Varieties of Naturalism

The naturalistic approach to morality requires that (1) the existence of morality, (2) the ability of human beings to be moral, and (3) the efforts of human beings to intelligently think about morality must all be compatible with scientific knowledge about nature and humans. Another webpage on "Naturalism and Morality" explains that nothing supernatural needs to be postulated to explain morality, and indeed, moral responsibility requires that people can judge what is moral without relying on the authority of any supposed God. How does a naturalist explain and justify morality without using anything supernatural or appealing to religious authority? Besides requiring compatibility with science, the following principles were discovered to be essential to the naturalist position on morality:

Morality is a kind of reliable practical knowledge that can be improved by applied human intelligence.

People know relative moral truths by deciding morality personally, by following their society, by conforming to one's species, or by following a law of nature (naturalists can select among these options).

People can be responsible moral agents only if they can judge for themselves whether an authority should be obeyed.

These principles can assist the naturalist in developing a secular ethics: an explanation and justification of morality that does not rely on anything supernatural or on any religious authority. A secular ethics does not need to reject moral rules or values taught by religions in order to maintain its independence -- the purpose of a secular ethics is not simply to contradict the moralities that religions teach, although a secular ethics will be free to raise reasonable disagreements with religions. Indeed, many naturalists suppose that many cultures are sources of moral truths because those cultures have been religious: a culture's religion provides some practical knowledge about morality. It is reasonable for the naturalist to view cultural/religious traditions as repositories for some moral knowledge, since they contain accumulated human experience about what makes a good life and how to practically achieve it through various moralities. However, the naturalist also believes that the moral wisdom in religions must be independently judged and improved by human intelligence.

We will explore how a naturalist secular ethics can be developed by working with cultural/religious traditions. The search for a naturalist secular ethics culminates in Planetary Ethics, which uses accumulated social experience, rational principles, and scientific knowledge. However, some naturalists have tried to develop a secular ethics by using human intelligence alone, in the forms of reason and science, without starting from any cultural/religious traditions that people find available in the society around them.

Ethics from Intelligence Alone?

There are two primary ways of attempting this approach:

Ethics from Reason alone? On this view, moral conclusions can be drawn from logical principles about rational consistency, such as the law of non-contradiction. Any ethical theory should pursue logical coherence among its set of moral rules, since a morality should avoid the practical problem of requiring contradictory actions or mutually exclusive actions from a person in a given situation. Perhaps reason alone can do more than just prevent practical conflicts within a morality, however. Can an ethical theory directly establish moral rules from rational principles? Some naturalists, inspired by Immanuel Kant's ethical theory (though Kant was not a friend of naturalism), have argued that a person cannot ethically follow a moral rule R unless that person's adherence to R is rationally consistent with that person's capacity to be a moral agent and also rationally consistent with other people adhering to R as well. Even if this method can distinguish moral rules from immoral rules (which is disputed), this method cannot provide a reason to choose between possible alternative societies, one in which all people follow R and the other in which all people follow not-R. For example, if R is "Do not take something of someone else's when you need it", we can imagine two alternative societies that both meet the criteria of rational consistency: In society A, everyone respects each other's private property by following R; while in society B, everyone lives without private property and follows not-R, "Take something from someone else when you need it". In society A, the thief is the immoral person, while in society B the hoarder is the immoral person. If you happen to have been raised in one society -- let us say that you were raised in society B and never knew any other way of life -- this method of "reason alone" may seem to authorize the ethical justification for the moral rules of society B over those of A. But this is an illusion of familiarity. Reason alone cannot inform us which is the more ethical society. It remains the case that reason demands a general stance of ethical impartiality: no one should try to personally follow moral R while at the same time expecting others to follow not-R. But we can also conclude that reason requires additional information before any specific and concrete moral conclusions can be drawn. Perhaps some information can come from science, but we won't forget society as a likely source (to be considered later).

