I am getting extremely fed up with having to constantly clarify this claim when discussing morality with amateur Christian apologists, who constantly accuse atheists of confusing moral epistemology and moral ontology, and more often than not this accusation is simply false. The term ontology simply deals with whether or not a concept has an actual referent in reality, it has nothing to do with whether one definition is better than another. This is used especially often as a dishonest way of trying to put non-Christians on the spot because most people havent even heard of the words ontology and epistemology before, much less know how to properly apply them or to judge whether this allegation is true. Regarding morality, before one can even begin talking about moral ontology, one needs to first define what exactly it is he means by morality, because morality by itself is simply a word like any other, and words without definitions are, by definition, meaningless. Without first defining what you mean by morality, you may as well be asking what the ontology of shoobadahsh is. Now, what most people mean when they think about morality, whether they will actually admit it or not, is whether an action inflicts unnecessary harm or suffering on other people, and that is the definition that I go by: one ought to strive to live ones life causing as little unnecessary harm and suffering to other people as possible, and one ought not live ones life causing as much unnecessary harm and suffering to other people as possible. Now, clearly this obligation only applies to people who value human life and agree that deliberately causing unnecessary harm and suffering to other people is wrong (the overwhelming majority of people, both modern, ancient and probably prehistoric), just like any possible theistic definition of morality would only apply to people who actually agree with the ideals it espouses and chooses to follow them. If you dont care if you burn in Hell, for instance, and instead prefer to live life by your own understanding of morality, then the theistic moral obligations do not and can not be said to apply to you. There is no such thing as an unconditional ought, and the very concept is logically incoherent, as it reduces to one ought do X because one ought do X, which is circular reasoning. Actual oughts take the form one ought do X if Y. Now, as for moral ontology and epistemology, in this case, the ontological aspect of morality by this definition is whether or not objective facts about how to reduce or minimize the amount of unnecessary harm and suffering you inflict on other people exist, and the epistemological aspect would deal with how we would go about recognizing these objective truths. It cannot be argued that there are not things which are objectively not conducive to minimizing unnecessary harm and suffering (rape, torture, etc.), and it also cannot be argued that humans are incapable of recognizing such actions, to varying degrees at least. So if youre a Christian, the next time youre about to try and confuse an atheist/humanist with the epistemology/ontology dilemma, dont, unless they actually ARE confusing the two, which most of the time is not the case.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 11:05:37 +0000
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