Moral Truths: The Foundation of Ethics

By Magnus Vinding

There are moral truths. There are truths about what matters in this world, and therefore also truths about how we should act in it. And we need to realize these truths, as such a realization itself will ignite a fundamental change for the better, both in our thinking, conduct and culture altogether. A fundamental change toward higher moral ground. Or so this book argues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magnus Vinding
• Release date: Nov 2, 2014

Magnus Vinding

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), and Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022).He is blogging at magnusvinding.com

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Moral Truths: The Foundation of Ethics

Copyright © 2014 Magnus Vinding

Other Books and Essays by Magnus Vinding:

Free Will: An Examination of Human Freedom

Why We Should Go Vegan

Why Happy Meat Is Always Wrong

The Simple Case for Going Vegan

A Copernican Revolution in Ethics

Essays on Veganism

Blog: magnusvinding.blogspot.com

Twitter: @MagnusVinding

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Parts of this book have previously been published in other books by the author, and on the site: magnusvinding.blogspot.com

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Prelude

A Short Demolition of Relativism

The Self-Contradiction of the Apparent Moral Relativist

Part I

The Basis of Moral Realism

Value: A Fact, Not an Assumption

Where the Complexity Lies

What about Other Ethical Theories?

Immanuel Kant: The Dedicated Consequentialist

The Felicific Continuum: Absolute or Not?

Clarifying the Qualitative Nature of the Felicific Continuum

The Ethical Implications of the Qualitative Distinction

Who Are We?

Part II

The Particulars of Ethics: An Open Question

Caring for Oneself Personally

Are All Conscious Beings Equal?

The Meaning of Being as High as Possible

We Should Examine the Question and Strive for the Goal

In Defense of the Goal-Oriented Approach

The Ethical Importance of Ideas

Means and Ends

The Urgency of Reducing Suffering

Uncertainty: Our Inescapable Condition

Specific Goals We Should Pursue

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Epilogue

Bibliography

Introduction

Are Right and Wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion? Oh no!

— William Lloyd Garrison

It seems that we are sailing on a stormy sea without a compass, floating around without direction. But is this because there are no directions we truly should take, or is it merely because we have not managed to create the compass that shows us such directions?

My claim is that the answer is the latter: the compass can be made. There are truths about what we should do — moral truths — and these can be searched for and discovered, and based on these discoveries we can build a true moral compass that provides us with truly normative directions.

This is the central claim I shall put forth, defend and elaborate on throughout this book. The book consists of various essays that build upon each other toward the collective aim of pointing out the most basic moral truths. Most fundamental of these truths is the fact that all other moral facts relate to, and which all ethics comes down to ultimately (I use the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ interchangeably). This fact will be presented in the third essay, and it is, I claim, all we need to know in order to start creating a true moral compass, a compass whose pointings we truly should follow. Once we have this fundamental fact on the table, what remains to be done is only to sort out the more specific facts of our situation, and to navigate in the direction these facts collectively point us in. This is not the simple part, however, for it is at this level that all the difficulties and complexities are found — in the specifics of what we should do, not the fundamentals. It may seem unclear what I mean at this point, but I shall elaborate further in the fifth essay, Where the Complexity Lies.

The first two essays are very short, and collectively they serve as a prelude to the third essay, and to the rest of the book, as the purpose of these two essays is to demolish relativism, the vile antagonist of realism, in a very concise manner. The first essay points out the self-refuting nature of the claim that no facts exists — a notion worth exposing as it is both disturbingly popular and because it stands in obvious opposition to any kind of realism, including moral realism. Having settled the undeniable truth of realism in the first essay — undeniable because one must be a realist to even try to deny realism — the second essay will move on to show the irrelevance of moral relativism in normative discussions by pointing out that moral relativists cannot consistently make any normative claims. This will be followed by the presentation of the fact that provides the final blow to moral relativism: the fundamental moral truth that makes moral realism true, and which provides the basis of morality. The essays that follow will all elaborate on this moral truth, defend its truth status, or examine its implications. One essay argues that the boundaries commonly drawn between different ethical theories are not as hard as commonly claimed, and that they all spring, more or less implicitly, from the same ethical truth, and hence tend to converge to the same ultimate goal. Another essay defends the claim that the fundamental moral fact really is a fact rather than a mere assumption, while another essay examines who we are and argues that it only makes sense to grant moral inclusion and care to all conscious beings — ourselves in the broadest sense — as opposed to merely caring about ourselves personally. These essays are found in the first part of the book, which is followed by a second part that moves beyond the fundamentals of ethics, and attempts to uncover some of the most basic practical implications of the fundamentals presented in the first part. This includes a clarification of the conditions and limitations under which we are bound to act, and not least a presentation of some specific suggestions about how we should act in this world.

