Moral Realism is False. But Global Ethics and Human Rights (and even the UN Global Goals) have a scientific basis.
Moral realists claim that there are ethical values, moral facts, morality-related truths and/or moral behavior rules/principles that are independent from human beings. So, they mostly resort to natural law theory or divine command theory.
My argument (my original thesis, the EPE-theory, 2016) is that moral realism itself (any version) and its claimed basis/source/grounds (natural law theory, divine command theory etc.) are false (because they have no causal evidence for such moral perspectives and/or their fundamental theories), but yet, there are Global Ethics and Human Rights based on one’s own short- and long-term well-being and life-span considerations having a sufficient scientific basis.
Let’s begin with ourselves. So, now if you want/prefer any thing or just continue to live to experience something in the future too, then, it requires you to secure your future: the next seconds, hours, months, years, your whole life-span, meaning your next 50 or 100 years, if possible, to realize those things that you preferred, wanted, decided or even unwisely chose in any way. So, the main ground is your own life-span, but more primarily, your own well-being-span (your own short- and long-term well-being). Then, you need quality forecasts to manage your own possible futures, and hence you have to understand and consider the interdependence of your own and others’s well-being-span and also even some other systems’s conditions. So, to (further) secure a future for your own preferred possibilities, you need to ensure human rights for all (including you) and quality welfare systems (e.g., ones toward the United Nations Global Goals) that are provided to you. Then, for increasing the probability and the quality of such possibilities and conditions, you have to prioritize to provide these to any person as a serving/fundamental/inalienable (ethics, rights, systems, design) construction. Otherwise, others would not agree on providing such security and human rights to you too. Because biological systems (especially ones able to make decisions, e.g., human beings) necessarily try to survive, or at least, it’s what you prefer for yourself while not committing suicide, and for it, they try to make decisions for gaining the needed resources and for achieving and securing such positive/enabling living-conditions and possibilities. So, if a human being, as a biological system, lives in poverty or lacks some of such conditions, such a deprivation causes this “agent” to achieve those conditions despite they are not possible (or at least much less possible). Then, such an agent has to consider the alternative ways that are mostly criminal, illegal, unlawful, harmful and/or risky in order to realize such conditions for meeting his/her own short- and long-term well-being considerations. As a result, his/her such acts harm other agents that are more capable/fortunate for such objectives and so that do not tend to act in such harmful/problematic ways. Thus, we have to develop and implement quality systems/human rights in concrete ways, which provide and secure such conditions, and eliminate such deprivation possibilities and risks to our life, health, autonomy, long-term well-being. By realizing these, consequently, we will have less crime, and less unethical behaviors against ourselves stemming from others, and also against others stemming from ourselves.
Now I want to further interpret my approach to Global Ethics and Human Rights by paraphrasing my argument with some additional detail and explanations: In precise terms of ethics, against “ethical relativism/nihilism/subjectivism, I think that the only defensible and necessary source/basis for ethics (in any culture and any time biological systems with some rationality-capabilities try to survive) is one’s own long-term well-being considerations. Such well-being considerations can be based on one’s own “decision” to maintain his/her life. Unless one commits suicide, it means that she “decides/prefers” to live more. For living more, she needs to design how to improve her well-being in a sense of probabilities. Then, she “must” try to find out, develop and implement workable ways for realizing such well-being conditions through very long-term considerations. So, all quality ethical deliberations/advancements can be based on such a decision (survival, and hence well-being). Likewise, any ethical investments in others and defending others’s rights can construct a sufficient (real-self-interests-based) justification and/or rationale based on this decision for one’s own well-being. In such a way, is-ought gap too can be resolved through what “is” more workable/actionable/effective for long-term well-being and for developing systems and rights meeting relevant objectives because of such a decision to maintain to live/survive. What “is” (relatively more) workable (found by sciences) is also what “ought” to be realized (by us because of one’s own survival-decision, and solely while there is such a decision until suicide or an ideology that is not well-being-oriented and so that is false and problematic). The point is that my meta-ethical argument is not naturalistic. It depends on one’s own decision toward her own survival. Thus, we can possibly move from “some” combinations of “is” (descriptive) statements to “some” combinations of “ought” (prescriptive) statements based on such a decision, and thanks to sciences. It’s my claiming resolution for the so-called “fact-value gap”. It does not imply that human beings have natural/permanent goals toward survival/well-being, or any other “inevitable decision”, and any teleological argument. Plus, thanks to its decision-dependency (e.g., some people commit suicide), it does not accept any version of natural law theory, divine command theory, and moral realism too. But it defends “ethical objective effects” approach as a main “ethical-reasoning ground” that must be constructed and developed in complexity by human beings based on a necessary condition that is a decision to be made to constantly aim any increase in one’s own long-term well-being (hence everyone’s real self-interests, but not total increase). With a ground of such objectivity, it rejects both moral relativism, subjectivity, and nihilism too.
