The End of Christianity (49 page)

3. If when rational and sufficiently informed you will want
x
more than ~
x
(and if and only if when you want
B
most,
x
will happen), then you ought to want
B
most.

4. Therefore, you ought to want
B
most.

It necessarily follows that of all the things we can actually achieve, one of them (or a subset of them) we will want most.
³⁴

Since anything we want most entails a hypothetical imperative that supersedes all other imperatives (by virtue of its end being more preferred to any other obtainable end), and a hypothetical imperative that supersedes all other imperatives is by definition a moral imperative, it necessarily follows that true moral imperatives exist (and merely await discovery). Thus, true moral facts exist.
³⁵
And they exist independently of human opinion or belief—because we can be mistaken about what we most want, and thus about what we ought most to do, due to our being ignorant of the true facts or reasoning fallaciously from those facts. This is proved by the observation that we change what we most want as soon as we become rational and informed.
³⁶
In fact, deliberation and information often change our desires, and that proves we can be wrong about what we really wanted.

Even supposed exceptions are not really such. For example, upon someone becoming fully informed of the consequences and yet continuing to smoke, we see no change in what they want most. Their decision then
entails
that smoking is wanted more than avoidance of the consequences; but that desire can only follow from irrational thinking (a condition sometimes called
akrasia).
Because the benefit of avoiding the consequences in
actual fact
vastly outweighs the trivial benefits of smoking—the more so as those same benefits can be obtained by other means—and it is irrational to prefer what is far costlier when all else is equal. This is unless, of course, preferring what is far costlier when all else is equal is in actual fact what you most want in life. But if that were the case, then by definition such a person actually
desires
all the dire consequences of smoking, and this then ceases to be an exception to the rule just established (as then the smoker was never mistaken about what they wanted most).
³⁷

Similarly in cases of self-sacrifice: If, for example, a mother gives her own life to save her daughter, it will be claimed that she chose contrary to what she most wanted (which is presumably to live, so as to continue pursuing her goal of personal happiness), but that can never be an intelligible description of what happened. If the mother
really
wanted most to go on living to pursue her own happiness, then by definition that is what she would have done. That she didn't
entails
she wanted most to give her life to save her daughter's. It might then be objected that such a decision was then wrong, but that does not automatically follow (she may in fact have been more content dying than living without having saved her daughter), and even if it
were
true, it simply then is true, and the mother should not have done that. She ought most to have let her daughter die. Our disliking that fact does not make it untrue. Indeed, our disliking it is then as wrong as someone disliking the liberties afforded to women or the freeing of slaves. We should then instead praise a mother's refusal of self-sacrifice, just as we now praise the liberties afforded to women and the freeing of slaves, as being in fact the morally correct decision, which everyone then understanding will take no umbrage at it, not even the daughter (I'm reminded of a soldier who fully
expects
to be abandoned for the good of the unit, and indeed would deem it profoundly wrong for his unit to do otherwise). Either way, there is still some true moral fact of the matter, and it is still entailed by what we most want (when rational and sufficiently informed). And having unarguable empirical evidence of that fact, no rational argument could then be made for any alternative morality other than fallacious (and thus irrational) appeals to emotion, tradition, or what have you.

The conclusion still follows: the right is that which we want most when rational and informed.
³⁸
But this only establishes a realist version of moral relativism: there must necessarily be a factually true morality
at the very least
for every individual, which may yet differ from individual to individual (or group to group). In such an event, moral truth is relative to the individual (or the group of individuals possessed of the same relevant properties). Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that for any individual there must necessarily be a factually true morality that is not the mere product of their opinion or belief (therefore it is not merely subjective, and certainly not antirealist), but is entirely the product of natural facts (their innate desires and the facts of the world that must be accommodated to realize those desires, which are both real objective facts). However, it can be proved that such absolute moral relativism is false, that there
are
true moral facts that obtain independently of individual or cultural differences, and thus there are universal moral facts.

THAT THERE ARE UNIVERSAL MORAL FACTS

From soundly established facts it is necessarily the case that every human being has in common with every other human being some subset of true facts of the world (shared aspects of environment, mind, and body, by virtue of having the same biology and living in the same universe) and some subset of innate desires (by virtue of having the same biology and many of the same aspects of conscious experience). Therefore it's possible that what every individual wants most (when rational and sufficiently informed) will be the same—in which case universal moral facts necessarily exist. For then everyone (when rational and sufficiently informed) will want the same thing most, and as obtaining the same thing in the same circumstances depends on facts of the universe that are universally the same for everyone in those same circumstances, the same moral imperatives are factually true for everyone. We need merely discover what they are.

Only if what an individual wants most (when rational and sufficiently informed) is not the same as for everyone else will this not be the case. Then, a different set of moral facts will be true for them (yet even then true moral facts still exist, they are just again relative to different groups or individuals). But that outcome is very improbable for members of the same species. This is because when rational and sufficiently informed, any individual will prefer to obey rationally informed desires over all other desires, which fact always entails the discovery that certain desires are instrumentally necessary to obtaining anything else one wants, and by virtue of sharing the same fundamental (as opposed to incidental) biology and environment (including social environment—because in the end, we still have to live with each other), everyone shares in common a set of instrumentally necessary and overriding desires that by virtue of being necessary and overriding must be obeyed above all others, which by definition entails a common moral system.

