Can Morality Be Objective?

Tyler Piteo-Tarpy
11 min readSep 29, 2024

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1. Introduction

In this essay, I will critique Alex O’Connor’s argument that morality can’t be objective even if God exists and is its source. His argument is addressed primarily at religion, but he uses it against atheistic attempts to ground morality objectively as well, and while I support his evenhandedness, I think he fails to recognize the features that make theism importantly different from atheism. My critique will end on that note but will begin by 2. summarizing O’Connor’s argument, will then 3. reject his separation of the terms “good” and “ought,” then 4. revive the term “objective” from the skeptical subjectivism he buries it under, and finally, as mentioned, 5. defend the authority of God to make objective commands, in this way affirming the status of objective morality as a unique consequence of a supernatural worldview.

2. Summary

O’Connor defines morality as: “the intuition that we ought to do that which is good, and ought not do that which is bad” (“Morality Can’t Be Objective,” t.5:40). He emphasizes that there is an important distinction between “good and bad” and “ought and ought not,” but claims that the impossibility of independently defining these terms is what makes morality non-objective. He agrees with G.E. Moore that ““good” is a simple notion, just as “yellow” is a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to anyone who does not already know it, what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is” (p.20). And yet, “even if you disagree when I call a particular thing good, the very fact that you can disagree demonstrates that you still know what I mean by good even whilst disagreeing that that particular thing is good” (“Morality Can’t Be Objective,” t.7:15). By this he means that we share an understanding of the simple notion, but disagree about what complex objects or states or events possess it: “yellowness,” or “goodness.”

There is another way to explain this common understanding in moral disagreement; R.M. Hare argues against Moore by claiming that “good” is fundamentally an evaluative term, not a descriptive one. He uses a thought experiment of a missionary conversing with a tribe of cannibals in their language using “good” to mean

the most general adjective of commendation… We thus have a situation which would appear paradoxical to someone who thought that ‘good’ (either in English or in the cannibals’ language) was a quality‐word like ‘red’. Even if the qualities in people which the missionary commended had nothing in common with the qualities which the cannibals commended, yet they would both know what the word ‘good’ meant. If ‘good’ were like ‘red’, this would be impossible… It is because in its primary evaluative meaning ‘good’ means… commendation, that the missionary can use it to teach the cannibals Christian morals. (p.148–149).

However, evaluation requires a standard of value to evaluate by, and a change in that standard, resulting from an evaluation that that standard is less commendable than it could be, itself requires a higher standard to evaluate by. The missionary, while he would be able to express his different commendations with an evaluative term, would not be able to teach an evaluatively better Christian moral standard without appealing to a standard the cannibals already held above their “productive of maximum scalps” (p.149) standard. I will return to this example later.

Next, O’Connor replies to the common critique that atheistic morality is subjective by pointing out that, likewise, “if you want to compare the ethics of two religions you need some moral basis on which to judge them, but that moral basis obviously can’t be one of the religions, and so the only way that you can decide which religion is morally superior is through a subjective analysis of which you feel is better” (“Morality Can’t Be Objective,” 12:50). Thus, the only difference between religious and atheistic morality is a feeling of objectivity versus a recognition of subjectivity. Taken with his previous point, O’Connor seems to be saying that though we may share an understanding of “good,” that understanding doesn’t come from a religion, and in fact it is just a subjective feeling or intuition that leads us to decide between things like religion. I will also return to this later.

That being said, O’Connor’s final point is that, even if we could objectively determine the existence of a particular God and the fact that this God had objectively determined some things as good and some as bad, we would still need some reason for why we “ought” to do those good things rather than the bad. He admits it is instinctually obvious that we ought to do what is good, but, because he accepts the “basic premise of skepticism which is to take nothing for granted” (“Morality Can’t Be Objective,” 18:05), he asks, can we prove that instinct to be true? He also notes that commands can’t be true or false, they just are, thus appealing to God’s commands doesn’t solve the problem unless we have some reason to recognize God’s authority, and this, he reiterates, would be a subjective reason.

In contrast to O’Connor’s definition of morality as “the intuition that we ought to do that which is good, and ought not do that which is bad,” however, my argument will show that morality is actually: the law that we do that which is good and not do that which is bad. Thus I will begin by showing that “ought” is not just an intuition we may accept or reject, but a law of action.