In short, there is no any moral/ethical fact that is before human beings exist (universal, in itself, code of ethics/morality), but we can possibly, preferably, accurately and effectively develop and many times are already developing “more-ethical” designs, approaches, systems, rights and conceptual/concrete tools/applications in globally-defensible ways.
Also, I have to add that ethical multiple dimensions of one’s own long-term well-being can be possibly understood solely in its complexity and interdependence with others’s well-being and also with some welfare/environment systems through quality interdisciplinary scientific knowledge on any critical issues that have primary importance for one’s own long-term well-being.
In other words, to me, what matters to decide/design/act is (must be) the probabilities of relevant effects on one’s own well-being-span. What is “ethical”, or more precisely (because there is no absolute but are always “relatively preferable alternatives/possibilities” that can be developed/realized), “what is More-Ethical” is “to receive particular effects, so try to increase those effects, ensure them, and continue to seek advancing those effects as much as possible”. So, how to receive, and hence, not act in terms of narrow-selfishness (which does not work for such advancements and cannot guarantee them in the long-term), develop concrete systems that work, and rights that can be possibly realized. Thus, it’s, for one’s own well-being, to develop/find out such patient-oriented patterns and ways that are concrete in order to be able to “receive” those particular effects. In short, it’s toward improving such passivities (receiving: patient-oriented expectations/realizations) through activities (developing systems, investments, rights realizations, SDGs realizations, individual/organizational supportive/cooperative efforts etc). As a result, it is to design and realize multiple systems, rights and tools that serve one’s own and consequently everyone’s such receiving possibilities. It may involve reciprocity perspectives in many dynamics as useful mechanisms but is not based on them because its designs and systems do not require mutual give-and-take as a necessary condition/rule.
Finally, by re-articulating, I want to emphasize that there is no any moral reality in itself that is independent from human survival-happiness-well-being expectations/goals, but yet, “Global Ethics (which is not self-evident, not intuitively-accessible, not commonsense, not virtue-based, but, instead, which requires so much constantly-advanced interdisciplinary theoretical knowledge, constantly-updated relevant information about the matters, always-further considerations on new needs/challenges and actionable possibilities and related perspectives) and Human Rights, and even the UN Global Goals have a sufficient scientific basis/justification for their prioritization and implementations”.
Author: Barış Bayram / Twitter: @BarisBayram2045
References:
“How to construct empirically verifiable ethics to fix the status quo”: http://impakter.com/impakter-essay-construct-empirically-verifiable-ethics-fix-status-quo/ (Barış Bayram; July 11, 2017; the Impakter Magazine).
“Examining ethics in a Trump world”: https://medium.com/@AltPolitics/modern-philosophy-bar%C4%B1%C5%9F-bayram-examining-ethics-in-a-trump-world-3465b4d6f6bd (Barış Bayram; July 13, 2017; AltPolitics Blog).
“The Theory of Cognitive-Ethical-Development Can Solve Any Real-World Problem”: https://www.academia.edu/30600969/The_Theory_of_Cognitive-Ethical-Development_Can_Solve_Any_Real-_World_Problem (Barış Bayram; December 24, 2016; academia-edu paper)
“A New Basis for Ethics Prioritizing Well-being: Primary Ethics of Economics”: https://www.academia.edu/30724375/A_New_Basis_For_Ethics_Prioritizing_Well-being_Primary_Ethics_Of_Economics (Barış Bayram; January 4, 2017; academia-edu paper)
