No Moral Progress without an Objective Moral Ontology

Jaron Daniel Schoone

doi:10.13189/sa.2018.060306

Abstract

One of the definitions of philosophy is: the study of presuppositions. While many philosophers and scholars agree that human history exhibits moral progress, there seems to be confusion about the presupposed moral ontology that such a view entails. Moral ontology is the sub discipline of ethics which concerns questions such as whether moral facts exist objectively, where 'objective' means that such facts would exist independently from anyone's personal beliefs (mind-independent), or subjectively, where 'subjective' means that such facts depend on the beliefs and/or desires of persons (mind-dependent). This paper concludes that moral progress requires an objective moral ontology. Consecutively, this paper will raise considerable doubts concerning the idea that the objective ontological foundation of moral progress can be natural. On a natural ontological foundation (such as provided by evolutionary ethics) either moral progress appears to be non-objective or it seems to be altogether illusory.

Highlights

In a survey titled “What Do Philosophers Believe?”, targeting professional philosophers at 99 different institutions, over half of the respondents (56,8%) claimed that their meta-ethical view is consistent with moral realism
For the sake of this paper I will assume that moral realism is true and will argue based on this assumption that one requires an objective moral ontology if one wishes to account for the existence of objective moral progress
One could deny that moral realism is true, which according to the aforementioned survey about a quarter of the contemporary philosophers would do

Summary

Introduction

In a survey titled “What Do Philosophers Believe?”, targeting professional philosophers at 99 different institutions, over half of the respondents (56,8%) claimed that their meta-ethical view is consistent with moral realism. C1: If there is objective moral progress, a non-natural objective moral standard exists. If one wishes to hold the view that the abolishment of slavery is objective moral progress it seems to me that one has to hold that slavery is wrong and that there is some kind of mind-independent fact about the world that makes it the case that slavery is wrong. There has to exist some ‘thing’ in the world, which makes it the case that abolishing slavery is moral progress and not moral regress This is what I take to be an objective moral standard. A moral non-objectivist, which I will refer to as a moral subjectivist, would deny the existence of any kind of objective moral facts, including those concerning moral progress. The objective moral standard is either natural or non-natural

P3: Nothing Natural Can Function as an Objective Moral Standard

P4: There Is Objective Moral Progress

C2: A Non-natural Objective Moral Standard Exists