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Moral Objectivism

Can there really be actions whose moral properties are independent of our perception of them? Think for
instance of Hitler’s killing of the Jews. Is Hitler’s act of genocide really, objectively wrong? Suppose that
Germany won World War II and everyone were brainwashed to believe that Hitler’s genocidal act is not
wrong but is actually morally justified: would that then be the case? In this chapter, we will examine some of
the major arguments for moral objectivism and also some objections to it.

So what is moral objectivism? It is “roughly the view that there are moral facts and true moral claims
whose existence and nature are independent of our beliefs about what is right and wrong (Brink, 1989: 20).
A moral objectivist believes that “there are objective universal moral principles, valid for all people and all
social environments”.1 Before we proceed, it is important to distinguish between moral absolutism and
moral objectivism. Moral absolutism states that “there are nonoverrideable moral principles that one ought
never violate.”2 A well-known example of a moral absolutist is the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In
his oft-cited article entitled ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy’, Kant starts from the
presupposition that lying is an absolute moral wrong. This means that lying is always wrong in whatever
circumstances that one finds oneself in. At the end of his article, Kant concludes that if an individual is
directly asked by a would-be murderer for the whereabouts of the innocent victim he intends to kill, then a
moral wrong would be committed were she to lie to the murderer. The objectivist agrees with the absolutist
that moral principles have universal, objective validity. However, objectivists need not always agree that
moral norms are necessarily exceptionless. For an objectivist, no moral duty has absolute weight or strict
priority; each moral principle must be weighed against other moral principles. For greater understanding,
the idea of prima facie duties would help. According to William D. Ross, the originator of the idea, prima
facie duties are duties that are binding only initially, or on “first appearance,” so that they can be
overridden by a more urgent duty. Using this idea, one may state that there is a prima facie duty to tell the
truth, but, as opposed to Kant, this duty can be overridden if a more urgent duty, such as the duty to save a
human life, presents itself.

So what are the reasons for thinking that moral objectivism is true? Five arguments are provided.

The Argument from Intuition - Normal people know that there are certain acts that are objectively
immoral: genocide, rape, slavery and many others. By objectively immoral, it is understood to mean that
these acts are wrong regardless of anyone’s opinions about them. However, if moral subjectivism is true,
then no one can’t criticize, say, Hitler for his genocide of the Jews since from Hitler’s perspective, he’s just
doing the right thing. But normal people would retort that the wrongness of genocide does not depend on
Hitler’s view about the matter. There is a principle behind this presupposition, and it is this:
(A) Genocide is objectively wrong, so no one should commit genocide.

1
Louis Pojman & James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th ed. (Boston MA: Wadsworth, 2012), 31-32.
2
Ibid., 32.
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Clearly, Hitler does not believe in A. But as Louis Pojman remarked: “Should that affect our confidence in
the principle? Is it not more reasonable to infer that Hitler is morally deficient, morally blind, ignorant, or
irrational than to suppose that his noncompliance is evidence against the truth of A?” 3

One may object that this argument begs the question since it is assuming that some acts are objectively
immoral when that is what needs to be proved by the moral objectivist. The likes of Ted Bundy can as well
say that they know that there are no objectively immoral actions, regardless of anyone’s opinions about
them. While it is implausible for anyone to meet someone who boldly claims that, we still cannot disregard
its possibility. This scenario however does not prove that both positions have equal validity since moral
objectivism is vastly more intuitive than moral relativism. Thus, it is the moral relativism that bears the
burden of proof to show that his position is true or probable, but until the relativist can show that, we are
rationally warranted to uphold moral objectivism even in the absence of any arguments.

