Rational Thought and Universal Morality

The following essay was submitted on October 23, 2006, to complete a writing assignment for a University of St Andrews Divinity class called "God, Sex, and Money".
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This essay will hopefully demonstrate that rational thought cannot by itself yield the universal ethical principles on which a moral system may be based. To illustrate that universal ethical principles must be given from somewhere outside of rational thought, I will describe two moral systems which are acclaimed by their adherents to be universally true, and whose key premises cannot be inferred by logic. What I will not concentrate on is whether any of these ethical systems is true. I will concentrate on their main premises, and show – without worrying about whether the premises are true – that those premises which are crucial to moral argument are grounded in something other than reason, and that rational thought removed from an already-built framework of moral principles cannot yield universal ethical principles.

An ethical principle is called universal if it is believed to hold true in every place and time, and apply to every person. (For the sake of this essay, I will use “universal ethical principle” to mean a principle that is believed to be universal, as opposed to a principle that actually is universally true.) It has the claim of universality, and so any belief system that includes it prescribes the same rights and obligations to all people. An individual who believes in a universal ethical principle can apply this principle to any action in any condition, and trust that he acted properly. Cicero’s natural law is one example of a universalistic belief system.
…law in the proper sense is … spread through the whole human community, unchanging and eternal … This law cannot be countermanded, nor can it be amended, nor can it be totally rescinded. We cannot be exempted from this law by any decree of the Senate or the people; nor do we need anyone else to expound or explain it. There will not be one such law in Rome and another in Athens, one now and another in the future, but all peoples at all times will be embraced by a single and eternal and unchangeable law.[1]
One trait of Cicero’s natural law that is not a necessary trait of universal ethical principles is Cicero’s appeal to nature. To him, proper morality is “right reason in harmony with nature.”[2] To act properly is to act as man naturally was intended to act, and so whoever “refuses to obey it will be turning his back on himself.” A man who disobeys natural law “has denied his nature as a human being,” and for that “he will face the gravest penalties.”[3] The emphasis that Cicero places on human nature as the basis of morality is not present in other systems of universal ethical principles.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative is an ethical principle that is well-known for its claim of universality. Unlike Cicero, Kant makes no appeal to human nature as the justification for his beliefs. Instead, he claims that moral principles are to be understood a priori, without foundation on particular experience. He says “it is absolutely impossible for experience to establish with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of action … has rested solely on moral grounds and on the thought of one’s duty.”[4] He claims that all moral principles can be summed up in one categorical imperative, which is “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[5] In other words, we may not commit an action in any situation unless it is an action that is permissible in every situation.

This principle is very much like the “Golden Rule,” in that it forbids us from committing an action that we do not want committed against us. But the categorical imperative goes much farther than “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. While the Golden Rule may admit a degree of subjectivity and conditionality, Kant denies both of these. Take, for example, his staunch defence of honesty. Even though it may be to one’s own advantage to “make a promise with the intention of not keeping it,” a false promise is still wrong. While applying the categorical imperative to lying, Kant says:
…I can by no means will a universal law of lying; for by such a law there could properly be no promises at all, since it would be futile to express a will for future action to others who would not believe my profession or who … would pay me back in like coin; and consequently my maxim [of making a false promise when hard pressed], as soon as it was made a universal law, would be bound to annul itself.[6]
Here, Kant gives an outright condemnation of all lying. Lying is wrong when committed all the time, and so it should not be committed any time. This condemnation of all lying makes Kant seem stricter than some Bible characters. Had Rahab[7] observed the categorical imperative when she was asked about the spies who visited her, she would have been compelled to deliver them to the guards, instead of continuing to hide them on her roof, and saying that they ran to the mountains.

Some of the principles presupposed by any universal ethical principle are: some things are good, and some things are bad; something that is good (or bad) in one situation is good (or bad) in all other situations (the claim of universality); and that such-and-such ethical principle accurately describes what is good or bad. A phrase included in each of these principles is “It is certainly the case that…” No man can say that such-and-such ethical principle is universal unless he is willing to say “It certainly is the case that some things are definitely good, and that some things are definitely bad; and that one thing that is bad in one situation is definitely bad in all others.” No principle can be called universal unless it can include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.
Rational thought is the process by which a person arrives at conclusions which are indicated by statements called premises. An argument is “an attempt to demonstrate the truth of … a conclusion, based on the truth of a set of … premises.”[8] Rational thought is only the process by which a person derives his conclusion from his premises; it does not account for his premises, unless these premises too are conclusions of arguments. The two types of arguments that may be used to derive the conclusion are deductive, and inductive, arguments. Only the former can be used to arrive at universal ethical principles. The latter is a style of argument “in which the premises of an argument are believed to support the conclusion but do not ensure it.”[9] Because induction does not ensure the conclusion, it cannot be used to support universal ethical principles, which must be able to include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.

