Transcript of Moral Skepticism and Moral Objectivism

pick your favorite evil practice genocide slavery I've been teaching moral philosophy for long enough to have discovered the one thing that everyone who teaches moral philosophy discovers which is that most students are some kind or other of a moral skeptic and by moral skeptic I mean someone who thinks that there is no one true universal objective moral code or moral law that applies to everyone everywhere so this view that denies the existence of one true objective morality he's very popular but it is not popular with the author that we read for today which is Shafer landau so the first chapter which we read for today just lays out Shafer land house position which is opposed to moral skepticism it's a rejection of moral skepticism and starts to give us a little bit of a taste for the kinds of arguments that we're gonna get but it's a it was a short chapter as you could tell and so this this video will be short as well Schaffer Landau himself mentions that it seems like moral skepticism skepticism about the existence of some objective universal moral code is on the rise and he gives three reasons why he thinks it's more popular than it used to be the first reason is a kind of loss of faith in traditional authority figures the idea seems to be something like this there are certain authority figures within society religious leader as political leaders and these folks were held up as the most likely to know what the objective moral truth is and then people seem to have stopped believing that these traditional authority figures have any attachment to the moral facts the one true objective moral facts and therefore if they don't know the true moral facts then no one does and there aren't any that's the idea the second reason he gives for the rise in popularity of moral skepticism right is some kind of increased exposure to other cultures the idea here is just that when you learn that other societies do things differently and you also see that their way of doing those things isn't bad doesn't seem all that bad you realize oh the way that we've been doing it over here isn't special and then you think maybe there isn't one right way to do things at all the third reason he calls the cautionary tale of our centuries fanatics what is that okay let's start with our century he wrote this book in 2001 so our century was the previous century the 20th century so that's 1900 to 2000 okay now we know which century we're talking about and the fanatics are well there's one there's one number one fanatic that always gets brought up in a moral philosophy class he's the number one fanatic of that entire 100-year period he gets mentioned all the time who's the number one you know what I'm gonna write I think everybody knows right here he is Hitler Hitler is the number one fanatic the cautionary tale of our centuries fanatics is the idea that well if you think you have the one true system of morality if you think you are in touch with the one true moral law then you might enforce it in a way that seems egregious seems evil seems wrong and so moral skepticism of some kind or other the belief that there isn't one true moral code might prevent this sort of stuff from happening that's the way that you would get to a belief in moral skepticism or an increased belief in moral skepticism so Schaffer Landau is going to attack moral skepticism this is a long book actually it's a short book but it's got a lot of chapters a lot of short chapters and the whole thing is dedicated to an attack on moral skepticism and a defense of the alternative view which he calls moral objectivism moral objectivism is just well it's just the opposite of moral skepticism it's the view that there is one universal objective moral code that applies to everyone everywhere it judges their behavior it's what determines whether their actions are right or wrong whether they know it or not it's out there judging us all the time this moral law that's moral objectivism so he's going to be defending moral objectivism and attacking moral skepticism and he actually starts to do that just a little bit in this chapter just a little bit and what we're gonna do now is look at what he says and figure out what that little attack is here's what he says full of outrage at moments and at other times just as full of reservations about the status of our moral condemnation that's a description that he gives of the moral sceptic he says that the moral skeptic is well his term for this for this his term for that is that they are morally schizophrenic that is the moral sceptic sometimes feels and expresses moral outrage they come upon certain practices pick your favorite evil practice genocide slavery foot-binding female genital mutilation honor killings if you're a moral skeptic then you still seem to think that those things are evil you are full of outrage at moments when you think about those things in those moments you are full of outrage but at other times because you're a moral skeptic you are just as full of reservations about the status of our moral condemnation that is you feel that our moral condemnation can't be based on some objective universal moral standard that's what it is to be morally schizophrenic and Schaffer Landau thinks that all of the moral skeptics are afflicted with this they all say that they don't believe that there are objective Universal moral laws that apply to everyone everywhere they say that but then you listen to them a little later and they also say things like subjugating women is just wrong they say things like that or they say enslaving another human being is evil or they say things that indicate that they think those things if that's the case then they are morally schizophrenic and this this is really just a characterization it's a loaded characterization of what he thinks the moral skeptic is afflicted with right but it is also a kind of argument against moral skepticism the argument is you can't have it both ways either you think these things are really and truly wrong for everyone everywhere whenever they engage in them or you think that there isn't a fact about anything being really and truly wrong for everyone everywhere you can't have it both ways that's the that's the criticism that's the argument there's one other point we'll get rid of moral schizophrenia there's one other point that Shafer Landau makes in this chapter that is worth emphasizing the other point has to do with the distinction that we've actually already talked about in this course and it's a distinction that Schaefer Landau doesn't even label explicitly but it is the distinction between ethics and meta ethics an ethical claim is a claim just about what's right or wrong so if you say slavery is evil or you say abortion is evil or you say abortion is permissible or you say slavery is permissible if you say any of these things you're making an ethical claim but then if you try to as it were zoom out and say something not about some particular practice but about the nature of morality itself you say something like there are no moral facts whatsoever or you say all of the moral facts are relative to a given society or a given culture you see you make a claim like that about the general nature of morality you're making a meta ethical claim so the point that Schaefer Landau makes towards the end of this chapter is just that in this book and in the subsequent chapters that we're gonna read we're not gonna read the whole book he's not making any of these he's not making any specific claims he's going to assume some specific claims about morality he sometimes uses slavery as an example he sometimes uses misogyny as an example or murder and that sort of things so he's assuming well in those cases he's assuming that those things are morally bad or morally wrong and he's assuming that some things are morally good rather specific things but he's not really arguing or even outright claiming anything like this he's not gonna make any claims about what the moral rules are or what the moral facts are he's just going to make some general claims about the nature of moral facts and that general claim is the big general claim of the whole book is that there are such facts and they apply the same to everyone everywhere no matter what anyone thinks about it that is as he calls it moral objectivism you