have found our moral sensibilities to be heightened and broadened, not deadened or narrowed, by seeing morality as empty.
Investigating moral realism can be challenging. When we refute the purported objectivity of morality, it can feel like we are refuting morality itself. It can feel like we are going too far, as if we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But actually, we are going for the middle way. We are trying to see morality as neither inherently existent nor utterly nonexistent, but as conventionally existent and very important. In going through this chapter, if you begin to feel that too much is being refuted, feel free to take a break and do a heart-opening compassion meditation, or skip to another part of the book!
Tuning into Moral Realism
Before we start to refute moral objectivity, we will try to tune into our feelings about it. As we have done in other chapters, we will first try to get a handle on our target. In this case, the target is moral objectivity. We begin with trying to make our conception of it clear and obvious. Once we have a clear grasp of it, it will be easier to refute.
Take a few minutes and bring to mind a moral principle that seems clear and obvious. A good example would be our sense that romantic relationships should be monogamous. Try to find a principle that seems objectively true, while also being something that you can work with.
Can you tune into the sense that this principle exists “out there” somehow? Does it seem to exist in a mind-independent way, as we usually think that rocks and mathematical principles do?
Does the fact that many cultures agree on this principle make it seem that it exists outside all of us? Does it seem as though it is objectively hardwired into our brains? Does it seem like this principle has been found and not made?
Try to get a sense of how intensely you feel that this principle is true. Tune into the strength of your conviction. Can you get a sense that the intensity seems like evidence of the objective existence of this principle? You may even feel like saying, “How could I possibly feel this strongly if it weren’t objectively true?”
And finally, try to see if you have the sense that if it is really objectively true, then it is true for everyone across the globe. Do you have a sense that this principle is true for everyone, regardless of their cultural background or beliefs?
What Others Have Said
Next, we’ll take a look at what some of the moral anti-realists have written about our sense of moral objectivity.
Our moral language is thoroughly realist. We speak as if moral facts are out there waiting to be discovered: “Does a fetus have a right to life?” “Is it wrong to kill animals for food?” “What obligations do we have toward the poor?”
Greene (2002)
[One may] ... perceive that moral imperatives are imbued with a kind of mystical practical authority...
Joyce (2007a)
If morality existed objectively, then this would require that “the universe takes sides”.
Burgess (2007)
When it seems that morality is inherently true, we feel “demands as real as trees and as authoritative as orders from headquarters.”
Garner (1994)
To review, when we feel that morality is objectively real and true, it probably appears to us as:
something that objectively and intrinsically guides our actions because of its inherent truth
something independent, that is true and existent, regardless of what anyone thinks or feels
something that is universally authoritative and therefore categorically binding for everyone.
Now we can begin the process of refuting moral objectivity.
Refuting Moral Realism
John Mackie, Richard Joyce and others argue that moral facts and values do not have objective, independent existence in our world. We will highlight three basic kinds of arguments.
The Argument from Diversity
In other words, why is there not more agreement across cultures and through history?
If moral facts existed independently of people’s opinions, then we should see more agreement across cultures. There is some agreement across cultures about moral principles, but not as much as there should be if moral principles were truly objective.
But members of different cultures and different historical epochs conduct their lives according to widely different moral values and practices. Moral principles are not only different across places and times, but they can also conflict with each other in ways that are very difficult to resolve.
Here is another quote from one of our moral anti-realists:
The example Mackie uses is of two cultures’ divergent moral views regarding monogamy. Is it really plausible, he asks, that one culture enjoys access to the moral facts regarding marital arrangements whereas the other lacks that access? Isn’t it much more likely that monogamy happened to develop in one culture but not in the other (for whatever cultural or anthropological reasons), and that
the respective moral views emerged as a result?
Joyce (2007a)
The Argument from Strangeness
In other words, how is it that we come to know these supposedly objective moral facts? Do we perceive them as we do the physical world? Do we reason them out, as we do a mathematical problem? Does our heart tell us something as rigid and unforgiving as an objective moral principle?
If objective moral properties truly exist, then, according to John Mackie (1991), they would be “qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.”
To discover, recognize, understand and track such peculiar things as objective moral properties, according to Mackie, we would need “some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.”
The Argument from Parsimony
In other words, why assume objective moral principles when we don’t have to?
Typical moral behavior, attitudes and reactions can be quite well explained through our education, upbringing and training. Positing the existence of objective moral properties is thus unnecessary.
If we can account for our moral feelings and intuitions by citing these sociological and anthropological observations, then why do we need to assume that the principles exist in a mind-independent way? How does that help us account for anything?
Why Do We Think Morality Is Objective in the First Place?
How can we account for our feelings that morality is objective? Where did the idea come from?
Projectivism
John Mackie and other contemporary philosophers argue for something called “projectivism.” This is a view that our mind, as the philosopher David Hume says, has a “propensity to spread itself on external objects.”