P.D. Magnus, in his Forall X, says: “An argument is deductively valid if and only if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.”[10] Any statement can be inferred, when given a well-constructed argument. But the truth-value of a deductively inferred conclusion depends on the truth-value of its premises. Even if a statement is inferred from its premises, there is no guarantee that it actually is true, unless the truth of each of its premises were guaranteed. This is one painful weakness that logic has when dealing with moral issues. If there were doubt about the truth of just one premise in a perfectly logical argument, then discerning the truth-value of the conclusion becomes a complete guessing game.

There is at least one (actually, there are many) premise about which there may be doubt, and which would make the moral argument a guessing game. Every premise which introduces a value or principle to a moral argument is a presupposition which may be doubted on the grounds that it is not justified on a purely rational basis. This is a problem for the moral argument that relies on a universal ethical principle – if there is doubt about any premise, there is doubt about the conclusion, and so a claim that includes “certainly” and “definitely” cannot be made. This doubt makes it impossible to argue about universal ethical principles. Doubt can be erased in one of two ways: either the premise can be demonstrated to have a purely rational justification, in which case it would not be any kind of assumption, and would not be an introduction of any value or principle; or the premise can be accepted as something that simply stands true, without any need for a purely rational justification. The latter implies that there is a basis, other than pure reason, which may be used in moral argument.

If one were to believe that rational thought alone is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, then he would be ruling out any source of moral principles that is outside of rational thought. He would be addressing the problem of doubt by using the first method given. Any principle that is “assumed”, or called “self-evident”, or received from any source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought, must be discarded if the moral argument should be purely rational. This poses another serious problem for the man who wishes to arrive at universal ethical principles by using purely rational thought. If he wants to use universal ethical principles, he must argue deductively; if he argues deductively, he must make sure that no doubt can be cast onto any of his premises; if he wishes to argue on a purely rational basis, then he must make sure that all his principles are founded on reason alone, and he may not draw any moral principles from a source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought. But to refrain from using moral principles that aren’t founded on pure reason means refraining from arguing for universal ethical principles. The claim of universality, which states that certain things should not be committed by any person in any situation, is itself a principle without any rational basis. No universal ethical principle can be stated without this claim, and so arguments that omit this claim cannot arrive at universal ethical principles. Purely rational arguments cannot infer universal ethical principles.

By blatantly spelling out the claim of universality, Cicero and Kant spell out assumptions which are not founded on rationality. Cicero reveals his assumption (actually, just one of his assumptions) when he says that proper law is “unchanging and eternal,” and equally applicable in both Rome and Athens.[11] Kant’s assumption is emblazoned on the very wording of his categorical imperative. “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[12] Even the fact that he makes assumptions is made clear in his writings.
We shall … have to investigate the possibility of a categorical imperative entirely a priori, since here we do not enjoy the advantage of having its reality given in experience and so of being obliged merely to explain, and not to establish, its possibility.[13]
Arthur Schopenhauer calls Kant’s morality, which is derived from “postulates of practical reason,” a morality “rested on concealed theological hypotheses.”[14] But the presence of a ‘theological hypothesis’ does not invalidate an argument for universal ethical principles. In addressing the problem of doubt, the arguer may choose the second method, which is to accept moral principles as legitimate assumptions that need no purely rational justification. If he does this, however, he would be relying on sources outside of pure reason, and would not be relying on rational thought alone to yield universal ethical principles.

One criticism of my argument might be that I start with a notion of rational thought that is too narrow to include those rational arguments which do arrive at universal ethical principles. It is possible to have a rational argument that deduces a universal ethical principle from a set of premises that includes a claim of universality. But while this would be a rational argument, it would not be a purely rational argument. When we address the question of whether rational thought is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, we must take it to ask whether rational thought is capable of yielding these principles on its own. If rational thought is capable when provided postulates, then this capability is not attributed to rational thought, but to the postulates. In the case of arguments for universal ethical principles, these postulates are the claim of universality, and any moral value to which it would be attached.


Works Cited
Cicero. The Republic; The Laws. Translated by Niall Rudd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H.J. Patton. London: Routledge, 2000.

Magnus, P.D. Forall X: An Introduction to Formal Logic. http://www.fecundity.com/logic, 2005.

Schopenhauer, Authur. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument.
[1] Cicero, The Republic; The Laws, translated by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 68-69
[2] Ibid., p. 68
[3] Ibid., p. 69
[4] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by H.J. Patton (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 71
[5] Ibid, p. 84
[6] Ibid, p. 68
[7] Joshua 2:1-7
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[10] http://www.fecundity.com/logic. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[11] Cicero, The Republic, p. 68-69
[12] Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 84
[13] Ibid., p. 83
[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, translated by E.F.J. Payne (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 57