So, in short, what I aim to present in this book is the core foundations of ethics, not merely the foundations of some ethical theory, but the foundations of ethics in the sense of that which we truly should do, and hence to show that ethical realism is true, and that it is so in a much harder sense than most think; that ‘ought’ really does follow straight from ‘is’ — from facts alone. This is significant, because only by realizing these facts will we be able to converge toward acting as we really should.

Prelude: A Demolition of Relativism

A Short Demolition of Relativism

A harmful and all too common idea is that it is impossible to know anything — that facts do not exist. The popularity of this claim, and the fact that anyone could possibly believe it, is quite astonishing given that the claim is both self-refuting and preposterous on its face. For if we apply the claim there are no facts to itself, then it must be true that the claim itself is not true either, and the claim therefore refutes itself. Adding to the claim that there are no facts except for the fact that there are no facts other than this one fact is no better, because, according to this claim, it must then also be the case — it must be a fact — that, say, 2+2=4 is not a fact. So the problem with this expanded claim is that accepting it forces us to admit that there is an infinite number of facts, because we can make an infinite number of claims about the world, and it must be true according to this expanded claim that none of these other claims are facts, which of course contradicts the claim itself. So, as closer examination reveals, this second claim is also incoherent and self-refuting, and therefore it cannot be true either.¹

Once we have accepted the validity of logic, the claim that there are no truths, or only a limited number of truths, is bound to fail, as reason itself compels us to admit that there is an infinite number of facts, and if we do not accept the validity of logic and reason, then why even try to make an argument in the first place?

Nothing keeps us from answering the biggest questions in life and agreeing upon their answers more effectively than the attitude of relativism, which is why it is so important to expose this attitude for the obvious self-contradiction it is, and to go beyond it.

The Self-Contradiction of the Apparent Moral Relativist

Having clarified that relativism is self-refuting and hence untrue, it is worth dealing with a common inconsistency of another, perhaps more popular, flavor of relativism: moral relativism, or, as we shall see, what is no more than apparent moral relativism.

While many people will admit that facts about the world do exist, it seems that many, especially highly educated people, will claim that ethical facts do not exist, at least no ethical facts that are true beyond a limited cultural context. Strangely, this often leads them to claim that the morality of other cultures should be respected and never judged on other terms than their own. This is obviously a self-contradiction since to claim that respect for the ethical codes of other cultures is always normative exactly is to claim that there is an ethical truth — that there is a claim about what we ought to do — that is true beyond a limited cultural context. So people who think of themselves as moral relativists actually tend to contradict the relativistic claim that no universal ethical truths exist, which reveals that they are, in fact, not truly moral relativists.

Unlike relativism with regard to all facts, moral relativism is not logically self-refuting per se, but assuming its validity does, however, prevent one from believing, and sincerely claiming, that we should act in one way rather than another — such a statement cannot be true according to a true moral relativist. And this includes statements about whether we should be moral realists or not, because even though moral relativism holds that moral realism is not true, the stance does not allow for the move that we therefore should not be moral realists. In making such a move, the purported moral relativist would stand revealed as a moral realist in disguise. Again, if one denies the existence of moral truths, one must, in order to be consistent, refrain from making purportedly valid claims about what we should do. This makes the moral relativist as valuable in a discussion about ethics as the relativist who denies that truths exist is in a discussion about any factual matter. The core statements that relativists make obviously keep them outside of discussions that concern the facts they claim do not exist. So while moral relativism is not logically self-contradicting, it does prevent one from saying that there is anything we should do. If a moral relativist does that that would be a self-contradiction.

