Welcome friends!
I think this time I’d just like to finish my discussion from last time about what I was calling the template problem. If you recall I was arguing in that post that religious people tend to view things through the prism of a sort of implied template of divine perfection and that doing so leads them to imbue any number of things with ethical significance that secular humanists tend to see as outside the scope of ethics. This time I thought I’d take a look at this template idea in the context in which both religious and secular people would agree we’re talking about ethics, which in case you’ve never read my blog before would be when the actions of one person have a significant effect on another person and we end up with an interpersonal conflict that needs resolving.
This time I’m talking mostly or perhaps entirely about explicit ethical propositions relating to how one should interact with one’s fellow humans. You can find propositions of this sort in both religious and secular ethics. In a sense I suppose one could say it’s implied by the very idea of ethics, which is basically a template for how one believes one ought to behave in different situations. Thus, in this case, it’s obviously not the presence or absence of a template that’s the issue. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s irrelevant either. In this context it’s the significance of the template for one’s ethics that matters, as well as the question of how the template relates to the natural world. Both of these issues give rise to a number of interesting differences in how religious folk and secular humanists tend to think and talk about ethics. (To avoid confusion I should point out that according to the way I’ve just framed this issue explicit directions on how people should behave when not having a significant effect on other people, which one quite frequently finds in religious systems, belong with my previous post despite the fact that in that post I was mostly discussing an implied template.)
In a religious system what typically makes ethical propositions valid or correct or whatever you want to call it (don’t get all philosophical on me now) is that they recommend behavior that corresponds to a template of correct behavior that is thought by religious folk to exist as a sort of cosmic given. That’s what ethics is in a religious context. Acting ethically means following God’s commands. I think it must be this feature of the religious view of ethics that makes religious people so prone to what seem to secular humanists as exaggerated responses to seemingly minor moral issues and that are always pulling the more spiritually inclined among us toward fanaticism and extremism. Because of the way religion frames the notion of ethics it can be very difficult if not impossible to revise or reconsider the template once it becomes established, which pretty much does away with the need for any sort of discussion or dialogue with those holding opposing views. Even more weirdly to a secular humanist all the elements of this sort of template tend to take on equal weight or moral significance. That’s because under the religious perspective if you give up the template you’re really giving up the entire basis of morality. Cutting your hair a certain way (if that happens to be in the template) has the very same ethical standing and significance for a religious person as, say, not murdering your neighbor and eating his or her brain. If you’re willing to ignore the template in one case then why would you pay attention to it in another case? It just wouldn’t make sense for someone thinking about ethics in a religious context. This leads religious people to adopt a very distinctive all or nothing sort of thinking when it comes to ethics and to come out with the sort of slippery slope arguments that seem to be their stock in trade. (If we let people cut their hair any way they like then what’s next? Allowing people to murder their neighbors and eat their brains?)
In a secular humanist system, on the other hand, ethical propositions take the form of a template of correct behavior because that’s just how ethical propositions work, but ethics isn’t defined in terms of a correspondence with an external template and that’s a big difference. Under the secular perspective we make up our own template whenever we think about ethics. To figure out if a given proposition expresses something one would accept as ethical one needs to relate that proposition to one’s moral sensibilities though some chain of reasoning that may be short or long depending on the proposition. Under this perspective ethics is not about following the orders of a particularly authoritative external agent; it’s about thinking through for oneself what one believes one ought to do and then using one’s reason to develop the implications of that belief. (Well, OK, I suppose one might view ethics in that case as following one’s own orders or following the orders of one’s moral sense and intellect, but it’s not really the same thing as following the orders of an external agent, is it? And of course a secular humanist might have ethical beliefs about following orders from an external agent but that’s also a different issue. The idea that following orders in that context is ethical would not be based on the notion that following those orders defines what it means to be ethical; it would be based on the fact that one’s ethical beliefs imply that one should follow those orders, which is a whole different kettle of fish.) Because of the way secular humanists conceive of ethics they are typically quite willing to reconsider and potentially revise particular ethical propositions in response to new information or arguments (or I suppose changes in their moral sentiments if that were to happen) and they tend to have little difficulty attaching rather greater ethical significance to some propositions than to others.
Another interesting difference in the operation of the template in the religious and secular contexts is that the relationship of the template to the natural world seems to me to be different. For religious people locating the template and understanding its ostensible relationship to the natural world can be surprisingly tricky. Indeed, I’m not at all sure all religious people are even on the same page on this one. On the one hand, the religious template of behavior can be seen as external to humanity in the sense that the validity of the template and the associated ethical propositions do not depend on what anyone thinks about them. Indeed, inserting one’s own feelings into the matter amounts to just so much hubris according to this common religious view. On the other hand, I’ve also seen the argument that since the same entity that ostensibly made the template of correct behavior also ostensibly made the world, including humanity, this template must be built into people or even into the external world. This leads to the idea that every one is truly good at some level; it’s just that some people have trouble seeing their inner light.