Ethics from Science alone? On this view, moral conclusions can be drawn from scientific knowledge. This is the secular version of Natural Law Theory, which uses science's knowledge of humanity and nature to develop a non-religious ethical theory. Some naturalists, inspired by Aristotle or Hobbes or Darwin, to name some prominent examples, have argued that the best moral rules are those which encourage the survival of the human species or the evolutionary path of life. Although this method may be able to explain why certain moral rules and values are found among many humans today, it cannot by itself dictate what moral rules ought to be followed by humans now and in the future. The inferential gap between what moral rules and values have so far been evolutionary advantageous and what moral rules are justified for people now and into the future is caused by the very fact that humans have a large capacity for applying intelligence to morality. [This inferential gap is not caused by the allegedly fatal "Is-Ought Fallacy" -- conclusions about moral rules can and do reasonably follow from premises that are not also moral rules.] Due to human intelligence, we discover that moralities are inadequate and need modification, since we are transforming the conditions under which humans are tying to survive and prosper. We are using technologies to live in a broad range of natural environments, to modify given environments into somewhat artificial environments, and to live together in complex high-population societies. Even if there is something like a relatively fixed "human nature," a natural human being will always live in an environment largely shaped by contingent and constantly changing cultural forces. The enormous variety of ways of life made possible by technology will require an ever-expanding range of practical moralities, although these moralities will never be exempt from the evolutionary test of natural selection. This method of science alone may seem to authorize the ethical justification for the moral rules of your society. But this is an illusion of familiarity. Science alone cannot inform us which is the more ethical society. It remains the case that science demands a general stance of evolutionary plausibility: important moral rules and values of most humans societies will have a sizable degree of evolutionary fitness because they have not yet been eliminated by natural selection. But we can also conclude that science requires additional information before any specific and concrete moral conclusions can be drawn. Some information can come from reason (see the paragraph above) but we still can't forget about society as a likely source.

Neither reason alone nor science alone can provide justifications for specific and concrete moral rules -- but what we combined them? Unfortunately, ethical impartiality plus evolutionary plausibility only helps us to eliminate some moral rules from ethical consideration, and does not help much with judging the rest. Since human intelligence alone does not get the naturalist very far, it is reasonable for the naturalist to view cultural/religious traditions as repositories for some moral knowledge, since cultures and their religions contain accumulated social experience about what makes a good life and how to achieve it through practical moralities. Therefore, the naturalist should consult experience, reason, and science to develop an ethical theory.

We can bring together all nine of the general requirements found so far that establish a naturalistic approach to ethical theory:

I. The existence of morality must be compatible with scientific knowledge about nature and humans.

II. The ability of human beings to be moral must be compatible with scientific knowledge about nature and humans.

III. The efforts of human beings to intelligently think about morality must be compatible with scientific knowledge about nature and humans.

IV. Morality is a kind of reliable practical knowledge that can be improved by applied human intelligence.

V. People know relative moral truths by deciding morality personally, by following their society, by conforming to one's species modes of survival, or by following an evolutionary law of nature.

VI. People can be responsible moral agents only if they can judge for themselves whether an authority should be obeyed.

VII. Reason demands a general stance of ethical impartiality.

VIII. Science demands a general stance of evolutionary plausibility.

IX. Accumulated experience in cultures and their religions contains wisdom about what makes a good life and practical moralities.

These nine principles together dictate that any naturalistic approach to ethics -- the explanation and justification of moral rules and values -- must result in a secular ethics that will not rely on anything supernatural or on any religious authority. These nine principles form only the most basic framework for an ethics, and we must next look more closely at morality and ethics from the naturalistic viewpoint.

What is Morality and Ethics from the Naturalistic Viewpoint?

There is a simple naturalistic explanation for the capacity of cultural/religious traditions to contain wisdom about what makes a good life and various practical moralities. Morality is essentially social in nature: morality is a type of practical reliable knowledge that aids the purpose of growing and maintaining social relationships. Morality is not designed for a person trying to live an isolated life without any social relationships. By noticing that human beings are social animals and depend on social relationships for pursuing a good life, the naturalist is not claiming that a person is nothing more than the sum of their social relationships. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case, since people are simultaneously in many kinds of social relationships and modify their social relationships over time. In order to manage so many social relationships, each person has to develop a unique character: a special way of prioritizing and harmonizing (as best they can) all their social relationships. This involves the intelligent  management of morality -- because each social relationship necessarily requires that the people in those relationships undertake special responsibilities and duties towards each other. No two people could possibly do this management task in the same way, even if they tried -- each person will have a unique character. However, morality does not exist for the sake of the unique person, as if each person must develop their own unique morality. Rather, societies develop common moral rules over time because (1) most people confront similar problems in managing similar kinds of social relationships, and (2) managing social relationships is far more efficient if everyone in a society largely agrees on the responsibilities and duties of these social relationships. If each society were always a self-contained isolated unit, and people never crossed social boundaries or changed social status, then each society could easily have one morality, and each person would not have to think too deeply about social relationships. However, the scale and depth of social interaction, as the world's cultures have come into closer communication and physical intermingling, raises novel challenges to morality. Just as individuals must try to intelligently manage multiple social relationships using moralities, by analogy we can see that societies and their peoples must try to intelligently manage multiple cultural contacts using ethics.

