Are morals instinctive? Or is moral law real?

Are morals instinctive? Why is there good reason to believe that the Law of human nature is a universal truth? Why does C.S. Lewis think that the Law of Human Nature means that there is absolute moral truth? How does Lewis prove that there is a universal objective moral standard called natural law? (Related: Moral Standards and Non Moral Standards)

These are tackled in this essay.

THE FOLLOWING are among the explanatory approaches commonly put forward in attempts to account for moral concepts  such  as  the  so-called  moral law, moral acts and the widely accepted ethical rules and values. Though having similarities, they nonetheless are not necessarily related to one another.

Moral Law as Herd Instinct

Does Moral Sense Refer to Herd Instinct?

There are those who suppose that the moral law is nothing but our herd instinct. The claim necessarily implies that moral law is something which has been naturally developed just like all our other instincts.

Indeed, it is hard to refute the presence in us of herd instinct. As C.S. Lewis concedes in The Case for Christianity, thus:

We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct–by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. (Lewis, 1943, p. 27)

But does it mean that the thing we call moral law is indeed one of the herd instincts?

“What people actually do”

There’s a claim that moral laws are simply those that we humans actually do. The contention is basically anchored on the notion that another brand of law, that  is, the laws of nature are nothing but descriptions of what things in nature actually do. Indeed, laws of nature, such as gravitational law, simply describe how nature operates, and thus they are not really laws in the strict sense, but only in a manner  of speaking.

For instance, when we say that raindrops always obey the law of gravitation,    it is the same as saying that the law only means, “what raindrops always do” as we observe them. We do not mean that raindrops always remember that they are under orders to fall to the ground. We only mean that, in fact, they do fall.

The theory thus claims that in morality, too, there is nothing over and above the facts themselves. That is, there is no real law about what ought to happen, as distinct from what does happen. Moral law is thus equated with natural law, both allegedly simply mean “what nature, in fact, does.”

The behaviors that pay

Some simply explain moral rules as the kinds or sets of behaviors that happen to be useful or those that pay. In other words, moral acts are just those that are expedient and immoral ones are merely those that inconvenience us.

Proponents claim that this definition, as compared to other explanations, is more compelling. But can this simplistic appraisal of morality satisfactorily account for moral laws?

ANALYSIS

Lewis’ reasons against ‘herd instinct’ theory

The late novelist and philosopher C. S. Lewis (1898 –1963) offers compelling reasons for the contention that moral law cannot be one of our herd instincts. We divide his reasons into three (3) items which are nonetheless interrelated:

• Moral law is that which judges between two instincts, and thus cannot itself be one of them.

In his The Case for Christianity, Lewis has beautiful explanation for this point which deserves to be quoted here at length:

You will probably feel two desires–one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, can’t itself be either of them. (1943, p. 8)

The contention is that feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that we ought to help someone who is in danger. For Lewis, to insist that Moral law is just one of our instincts is like to say “that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard” (p. 8). It is thus argued that “the Moral Law is, so to speak, the tune we’ve got to play: our instincts are merely the keys” (p. 9).

• When two instincts are in conflict, the stronger usually wins. The moral law, which is not an instinct, is that which sometimes tells us to side with the weaker instinct.

Lewis explains that a person probably wishes to be safe much more than he wants to help someone who is drowning. Self preservation, after all, is one of the most basic instincts. But the moral law sometimes tells him to help someone in need even if doing so may involve risk. Moral law is thus construed as being not an instinct, but that which directs a person what to choose between the two active instincts.

Distinct from instinct, moral law is also seen as that which tells us to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is, to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations for instance, or arousing our pity so as to get up enough “steam” for doing the morally right thing.

And in making an instinct more active than it is, we are not acting from instinct. Lewis justifies this proposition, thus: “What it is that says to you, ‘Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up’ can not itself be the herd instinct. What it is that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder can not itself be that note!” (1943, p. 9)

• No instincts can be considered as necessarily good or always in agreement with the rule of right behavior.

Here’s the hypothetical syllogism for this point: If the moral law is one of our instincts, then we ought to be able to point to some of our urges that we could always deem as good or always in agreement with the rule of morality. But we cannot, for there is not one among our impulses that the moral law would not sometimes tell  us to restrain.

Lewis believes that it is a mistake to think that some of our impulses, say motherly love and patriotism, are automatically good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are necessarily bad. At most, we could just say that some impulses are ‘preferable.’

By this, we mean that the occasions on which ‘un-preferable’ instincts (e.g. fighting instinct and sexual desire) have to be controlled are comparatively more frequent. But ‘un-preferable’ instincts are not necessarily bad for there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse, and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. Similarly, there are occasions on which a mother’s affection for her children or a man’s love for his own country has to be suppressed, else they could be charged of being unjust or unfair. Using analogy, Lewis concludes, thus:

Also Check Out: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories, also by author Jensen DG. Mañebog

Think once again of a piano. It does not have two kinds of keys on it that may be regarded as the “right” keys and the “wrong” keys. Every single key tapped to strike a note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts. (1943, p. 10)

Many things people do are wrong

As to the claim that moral laws refer to “what human beings, in fact do,” we can observe that many of us, in fact, do not obey these laws at all, and perhaps none of us faithfully obey them all.

The problem in proposing that moral law is tantamount to what humans actually do is that it commits the so-called “is-ought” fallacy. Simply because someone is doing something does not mean that one ought to do so. Otherwise, racism, rape, cruelty, and murder would consequentially become morally right. Also, should what people actually do be considered the basis for what they morally ought to do, then we ought to lie, cheat, and steal, since these things are done all the time. The proposal to refer moral laws to people’s activities could thus result in absurdity.

A purely ‘descriptive ethics’ is indeed no ethics at all. Describing human behavior is not Ethics but Sociology. Morality’s essential function is not describing but prescribing human behavior.

Admittedly, the law of gravity tells us what raindrops in fact do; however, moral law , being prescriptive, is something different—it tells us what people ought to do, and don’t. In other words, when we are dealing with morality, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. We have the facts (how humans do behave) but we also have something else (how we ought to behave).

Some moral acts could be bothersome

On the other hand, to equate morality to the behavior that pays is to reduce ethics to prescribing courses of actions that are convenient to us. In such a view, to say that someone is doing wrong acts just means that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to us. But when a person wears clothes with repulsive color combination, his act is also inconvenient to us. So the theory, in effect, equates doing wicked deeds to wearing of awkward dress and the like.

Also Check Out: The Worldview of Atheism by Jensen DG. Mañebog

When waiting in line, a man who was ahead of me because he got in the line first and another who attempted to deceitfully overtake me have both caused me inconvenience. But I could not say that both of them committed an unjust act against me. In fact, nothing in the name of morality authorizes me to be angry at the first man. In contrast, I have all the reasons to be angry at or criticize the man who tried to unfairly overtake me even if he did not succeed. Clearly then, an action’s being immoral is distinct from its being useful or convenience-causing.

Moreover, there are wrong behaviors that could be not inconvenient to us at all. For instance, suppose our country unjustly colonized other nations, took away their wealth, and distributed them among us.  The  act  is  immoral  and  yet  does not inconvenience us. Likewise, there  are  moral  acts that  could  be  bothersome. To physically help a drowning man, financially donate to victims of disaster, keep promises that require sacrifices, and be honest and faithful which demand self-denial are moral acts which could be not expedient.

Therefore, to say that moral rules are simply the behaviors that happen to be useful or those that pay is an inaccurate ethical proposition … continue reading

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Also Check Out: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories, also by author Jensen DG. Mañebog

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