Moral Authority

It is often said that we should each of us follow our conscience, and that is absolutely true. However in our post-modernist, relativist times it is more often claimed that we should only follow our conscience. People are encouraged to ignore all moral authorities and instead to use your own reasoning when coming to moral decisions. This is a far more destructive belief than is generally recognised and an example will demonstrate what is wrong with ignoring moral authorities.

The example argument in question runs as follows:

Homosexuality is perfectly normal since we also find many animals in nature that also practice homosexuality. Everything that is normal is OK, so therefore homosexuality is OK.
The problem with this argument is that chimpanzees also kill other chimps expressly for the purpose of eating them (Other animals behave in similar ways). Now by the logic of our argument above Jeffery Dahmer did nothing wrong since he was only practising cannibalism, which other animals also do.

To justify actions by saying `Other animals do it' is to deny that there is any morality at all. Animals do not know morality, they just act on whichever impulse is strongest at a particular moment. But morality is about subjugating our strongest impulse to our rational will and spirit. So to allow any action that is found in animals amounts to saying that we should never repress any impulse, which amounts to denying that there is ethics.

But the laws of our society gain their force through moral reasoning, so to deny morality is to deny that there should be any laws. So therefore, if we accept the argument above as being valid then we are lead to also accepting that we should all live like the children in The Lord Of The Flies.

The real point in all of this is that a great number of people accept the above argument as being valid and even make documentaries about it. But I think, plainly, none of these people realise that they must also accept the disintegration of society by accepting the argument. But even worse, by denying morality the argument actually denies its own validity. That is, the argument is a moral one - it is only valid if morality is valid - but the argument entails that morality is invalid. The argument therefore contradicts itself. Obviously none of this has occurred to anyone who has made this argument or to anyone who has heard and accepted it.

What this demonstrates is that morality is a far more difficult subject than people are encouraged to believe. When I taught myself logic, and especially moral reasoning (or `deontic logic' as it is called), I was shocked by just how ignorant and faulty my moral reasoning had been previously. Morality is just as subtle and complicated as any science, yet none of us presumes to be able to unlock the mysteries of the universe on our own. Likewise, morality is a far more complicated subject than can be learned by people with better things to do than read textbooks all day.

We should all therefore accept the advice of moral authorities just as we accept the advice of a doctor. None of us would try to operate on ourselves, yet that is what we do morally when we rely entirely on our conscience.