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Charles Taylor Wagers on (Critical) Falsifiable Moral Realism

Human subjectivity, human freedom is the combination of being (ontology), moral conviction, and action (agency). Indeed, who are we late moderns and where are we headed culturally? Charles Taylor challenges the current superficiality regarding moral convictions with its over-emphasis on living one’s desires on a philosophical trajectory of freedom of choice/self-interest/love of self first. Self is the a priori. Some call this the cult of self or idolatry of self (Augustine). Shouldn’t we aspire to higher ideals? Taylor’s argument for moral realism starts with the following. In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences in real time and space, and how they actually reflect upon those experiences–the phenomenological dimension. He is interested in praxis (behavioural practices) as well as moral theories. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality (the moral phenomenon), he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously a person’s perception of the independence of moral goods. It has been my privilege to wrestle with Taylor’s engaging ideas for a couple decades. I find him weighty, nuanced, wise, resonating with my personal experience and observations of human behaviour, desires, and needs. There is real depth to his take on morality that avoids many of the traps/conundrums in moral discourse today. It ought to captivate and challenge the best minds and the most genuine hearts in this complex field of ethics, spirituality, and identity.

Taylor does not feel it appropriate to substitute a philosophical abstraction (for example, utilitarianism or personal happiness) for how people live, reflect, and think morally. His first point of departure is that he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. News flash: we all judge others and ourselves morally continuously. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations. One notes the important reference to the qualitative aspect of the free will. This concept of second-order desires invokes the ancient idea of the good, a concept that goes all the way back to Plato. Taylor has a critical engagement with Plato’s moral ideas, but recognizes his gift to us in the transcendence of the good. The good, for Taylor, is one which, although interwoven with the self, transcends the self in significant ways. It is broader, higher and deeper, so to speak, not reducible to an individual’s being or choice. We are deep into the hermeneutics of the self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6081klkdqGo

Ruth Abbey (2000, 29), a Taylor scholar, comments that: “He does not suggest that in trying to explain morality we imagine a moral world devoid of humans and attempt to separate its subject-dependent properties from its objective or real properties.” Both are vital to the discussion. He begins by claiming that all humans have certain moral intuitions, and all make moral judgments, including judgments about the behaviour of others. They all have a qualitative sense of their significant moral choices and deliberations; moral agency can never be reduced to mere decision. For example, he points out that respect for human life is one of the deepest and most universally held moral instincts across multiple cultures (C. Taylor, 1989, 8, 11-12), which includes a concern for the Other; it is not merely a characteristic of self-survival, or an obligation to family or tribal survival. For example, “Human beings command respect in all societies; the West articulates this in the language of rights” (C. Taylor, 1989, 11). All societies condemn murder and lesser forms of abuse such as harassment. When this respect is not shown to someone, it is judged negatively–that is, there is strong moral conviction, an intuition about such behaviour. One exercises a moral or qualitative evaluation of the situation, appealing to some moral standard or moral good which transcends the situation and the parties involved. It is instinctual and natural to human society and relationality. One might say that it is inescapable for a healthy, adjusted person.

Our moral reactions have two facets … On the one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love of sweet things, or our aversion to nauseous substances … on the other, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From the second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of a given ontology of the human … The whole way in which we think, reason, argue, and question ourselves about morality supposes that our moral reactions have these two sides: that they are not only ‘gut’ feelings but also implicit acknowledgments of claims concerning the objects. (C. Taylor, 1989, 5 & 7) 

Taylor’s form of critical moral realism means that the emphasis includes both objective and subjective aspects (poles) of self and morality, both a subjective and objective givenness. Humans do not just act, but regularly evaluate, praise and condemn other’s actions and motives, and their own speech and conduct, always appealing to certain objective standards. We always want to justify what we do–appealing to validity. We feel guilt when our desires or behaviour do not measure up to such standards. It is ironic that we can be disgusted with our own actions or thoughts.

According to Taylor, humans are strong evaluators by nature; strong evaluation is an essential feature of identity and a permanent feature of moral life (C. Taylor, 1989, 3-4, 14, 15). He sees this capacity for evaluating or judging desires to be distinctively and universally human. He believes that human beings experience the goods that command their respect in a non-anthropocentric way, that is, as not deriving solely from human will or choice, nor depending only on the fact of individual affirmation of their value. We may indeed ask where they are derived from–at a higher level of reality. He strongly challenges the projectivist hypothesis (C. Taylor, 1989, 342). Human interpretation is always involved (moral convictions are human convictions after all). But there is also an objective element in this evaluation process that Taylor wants to make quite explicit and clear–to underline. Projectivism holds that the world is essentially meaningless and that one must create meaning for life by what one affirms or creates. Foucault affirms something like this in his concept of self-invention. A moral good, under projectivism, would calculate as only a myth or an illusion, even if a myth by which one lives. The bottom line: we all appreciate these goods at some level, because they inspire and protect us from harm, build a community of expectations and security, give hope of a positive future.