Many self-professed moral relativists will insist that they can claim certain ethical statements to be true, but only within a given cultural frame. First of all, this is not moral relativism, but rather moral realism with a view of ethical facts one could call contextualistic in a hard sense. Secondly, such a position faces difficult problems of its own, especially the problem that faces any strongly contextualistic view of facts, namely: what demarcates one context, one cultural frame or setting, wherein one set of facts is true as opposed to another? A shared language? A shared history? A shared view of connectedness? This moral relativism, or, rather, hard contextual moral realism, rests upon a hard distinction between cultures that is as impossible to draw as it is to defend, especially in today's global, interconnected world.

So while moral relativism is not self-refuting per se, it does seem like it is hard, if not impossible, to consistently believe it to be true, since it seems humanly impossible, or at least impossible for any humane being, to really think that no actions are ethically right or wrong in any strong sense. As Sam Harris notes in his book, The Moral Landscape: Given how deeply disposed we are to make universal moral claims, I think one can reasonably doubt whether any consistent moral relativist has ever existed. ²

Moral relativism is as harmful for our ethics as relativism with regard to all facts is for any science. It makes further progress impossible and rejects the progress we have made so far as truly being progress. And not only does moral relativism block the progress of the study of ethics — the study of what we should do — but also our moral practice itself, as it causes us to not see clearly on ethical matters. It prevents us from speaking out clearly against immoral actions, and it keeps us from raising ourselves to higher moral ground, at least from doing so as fast and intelligently as we easily could.

To the extent that we have made any progress in science, it has been because we admitted that there are facts to be uncovered and explained in the first place — because we admitted that relativism is false. Similarly, to the extent that we have made progress ethically, it has been because we have realized, in one way or the other, that some things truly are better than others.³ Admitting this is the only way in which we can intelligently strive toward ethical progress, because, otherwise, we cannot even talk about ethical progress — we cannot claim that the holocaust is really worse than a broken finger, or that we should avoid any of them, which a moral relativist cannot consistently say. As this reference to real-world examples exposes, moral relativism — the intellectual position that no state of the world is in any way better than any other; that happiness is not preferable over suffering and pain in any deep sense — is indeed nothing less than intellectually acquired psychopathy.⁴

Unlike what the moral relativist erroneously thinks, we truly do have moral obligations, and one moral obligation that stands as clear as any is to go beyond moral relativism.

Part I: The Foundation of Ethics

The Basis of Moral Realism

What provides the core foundation of moral realism is a simple fact obvious from the experience of all of us:

A continuum of more or less pleasant experiences exists, and what ultimately matters is where consciousness falls on this felicific continuum; being as far toward the positive end of this continuum is what ultimately matters.

This, I claim, is a fact, not a human invention, and to not realize this fact is to fail to realize the perhaps most important fact of all as it is the fact that all morality relates to ultimately. For what this fact implies is that the goal of bringing consciousness as high as possible on the felicific continuum is what we ultimately should attain. It is the fact that bridges the gap claimed to exist between 'is' and 'ought'.

Such a claim about a link between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ may seem controversial and misguided, as all claims of this sort are widely held to be, yet it is in fact the notion that such a link cannot be drawn that is misguided. First, the idea that 'is' and 'ought' should be divorced from each other in any deep sense is a hard one to maintain for the reason that 'is' includes all that exists, including any 'ought’ — or value — that we have or could possibly think about, and to insist that we cannot base an 'ought' on an 'is' is therefore to insist that we cannot base an 'ought' on anything at all. So all talk about ‘ought’ must ultimately be based on ‘is’ in some way, as there is nothing else it can be based on, and nothing else we can talk about ultimately. As Henry Sidgwick noted in The Methods of Ethics: "On any theory, [my emphasis]