If you could imagine the worst possible misery for everyone, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, then you can reasonably say that anything which isn’t that is better. Once you admit this, a moral landscape with measurable characteristics is created.
A field of exploration about human well-being overarched by this concept of morality is opened. This spectrum is represented in the mind with total misery for everyone on one end, and total human well-being on the other. We can then begin to place cultural practices on this spectrum and judge their adequacy relative to the desirable outcome, and work from there.
Whether or not we understand the intricacies of such truths, we know that there are right and wrong answers in the continuum of human well-being. It’s reasonable to say therefore, that when we talk about values, we are talking about facts of human flourishing.
This enables us to categorise ubiquitous practices we know of as right and wrong. For example, right off the bat, we can say that throwing gays off rooftops because of their sexuality, or stoning women to death for being raped, is not the epitome of human flourishing, not by any stretch of the imagination. On the contrary, such practices are dangerously close to the worst case scenario and are represented as the valley of this moral landscape.
A counter-argument would be that the notion of well-being is subject to change relative to public perception and time, but if you could consider by analogy the concept of physical health, then this makes no sense. The model of physical health has changed over the years, largely for the advancement of humanity. For example, where we once thought that living till age 40 was representative of a fulfilling, healthy life, we now believe otherwise.
Just because the concept of health is open for revision through the ages does not make it vacuous. With this in mind, you could say that an objective measure of morality is just as tenable as an objective measure of physical health. This demystifies the abstraction of morality into something more concrete.
When we talk about morality, we value differences of opinion in a way that we do not in any other area of our lives
It is very likely that there are different ways to maximise human flourishing and these peaks can only be true relative to worse scenarios. Take by analogy the fact that there are many right answers to a balanced healthy diet, yet the difference between nourishment and poison is still very much intelligible. While recognising this, we are not tempted in any way to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition.
For this train of thought to continue, the idea of moral relativism, which is that right and wrong acts are relative to the cultures within which they reside, must be dismantled. Such an argument is based on the premise that since moral conduct differs among societies, then no one can be objectively right or wrong, which is to say that moral truths do not exist.
Consider for example, the problem of women’s bodies. Some cultures choose to cover them up from head to toe because that’s what their culture dictates.
Who are we to say, that the peoples of an ancient culture are wrong to cover their women and daughters in cloth bags? Who are we to say that it is wrong to be beaten into submission if they decline to be smothered in this way?
The real question is, who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to pretend to be non-judgemental about practices like this?
This is not about voluntary choices. When your first instinct is to beat a person into submission, what are the chances of that being a peak of human prosperity?
We have somehow managed to convince ourselves that there is such a thing as quantum physics expertise, but no moral expertise. When we talk about morality, we value differences of opinion in a way that we do not in any other area of our lives. Just because someone can articulate an understanding of physics through religious dogma does not make their view relevant.
So how have we convinced ourselves that every culture has an opinion worth considering when it comes to morality? How do we revere people who have repeatedly demonstrated their ignorance about truths of human flourishing as having some legitimacy when talking about such things?
The pervasive idea that science cannot tell us anything about morality is a false dichotomy as both are based in facts.
Advocating for the scientific understanding of human well-being through various disciplines does not preclude moral conduct. Science has always been about values, and you cannot get facts without embracing the certain values needed for scientific inquiry.
We need to admit that there are right and wrong answers to these questions, and that science relates in its totality to that domain of facts.
Christopher Attard is a university student furthering his studies in psychology.