Moral Judgments and Moral Theories

Okay, all this political blogging’s got me down. Let’s take things back to a more abstract level.

Sometimes people argue that since there is no universally agreed upon moral theory (say, utilitarianism, Kantianism, divine command theory, or whatever), then we should be moral relativists. That is, if we don’t have a satisfactory second-order theory about morality, then we’re not justified in holding on to our first-order moral judgments.

This doesn’t seem right. Consider an analogy. For thousands of years, the human race had no theory about how sense perception worked (and certainly not a correct theory until fairly recently – or at least we think it’s correct!). Does this mean that for all that time people were unjustified in their perceptual judgments? Surely not. My judgment that I see a computer screen in front of me is independent, epistemically speaking, of whether or not I have a correct theory about how perception works (In fact, whatever theory of perception I do have is a rather fuzzy one. I’m sure I would have a hard time explaining it in any detail).

Similarly, or so it seems to me, is it with our moral judgments. Take a first-order moral judgment like “It is wrong to inflict prolonged and undeserved suffering merely for one’s own pleasure or convenience.” This seems to be about as close to an obvious moral truism as you’re going to get. And certainly someone who believes this is justified in believing it even if they never think about or come into contact with moral theorizing. Moreover, I would say that this moral truism is probably more certain than just about any premise one would use in constructing a moral theory. And any moral theory that implied that this truism was false should, for that reason, be rejected as an inadequate theory.

Just as we perceive facts about the material world, it may be that we “perceive” moral facts. The fact that we don’t have a fully satisfactory theory about morality isn’t, on its face, reason to give up morality any more than the lack of a theory of perception would’ve been reason for our forebears to give up making perceptual judgments.