The Corrective Action Problem of Objective Morality

Moral Wrongness/Correctness Is Different

I don’t believe objective moral values exist. More than that, I’d rather they not exist. Here’s why.

Having objective moral values means that you believe some things are always more valuable than others. All else being equal, you always prefer some things over other things, as they are always more valuable.¹

Objective moral values are problematic because of the Corrective Action Problem: Moral issues demand corrective action. If there are objectively correct answers to moral questions, that means that we should act to correct the morally wrong, those being both wrong believers and wrong actors. The consequences of this would lead to moralizing everyone’s individual actions and preferences, even the supposedly amoral ones. If taken to its logical end, that would obliterate individuality. It would be dystopian.²

Moral Language Implies Corrective Action

For many people today, being insufficiently moral isn’t a big deal. So what if we’re insufficiently moral? As humans we’re insufficient on all sorts of measures!

The problem here is hard to explain in philosophical terms because it involves context. Anyone who has had a moral conversation outside of a philosophy classroom will recognize what’s going on. Namely: Moral facts imply taking corrective actions against moral wrong-doers.

When humans say someone or something is morally incorrect or wrong, we don’t leave it at that; rather, we feel the need to correct the morally incorrect behavior somehow. We can’t just say that slavery or genocide is wrong, we feel the need to stop the slavery or genocide.

In this way, corrective action is the underlying subtext of most moral language. When put in moral situations, human feel the need to act or “correct” the situation. If I see a child drowning, I want to save them, if a friend asks me for $20, I want to help them, and so on.

Corrective action isn’t just in the content of moral situations, but also in the way we discuss morality. Namely, our moral language is dripping with words like obligation, ought, and should. On a more primal level, moral language exploits corrective moral emotions like guilt and shame; we imply those who disagree should feel shame or guilt for doing bad things or failing to do good things.³

Objective Values Entail Objectively Correct Action (And More Meta-Moral Problems)

If it’s truly the case that objective values exist, then some people’s preferences and actions are more correct than others.

This seems like a mundane claim, but it’s not. If objective moral values exist, we must optimize for those values, and that optimization will dictate our actions. If we fail to optimize for these objective moral values, we are insufficiently moral (and again, that invites corrective action).

What’s more, if some actions are objectively more morally correct than others, than there is a correct answer to the trolly problem or your favorite philosophical thought experiment. Answering wrong and perhaps refusing to support policies that lead people to the Correct Answer are moral failures (again, inviting correction).

So, if I’m given the choice between saving 100 people and my child, there is an objectively correct answer to that question. Let’s say I answer the problem “incorrectly.” What would it require of me, on a deeper level, to align myself with the objective moral values? Let’s say I believe the correct answer is to save my child, but the actual correct answer is to save the 100 people.⁴ At a fundamental level, the reason why I’m “wrong,” is because I value the life of my child “too much.” The only way to change that is for me to deny my preferences and somehow engineer myself to care less about my child.

But what if I refuse? What if I believe that reducing the love between parent and child is itself evil? Well, in that situation, I’m being objectively morally bad, and perhaps a threat or risk to society, kind of like having someone walk around saying mass murder is okay. Surely something such as that demands moral correction?

And this brings us to other meta-moral problems that objective morality creates. It’s a moral problem that we have people who are radically wrong on moral issues walking freely and spreading their false views, without society initiating corrective actions. Sure, there are probably better ways to initiate moral change than obnoxious corrective actions like shaming, guilting, or inflicting the law on someone, but failing to exhibit the willingness to use these tools implies a lack of authentic moral seriousness.⁵

Objective Morality Colonizes Everything And Breeds Unhappiness

I’ll admit that the above section sounds a little bit like the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist (The objective moralists want to take away your freedom because they disagree with you!), but I believe it. In the shadow of objective moral values, I have a hard time seeing how one believing incorrect answers to moral puzzles isn’t a moral failing that demands corrective action.

I’m only scratching the surface here, but the implications of this are widespread. Arguably, everything we do touches morality somehow. If that’s true, there’s an objectively correct way to spend your money, to speak, to eat, to walk down the street, and so on. If we have a moralizing ruling class, then it justifies arbitrary, harmful, and invasive behavior regulation. Think of how in communist countries, institutions and behavior were policed under the pretense of ideology. These countries were simply institutionalizing objective morality. The same can also be said of theocratic regimes that enforced morality laws.

I don’t think I need to belabor this point, that institutionalized objective morality is bad, because the lessons of history make that obvious case for me.

On the individual level, objective morality by itself is a guaranteed way to make you anxious, exhausted, and miserable. Comparisons to religion here are apt.

In Western Christianity, given the doctrine of original sin, everyone is seen as imperfect or immoral, but through God’s Grace, Christians are redeemed. Christian morality has an objectivist character, but ethics are formulated with human imperfection in mind. Still, many Christians grow up feeling a sense of guilt for doing sinful things. They cannot help that they commit sin (failing objective morality), but they also can’t help feeling guilty or shameful for committing sin.