Ethics was born as intelligent thinkers pondered how people could manage cooperative social relationships across social and cultural boundaries. Ethical principles are different from moral rules, although people often confuse the two. A moral rule is a specific statement of an action that is deemed right or wrong. Ethical principles are used to explain what morality is and why it is necessary, and to judge what rules should actually be moral rules. All human societies have used moralities, but few have developed ethical systems as well. Most of the human societies that have ever existed did not attempt to justify their moralities with higher-level principles. Ethical theories are only useful when there is a need to explain and justify a morality to people who were not indoctrinated into that morality when young. People typically need little explanation or justification for a morality that they were raised in; such needs usually arise if they are exposed to other moralities and begin the question the intuitive natural obviousness of their given morality.

Ethics was born in civilizations attempting to impose their own morality and law across large diverse territories, and ethics reached adolescence in those religions attempting to persuade converts from many diverse cultures. The world's largest religions -- religions such as Confucianism, Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam -- were born in the crucible of intercultural contact and conflict. These religions attempted to spread beyond native cultural boundaries, and began to develop their own ethical systems. A few religions, notably Christianity and Islam, dreamed of a universal morality for all humanity, and their theologians helped to mature ethics by grounding morality less on any particular feature of one society and more on principles that might be persuasive to people regardless of their social origins. In Greece too, cosmopolitan poets and philosophers were well aware of how different cultures could be, and started searching for a common human basis for morality. Theology and Philosophy sought a universal means to persuade any intelligent human being, by trying to formulate a method of persuasion that did not depend on any particular cultural belief. Both Theology and Philosophy ultimately fail in this goal, but they do generate a Humanist Ethics in the process. Humanist Ethics protects each person's rights and liberties, but can do little to positively promote cross-cultural communication and cooperation. When Humanist Ethics defines its aims primarily as social in nature rather than individual in nature, it becomes Planetary Ethics: the search for principles that all humanity can use for promoting cooperation on common problems.

We therefore distinguish between five kinds of Ethics, listed in order of their increasing maturity.

Cultural Ethics is a social morality elevated to a global scale, as if some unique society has just the right morality for all humanity. Cultural Ethics is motivated by a strong bias in favor of one's own social morality. This bias is reflected in a Cultural Ethics's typical claim that this one society has achieved the highest form of human life yet attained. The rest of humanity can be "elevated" to the best way of life, a Cultural Ethics explains, by adopting this one special society's morality. The limitations of a Cultural Ethics are obvious: any "reasons" offered by a Cultural Ethics in support of the excellence of that society's morality will ultimately be grounded on cultural features of that society, and so circular reasoning or appeal to "intuitions" will always result. Neither circular reasoning nor appeal to intuitions will impress any thoughtful person from another society having a quite different culture. Some cultures do powerfully influence their neighbors and inspire imitation, for practical characteristics such as military might, economic wealth, or artistic genius. Until one civilization does succeed in eliminating all competition, however, the world will need more than multiple competing Cultural Ethics to reasonably manage international conflict and cooperation. Sometimes a Cultural Ethics takes advantage of an embedded religion, following that religion's spread into other cultures. When a Cultural Ethics does succeed in identifying its worthiness with the value of a particular religion, it evolves into a Theological Ethics.

