Moral values
By Serge Kreutz There are no genuine, logical moral values . It’s as simple as this. All moral values are perceived values. They are highly arbitrary. The moral values of current democratic societies are no more correct than the moral values of slave-holding ancient Rome, or of a cannibal Melanesian society 200 years ago. They are just different.
The moral values of current democratic societies may be of a more gentle kind than those of slave-holding Rome or Melanesian cannibals. But we better be prepared that the moral values that are commonly accepted today will feel as outmoded to humans who live a few hundred years from now as the moral values of slave-holding Rome or Melanesian cannibals feel outmoded to most people now.
Comparing the complexity of the law applied in modern societies with the relative simplicity of the law of primitive societies, we can conclude that today’s moral values are more sophisticated. But the more sophisticated moral values become, the more difficult it becomes to recognize that they are just as arbitrary as simple moral values.
With no quantity of arbitrary moral values, and not by creating ever more complex ethical and legal systems, will we be able to overcome the most basic dilemma: that there is no philosophical or biological basis why any kind or form of ethics should be preferable in principle to any other kind or form, or, for that matter, to the absence of all kinds or forms of ethics.
But while there may not be a philosophical or biological basis, there may well be a practical basis for prefering a complex and gentle ethical system over a more simple and brutal one: many people rather live in a peaceful society than a violent one.
2007