Rationally informed desires (even prior to becoming rationally informed) can come to exist in only two ways: from fundamental biology or from environmental conditioning (which includes deliberate choice).
³⁹
Upon rationally examining our every desire in light of becoming sufficiently informed of all the relevant facts, we can only rationally and informedly choose to obey a conditioned desire insofar as it ultimately fulfills an unalterable biological desire or negotiates an unalterable condition in our environment. This is because anything alterable we can alter instead of obey, so anything we
must
obey will always override anything we
needn't
obey. Hence the unalterable conditions of our biology or environment will always necessitate wanting something more. In other words, there is always some true statement “I need
x
,” and for any rationally informed person, “I need
x
” always entails wanting
x
more than
z
whenever two conditions are met:
x
entails ~
z
and “I want but don't need
z
.” If
x
does
not
entail ~
z
, then no conflict results (hence incidental desires make no difference to fundamental moral facts—see below for “allergies” as an example). But when a conflict does result, what is needed will always supersede, and thus the other cannot be a moral imperative. And since this further entails that needs can only be superseded by other needs, only needs (which are unalterable desires that are fundamentally or instrumentally necessary) can be the basis of a true moral system. And needs are only entailed by unalterables (of our biology and environment), as otherwise, by being alterable, they are no longer needed (because by altering them we can remove the need of them).

Therefore, what we want most (when rational and sufficiently informed) will always be entailed by, and only by, unalterable biological facts or unalterable environmental facts. But human beings, by virtue of their origins and continued interbreeding, do not differ biologically in any way that would vary any of their desires that are fundamental, unalterable, and instrumentally necessary. In fact, that would be extraordinarily improbable (owing to the extreme genetic deviations it would require, which cannot be achieved by random mutation, except with such extraordinary rarity that we can expect never to meet such a person in many millions of years). For example: we all need to eat, breathe, move, think, and cooperate and socialize with a community; generally the same things are lethal or harmful to us (physically and in some cases emotionally, such as the scientifically documented effects of loneliness and withdrawal of affection); we all construct a conscious self-awareness when healthy and awake; we all have mirror neurons and rely on innate theories of mind to understand other people (unless we're mentally disabled, but even most autistics, for example, can
learn
a theory of mind and apply it in their decision-making, and like the rest of us they still
need
to navigate their social world successfully).
⁴⁰
And so on.

Happiness and contentment are thus dependent on an array of biological facts universal to all human beings. Even what were once thought to be an exception to this expectation (psychopaths) have since been shown not to be: though they are cognitively defective, when honestly reporting and sufficiently informed of the difference between their lives and mental states and those of nonsociopaths, they always concede to being profoundly dissatisfied and desire most to be different persons but are incapable of obtaining what they desire owing to their cognitive defects. Thus (when fully rational and informed) they do not “desire most” anything fundamentally different than we do, they are merely incapable of achieving it. And they are not incapable of achieving it because of an obstacle external to their reasoning, but because of a defect of their reasoning.
⁴¹
They are thus inescapably irrational, which is why they are classified as insane. Our inability to rationally persuade them to be moral is exactly the same as our inability to rationally persuade a schizophrenic. And it is no defect of a moral theory that madmen cannot be persuaded of it.

Since our primary biological desires (primary meaning those that are fundamental, unalterable, or instrumentally necessary) can't commonly differ, and thus won't generate differences in our most overriding desires, that leaves unalterable differences in environment. But those make no difference to universal morality. By being unalterable, they constitute conditions an agent is forced to comply with. Since moral facts are context-dependent (as any hypothetical imperative must be, that is, the required truth conditions entail the end must be obtainable by the prescribed action, which will always depend on the context), when unalterable environmental facts entail wanting something most that those in a different environment
won't
want most, this conclusion is already entailed by any system of universal morality. That is, any system of true moral facts will already include the fact that, if we were forced into the same conditions, we would be compelled by the same imperatives that then obtain. In other words, that a person might want something else most in condition C than in condition D does not entail that different moral facts obtain, because in this case the imperative differs only relative to individual
conditions
, not relative to any desires that would still obtain absent those conditions, and
all
moral facts are relative to conditions.

Even the most stalwartly conservative Christian will admit that conditions can alter what's morally right to do, and ultimately even Kant would have been compelled to agree. His categorical imperative entailed we ought to “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law,” and we would certainly will to be a universal law that whenever an exception obtains, our behavior ought to be adapted to it. For instance, killing in self-defense: we would never will to be a universal law a blanket prohibition against killing, precisely because we know we may have to kill a would-be murderer in our own defense. Thus we would instead will to be a universal law a prohibition against killing only in certain circumstances, with an allowance for killing in others. Hence we incorporate differences in the conditions, even in a universal moral law. Therefore, because we would will to be a universal law that a person in condition
C
should most want one thing, but in condition
D
should most want something else, precisely because that person cannot alter those conditions, differences in greatest desire entailed by unalterable environmental factors make no difference to whether there are universal moral facts.

Since biology will never create a different set of moral facts for any human individual (except so rarely as to be inconsequential), and environment
cannot
create a different set of moral facts for any human individual (because, as just demonstrated, such an effect is logically impossible), and these are the only possible sources of such a difference (being the only possible sources of a rationally informed difference in greatest desire), the conclusion follows that there must necessarily be universal moral facts (for all or, at least, very nearly all human beings).
⁴²