Do We Need an Explanation of Morality?
Do We Need an Explanation of Morality?
By David Baggett
I teach in an apologetics department, but I’m trained as a philosopher. My background is also a largely secular one. I attended public school growing up, a state university for my undergrad degree (in philosophy), and my doctoral studies in a state university (also in philosophy). Perhaps in part due to these reasons, sometimes when I hear folks talk about apologetics, it doesn’t resonate with me.
John Wesley once said that training in logic carries various benefits, among them recognition of how hard it is to prove anything. Indeed, the very language of “proof” is language I tend to shy away from when I do or teach apologetics, gravitating instead to language of argument or evidence or reasons.
Growing up in public school never challenged my faith that much, but attending a state university gave me a front row seat in ideological warfare. All of a sudden I found plenty of professors with an axe to grind and agenda to push. It was a real testing ground for me as I locked horns with them from time to time when their mission seemed to conflict with my convictions as a believer.
It was philosophy that caught my attention in college more than apologetics. Philosophy was incredibly interesting. The notion there were things we could figure out just by thinking really hard about them captivated my imagination. As a Christian my worldview invariably shaped how I did philosophy, and questions in ethics and the philosophy of religion, in particular, struck my fancy. But my aspiration wasn’t to become an apologist, but a philosopher, and a Christian one at that.
Because I saw up close and personal the ways in which people of faith were challenged in college—and even more in graduate school—I found myself wondering on occasion whether there were good reasons that could withstand critical scrutiny to be a theist and a Christian, especially in light of such challenges as the problem of evil.
What especially struck my attention was the question of the foundations of ethics. The seed of the interest formed in college was generously watered when I attended Asbury Seminary (in between undergrad and doctoral studies), and came into bloom in graduate school. I eventually wrote my dissertation on the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma. In contemporary terms, this is the question of whether morality is what it is because God says so, or if God says what it is because that’s what morality already is in and of itself.
I still didn’t see my work as explicitly apologetic, but eventually I came to see that defending theistic ethics against objections was one of the ingredients of moral apologetics. Other components involve highlighting deficiencies in secular efforts to make good sense of ethics and defending the moral realism on which moral arguments are based. And via this circuitous route my work in philosophy eventually landed me in the arena of apologetics.
But for me it was about following the evidence where it led, one intuitive and (hopefully) principled step at a time. To this day, I find myself feeling a bit uncomfortable when I’m seen as a spokesman for the moral argument—as if I’m committed to it no matter what and come what may. Intellectual honesty, it seems to me, requires less advocacy than exploration, not to mention plenty of intentional enjoyment of challenging questions that arise along the way rather than seeing them as scary threats.
I do not see apologetics as mainly about winning an argument or showing how smart one is. It’s about learning how better to provide reasons for the hope we have within us as Christians, answering objections, providing clarity, and offering compelling reasons to take theism and Christianity seriously. In a world in which there’s no shortage of folks who insist that faith requires checking your brain at the door, this is an important job for some members of the body of Christ.
In the course of my career I’ve worked in philosophy and popular culture, I edited a book with Gary Habermas and Tony Flew on the resurrection, I co-edited a collection on C. S. Lewis as philosopher, and did some other things besides. But my main work, in partnership with Jerry Walls, has been a tetralogy on the moral argument: defending theistic ethics (Good God), critiquing secular ethics (God and Cosmos), chronicling its history (The Moral Argument), and defending moral realism (forthcoming The Good, the Right, and the Real).
Just recently, I heard someone suggest that there’s another task of the moral apologist, and one rarely done, namely, answer the question of why morality needs to be explained in the first place. I’ll attempt now in short compass to offer a few reasons why morality strikes me as something that naturally raises questions about what explains or accounts for it. These are reasons that at least persuade me; whether they convince others, or ought to, is beyond my pay grade.
In short, morality rightly understood appears to be prescriptive, not merely descriptive. It tells us how we ought to live, on pain of feelings of guilt (usually) and real objective guilt (arguably). So if morality is to be taken seriously, something like its authority needs to be recognized and reckoned with. That morality dictates to us what we ought to do or refrain from doing irrespective of our desires is what J. L. Mackie referred to as its “queerness,” by which he meant oddness. Moral duties, in particular, he thought, are an odd fit with a naturalistic world. I agree.
If such things as binding moral duties exist, they would be sufficiently strange to call for an explanation. Even moral skeptics tend to see this—for they tend to think no such explanations exist, calling for skepticism about moral reality.
So it’s not just moral realists who think morality calls for a robust explanation. The fact that if there is no such explanation we have reason to be skeptical about morality seems implicitly to assume that morality needs explaining. What can be said about moral duties can also be said about moral rights and various axiological realities. For example, take the intrinsic value of human beings. We could just accept such a thing as axiomatic and ask no further questions, but that approach strikes me as rather unphilosophical and, frankly, incurious. (Again, this is my take on this matter; folks are free to disagree.)