For secular humanists locating the template and figuring out how it relates to nature is a lot easier. It’s certainly not floating about in the ether external to human reason. Indeed, from the secular perspective it only makes sense to talk about the template from the perspective of someone having a given moral sense and supporting a given ethical theory. In general people everywhere seem to have rather similar fundamental moral sentiments probably because if you go back far enough you’re just talking about the sorts of beliefs that allow humans to function effectively as social animals. That’s why we can discuss ethics and often reach at least some level of agreement on which way to go, eventually. But there’s no mechanism to ensure that will always be possible because reason and logic only get one so far and what ultimately matters, moral sensibilities, are not intellectual artifacts like reason and logic but aspects of the natural world more akin to human emotions. They’re part of the natural world and as such are prone to the variation and mutability that is the hallmark of the natural world. Thus, it’s always quite possible we might encounter people who do not share our fundamental moral sensibilities and who consequently will not be swayed by our notion of what is right. In that sense the potential for conflict is pretty much built in to the secular humanist way of thinking about ethics.
Ironically, I think the recognition of the limitations of ethical philosophizing and the constant threat of overt conflict makes those who adhere to secular ethics less prone to actual conflict. In my experience they just tend to try harder to reach some basis of commonality with those starting out with different views. Religions, which tend to suppress conflict in an intellectual sense by doing away with the need for discussion and debate and often by simply assuming everyone is really the same on the inside, seem to me to be more prone to leading their adherents into actual conflict because religious people often get stuck at the stage of getting other people to accept the template as a divine artifact. This can be a bit of a problem because differentiating one ostensibly divine artifact from all the other ostensibly divine artifacts is just not really all that easy to do, never mind the related issue of trying to convince people who believe there is no such thing as a divine template. So the religious idea of generating an ethical society tends frequently to devolve into trying to get enough political or perhaps even military power to force everyone else to obey the one true template of behavior.
Actually, the potential diversity of moral sentiments in the secular context also seems somewhat interesting to me considering my previous argument that secular humanists tend to appreciate and accept natural variation in many situations in which religious people do not. Here we’ve clearly gotten to a realm in which diversity is not a good thing even for secular humanists. Indeed, this switch in attitudes about the value of diversity gets to the whole basis of the liberal ethos. Diversity along many dimensions is natural and can even be considered good or at least not too bad. We certainly don’t want to banish all diversity from the world as though it were some sort of generic evil. However, when we get to ethics we’re in a whole different place. We’re talking about interpersonal conflicts in which both people can’t have their way and although we hate to get involved we kind of have to if we’re going to live socially the way humans developed over time to live. So for example diversity in our thinking about the acceptability of murder is not really acceptable. We have to sit down and tackle the unpleasant and complicated task of how different people think about killing people in various situations and come up with something we’re willing to argue is ethical. But we want to minimize the situations in which we have to take up that sort of thing. Two people not liking the same haircut doesn’t make the grade. Sorry, but I think we can preserve a little natural diversity there. Being offended by an ugly haircut just doesn’t rise to the level of significant effect that would require ethical debate. My larger point is that to understand this type of thinking one has to come from a place where one perceives a tradeoff between diversity and freedom on the one hand and the need for ethics on the other. If you start from the religious perspective it’s all too easy to not even understand the issue. It’s way too easy to just say, look, the haircut is incorrect. It doesn’t correspond to the template of divine perfection. We should ban it. There is no tradeoff; there’s only right and wrong.
I suppose that last point brings up yet again the specter of so-called moral relativism, which is something I think people tend to get rather confused about and I’ve written about before. (See my post on Secular Humanist Ethics from February 3, 2011.) Under the secular perspective we need to reference a particular ethical theory to talk about morality. Morality isn’t just floating around the natural world like a rare butterfly waiting to be discovered. We have to decide what it is. The fact I recognize that if my system of ethics doesn’t make sense to you because you don’t share my fundamental moral sensibilities doesn’t mean I think it’s fine if you do things your way and I do things my way, not when we’re talking about issues of true ethical significance like murdering people. If you’re doing something to someone I think is unethical then I’m basically involved whether I want to be or not. Yes, it’s all relative; but that doesn’t mean it’s not real or it doesn’t matter to me or you or to any other particular person. We can duke it out if we must but we’re going to have to come to some sort of resolution. I suppose the confusion in this context must come from conflating two contexts in which one might discuss ethics: the context of personal responsibility and adherence to one’s own ethical beliefs and the context of philosophical talk about the ultimate basis of ethics and the fact different people may support different systems of ethics. One can’t just switch contexts back and forth like a crazy man or woman and expect to maintain any idea of what one is talking about.
Well, I think I’ve probably beaten this topic into submission, at least for now. So let me just end with a humble plea: I think the world would be a much more reasonable and peaceful place if we gave up the notion of divine templates and commands from on high and just started talking about what we all think is ethical and why we think that. And for goodness sake let’s try to restrict our discussions to things that really matter. But fear not. Losing one’s religion doesn’t mean losing one’s ethics; it just means reconsidering the basis of one’s ethics. You will always have every reason to do what you know you ought to do, so please set your mind at ease on that point.
