Counterfactuals and moral relativity

In my August 30 blog post, I segued from a discussion of Jean Grimshaw’s book “Philosophy and Feminist Thinking,” into a discussion of what I called a “natural historic” view of morals. I promised to return to the topic, which I am doing with this post, although not, I’m sorry to say, to the particular questions I had promised to address. (Someday...)

The fundamental difficulty in moral philosophy is to find some normative basis for behavior that has some claim to universality, but does not seem arbitrary. We are not comfortable with an absolute relativism which says moral choices are simply a matter of personal choice, and there is no “objective” basis for privileging one person’s, or culture’s choices over another’s. But an authoritative absolutism, which says these particular moral premises are right for all people and for all time, is not very satisfactory, either. Or rather, many people are in fact quite happy with the authoritarian approach, but the authoritarians never seem to agree on a set of premises. So the question is, if we reject absolute relativism, how do we come up with a rational means of evaluating completing claims? And how can we justify that means, without simply elevating the relativism to another level?

Before I tackle the above “big question”, though, I want to address one particular argument for absolute relativism – the argument that since no particular moral stance can be proven, there is simply no option but to view moral behavior as a purely personal matter of preference, choice, or taste.

I think there is an interesting parallel between moral arguments and certain kinds of argument from counterfactual hypotheses. Arguments from counterfactual hypotheses can be of different kinds. For instance, I can take a rubber ball from my desk drawer, hold it out at arm’s length for a moment, then put it back in the drawer and say to you, “If I had released that ball, it would have struck the floor and bounced. It would have bounced several times, but the altitude of each bounce would have been less than that of the previous bounce.” As an example of a very different kind of counterfactual argument, I could say, “If the South had won the Civil War, slavery would have been abolished anyway, within 25 years.”

The first of these two counterfactuals describes a possible experiment within the context of a well-understood physical theory (Newtonian mechanics). The theory is so well developed that I can present a precisely detailed argument, including mathematical equations, connecting my prediction firmly to the basic laws of the theory, an argument which nobody who understands the theory would care to deny. Finally, and most importantly, I can if I wish demonstrate the truth of my prediction by actually performing a similar experiment; I can take out the ball again, and drop it. Our acceptance of the theory, and of the underlying general theory of knowledge through experimental science, are so great that having seen the experiment done once, we probably accept immediately that it would have worked the same way in the first (untried) example. If not, I can repeat the experiment over and over until the most confirmed philosophical skeptic begs me to quit.

The second counterfactual argument in my example takes place within theoretical contexts (history, political science...) that are not as precisely defined as Newtonian mechanics. Most importantly, experiments of the kind I described above cannot be done. This is not to say that historical sciences cannot be empirical, but experiment in historical sciences is based on making predictions about patterns of unknown facts, and then seeking out and examining the facts to see if they conform to the predicted pattern. Experiments that go directly to arguments that “if this had happened, then that would have also happened”, as applied to specific cases, can never be done. This means that historical counterfactuals of this kind can never be proven or disproven with the degree of certainty that would apply to simpler, physical problems. Does this mean, as has been proposed, on similar basis, for moral arguments, that such counterfactuals are purely matters of opinion – of personal taste – and there is no right or wrong to them?

That historical counterfactuals are purely matters of taste flies against common sense. For instance, if I say slavery would have ended within 25 years after the Civil War, if the South had won, you might reply by saying, “Slavery would have ended, but it could have taken 50 to 100 years.” Many people might think that your prediction was more likely than mine. (Note: I personally have no opinion on this. My counterfactual example is such on more than one level!) Let’s take a more extreme argument: “If the South had won the Civil War, they would have immediately freed the slaves and given them the vote.” Very few people, if any, would believe that this argument was true. So, in fact, we do believe that there is a sort of truth and falsehood to counterfactual arguments. This is because we live in (and believe we live in) a rule-ordered universe, and we believe those rules may be used as a basis for prediction. The intellectual process of making a counterfactual prediction is no different than that of making a future prediction; it is just that in one case the experiment may sometimes be carried out, and in the other it cannot.

The parallel between counterfactuals and moral argument suggests that the mere fact that moral arguments cannot be answered on a firm, empirical basis of the sort possible with Newtonian physics is not sufficient to prove that they are reducible to nothing more than personal taste and preference. On the other hand, it doesn’t prove that there is a better basis for them, either. In the counterfactual case, I found a parallel between the process of making counterfactual predictions and making (sometimes or somewhat testable) future predictions. What could be a basis for making non-arbitrary decisions in moral arguments?

I have some thoughts toward an answer (certainly not the temerity to say I have an answer!) But when I wrote it all down, the outcome, at some 2400 words, I thought was much too long for a single blog post. So I’ll continue this next week. (Gives me more time to tinker, in any case.)