3. The Relation of Good and Ought

I have argued elsewhere that the laws of nature should not be thought of as merely descriptions of what regularly does occur, but rather as necessary causes of what does occur. Thus, the actions of material bodies are governed by laws. The actions of humans are also governed by laws, but unlike merely material bodies, we create some of those laws for ourselves. Another way of saying this is that we are free, and we are free because we can choose between alternative actions, whereas a stone can only move as it was moved. When we choose an action, we command the parts of ourselves necessary to carry it out to be moved by us. And yet, in order to choose an action from among the various alternatives, we need a reason. A reason is a connection between an end and a means to that end, or a value and a path to that value, and what we value we call good, though Moore’s Open Question argument demonstrates that we cannot call just anything good. If we value pleasure, or some other natural property, we cannot say that what is good just is what is pleasurable the way we can say an unmarried man just is a bachelor because we can always coherently ask if pleasure is actually good in a way we cannot about unmarried men and bachelors. If we find pleasure is not actually good, or is less good than something else, then we can change our value. Thus, our most fundamental value — the standard we change our other values by — is what we call irreducibly “good.”

To Hare’s earlier point, our use of the term “good” might just mean that we value what we apply it to, and thus our values could be arbitrary, and O’Connor too has expressed his support for an emotivist theory of moral language (“Debating The Moral Landscape,” t.54:10) which claims that when we say something is “good” we are really saying the equivalent of “yay!” (and with “bad” saying “boo!”) or some other non-conceptual emotional response. Perhaps O’Connor has changed his stance on Moore’s argument because this theory is incompatible with “good” being indefinable and instead makes “good” meaningless.

What would “yay!” or “boo!” mean without some common standard to define them by? They are clearly evaluative terms, comparable to the language of the cannibals in Hare’s thought experiment, and I can understand them as such once I’ve studied my “grammar book” (p.148). But in order to have a moral disagreement with the cannibals — or with O’Connor — rather than a mere formal exchange of customs, I need some standard to tell me whether I ought to agree with their evaluation or not. If the cannibals cut off my scalp while saying “yay!,” I will understand what they mean, and they will, if they studied my language, understand what I mean by “boo!,” and yet they would have no more reason to respect my evaluation of disapproval than I would have to respect their evaluation of approval. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “if no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality” (p.13). Thus, if “good” were not like “red” or “yellow,” there would be no sense in debating the merits of civilized morality and savage morality with either cannibals, philosophers, or even ourselves. That is, unless, above and beyond the cannibals’ value of scalps, they value, say, the will of God.

All this is to say that when we choose an action, we choose it because we find it in some way good; it in some way possesses goodness, and this is why we also evaluate it as good, or better than the alternatives. Evaluation follows recognition, and we cannot choose an action we recognize as worse than another because of its worseness without somehow believing that worseness is actually better than betterness. We always choose what we think is good, even if we reject the common labeling. Satanists do not worship Satan because they want him to destroy what they love, they worship him because they think God is going to destroy what they love; they have swapped the labels, but it is still love, not hate, that motivates them. Thus, since we cannot help but do what we think is good, we cannot coherently ask if we “ought” to do what we think is good. To pick out an action as “good” is just to pick out the action we “ought” to pick. It is a law of free action just as the conservation of momentum is a law of determined action.

5. The Distinction Between Objective and Subjective

O’Connor’s argument against objective morality boils down to the idea that decision-making is determined by subjective feelings. But this argument does away with all objectivity. Empirical evidence — what is often claimed as the standard of objectivity by scientifically minded atheists — would itself be subjective under this standard as it would rely on the subjective decision to trust our senses. Even logic could be doubted — as Alvin Plantinga argues in his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism — if we were to doubt the reliability of our cognitive faculties. But we can’t reasonably doubt our cognitive faculties if we are trusting our cognitive faculties to produce a reasonable doubt. Likewise, we can’t completely doubt our senses if we are using them to move through reality. As Linda Zagzebski writes, “skepticism threatens the motive to act not only on the level of failure in belief, but also on the level of failure in desire and purpose. Belief skepticism and motivation skepticism combine to threaten the moral life — in fact, practical life in general, with possible paralysis” (Zagzebski, p.354). One can doubt the necessity of logical reasoning if they are willing not to think, or the necessity of action if they are willing not to live, but for those of us who are not so willing, we instead, contra O’Connor, do take some things for granted.

