Morality Certainly Involves Trial and Error, but Rationality is Also Involved
Kevin R. Henke
October 15, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I stated:
“No gods, angels, demons or a Bible are also needed to figure out how people should try to function in our environments. We should develop rules (morality) through reason and not Biblical dogma so that we can live peacefully with each other and our environment.”
Lundahl (2022j) then replies to my statements:
“The morality is here said to be rooted in reason. Now, the question is not whether an agency external to our reason is needed to enlighten it - it may be the case, and as Christians, both Lewis and I believe after the fall each has some kind of need of that. The questions are rather:
· where do universally valid rules of reason come from?
· does reason deal with any moral rules prior to its own developing of moral rules?
The point of chapters 3 and (I think) 4 is, the laws of chemistry and electronics and physics and the constraints of evolution do not put us into the reach of discovering what is universally valid. For our reason to do this, we need to be more than that. The sentence ‘[o]ur brains, thoughts and surroundings are all ultimately controlled by the laws of chemistry and physics,’ needs to be false, at least if implying ‘and nothing else.’”
In Henke (2022ay), I answered Mr. Lundahl’s question: “Where do universally valid rules of reason come from”:
“The “universally valid rules of reason” that Lundahl (2022j) references are solely human discoveries. There’s no need for anything beyond human reason (Dennett 2006). The rules are “universal” because they happen to work in a variety of circumstances from generation to generation. In ancient times, humans learned to develop morals so that members of the tribe could get along with each other. Otherwise, the tribe would fall apart. People needed to cooperate with each other to survive. They also learned how to make spears, avoid the berries that were poisonous, develop strategies for hunting, etc. Both of their technological and socialization (moral) skills came from reasoning and they passed that knowledge onto their children. Their children added to the knowledge and passed that onto their children, etc. In other words, ancient people discovered morality in the same way that they discovered how to make a spear – through reason and trial and error.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022s) then replies to the bolded section:
“You have just made a very persuasive case against going even one step beyond tradition as it stands, since morality is about trial and error and passed on knowledge, and not about universally valid premisses. On your view.”
Tradition is not good enough to determine morality, as can be easily seen from the frequently barbaric traditions in the Bible. Trial and error, along with reason and empathy for our fellow humans, are used to discover what is moral and best for our society. Once discovered, many of these morals are close to absolute and can be implemented universally; that is, among different cultures (e.g., prohibitions against murder and widespread tolerance of political speech). We use trial and error and rationality to discover morality just as we use rationality and trial and error in experimentation to discover the laws of nature. We learn from our mistakes, as well as our successes. Knowledge of nature and morality were not handed down to us from angels or gods. We have to learn how to be moral and it’s a continuing process.
In the 1920’s, the US society made a moral decision and implemented the prohibition of alcohol. That was a trial-and-error experiment in morality that failed. We learned lessons from that. Although alcohol is dangerous and, certainly, we can rationally argue that our society would be better off without it, simply banning it didn’t work. We had to come up with better moral solutions to deal with the immorality of drunkenness, such as laws against drinking and driving, and medical programs to deal with alcoholism.
Reference:
Dennett, D.C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Viking Penguin: London, UK, 448pp.