Jared Emry

There are three major kinds of nihilism: moral nihilism, epistemological nihilism, and political nihilism. Political nihilism derives its root in the same way as the word annihilation. It is the idea “all social and political structures should be destroyed.” Epistemological nihilism is the idea “there is no truth.” Moral nihilism is the idea “there are no values.” These types of nihilism could be all accepted by a person, but any person could easily accept one type and reject the others. They may overlap in a person, but each type is discrete and unique from each other. The confusion of these terms needs to be eliminated before discussing any one individually (Joyce 1). Unfortunately, the term moral nihilism still is vague and slovenly to the point of being both useless and meaningless. For the sake of discussion the term will be defined as to refer to a collection of philosophies that claim there are no moral facts. It is also necessary to trace major moral nihilist thoughts and arguments behind them.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his landmark book The Brothers Karamazov, has Ivan Karamazov state “if God is dead, then everything is permissible.” Many of those in the current skeptic and atheist communities would and do openly reject this dictum as it seemingly remains as either a pragmatic or a metaethic for the need of God; however, this rejection is an offhand dismissal. While Dostoyevsky is an Orthodox Christian and the text could be interpreted as a shameless strawman for atheistic metaethics, Atheism does not necessarily lead to moral nihilism, nor is that an accurate representation for the book (Joyce 2). The novel presents characters from all walks of life and their perspectives on existence. Ivan is the most tortured of them all and not due to his atheism. Ivan is brilliantly analytical and comes to the conclusion people only care about right and wrong insofar as there exist consequences, especially eternal ones. He desires to embrace goodness, but he can’t logically justify it. He gives up on love, happiness, and humanity. He cannot reconcile himself to his disbelief. He cannot reconcile morality with reality. It seems the only way to save values is to betray them. He is left mad and without redemption. His logic is never refuted; rather the disbelief is too much of a burden. It is not a claim atheism leads to moral nihilism for whatever reason. The consequences of the human psyche are irrelevant to the cold mathematics of nihilism. The sentiment here is mirrored by Camus in L’Homme Révolté and Sartre in Existentialism and Humanism. Dostoyevsky’s dictum may be popular in that god is Buddha’s trapdoor — the only exit by which humanity can escape from nihilism. On the other hand, it could be described without a theistic premise, in which the question is what the nature of moral permissibility actually is. This all presupposes the natural intuition of morality found in humans is something that should be doubted.

What justification do we have for moral skepticism? The common standard of justified belief in skepticism is if any contrary hypothesis cannot be ruled out, then that belief is not justified. The skeptic only has the burden of showing for a belief, there is a contrary hypothesis that cannot be ruled out. More specifically there are two basic issues in question that highlight a general cause for analysis of greater depth (Joyce). The first is the pervasiveness of moral disagreement. The second is ability of the sciences to explain moral beliefs in terms of biosocial terms without endorsing moral premises. If morality exists as a property, why is there a lack of moral uniformity across cultures and between individuals? Is active euthanasia moral? Is abortion moral? These are dichotomous and are prominent examples of moral disagreement.  Is there really direct and non-inferential access to the nature of morality if disagreement is so common? If moral belief can be described entirely outside of moral terms and described better, then why the need of such terms? It would seem the questions need answering.

Moral skepticism can also be reached by an argument of regress. Moral beliefs must be justified either inferentially or non-inferentially. A non-inferential argument may be easily dismissed with Occam’s Razor. It seems implausible moral judgments are valid without inference for known disagreements (Loeb 282). Furthermore, moral judgments are subject to framing effects, misleading emotions, and are the product of processes independent of truth. The other option is inferential justification, which may take three forms. First, a moral belief may be justified with no normative premises. The naturalists who make this claim must still rely on suppressed normative premises. Evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or general culture can explain moral beliefs, but do not inherently appeal to any moral fact. The naturalist argument relies on the suppressed premise all acts with features they deem immoral are morally wrong, but from what do they deem those features? It can still easily be denied due to prior moral assumptions (Bedke). Second, a moral belief may be justified with some non-moral normative premises. The idea here is theoretically all unbiased and rational people would make the same decisions if placed in the same circumstance and thus allege said beliefs are true. All factors required in such judgments are controversial. How are impartiality, rationality, and relevance decided? (Brandt) The differing theories for each factor would seem to point to suppressed moral premises. The third option is to justify moral beliefs with moral premises. The obvious flaw here is all moral premises are moral beliefs that must be justified. The most common denial would be such justifications must either be infinite or circular. Contamination of the premises with the conclusion gives little reason for the doubter to accept the premise. However, some have proposed a branching tree of premises that together form a coherent whole that can be internally proven. The suppressed premise here is coherency is a suitable replacement for truth. A system may be internally coherent but bears no reflection on externalities. Many internally coherent systems may conflict with each other, which gives rise to doubt concerning which internally coherent system is actually true. Additionally, social contexts are unable to justify moral belief as social contexts are corruptible and no solitary link can be made to affirm social context as truth. These are all the options by which moral beliefs may be justified, and the valid conclusion is there are no justifiable moral beliefs. This conclusion can only be avoided by tackling at least one of the premises covered here.