The Argument from Epistemic Realism – When a moral objectivist enters a discussion with a moral
relativist, both camps assume that there are objective epistemic duties that bind them. Common epistemic
duties are these: Do not misrepresent one’s intellectual opponents, do not deliberately commit fallacies, do
not deceive, and be honest in one’s claims. For the moral objectivist, it is not hard to integrate epistemic
duties within his framework since he can easily argue that epistemic duties are a subset of moral duties.
But in the case of the moral relativist, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to claim that there are epistemic
duties since if morality is relative, there is no binding reason for anyone to obey epistemic duties. Thus, it is
more likely to think that moral objectivism is true given the universality of epistemic duties in the context of
moral discussions.

The Argument from the Phenomenology of Moral Disagreement – When people disagree about some
moral issues, it seems that the usual presupposition on both sides is that there is an objective truth about
the matter that would settle the issue. Consider the issue of death penalty. Those who are against it claim
as one major reason the idea that the imperfection of the justice system may put someone to death who in
actuality is really innocent. Furthermore, they appeal to the moral idea that it is always unjust to punish
someone innocent to death, and they take this as an objective moral fact in which even their opponents are
expected to agree. Meanwhile, those who are in favor of the death penalty may have as one major reason
the idea that the only proportionate penalty to terribly heinous crimes is death, and they also take this as an
objective moral fact in which even their opponents are expected to agree. In both cases, both sides rely on
assumptions that they take to be objective moral facts, and that it is these facts that are assumed to have
the power to persuade the other camp of one’s position. There would seem to be no point in arguing for
one’s ethical position if there is no way by which both parties can come to some sort of agreement
predicated on an intersubjective reality that should be rationally convincing for everyone.

The Argument from Moral Responsibility and Accountability – The idea of moral responsibility is
rooted in the idea that a moral agent is compelled to fulfill his moral duties regardless of one’s desires and
preferences. The other side of moral responsibility is moral accountability, which stems from the intuition
that we can hold others responsible for their actions. We are in a position to express moral condemnation
3
Louis Pojman & James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th ed. (Boston MA: Wadsworth, 2012), 39.
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to moral agents who perform morally forbidden actions while we can express moral praise to those who
perform morally good actions. But the idea of holding others responsible only makes sense if morality lays
out a standard that is universally binding to every member of a moral community. Moral accountability
entails that for every morally significant action we perform, we must expect a reaction from the moral
community that is appropriate to the moral significance of our action. Morality then is at its bottom an
interpersonal affair. But the interpersonal nature of morality would not make sense if morality is not
objective. If moral subjectivism is true, then a compulsive liar cannot be reprimanded to avoid lying if lying
is always justified according to his moral framework. The same strand of reasoning applies to moral
conventionalism as well, in which one culture cannot be morally condemned even if there is widespread
agreement that a cultural practice is intuitively morally wrong (such as the sati practice in India).

If one is willing to defend moral relativism even at the expense of moral responsibility and accountability,
morality would be reduced into what we may call the solipsistic view of morality, in which morality
becomes merely a personal, not interpersonal, affair where moral responsibility and moral accountability
are concepts that no longer make sense. Moral solipsism is directly entailed by moral subjectivism. This is
in contrast to the interpersonal view of morality, which is easily explained under moral objectivism.
Clearly, there are two competing views: the solipsistic view of morality that abandons moral responsibility
and accountability versus the interpersonal view of morality under which is the view that moral responsibility
and accountability are concepts that are integral to morality. In conclusion, the strength or weakness of this
argument depends largely on what view is taken by the members of the moral community as more intuitive,
but it seems that at first glance moral responsibility and accountability is connected to the very fabric of how
morality makes sense to us.

The Argument from the Nature of Moral Discourse – “You did the right thing.”
“Is this wrong?”
“There are cases of X where it is morally justified.”

