Truth and Morality: One, Many, or None?

Text Selections
Plato, Republic
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Course Description

There are those who think that without a belief in “absolute” truth or a belief in one morality, or one set of values, societies would decay and crumble. Some see this decay as already eating away at many contemporary societies and take it as their task to fight this decline. Others think that cultural diversity and the inevitable presence of bias and self-interest make the idea of a single truth or a single, correct morality simply implausible. Furthermore, some believe, the view that there is a single truth or a single morality is what leads to many forms of intolerance; there would be more peace, tolerance, and understanding both within societies and between societies if people would just give up the old-fashioned, unsophisticated view that there is one truth for all humans or one set of values for all humans.

In this course we will investigate whether there is indeed one truth or many; whether truth is in some way relative to particular groups of people in particular places and times—cultures, societies, or traditions. Or whether, as some philosophers have argued, humans are not capable of knowing any truth whatsoever. We will concern ourselves with both purported descriptive truths—the kinds of things physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, and so on claim to reveal to us—and specifically normative or evaluative truths—the purported truths of morality, of values, of rationality. Could there be some sense in which the world of physics, in which everything happens according to the laws of physics, is true for physicists and others who believe in physics, but not true for someone who believes that God is continuously directing how the Universe proceeds? How could there be two truths here? Isn’t the physicist either right about how the Universe works or wrong? After all, those who believe in physics and those who do not cannot literally be living in two Universes, can they? (Imagine the consequences for international trade!) Doesn’t this mean that those who accept one religion—or a secular world view—have to think of those who disagree with them as simply mistaken?

Similar questions arise about morality and values. Should we think that slavery was fine once upon a time because that is how things were done then? But then what stops a group of people from separating themselves from the rest of us and declaring that they are founding a new community in which, once again, slavery is just fine? But if there are universal moral truths, then how do we know them? Physics has particle detectors, the biologist has microscopes, the economist has detailed surveys of income levels and productivity, but what instrument do we have to detect moral truths? A person’s right to health care, if any rights actually exist, isn’t like the person’s height or weight. How do we “measure” someone’s rights? Or should we conclude that believing in morality and values is like believing in witches or unicorns, a mistake we should finally get over? But if there is no right or wrong, if nothing is really more valuable or important than anything else, then how can we decide what to do with, and in, our lives? Indeed if there is no value, meaning or point to anything, then life itself seems completely worthless.

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