Rather than defining “objective” as “provable,” since all proofs are based on assumed premises, we can define “objective” as “universal,” since all thinking and acting people must assume premises. Thus, when we say that morality is objective we are saying that it is the sort of thing that could only exist universally, regardless of whether it does in fact exist, but regarding the fact that we need to assume it exists. This is because in order for an action to be considered the one one ought to take it needs to be considered good, and if you consider an action good you have a reason for how it is related to the indefinable good, and in order for you to say that I ought to take that action too you have to say that I ought to consider it good too. You will have to show the truth of its relation to the indefinable good, and I will have to accept that truth as truth; that reason as my reason to act.

It might be objected that morality only applies to oneself and not to others, but because it is dependent on the simple notion of “good” that O’Connor admits is shared, it is in this way universal. O’Connor is right that our moral intuition does judge decisions, but that doesn’t mean our moral intuition is not universal, and in this way objective. At least, it would be a weak hypothesis that claimed this shared moral intuition was randomly produced. Much more likely there is some universal reason that influenced everyone to share it. And if this moral intuition is about something that is different from any natural property, then it must be about something transcending naturalism — something super-natural.

5. The Authority of God

O’Connor’s final point is that — granting for the sake of argument that God exists and is the source of morality — we still can’t claim His commands as an objective basis for morality without subjectively recognizing His authority to issue commands. But this confuses the nature of authority in the concept of God. As established, we could only reject God’s commands if we had a different standard we viewed as better than them. This standard, O’Connor is claiming, is a subjective preference, but subjective preferences are still subject to rational judgment by ourselves and others; should we pursue pleasure is still a coherent question. And yet, as Lewis writes “there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source” (Mere Christianity, 48). God, as the creator, and therefore knower, of all things, is truth, and so we cannot reason our way to a truth greater than Him. Even our subjective preferences were originally given to us by Him. The only way to reject His commands then is to reject His existence, or the care for truth altogether.

This can be illustrated by considering God’s non-moral commands: imagine rejecting God’s command that a particular stone exist because it is in your path. Subjective responses to objective truths do not change the nature of those truths; as will be discovered when you walk into the stone. Moral commands are different, because they are identified as such by being directed at free beings, not stones, but even so, it is not the command that changes based on our response to it, it is us. We can not reject, say, the US Constitution while remaining a US citizen. It is our status, not the law’s, that will change. Likewise, we can not reject God’s law while remaining a citizen of His kingdom, or a member of His family. One can certainly wish not to be His child, but imagine a human infant wishing that of its parents, its source of life and sustenance. If it is successful in its rejection, it will not retain its ability to accept or reject anything else for long.

6. Conclusion

O’Connor argues that morality can’t be objective even if God exists and is its source because even then morality would rely on the subjective “intuition that we ought to do that which is good, and ought not do that which is bad.” In contrast, my arguments have shown that it is an objective law that we ought to do what we view as good because that is how we do anything, and we ought to do what is ultimately good because that is how we judge what to view as good, and what is ultimately good is an indefinable, supernatural… something, and that something is what we call God.

Bibliography

Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals, Oxford, 1963; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Nov. 2003, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/0198810776.001.0001.

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperOne, 2015.

Moore, George. Principia Ethica, Neeland Media LLC, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=5318713.

O’Connor, Alex. “Debating The Moral Landscape With Sam Harris.” YouTube, YouTube, 31 Mar. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEuzo_jUjAc&list=PLMDve3WeC9qAidJ-sVarJXjy5blvar8qu&index=3.

O’Connor, Alex. “Morality Can’t Be Objective, Even If God Exists (Morality p.1).” YouTube, YouTube, 29 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tcquI2ylNM.

Plantinga, Alvin, ‘The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism’, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York, 2011; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Jan. 2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812097.003.0010, accessed 24 Apr. 2024.

Zagzebski, Linda, ‘Morality and Religion’, in William J. Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, Oxford Handbooks (2007; online edn, Oxford Academic, 2 Sept. 2009), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195331356.003.0015.

(Written April 2024)

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Tyler Piteo-Tarpy

Essayist, poet, screenwriter, and comer upper of weird ideas. My main focus will be on politics and philosophy but when I get bored, I’ll write something else.