I. Introduction
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes employed deductive reasoning on morality as if it is a science. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke also used a similar methodology. Though these two philosophers differed at what foundational assumptions they would use for their system of morality, they were commensurable for both assuming a science of morals. In this paper, I will first present their view on such a science and its difficulties, then attempt to resolve the difficulties, and eventually argue that such a science is indeed possible.
II. Hobbes and Locke on the science of morals
For both philosophers, to have a science of morals means that moral rules that are deductive like mathematical theories. They established foundational assumptions about morality, and from these assumptions derived their system of knowledge on morality. For Hobbes, the essential assumptions are:
And from these two assumptions, Hobbes was able to derive a complete and coherent system of morality, in which people are obliged to avoid the state of nature[3] and to pursue peace in a civilized society. For example, by assumption 1, we deduce that a state of nature will be a state of war, because people will be at war with each other for their egocentric needs. Call this consequence 1. By assumption 2, it is good to have peace, and bad to have war. Consequence 1 in addition to assumption 2 gives consequence 2: it is bad to have state of nature. With similar reasoning, we can deduce that it is good to have a social contract, because that it gets us out of the State of Nature, which we have shown is bad; it is good to have a Sovereign, because it enforces the social contract, which we have shown is good; it is good to kill someone who breaks the contract, since they disturb the peace, etc…
For Locke, the foundational assumption is that “good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain”[4]. We can deduce that anything that brings pleasure is good, and vice versa. There are no innate moral principles[5], and we are supposed to inquire why we should follow a certain moral law. The answer to this inquiry can be found with a similar reasoning demonstrated for Hobbes: an action can be deemed immoral for producing more pain than pleasure.
For both philosophers, no matter how they came to conclude the foundational assumptions they used, they both employed them in their deductive reasoning to develop a system of morals.
III. Difficulties in the science of morals
Both philosophers encountered difficulties in their deductive reasoning. For Locke, this difficulty stems from the analogy between mathematics and morality. He pointed out that morality is more complex than mathematics, giving us two inconveniences. The first inconvenience is in the disagreements upon definitions in the discussion of morality, “that their names are of more uncertain signification, the precise collection of simple ideas they stand for not being so easily agreed on” [6]. The second difficulty is the incapability of mind to precisely employ deductive reasoning on moral issues, “that the mind cannot easily retain those precise combinations so exactly and perfectly as is necessary in the examination of the habitudes and correspondences…”
For Hobbes, the widely-raised difficulty comes from the validity of the state of nature. Though the philosopher did not mention this difficulty himself, it is a valid concern that, never in the history had it been documented clearly and indisputably a State of Nature as described by Hobbes. This casts a shadow on his science of morals, because the validity of the science of morals relies on having a foundation that can be agreed upon and is sensible empirically to certain extent.
IV. Such a science is possible
It is necessary to clarify that the essential question of interest of this paper is whether morality can be done like pure science. We may not have found a complete and coherent science-like system of morals yet, but an absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. In this section, I will first attempt to resolve Locke’s difficulty of analogy between mathematics and morals, then argue that Hobbes assumption about state of nature is usable, resolving the second difficulty. Both philosophers’ sciences of morals being robust should also serve as a support for the potential existence of a complete, coherent science of morals.
To Locke’s first inconvenience in the analogy of morals to mathematics, that definitions in morals are not easily agreed on, I respond that should not deter us from looking for the one true definitions. For example, in mathematics, the complexity theory problem of whether P is equal to NP[7] is still disagreed on. Mathematicians have been arguing about it for a century without giving out a proof. Does that mean that both “P = NP” and “P != NP” are true, or neither is true? No. Precisely one of them is true, and we simply have not found the truth (the proof) yet. The disagreements in the discussion of morality can also be of this kind.
And to the second inconvenience, that the mind cannot easily retain those precise combinations so exactly and perfectly as is necessary in the discussion of morality, I respond that his doubt assumes that the human mind plays a part in the deductive reasoning process, which is not true. If the definitions are unambiguous, coherent and complete, then we use deduction to arrive at a conclusion, in which case our mind may just as well be replaced by a machine.
Let us look at the famous dilemma where we are trying to judge whether John did an immoral thing by killing one innocent person in order to save five. This is the point where the second inconvenience might emerge, since with a clear description of the situation, and clear definitions (namely that killing is wrong, saving people is right), we can indeed arrive at different conclusions in our separate minds and be able to justify our conclusions. It seems that minds, or subjective personal opinions, can actually make a difference in this moral debate. What went wrong was that we mistakenly thought that we had all the definitions and descriptions we need. “Killing is wrong” is not a complete definition. One attempt to complete this definition may be to say “killing for any purpose is wrong”, which could be debated but will however unify the conclusions across different minds. In any mind, adding up “killing for any purpose is wrong” and “John killed” will deductively give “John has done the immoral”. There is nothing special in in the mind that is required for the process of analysis of morality when moral principles are perfectly clear. Locke’s second inconvenience in itself assumes that mind is needed for doing morality, which already contradicts the existence of a science of morals.
To Hobbes’ difficulty, I respond that it is not necessary for State of Nature to have actually existed to show that Hobbes’ science of moral is valid. Hobbes provided a theoretical worst-case of human nature. The laws that are valid in the worst case, when moved into an average case, should not make the system of moral rules incoherent or untrue in anyways. In a society where people are rational and benign, all the old rules forbidding killing and stealing carry over. As for the Sovereign and our obligation to him, it does not matter whether they exist now, because their existence will not be repressive or immoral. According to Hobbes, they exist only for the benefit of people as a whole even in the worst case (State of Nature).
I think that there does exist a parallelism between morality and science, because of the objectivity and absoluteness of the process of doing both. Both morality and science objectively relies on reason and logic, and we play a role only in discovering the truth that exists in nature. In science, various measurement and observations made in experiments cannot change or dictate the true physical laws being measured. So what makes us think that morality is the other way? Human minds participate in the process of moral judgements, but a judgment cannot bend a moral truth into falsehood, or vice versa. When people point to different moral rules in different societies, I say that in reality none of the laws of physics works precisely the way scientists expect, but that is not because there is not one physical truth. What was lacked was the preconditions needed for the law to show a theoretical value, like vacuum, frictionless space, bodies without interactions. Analogously, it may seem to us that under certain social conditions, it is ambiguous which moral conclusions to draw---but the ambiguity comes from establishing a model representing reality precisely, not from the objective moral truth.
V. Conclusion
Both philosophers had demonstrated that there can be a science of morals. I have attempted to make their science of morals more robust by attempting to fix the potential objections to their argument, and directly presenting my own argument, namely that morality can exhibit objectivity very similar to science. Future research should be devoted into finding an actual indisputable foundation for the science of morality.
Reference
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, Thomas Hobbes
[1] Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, P117, paragraph 2
[2] Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, P122, paragraph 2
[3] The state people are at before society comes into existence
[4] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P189, paragraph 4
[5] Moral principles that comes as a prior, independently of the foundational assumptions.
[6] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P194, paragraph 2
[7] In plain English, P vs. NP can be understood as whether there is a better way to solve certain problems than using brute force
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