IS MORALITY SOMETHING WE JUST MAKE UP OR DOES IT REST ON A SOLID FOUNDATION?

Is morality something that we had to make up? Or can there an objective basis for morality in a meaningless, purposeless, and non-moral world, which accidentally sprang into existence and doesn’t care a whit about us? Instead, if we make it up, isn’t morality arbitrary, make-believe, and evolving to satisfy the tastes of society?

Instead, I’d like to suggest that, as there are the laws of science, there are also moral laws, which emanate from the mind of their Creator. Therefore, they are wise, benign, and objective, a virtual love letter from our Creator.

In contrast, in his essay “Fact and Value,” objectivist Leonard Peikoff argued that there are objective moral principles or laws (“oughts”) embedded in the physical reality the facts of this cosmos:

• As Ayn Rand states the point in “The Objectivist Ethics”: “Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every ‘is‘ implies an ‘ought.’” (http://www.peikoff.com/essays_and_articles/fact-and-value/)

According to Peikoff, every fact also contains a moral truth or mandate. But how it is that “every ‘is‘ implies an ‘ought?’” A car can place no demand on us that it “ought” to be driven. Nor can an apple demand that it “ought” to be eaten. Instead, it seems that the “is” and the “ought” occupy separate, although adjacent, realities.

Ordinarily, they do, but Peikoff unites them by introducing his own “ought,” the overriding necessity of human self-preservation, to connect the non-moral “is” (facts) to the moral “ought,” as the basis for objective ethics. Consequently, Peikoff makes the fact of the sun or antibiotics into a moral imperative:

• Every fact of reality which we discover has, directly or indirectly, an implication for man’s self-preservation [the basis for all other “oughts”] and thus for his proper course of action. In relation to the goal of staying alive, the fact [of our preservation] demands specific kinds of actions and prohibits others; i.e., it entails a definite set of evaluations. For instance, sunlight is a fact of metaphysical reality; but once its effects are discovered by man and integrated to his goals, a long series of evaluations follows: the sun is a good thing.

The fact of sunlight then becomes an objective moral good because it is necessary for the most basic moral good – the preservation of the human-self. However, it is important to observe that Peikoff’s Objectivism is not ultimately based upon the facts, but upon an arbitrary and non-objective “ought” or value – the preservation of the self.  The facts are then called into service of his “ought” – “man’s self-preservation.” Consequently, “the sun is a good thing.” Why? Because it serves our “ought” of “self-preservation!”

But from where did this “ought” of “self-preservation” come? Not from the facts! The facts of existence and of science are silent about human priority or exceptionalism. They say nothing of a human value, which is supposed to exceed the value of termites, mosquitos, bacteria, or hogs. (The concept of value requires us to question – “Valuable to whom?” Certainly to humans we are valuable, but this is just a subjective assessment. Instead, the idea of ultimate value is a religious idea, which comes from God). Instead, in order to salvage “The Objectivist Ethics,” Peikoff is forced to inject his own subjective value of “man’s self-preservation.” (If the hog could speak, he’d speak of “swine preservation.”) However, this makes his entire moral system subjective. All of the facts are coerced into serving his own value of “man’s self-preservation.”

From this analysis, it seems that “Objectivists” are un-objectively chauvinistic about the primacy of human survival and well-being. In a valueless world, what could possibly make us more valuable than bacteria, against which we use antibiotics, apart from our own make-believe, subjective, and evolving values?

Many criteria, like our intelligence, creativity, and sentience, have been offered to objectively value us above cows and mosquitoes. However, this is nothing more than merely passing the problem elsewhere. Why should our intelligence make us more valuable, and according to whose assessment? And what gives our assessments an objective footing?

Besides, we cannot apply any of these standards consistently. For example, if it is our intelligence that makes us more valuable than swine, then none of us humans can be equal. Instead, the more intelligent human becomes more valuable than those less intelligent and less educated. Few of us want such a world.

Without an all-wise, just, loving, and forgiving creator God, ethics are left in shambles. We are therefore left wondering why God is so quickly dismissed. Perhaps we are so terrified of being judged by Him that it becomes more comfortable to simply deny His existence.