Objective Morality
Geoffrey Moore
Author, speaker, advisor, best known for Crossing the Chasm, Zone to Win and The Infinite Staircase. Board Member of nLight, WorkFusion, and Phaidra. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute.
Without a belief in a divine source, how do atheists justify the existence of objective moral values and duties?
This is a great question because, without objective moral values and duties, it is hard to imagine how a contemporary liberal democracy could flourish or even function.?
Religion derives moral values and duties from sacred texts.? Within any given religious community, this claim holds up well enough, and religious narratives and the principles derived from them provide both moral inspiration and accessible guidance for ethical living.?? To say these provide objective moral values and duties, we should note, is to define objectivity as that which is independent of personal preference. This is fine as far as it goes.? Claims of objectivity do not hold up well, however, when competing religious visions confront each other with conflicting imperatives, each asserting transcendental authority for its own claims.? Taken to the extreme, such clashes have led to some of humanity’s worst acts of persecution and genocide.?
Indeed, it was just such conflicts that led to the Enlightenment’s seeking out secular alternatives to provide the foundation of moral values.? Philosophers following Immanuel Kant, for example, anchored morality in a categorical imperative to always respect the humanity of others and to act only in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone.? Others who followed Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill argued for a utilitarian foundation based on maximizing human welfare by pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number.? The problem with both these systems, however, is that neither aligns well the psychological or social experience of making moral choices in real life.? They are too embedded in theory and analytics to be available to the intuitive performances of everyday living.? Thus, while either or both may be useful for reviewing moral decisions, neither is suitable for actually making them.
Interestingly, despite their considerable differences, religious traditions and Enlightenment philosophy do share a common dimension in their approach to validating moral values.? They both come at them from the top down, beginning either with a divine creator or some overarching first principle, typically Reason (with a capital R).? This stands in direct contrast to the approach I took in The Infinite Staircase. ?Anchored as it is in the framework of emergence, I was committed to explaining everything from the bottom up because that is the only way that emergence works.?
So, from a secular bottoms-up perspective, how can we justify the existence of objective moral values and duties?? In the staircase framework, the first stair that emerges after consciousness is values.? It evolves out of a mammalian strategy for living that entails nurturing the young and governing the pack.? From nurturing, we learn to value love and kindness.? From governing the pack, we learn to value discipline and respect.? All mammals embrace these values, including we humans.? There is no entry into human life that does not begin with love and kindness—babies simply cannot survive without it.? And there is no family that can thrive without discipline and respect—things just fall apart.?
Because all humans are mammals, these values are universal.? That, in my view, makes them truly objective.? Beyond this, as we move further up the staircase to embrace culture, language, narrative, and analytics—the stairs that make us uniquely human—what originated as a universal field becomes increasingly fragmented under the competitive pressures of natural selection, leading to differing strategies for living anchored in differing cultures, differing languages, differing narratives, and differing analyses.? Any one of these strategies is free to assert that its particular representation of values is universal, but to do so, it must locate it in a transcendental field, experienced through revelation or reason, neither of which has ever succeeded in winning universal acceptance across the entirety of the human community.? What we can do, on the other hand, is stay true to our mammalian roots, abiding by the core values that we all share.
That’s what I think.? What do you think?
Make AI work for you - KI für den Mittelstand KI = Kollaborative Intelligenz #KollaborativeIntelligenz
9 小时前Hi Geoffrey, the argument in?The Infinite Staircase?presents an interesting and thoughtful attempt to ground objective morality in a secular, bottom-up framework. You rightly identify the limitations of traditional religious and Enlightenment moral systems, which often rely on top-down justifications—either through divine authority or abstract rational principles. Your evolutionary perspective provides a compelling narrative about the emergence of moral values from social structures within mammalian life. Prof. Markus Gabriel, has developed the "Philosophy of New Realism" and he rejects both?scientific reductionism?and?constructivist relativism, asserting instead that: Moral values are irreducible: They do not emerge merely from biological evolution but exist independently as part of reality. A?genuinely objective morality?cannot be reduced to its evolutionary function. Instead, as Gabriel argues, moral facts must be recognized as fundamental aspects of reality itself. While?The Infinite Staircase?makes a valuable contribution by highlighting the inadequacies of traditional moral theories, it ultimately remains trapped within a?naturalistic framework that does not fully account for the independent reality of moral values.My2Cent
Retired, Hewlett Packard Inc and Agilent Technologies Inc Bachelor of Science Business Administration - San Jose State. Math/Chemistry - Canada College
10 小时前Mammalcentrism Animal sentience research is often accused of being mammal-centric. This is primarily due to the similarity of physiology and neurology in humans and other mammals, and the relative ease of drawing conclusions from argument-by-analogy. In addition, attitudes to animals may be affected by innate human tendencies to sympathise with animals depending on their status, use, attractiveness, or believed intelligence. Yue-Cottee for example, describes how cold-bloodedness is often used as a reason for the denial of subjective feelings to fish. She argues that a metabolic difference should not be used as a reason for denying them concern or protection, particularly in light of the contradictory scientific evidence. There is hope, however, and science is slowly moving away from this dominant, mammalcentric perspective. For instance, in recent years we have seen a growing focus on the subjective minds of invertebrates such as cephalopods and decapod crustaceans. As the field of animal sentience research continues to grow, scientists should be able to further develop the methodologies used to explore the affective states of animals. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/3/882Knowledge
In a cold call scenario, the sales rep must establish credibility immediately using two mammalian realities: 1. nurturing the uninformed (showing empathy for those who do not yet know what they are missing) and 2. governing the pack (exhibiting confidence that continued dialogue will improve the recipient's chance of success).
Personal Project Coordinator/Design Educator | Biology, Chemistry
16 小时前Your perspective is thought-provoking, but there’s a key distinction between values and instinct. Mammalian nurturing behaviors are biologically hardwired, driven by chemical processes like oxytocin, rather than conscious moral choices. Values, however, are uniquely human requiring reflection, reasoning, and a guiding framework. Historically, religious traditions have provided this structure. The Ten Commandments, for example, were introduced during a time of moral relativism, shaping ethical and legal systems that persist today. If morality is purely emergent, what objective standard ensures its consistency? Instinct alone does not create values only humans engage in moral reasoning, suggesting morality requires a foundation beyond biology.
Head de Inova??o e Transforma??o Digital | Produtos | Agilidade
16 小时前Geoffrey Moore well done! Respect each other and always improve ourserlves as human species is the best way.