Few trends in academia have astonished me more than atheistic moral realism (AMR), the view that moral principles are akin to abstract objects. Because abstract objects are plausibly taken to be necessary and universal, it would seem a comparative neoplatonic form of morality could sufficiently ground the objectivity of moral principles apart from God. This view is championed by atheist philosopher Michael Martin, and others have jumped on the bandwagon as well (Paul Kurtz, Louis Pojman, et. al.). Without detailing a critique, here are some reasons this view strikes me as immanently suspect.
First, if moral principles are treated as platonic abstract objects, then AMR faces the same difficulties Platonism does. Chiefly, the epistemological objection. If moral principles have the same properties as abstract objects (existence a se and causal inefficacy), then such a view would render moral principles unknowable. Knowledge of external objects entails a relation of sorts—one where information about that object can pass from it to us. But how can an unextended, causally effete abstract object enter a relation?
Similarly, abstract objects themselves aren’t exactly complimentary to a naturalistic worldview, much less moral ones (a further defense of these two points can be found here). The late atheist J. L. Mackie:
If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of … perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else. (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [Penguin, 1977], 38)
Second, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles somehow and they weren’t in tension with naturalism, such principles would nonetheless be unintelligible. Just what it means to say that moral principles such as justice and charitableness exist alone all by themselves is wholly unclear. I understand what these principles mean when associated with persons (the judge exacted justice; his charitableness is admirable), but to say there exists entities called justice and charitableness apart from persons, or at least states of affairs, is rather uninformative.
Third, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us, why should we feel obliged to obey them? Why should be duty-bound by them? They just are. Ethicist Richard Taylor points this out:
A duty is something that is owed…But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation…Our obligations can … be understood as those that are imposed by God…But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of moral obligation…still make sense?…the concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone. (Ethics, Faith and Reason [Prentice Hall, 1984], 83-84)
Nothing about a brute given conveys normativity. The problem would be even more pressing were such principles to conflict with my own self-interests.
Fourth, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us and we did feel obliged to obey them, why obey certain ones as opposed to others? For every moral value we deem good, surely there exists another which is bad. For example, opposing charitableness would be greed; justice, injustice, and so forth. Why choose to obey the former as opposed to the latter? Pain of arbitrariness seems unavoidable. This in turn lands us right back into the relativism AMR sought to avoid: how can we go about criticizing a person who chooses to obey difference abstract moral principles than the ones we have? To avoid this we can deny the existence of those moral values we see as bad and claim only ones like charitibleness exist (this seems to be the position of Martin and others). But this move itself is completely arbitrary. It seems awfully convenient that only those values we deem good happen to exist and that we have evolved in such a way as to incorporate them into daily living. As is often said, “It’s as if the moral realm knew we were coming!”
Fifth, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us and we did feel obliged to obey certain ones as opposed to others, why think they’re any more applicable to us humans than any other creature? If the moral realm just exists wholly apart from creatures, wouldn’t it be just as true and binding for one species as another? To say not would be guilty of speciesism.
Sixth, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us and we did feel obliged to obey certain ones as opposed to others and didn’t occasion speciesism, AMR is patently ad hoc. Traditionally, the atheist has agreed with the theist that if morality is objective, God is needed. Consequently, the atheist has bitten the bullet and defended moral relativism. Only recently, however, has AMR been seriously entertained. To me this shows that theism had the upper hand in the debate and that the unlivability of relativism is finally being recognized. Rather than stomach the moral relativism their own view logically leads to, atheists are now borrowing from a theistic metaphysic—sort of like having their philosophic cake and eating it, too.
Finally, even if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us and we did feel obliged to obey certain ones as opposed to others and this didn’t occasion speciesism and AMR wasn’t patently ad hoc, the theistic grounding of the objectivity of morality should be preferred. This is because objective morality fits better into a background theory of theism than atheism. Moreland notes this well:
If evolutionary theory is all there is to the development of the cosmos from the big bang to man, then any view which postulates the brute existence of morals would seem to do so in an ad hoc way. The general background theory would count against the veridicality of the claim to know that morals exist, even though it would still be logically possible for them to exist. If theism is true, one’s background theory explains the existence of human morality. But if one denies God and accepts evolution, then it would seem more reasonable to accept an evolutionary, subjectivist view of morality. The existence of objective values would still be possible, but it would be unlikely and ad hoc, given this background theory. The claim to intuitively perceive such values would have such a background theory as a defeater. The background theory of theism supports such claims and makes them prima facie justified because it removes the background theory (atheistic evolution as the only account for human life and morality) which is the defeater. (Scaling the Secular City [Baker, 1987], 125)
More could be said on this point, such as how theism’s account of objective morality is simpler and has more scope. In other words, Pr(OM|N) < Pr(OM|T), where (OM) is objective morality, (N) is naturalism, and (T), theism.
In conclusion, then, if we could have knowledge of abstract moral principles and they weren’t in tension with naturalism and they were intelligible to us and we did feel obliged to obey certain ones as opposed to others and this didn’t occasion speciesism and AMR wasn’t patently ad hoc and Pr(OM|N) ≥ Pr(OM|T), then I guess AMR isn’t that implausible, afterall.