So in light of the seeming importance and authority of morality, it demands an explanation. In our quest to figure out life’s meaning and purpose, such central existential realities—if such there be—as intrinsic moral goods, inherent human value, binding moral duties, authoritative moral rights, etc. give us a great place to look to find insight on the question. Asking for their “explanation” is natural place to start.
But of course we can avoid invoking the category of explanation here if we’d like. When George Mavrodes spoke of the oddness of moral duties, his takeaway was that they make more sense in a theistic world than an atheistic world. Such probability comparisons needn’t make explicit reference to explanation.
Or we could try something even less ambitious and, following the Reformed epistemologists, treat such things as moral duties as “natural signs” that organically incline us to take theism more seriously. Or we could adopt what Richard Swinburne calls a C-inductive argument and interpret moral duties as increasing the likelihood of theism at least marginally (without rendering it likely true).
Explanation-type arguments are just one way to go. The underlying rationale of moral arguments, though, is that, in one way or another, moral facts of various sorts give us reason to think theism more likely than it would otherwise be. It’s less an airtight, knock-down proof than one piece of a large puzzle, and some of us are inclined to think it’s an important piece. I respect the mental freedom of those who may disagree—and I realize there are all sorts of additional questions to ponder—but that doesn’t detract in the least from what seems to me the case.
— David Baggett is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Christian University. He is the author or editor of about fifteen books, most recently Ted Lasso and Philosophy: No Question Is Into Touch edited with Marybeth Baggett.
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This is a fantastic article Prof. Baggett. I think your reflections here are very good. As someone who finds abductive moral arguments (such as the one you offer) interesting and worthy of engagement, I'm often disappointed to see that the discourse on this subject is ruined by so many apologists who make bold claims about how objective morality is impossible on Atheism, or other such issues. I'm glad to see pushback on such rhetoric implicitly outlined your article.
Hi Ian (if I may), wonderful to hear from you. Thanks for your note. Regarding the distinction between morality and ethics, some folks do indeed distinguish between them. And doing so is fine as far as I'm concerned as long as it's made clear where the distinction resides. The one you mention is a possibility, for sure. As for myself, although I think the distinction you identify is important, I don't tend to use "morality" and "ethics" differently. I'd more likely just say the moral or ethical person wouldn't either endorse treachery or engage in it.
But as you point out, there is indeed a distinction between recognizing a moral (or ethical) truth and living according to it. Someone might recognize an action as wrong and still do it; as sinful creatures, we all do that from time to time. This is what the quote from NCIS is getting at. The show makes the point by invoking a distinction between what is moral, on the one hand, and what it ethical, on the other. To my thinking, the underlying distinction is what is most important; whether or not to make the distinction using the ethics/morality distinction is another question.
You then get at a similar but subtly different distinction by suggesting that ethics is a matter of interpreting morality in particular contexts, codifying the rules for particular jurisdictions. Morality, in contrast, is more universal.
Again, the underlying distinction is what strikes me as most important. There are some convictions people hold to be ethical (or moral) that fail to pass muster. Martin Luther King, Jr. would talk about "unjust laws," for example, by which he meant that the laws in question failed to conform to the higher moral law.
Just as individuals can get ethics wrong (by, say, becoming moral skeptics), so can whole groups or even nations (by, say, codifying segregation). So ultimately, we are all responsible for thinking hard about ethics/morality rather than simply following the lead of our culture or subculture. This is not to say morality is a wholly individual affair; there is wisdom in an abundance of counselors and we think issues through together in community. How to apply general principles to specific situations can be tricky. But we should not always take as sacrosanct some prevailing view about morality or ethics. Doing so can be a recipe for following the wrong crowd and end up trying to rationalize something morally corrupt. Or in the case of the Nazis, something more hideous than words can say. The ease with which as human beings we can try to rationalize truly horrific things should remind us all of the need to approach ethical questions with real care and soberness. Clay Jones warns we are all susceptible to this; we are all, as he puts it, "Auschwitz-enabled." (The good news of the gospel is that God's grace is available for us to be forgiven, changed, and ultimately, at the day of Christ Jesus, perfected.)
I suspect that God, via the natural law, has made at least general moral principles available to most everyone. C. S. Lewis discusses this at length in his book called The Abolition of Man. The Appendix of that book lists examples of moral or ethical truths that have been recognized the world over throughout history from a wide variety of cultural situations.
By pointing to the distinction between what might be accepted locally as a moral or ethical view, and what is actually morally or ethically true, you are indeed pointing to one of the important reasons to take such a thing as objective and authoritative morality seriously. You are right that many people nowadays dismiss the idea of universal morality, but that trend strikes me as a mistake. As it does to philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers; here's a short quote from her:
"Have we not learned a thing or two over the past several thousand years of civilization? To pretend we know nothing about basic decency, about human rights, about vice and virtue, is fatuous and disingenuous. Of course we know that gratuitous cruelty and political repression are wrong, that kindness and political freedom are right and good. Why should we be the first society in history that finds itself hamstrung in the vital task of passing along its moral tradition to the next generation?"
Thanks again for the marvelous note! i suspect God is using you mightily right where you are!