Moral agents engage in moral discourse all the time. The first example above illustrates the moral judgment
of expressing moral praise toward another, a judgment that is assumed to be interpersonally applicable to
both the giver and the receiver such that if the giver acts similarly, it is assumed that he also deserves
moral praise. This shows that giving a moral judgment transcends one’s personal desires and beliefs, the
nature of which is better explained by moral objectivism than moral relativism. It would not make sense to a
moral relativist to accept moral praise or moral condemnation from others since he is only bound by his
own judgment or his society’s. In the second example, the question commonly presupposes a standard to
which one’s action may or may not live up to. A moral relativist may reply that the question may just be
compelling the moral agent to utilize his own moral standards in assessing his action, and is thus logically
consistent with moral relativism. Granted, but then the moral relativist cannot ask the same question if it
means something like, “Do you think I have done something wrong?” since the question presupposes that
there is a standard to which the moral agent is supposed to respect and follow and whose authority does
not lie solely on other moral agents who have made the judgment. Finally, the third example above
assumes that the cases appealed to possess certain characteristics which make them morally justified for
every moral agent. There is no point in differentiating between cases that are morally justified to those that
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are not if the ultimate arbiter of moral issues is solely the self. Indeed, moral discourse would cease if
everyone is a moral relativist since there is no point of convincing another moral agent of a particular moral
position if the only valid standard for everyone is their personal point of view.

Moral Objectivism and Moral Dilemmas

Some of those who are not convinced of moral objectivism point to the existence of moral dilemmas as
undermining moral objectivism. As the philosopher Saul Smilansky described: “Moral paradoxes are
entertaining, but despite all of the fun that we can have with them, they are also aggressive threats to
fundamental moral intuitions, to our ethical theories, and in general to our peace of mind.”4 How exactly do
moral dilemmas undermine the veridical strength of moral objectivism? Let us look at one well-known moral
dilemma to find out some answers.

In a now classic article entitled ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Peter Singer devised a thought
experiment to show that affluent people have a moral obligation to donate much of their wealth to the poor.
As Singer expressed it, “If I am walking a shallow pond and see a shallow pond and see a child drowning in
it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant,
while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.”5 The thought experiment is meant to be
an analogy to the rich people’s moral obligation to help the poorest of the poor such that if one has a moral
obligation to help the drowning child, it is similarly the case that the rich has a moral obligation to help the
poor. At first glance, Singer’s argument is persuasive since it appeals to a commonsensical intuition in
morality that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing
anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”6 In other words, Singer is appealing
to the moral value of well-being. However, there is another commonsensical intuition, which is this: one has
a rightful claim to one’s own earnings such that it is the complete prerogative of the owner to decide where
his earnings will go. This intuition appeals to the moral value of freedom. Now, how shall we resolve this
dilemma?

One way of illuminating this dilemma is by recognizing value pluralism, the idea that human beings have
evolved in such a way that there are not one but many things we consider to be universally valuable.
Granted, there are a few who do not believe that some of these values are universal such as in the case of
psychopathic serial killers who do not think that human beings are intrinsically valuable. But these
psychopaths, by virtue of their incapacity to recognize a real good, should not be considered part of the
moral community. Going back to universal moral values, we may point to the five fundamental moral values
that undergird the five fundamental moral principles in chapter 1: freedom, fairness, respect for persons,
truth, and well-being. Now using the framework of value pluralism, we can see how the drowning child
scenario above creates the dilemma: because it shows how a certain occurrence can make us choose
between two things that we recognize as both universally valuable (or both universally devalued) but we

4
Saul Smilansky, 10 Moral Paradoxes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 3.
5
Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:3 (1972), 231.
6
Ibid.
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cannot choose both of them. However, the important thing to note here is that this fact does not seem to
count against moral objectivism since each of these moral values, taken by themselves, remain objectively
valuable; the dilemma only shows that two objective moral values can conflict with one another. Whether
one is more superior than another is something we can deliberate and debate about but it is clear that
moral values, such as well-being and freedom, remain objectively valuable even if they happen to collide
against each other.