Theological Ethics attempts to explain and justify the moral rules of a religion as the best morality available to humanity. Theological Ethics may apply rational arguments for defending its morality, but some premises of these arguments will ultimately be based on the authority of a divine power or a divinely authorized person. Since all religions by definition require submission at some point to a religious authority (a god, a priest, a sacred text, a divine communication, an inherited tradition of wisdom, etc.) no religion can completely eliminate reference to some particular culture. The religious authority always has some particular point of origin and special cultural situation. For example, Jesus spoke to Jews -- but why did Jesus appear to just them at that historical time? Muhammad delivers the words of an angel -- but why just to Muhammad at that period of time? Theological Ethics combines reference to religious authority with other principles that are not bound to any particular culture, so theological ethics is an improvement upon Cultural Ethics. However, Theological Ethics cannot escape the limitations of cultural origins because of its ties to a religious authority. For example, perhaps it is morally right to not eat meat; yet an ethical system defending that moral rule should not appeal to the belief that cows are sacred animals, which is a belief that feels intuitively correct only to people from a small number of cultures. If a Theological Ethics does attempt to eliminate any grounding in religious or cultural authority, it evolves towards a Philosophical Ethics.

Philosophical Ethics attempts to explain and justify moral rules using human intelligence alone. The resources of reason and science seem to be a plausible foundation for an ethics independent from either cultural or religious authority. Because reason and science are designed to produce valid knowledge for any intelligent person using their methods, no cultural or religious presumptions or prejudices are supposed to be involved. However, as we saw in a section above, neither reason nor science cannot inform us which is the more ethical society, although they can help to identify immoral societies. Any Philosophical Ethics has inherent limitations that eventually causes it to either (a) enjoy plausibility by confirming pre-existing cultural biases and hence reverting back to a Cultural Ethics, or (b) surrender plausibility by reaching counter-intuitive moral conclusions that stray far from most or all cultural moralities. If a Philosophical Ethics admits that it must incorporate the actual beliefs and concerns of all real people, it evolves towards Humanist Ethics.

Humanist Ethics seeks ethical principles acceptable to all humanity regardless of their cultural beliefs, starting from the realization that each culture and society is a minority viewpoint when contrasted with the rest of the world's cultures. Minorities first and foremost desire protection from majorities, so minorities want the moral right to their own convictions and lifestyle without social penalty, and the political right to live in peace without government penalty. Humanist Ethics therefore mostly consists of principles designed to promote "live and let live" moralities, being the first type of Ethics that is comfortable with moral relativism. No ethical theory defends ethical relativism (since the point of any ethics is to rationally defend one system of ethical principles for all humanity) but the principles of Humanist Ethics permit many moralities to flourish so long as they all peacefully tolerate each other. To function, Humanist Ethics must make a sharp conceptual distinction between the person as a generic human being (the individual political person, where rights and liberties are grounded) and the person as a member of a particular group (the social and cultural person, where moral and religious convictions are grounded). Humanist Ethics is the foundation for political liberalism with its focus on negative rights and a public sphere of politics insulated from cultural, religious, and moral biases. This political emphasis generates secular humanism, and it also generates two mirror-image rivals: communism (stressing positive economic rights) and communitarianism (stressing positive cultural rights). No Humanist Ethics really justifies any specific morality; it merely erects a universal political theory capable only of restraining extreme moral pluralism. Any Humanist Ethics has inherent limitations that eventually causes it to either (a) enjoy plausibility by searching for a universal spirituality and degenerating into a syncretic religious humanism, or (b) surrender plausibility by transcending human values and mutating into an elitist technological posthumanism. If a Humanist Ethics avoids the temptation of religion by remaining secular, and also avoids the trap of elitism by remaining universal, it evolves towards Planetary Humanism.