This skepticism can be taken further by asserting a hypothesis that cannot be ruled out. Moral nihilism is capable of explaining any moral beliefs exist the way they do accurately through evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or general culture. A coherent system that creates accurate predictions cannot refute nihilism either. One must rule out moral nihilism to be justified in any moral belief, yet not justified in the denial of moral nihilism. Justification of moral belief requires the denial of moral nihilism. It could be said the belief “genocide is wrong” requires the denial of this moral nihilism and until such time as this denial is justified “genocide is wrong” is an unjustifiable belief. “Genocide is wrong” isn’t a controversial moral belief and so it is plausible this extends to most other moral beliefs and controversies. How can nihilism be denied? A claim may be held against nihilism lacking meaning or internal coherency, yet it remains meaningful and coherent in light of all theories of language. Furthermore, common moral beliefs cannot justify this denial regardless of how obvious they may seem, for this denial is countered by simply pointing to the fact many people do reject moral beliefs and a seemingly coherent system does not speak to the external world. Additionally, all arguments pointing to moral nihilism as being incompatible with non-moral facts can be dismissed for crossing the is-ought barrier. Yet, people reject these conclusions without being able to refute them. The kneejerk reaction might to simply call this nihilism or this skepticism irrelevant. In fact, many people do accept forms of moral nihilism due to a lack of defensible moral theories. It seems relevant because people really do reasonably hold to this skepticism and it does directly confront the moral belief in question. To call it irrelevant is to simply dismiss these people and to not question an underlying belief without justifiable cause.

Moral skepticism and moral nihilism support each other adequately but are not necessarily reliant upon each other, especially due to the diverse nature of moral nihilism. While moral nihilism can be roughly defined as a rejection of values, especially moral values, the method or reason of rejection may vary. Moral nihilism includes all three major theses of moral-antirealism, yet possibly includes other meta-ethical theories. These are non-cognitivism, error theory, and non-objectivism. Non-cognitivism can be boiled down to the idea when people say a moral declaration, they do not intend to express moral truth. Instead of moral truth, people proclaim only their feelings in regard to an action or features associated with an action. Non-objectivism holds morals are constituted by thought alone, but this is not to be confused with subjectivism, as subjectivism is a mere type of non-objectivism. Nor should non-objectivism be confused with moral relativism, which may or may not be nihilist in nature depending on its presentation. However, non-objectivism’s status as moral nihilism is controversial on both sides of the aisle. Error theory is the traditional form of nihilism and perhaps the form that carries the most weight.
Error theory claims there are no objective values and denies it on a similar principle by which an atheist rejects god. Nihilism may be seen as a disjointed whole, against which all strands may need substantial arguments. Either moral judgments aim at telling truth, or they do not. If they do, all claims necessarily fail. If not, moral judgments are inherently separate from truth. However, perhaps it is better to look at traditional nihilism.

Error theory has its unique arguments that may supplement moral skepticism. The previously mentioned argument from disagreement can be expanded (Brink). If we start with the empirical observation many moral disagreements exist, then the demand of moral superiority must also be demanded of epistemological superiority — at least in regard to morality. Why do some cultures or individuals lack this epistemological access to moral knowledge? Many who try to answer find the reason for their claimed superior access may not like the answers they find. Furthermore, it would be more logical that the moral beliefs arose as a result of those answers and not the other way around (Mackie). A second argument stands more uniquely, rather than supplementary, to moral skepticism in the form of what is known as the argument from queerness. The idea here is morality, as a property, is unlike all other properties in universe and is therefore weird. Morality must be described as being observable in a way fundamentally different from all other properties. Morality requires a special faculty by which to operate, whereas all (or at least most) other properties are operated by normal faculties of observation. Morality requires a foreign method of knowing (Mackie).

The existence of moral nihilism, like all nihilism, rests in the negation of commonly accepted beliefs and axioms. It is as various in form as all the things it attempts to negate. It also stands as a brooding giant in philosophical discussions, as it demands attention and yields no ground. It purports what seems obvious to humanity stands on shaky ground. The proposition seems alien to us. If we cannot accept it and we cannot refute it, do we stand on mere faith? Are we to be mad like Ivan Karamazov in our inability to reconcile our human psyche to our reason? Richard Joyce proposes even if morality is a delusion, that delusion must be maintained. For now, however, can modern society cope with such a fundamental in question?

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