Self Delusions

Does morality require a soul?

Julian Sanchez from the January 2004 issue

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Similarly, critics of liberalism -- and some liberals as well -- believe that disparities of wealth and income are justified only if the well off "deserve" what they have in some deep sense. But as the late philosopher Robert Nozick observed, there are many things to which we are entitled, even though they are not deserved "all the way down." Being born with two working eyes is an accident of fate, not something the sighted have done anything to "deserve."

It does not follow that our eyes are up for grabs, subject to political reallocation. Our decisions -- our capacities and the uses we make of them -- are as much a constitutive part of us as our bodies. Respect for embodied persons still requires deference to our "unfree" choices and their consequences.

The account of morality given in The Problem of the Soul is emotivist: "Good" and "bad" are expressions of approval and disapproval, and saying that "murder is wrong" is tantamount to exclaiming "boo, murder!" It is here that Flanagan's claim to leave the core of what we care about intact is least plausible, but he does make a good case that the demand for some more transcendent basis for ethics is misplaced. What we seem to want in ethics is what Nozick would have called a "coercive" argument -- one so powerful that it must be accepted, even by a full-blown moral skeptic. But this is too much to ask, and it is more than we ask in the epistemic realm, where our situation with respect to a radical skeptic is perfectly analogous. There is nothing we can say to someone who rejects the axioms and inference rules of deductive logic without begging the question. Similarly, there is no deductive proof that induction -- inference from past evidence to future occurrences -- is valid. There's something obviously circular about asserting that we're entitled to inductive inferences on the grounds that they've worked pretty well for us so far.

If this seems comforting, it is probably because truly radical skeptics about either morality or logic are in short supply. But we do regularly face the problem of moral disagreement. Evolution gives us reason to expect that the most basic moral sentiments will be as universal as the ability to appreciate logic, but this still leaves the tricky moral details radically unsettled. Yes, we can all agree with Flanagan that murder and rape are bad, but where does that leave us with respect to the more subtle questions that are the focus of real debate?

Saying, as Flanagan does, that ethics should concern itself with "human flourishing" does not tell us who should flourish and to what degree. Should we be especially concerned with the worst off in society, or is it only the sum total of benefits and burdens we face, rather than their distribution across persons, that matters? How do we weigh different kinds of flourishing? Perhaps Flanagan is right that there will be no one "correct" way to answer these questions, but this means that they may ultimately have to be decided by nothing more exalted than the relative power of those who disagree.

Nevertheless, the fear that a naturalistic worldview will undermine all morality and meaning is exaggerated. Finding out that you are not the kind of metaphysical entity you might have thought you were doesn't make pain hurt any less, strawberries taste any worse, or love any less worth pursuing. It is not yet clear whether the more fleshed-out view we may ultimately develop will, as Flanagan believes, prove as psychologically satisfying as the one we leave behind. But if naturalism leaves us with a new set of problems in place of our old and comforting myths, it also leaves us with a new opportunity to create meaning. That, too, is a kind of freedom.