Moral Objectivism and Moral Epistemology

Another problem that is also thrown against moral objectivism is the idea that it makes knowing right and
wrong deeply problematic. If morality is something that is totally independent of human opinion, then how
are we supposed to know about it? Remember that this problem cannot be applied to moral relativism: the
subjectivist can know morality by virtue of what he as an individual deems to be moral or immoral while the
conventionalist can know morality by virtue of what his society dictates as right and wrong although we
have to remember from the last chapter that this last one is not totally unproblematic; there is the
epistemological problem for the moral conventionalist. However, there are natural ways to determine what
society deems as right and wrong even if those ways may sometimes conflict. But moral knowledge
becomes more problematic for the objectivist since if morality is totally separate from human opinion,
including human desires and goals, then we seem to be at a complete loss of knowing it. So how can a
moral objectivist avoid this problem?

It is good to know that many moral objectivists are familiar with this problem and many answers have been
advanced in response to it. But first, let us first bear in mind that moral epistemology “is the study of
whether and how we know right from wrong.”7 Thus, the insights gained in this particular study of moral
epistemology can shed light on the various ways by which the moral objectivist come to know of moral
truths. One well-known way of answering the problem from both the philosopher’s and the layman’s side is
by an appeal to conscience, a form on an inner voice that tells us what is right and wrong. Following the
philosopher C. Stephen Evans, we may strictly define conscience as “a faculty whereby humans can
immediately discern the rightness or wrongness of particular acts or of general principles about how one
should act.”8 Now, one might find the term conscience disagreeable since it appears to presuppose a
religiously inspired morality, a framework that we will examine in the next chapter. Regardless, a faculty
similar to Evans’ description of conscience has been deemed to be a reasonable answer to the problem of
moral knowledge, and the view that advances and defends this faculty as a valid source of moral
knowledge is called ethical intuitionism. This faculty has been called as a moral sense or moral intuition.
Consider for instance the act of causing unnecessary harm to people. According to the ethical intuitionist,
recognizing such an act, one intuitively judges that it is morally wrong. No further inference is made as to
how the recognition of the act led to the intuitive moral judgment. One can no longer ask why causing
unnecessary harm is morally wrong; it should be intuitively clear to everybody how that act is judged as

7
Aaron Zimmerman, Moral Epistemology (London:Routledge, 2010), 1.
8
C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 41.
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immoral. There is a host of empirical research to suggest that there are moral duties that are universally
upheld in the vast majority of human cultures, such as the duty to be truthful, to keep one’s word, to
practice hospitality, and others.9 This strengthens the moral intuition that it is morally obligatory to be
truthful, to keep one’s words, and others.

Does this mean that moral intuitions are automatically correct? There is no reason to think that it is, and
there is one strong reason for this suggested by Evans, and it is that human moral judgments are not
completely independent of social and cultural influences. As he said, “one can easily imagine various moral
traditions that might enhance or distort the functions of conscience.”10 Imagine for instance being born in
ancient Greece where slavery is legal and culturally accepted. The social and cultural milieu at that time
can be expected to cloud the intuition that using human beings as mere means to one’s own ends is
morally wrong. But this should not lead one to conclude that the cultural environment can completely
overpower one’s moral intuitions. For instance while Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, thinks that
slavery is justified, Plato his teacher does not think so. On the other hand, one’s social environment can
also contribute in the discernment of moral intuitions: proper education for one seems necessary.

In any case, we might end this chapter by a quote from one of the ablest defenders of moral objectivism,
the philosopher David O. Brink. He observed that:

In moral argument and deliberation, it seems, we are trying to discover what sorts of things
are valuable, praiseworthy, or obligatory. We recognize moral requirements, and if we are
sensitive to moral requirements, they constrain our will and our conduct. We think people
can be morally mistaken and some people are morally more perceptive than others.11

If you resonated with the description Brink is giving with regard to how you generally view morality, it is
likely because you are a moral objectivist.

9
See C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947), 95-121.
10
C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation, 42.
11
David O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 8.