In other words, Christianity has a corrective action problem, because a corrective action problem is going to exist wherever humans feel the need to conform to an impossible standard for moral reasons. They’ll suffer from not being perfect, but also for feeling bad for not being perfect.

In Christianity, everything is moralized and compared to an objective standard. Even if one isn’t expected to be perfect, believing in Christianity makes many suffer from the guilt and shame of not being perfect, or simply having flaws.⁶

Secular moral objectivism has the same problem. Indeed, with the Effective Altruist movement, morality creeps into everything, just as it does in Christianity. For instance, many EAs will say that the best thing you can do is maximize your education, earn as much as you can, and give that money away to life-saving charities. Your career choice is a moral issue. Your choice to not maximize your income and give it away is a moral failing.⁷ Sure, we epistemically don’t know the answer to many of these moral questions, but that’s not an excuse to not try to know the best course of action, and given your best information, act.

Just think of what this implies: Every time you opt to spend your time and resources on yourself over helping someone or something else, you have to be content doing something you believe is immoral. Secular objectivists will say you shouldn’t feel guilt or shame for doing this, but this doesn’t seem right. This voids words of their meaning.

Saying “I chose the more immoral option, and I have no guilt or shame” renders words like “immoral,” “guilt,” and “shame” meaningless.

In this way, for secular objective morality, there’s no credible way to say we shouldn’t attempt to be maximally moral, and that failing to do so is a moral failing.

There is no secular doctrine of original sin; trying your best is not good enough. As soon as you say measuring up to objective standards don’t matter, you’re being being objectively immoral at worst and endorsing a form of subjective moral standards at best.

Why Should Hope Objective Morality Doesn’t Exist

The existence of objective moral values would be horrible. If they existed it would demand moral agents acting in near-identical ways, removing their individuality, much as totalitarian regimes in the past demanded conformity and suppressed individuality and minority culture.

Objective morality would mean everyone has an objective duty to participate in corrective actions on themselves and others, which historically has caused misery.

The idea that there are clear moral answers to all moral questions, or that we can live a happy, fulfilled, moral life just by aligning us with purportedly objective moral values is a great thought. But when we look at the implications of those ideas being true, we see a world that looks neither moral nor happy.

There is one answer to the problem of corrective action: That morality doesn’t actually demand corrective action, and therefore it’s not a problem. As I’ve implied in this post, I don’t think this is a good objection. I don’t think you can solve moral problems by redefining what morality means. That will be the subject of a future post (maybe even my next one): The definition problem.

1. Perhaps some utilitarians may quantify these values and say that they’re exchangeable, but for the most part, objective moral values functionally means prioritizing some values over others, almost all of the time.

2. The problem is called the corrective action problem because it stems from the strong human intuition to correct moral problems through action. Advocates for objective moral values seem to ignore that this intuition exists, instead believing it to be a feature of this abstract thing called morality. They care about the purported science, philosophy, and rules of morality because they think conceptualizing morality an adopting it in the proper way will create optimal moral ends. This is wrong. Our moral philosophies come from our moral instincts, not vice versa.

3. This is the obvious subtext or context of every realist/objectivist vs anti-realist/subjectivist debate in ethics. Realists/objectivists seem to believe that anti-realists/subjectivists don’t believe that slavery or genocide or child torture or anything we perceive as bad should be stopped (even though that doesn’t follow from their position). The realists/objectivists wouldn’t express the same level of urgency or outrage if they thought moral disagreements and moral failures were as trivial as answering a math problem wrong. The anti-realist/subjectivist doesn’t necessarily deny the corrective instinct, they just think it’s a human instinct, not an essential feature of the content of moral language and debate, as the realist seems to believe it does.

4. I understand if someone disagrees with me!

5. Part of the reason I’m critical of Effective Altruists and secular moral objectivists is because I have a hard time taking seriously people who say that shrimp or insect suffering is a morally important issues. Proponents are way too libertarian, not wanting to punish people for their preferences. They’re more likely to say “it’s good to reduce suffering,” than saying “you’re bad if you eat shrimp or support community gardens.” When it comes to the moral issues that normal people care about, there’s immediate corrective action that’s taken against moral wrongdoers, whether that be social shunning or trying to incur losses of freedom and income. You don’t see that with EAs and secular moral objectivists. If you think I’m a bad person for eating shrimp, you should say it and shame me. If you don’t, I don’t believe you.

6. Indeed, 10 or 15 years ago, when the New Atheists were popular, the promise of secular morality was that we could let go of guilt and shame for arbitrary sins. We could embrace the fact that our actions and thoughts were cosmically insignificant. We’d still have guilt and shame to motivate moral action as we were still human, but we could critical examine and discard the things that made us feel guilt and shame for no reason.

7. I imagine many will protest that no, no, that’s not what their philosophy implies. Just because you’re not maximally moral doesn’t mean you should feel bad. I’m talking about this in a future post, but this is the definition problem. It’s absolutely silly to redefine morality in this way. Shame and guilt are important moral motivators, intwined with moral language.