Taylor’s term, strong evaluation, comes from Harry Frankfurt’s (1971, 5-20) argument about second order desires, that is, desires one has about one’s desires, evaluative desires (such as respect, rights, or justice) that transcend other desires (sex, safety, food, and survival). These are “standards by which basic desires and choices are judged” (C. Taylor, 1989, 20). Humans experience a range of desires, but do not view them all equally; some are naturally seen as higher or more admirable than others. There is a hierarchy and contrast in human desires (C. Taylor, 1989, 4, 20, 47). Individuals do not see all their values or desires as being of equal worth. One must overpower one kind of desire for the benefit of others–for example to build community and peaceful relations. Strong evaluation is inherently contrastive and hierarchical; it appeals to certain goods that are independent of the self and independent of human choice (C. Taylor, 1989, 58, 68, 74). These goods are always related to the human moral sphere, and are never mere abstract categories. Ruth Abbey sharply captures the nuance of Taylor’s view: 

The best account of morality must be one that incorporates the fact that individuals experience goods as being worthy of their admiration and respect for reasons that do not depend on their choice of them. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, Taylor claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of the goods. (R. Abbey, 2000, 28) 

This independence of goods is vital to the debate between Taylor and Foucault; it is a point where they differ sharply. Taylor refuses to reduce morality to a power relations or truth games struggle: a contestation. Those who have brought moral reform to society were often a small minority that appealed to something higher in the human condition (our better angels). The good to which we challenge one another must be transcendent of what we regularly do and how we treat one another. It promotes higher expectations of attitudes and actions–the appeal to something higher and deeper.

Furthermore, as Flanagan (1996, 147) notes in his commentary on Taylor, this concept of strong evaluations is both descriptive of how people are and act, and normative regarding what is required for full personhood. Individuals do make these working moral assumptions, says Taylor, even if they are not conscious about relating to, evaluating, sorting, and ordering goods that impinge upon them. The process is often tacit, unconscious or intuitive, but nevertheless real. Taylor emphasizes this fine distinction to focus on the normativity and hierarchy of moral goods: 

I want to speak of strong evaluations when the goods putatively identified are not seen as constituted as good by the fact that we desire them, but rather are seen as normative for desire. That is, they are seen as goods which we ought to desire, even if we do not, goods such that we show ourselves up as inferior or bad by our not desiring them. (C. Taylor, 1985a, 120)  

Moral realism for Charles Taylor, means that (C. Taylor, 1989, 4, 20) strongly valued goods command the respect of individuals because of their intrinsic value, not one’s choice to value them; they are experienced as making calls or demands upon individuals, rather than being just freely or arbitrarily chosen by them. This means that Taylor takes existential moral experience of the good seriously and imputes ontological significance to it–thus, critical moral realism. He resists the slide towards moral subjectivism/relativism, which suggests that one’s choice among the various goods/values can only be justified according to individual preferences or inclinations–the lazy, selfish person’s ethics. These preferences can be judged objectively, rationally examined, discussed, and debated with the hope of better outcomes in future–towards individual flourishing and social harmony.

Taylor claims that there is an inherent quality (a goodness) in the good that individual selves ought to recognize in their openness and wisdom. The good is the key element in morality that helps an individual self-transcend the animal level of desires for food, sex, and survival. Taylor (1989, 42) offers a key test of a good: Can it be the basis of attitudes of admiration or contempt? It raises questions about “what kind of life is worth living … what would be a rich, meaningful life, as against an empty one?” (C. Taylor, 1989, 20). One can easily discern the difference in the goods appealed to between medical relief work as in Doctors Without Borders and child prostitution/trafficking; peace-making and war mongering invasion of other countries; compassion towards the marginalized and fear-hatred towards the person who is different. Taylor claims that this discernment, this instinct is linked to a second order desire, or qualitative discrimination which is part of who we are as moral beings. The former garners one’s admiration, while the latter draws one’s contempt and even condemnation. Taylor wants us to affirm this capacity for evaluating or judging desires, claiming that there is a capacity within the human person (discernment or wisdom) which can be revived and educated. This is key to cultural renewal. It can help us look critically at our own desires and behaviour in light of the good, with the prospect of moving towards it. He resists the stance of the nihilist, where the good is demoted to subjective choice or group values, or even harmful, belligerent politics. Ethics that emphasizes the will and freedom of choice is too often poorly focused on a Dionysian release of the base desires. Dr. Abigail Favale shows some implications for the discussion of identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwZAB1CzAcA

Individuals are not always aware of the hierarchy that is in play; it can be held pre-articulately or tacitly as a background to moral understanding. One can also repress these helpful instincts and become less human. The language of strong speaks more about quality than force or power. Taylor believes that all individuals are strong evaluators, but does not believe that they all value the same things strongly. He does, however, believe that some goods do feature in all moral codes and are strongly valued by all cultures: for example, the value of human life, protection of children, the dignity of the person, basic respect and cooperation. Taylor’s voice is vital to contemporary international and national relations. See you in the next post as the momentum of Taylor’s wisdom develops its gravitas.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology, University of Wales, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinar Producer, Meta-Educator UBC Graduate Students & Faculty

Key Readings for Dialogue with Charles Taylor

• Taylor, C. (1985c). Connolly, Foucault, and Truth. Political Theory 13 377-85 
• Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
• Abbey, R. (2000). Charles Taylor. Teddington, UK: Acumen.
• Frankfurt, H. (1971). Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person. Journal of Philosophy 68 1 5-20. 
• Flanagan, O. (1996). Self-Expressions: Mind, morals and the meaning of life. New York: Oxford University Press.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TmQUo-hqHM Charles Taylor reflects on the self in a secular age at Duke University.