Planetary Ethics seeks ethical principles acceptable to all humanity that deal with the greatest problems of all humanity. A Planetary Ethics is designed to find ethical principles for managing diverse moralities with the aim of decreasing conflict and increasing cooperation among societies. Planetary Ethics is a naturalistic and secular ethics and shares much with secular humanism, yet goes beyond it by balancing moral relativism with some measure of moral universalism. Planetary Ethics is the intelligent inquiry into the effectiveness of current moral knowledge from all cultures for increasing international cooperation as the scale of human interaction increases on a global scale. How can we manage the world's moralities in order to increase cultural cooperation and improve the human condition? The answer cannot merely be a universal political order of political liberalism and a planetary military alliance to enforce it. Indeed, if a positive universal morality for nurturing cross-cultural social relationships gained wide-spread use, fewer international laws backed by military threat would be necessary. Furthermore, when people are more interested in social relationships across national boundaries as well as cultural boundaries, their unthinking patriotic allegiance to any particular culture or nation will diminish. Planetary Ethics is the foundation for a cultural and political pluralism that will diminish both the ethnic tribe and the nation-state. Humanist Ethics has already done much to overcome ethnic tribalism around the world, but it erected political nationalism in its place. Just as Humanist Ethics had to overcome the religious prejudice of Theological Ethics, a Planetary Ethics must overcome the nationalist patriotism of political liberalism, which is a very difficult task. If Planetary Ethics cannot overcome nationalism, by failing to generate a more compelling enthusiasm among all peoples for belonging to a global community, it will either (a) support the moral causes of the world's wealthy and prematurely arrest at the stage of cosmopolitan economic globalization, or (b) endorse self-reliance virtues for moralistic people who feel politically powerless and get sidetracked towards the dead-end of complacent post-modern stoicism.

We can develop more details about the framework of any Planetary Ethics by noticing implications of the nine principles of a naturalistic secular ethics taken together. Some of these implications serve to weigh against proposed moral rules that probably should not be tried, while other implications encourage the experimental trial of proposed moral rules that might benefit humanity. 

Planetary Ethics Principles that Weigh Against Proposed Moral Rules

• Does the moral rule seem too radical, by proposing a big change to a traditional social relationship found across cultures?

• Does the moral rule seem too unfair, by proposing a new burden or restriction on some people but not others?

• Does the moral rule seem too shortsighted, by proposing a tempting benefit that may actually harm future generations?

• Does the moral rule seem too aggressive, by proposing a swift justice that might also increase fear and resentment?

Planetary Ethics Principles that Support Proposed Moral Rules

• Does the moral rule promote the self-respect and dignity of all people?

• Does the moral rule promote the protection of the weak against coercion and violence?

• Does the moral rule promote the overall amount of human health and happiness?

• Does the moral rule promote the self-confidence and courage to question and learn?

• Does the moral rule promote the free and safe expression of ideas and concerns?

• Does the moral rule promote the ability of people to cooperate in thinking about their common problems?

• Does the moral rule promote the willingness of people to form trusting and sympathetic relationships?

What Specifically Does Planetary Ethics Stand For?

Secular Humanists are people who search for a Planetary Ethics capable of increasing cultural cooperation and improving the human condition. Secular humanists believe that this search for a Planetary Ethics must use the methods of learning from cultural/religious wisdom traditions, free and open inquiry, and scientific method. At this moment in time, Secular Humanists have made some progress towards a Planetary Ethics. Their principles are indebted to various wisdom traditions, the Enlightenment, political liberalism, and free thought movements.

Secular Humanists recognize the Common Moral Decencies and the Ethical Excellences. The following explanation of these principles is given by Paul Kurtz in his article "The Ethics of Humanism without Religion".

"The common moral decencies are widely shared. They are essential to the survival of any human community. Meaningful coexistence cannot occur if they are consistently flouted. Handed down through countless generations, they are recognized throughout the world by friends and relatives, colleagues and coworkers, the native-born and immigrant, as basic rules of social intercourse. They are the foundation of moral education and are taught in the family and the schools. They express the elementary virtues of courtesy, politeness, and empathy so essential for living together; indeed, they are the very basis of civilized life itself. The common moral decencies are transcultural in their range and have their roots in generic human needs. They no doubt grow out of the long evolutionary struggle for survival and may even have some sociobiological basis, though they may be lacking in some individuals or societies since their emergence depends upon certain preconditions of moral and social development."

"The common moral decencies refer to how we relate to others. But there are a number of important humanistic values that we should strive to realize in our personal lives, and that we need to impart to the young. They are the ethical excellences. There are standards of ethical development, exquisite qualities of high merit and achievement. In some individuals nobility shines through; there are certain excellences that morally developed persons exemplify. These personality traits of character provide some balance in life."

Among specific principles typically favored by secular humanists, but not necessarily accepted by all humanists, are the following: