The Basis for Moral Experience: A Follow Up to My Previous Article Possibility of a Metaphysics of Morality

From my previous piece on the Probability of a Metaphysics of Morality, I posited the limits in respect to human cognition of universal morality and thus the very basis for moral rationalism. This move from moral rationalism to moral skepticism lends itself important consequences for our further inquiry into morality. What I aim to do now is construct a definition of what serves as the basis for morality, if not our faculty of reason.

The basis for any moral experience, judgment, or claim may have in its origins our own experience of what it means to be moral. In other words, what we hold to be moral is imparted upon us by our experiences with the world we may know. The limits of knowledge extend to the empirical world as given to us by our sense impressions. In order to step aside messy and unfounded assumptions of metaphysics, it is necessary we move towards a direction that we base our morality in something concrete, something relevant in order for it to make any sense at all.

By experience I mean all our interpretations of the given physical world in which we can thoroughly cognize and know. The basis for our moral assumptions, moral principles, and morality in general are in accordance not with any universal truth, but rather subjective truths given to us from our surroundings (that make our particular experiences possible). It is only logically necessary that empiricism could never possibly serve as the grounding for a universal truth, since all of our experiences are hence subjective. The question must be asked then, how does this happen? How does experience shape morality, if my position is at all valid?

If morality is not given to us a priori (before experience), then we must assume it through reason. It follows then, that morality through reason necessitates rational assumption of a free and autonomous will in order to serve as a necessity for the possibility of having moral experiences to begin with (I summarized the Kantian viewpoint in my other work, Possibility of a Metaphysics of Morality). The clumsiness of this assumption is neither necessary nor useful. We may understand morality not merely in obtuse philosophical language, but rather in practical terminology that at its basis can appeal to something that is universal: experience. Even though our experiences are not universal, it is accepted and undeniable that we, as consciously aware, have experiences of some sort with the physical world.

From these experiences, morality as it is seen as a social convention within any given community is then imparted upon the members of such a community through means of socialization, moral praise or condemnation, and the application of social norms through the everyday experiences of living within a community of other individuals.

An example may be necessary to illustrate my point. We are taught from an early age that it is impolite to stare. The geneology of this particular social norm is not particularly of interest to us, but the fact that this goes against our natural tendency as children in which we are therefore told that doing so is wrong, is an example of social conditioning to particular, accepted norms. These norms and their respective conditioning upon members of the community may manifest themselves in far more complicated ways. Another example may be lying. We are conditioned that lying is wrong in most circumstances through various means in our experience. While it would be odd to award someone simply for telling the truth, there are often times negative reinforcements for actions of deceit. Sometimes this conditioning takes the form of coercive measures by the state (punishment for perjury), sometimes these results in civil actions against individuals who break valid contracts, or a child is grounded for lying to his parents about going to a move instead of studying for an exam. Admittedly, these forms of conditioning serve more as reinforcement of social norms than anything, and have little to do with creating morality. This is the natural conclusion of the necessity of imposing certain values on children when they are young, but these norms having little to do with morality in the abstract or meta-ethical sense.

Morality that stems from experiences can be conditioned in a number of ways, not just negative reinforcement imposed by some authority. If we lie to our friends or family as adults, there are negative consequences for our actions. We might lose these friends, or at least put ourselves at great risk for losing their faith or trust in us. Thus, conditioning need not take merely the form of state sanctioning, but also from our personal experiences - which may in fact play a far greater role in our moral development than anything else. However, we should note here that our experiences are neither isolated from nor independent of our empirical world. For, we are not the masters or dictators of our own experience, but rather our experience is conditioned by the material world in which we live in. And it follows our interpretations of experience represent a clear, concrete view of the way in which reality exists in as far as appearances are concerned.

The social usefulness of understanding morality in terms of experiences gives it a flexibility and fluidity that make possible adaptations of our concepts of morality to social, political, and economic developments in our physical world. Try contemplating the opposite then, we are left at trying to reconcile changes in universal truth; which would only result in subjective-universal truths, and thus reduce to relativism which is incompatible with grounding morality in the metaphysical world and would completely collapse!

We can now conclusively say that unless we want to take on the cumbersome task of assumption of free, autonomous will and its consequent - universal morality, then we must ground the basis for our moral experiences in the empirical world - given to us through sense impressions.

I have yet to make a positive proposition as to what "morality" is in general, and this will be the subject matter for a different argument. However, I have thus far established keystone premises for my argument, and have constructed the essential bridge between morality and experience, and am now able to move in a direction of defining and explaining morality in general. The argument I have presented has merely been to distinguish potential groundings for morality, and dispel the universality of a metaphysics to morality that asks too much of us in order to have any real, practical use for human beings.