"The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing." - Blaise Pascal

It's been a while since I last wrote because I've been busy planning my life. However, I wanted to briefly pen a post today about a topic that has occupied my thoughts over the past few weeks. A significant trigger for this post was a discussion I encountered on X (formerly Twitter) between James Lindsay and Jonathan Pageau. The crux of their disagreement centered around the sufficiency or insufficiency of reason. My aim today is to illustrate the inadequacy of reason in the context of morality. Additionally, I intend to establish criteria for determining whether Enlightenment morality or moral belief systems derived from Enlightenment philosophy achieve their intended goals.

As Jonathan Haidt defines them, moral belief systems constitute interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that collaboratively suppress or regulate self-interest, making cooperative societies possible. Haidt's work, "The Righteous Mind," features this definition. To simplify the ontology of a moral belief system, one can perceive it as an experiential and evolving way of discerning the true, good, just, and beautiful—at least, managing groups to maintain a stable and cooperative society. A moral system's values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms manifest a group's interpretations of the true, just, good, and beautiful as moral structures. However, moral belief systems need a stated presupposition or unstated assumption to follow, i.e., to be proven true. The predicament with these presuppositions or unstated, necessary assumptions is that they represent preferences. Consider this simple example: Peter believes that caring for humanity is good. How does Peter justify this belief? He may present a series of facts, but those descriptive facts do not inherently provide an "ought." A necessary statement is indispensable. Peter must say something like, "Caring for humanity is good." Peter would then say, "Given I or we prefer to care for humanity because we believe caring for humanity is good, and these data, we should do (fill in the blank)." However, the inquiry persists: Why is it considered good?

This teleological question presents a preferential problem, demanding an explanation of how Peter derived this preference. I'll begin with the latter. Drawing on my research in neuroscience, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, Peter developed his preferences through processes of evolutionary selection -- roughly speaking -- encompassing natural selection, sexual selection, and group selection. Peter's stated preference is an expression that emerged from his worldly experiences and those of his ancestors. These experiences elicited feelings through his and his ancestors' limbic systems. These feelings give and have given rise to sentiments or intuitions he linguistically articulated or articulates as a moral preference. The teleological issue is that Peter's and his ancestor's preferences are inherently tautological. He cannot factually justify caring for humanity unless he acknowledges that caring for humanity is good. Moreover, he accepts that caring for humanity is good because he believes caring for humanity is good. His moral preference does not justify whether we ought to or should do anything.

Moral systems, therefore, are not substantiated by the necessary assumptions or principles unless one accepts the moral system's foundational assumptions or principles, e.g., Peter's preference. These principles or foundational assumptions are related to the good, true, just, or beautiful, yet they do not equal what is true, good, just, or beautiful. Consider this analogy: The word "Tree" does not capture the full essence of a tree itself, just as the term "Good" does not fully capture the intrinsic nature of goodness. What moral principles should mirror is something that genuinely aligns with the true, good, just, or beautiful when formulating or constructing a moral system's foundational assumptions. We can conceptualize the good, true, just, or beautiful qua the true, good, just, or beautiful as stimuli that evoke emotion. These elicited emotions can be perceived as moral sentiments or intuitions, as they appear to be stimulated by things deemed true, good, just, or beautiful. With these sentiments, the root of Peter's preference, we can synthesize a moral claim using our capacity for reason. The moral sentiment, akin to Haidt's elephant, steers moral reasoning, represented by the rider, who only has a modicum of control over the sentiment or elephant. However, these moral claims are abstract representations of things that seemingly embody the qualities of truth, goodness, justice, or beauty yet do not precisely convey the essence of true, good, just, or beautiful things.

When we engage in reason, à la Heidegger's interpretation of reason vis-à-vis Aristotle, we are delving into processes of synthesis and diairesis. Reason is a process by which we linguistically consider a statement, its parts, and meanings to formulate a new conception of a statement and (most importantly) determine its validity. This synthesizing process serves as a foundation for moral reasoning. However, when we examine a moral statement, we are dealing with an abstraction, a concept detached from the substantive matter we are discussing; in this case, the true, good, just, or beautiful, at least. Reason cannot prove the validity of a moral claim because moral claims rely on tautological presuppositions. This implies that, while reason is indispensable for moral philosophy, it is insufficient for determining whether the moral claim is valid through the moral system's linguistic architecture or logic. Simply because I can reason through a moral system or from without it and about it does not guarantee that I will arrive at valid moral conclusions, ascertain a valid moral statement (something I do not think is achievable unless one accepts the moral system's tautological foundation), or possess a valid moral system or philosophy. Pageau's discussion with Lindsay alludes to the fact that reason and experience (something not entirely accessible to reason) are crucial for a properly functioning moral system.

Reason's inability to access moral experience, given that those experiences articulated as preferences are tautological and do not substantiate the "ought" unless accepted, gives rise to the predicament of moral nihilism or relativism. What is deemed good for one individual may not hold for another, and vice versa. Furthermore, we remain uncertain whether an individual is discussing what genuinely reflects what is true, good, just, or beautiful; all we know is that they consider it as such. Their moral experience, i.e., their moral sentiment is self-justifying (even if the way they've perceived any relevant facts to derive their moral claim is not), hence the tautological conundrum. How, then, can we navigate this challenge? How can we discern when a moral system accurately reflects what's true, just, good, and beautiful?

Groups or individuals embrace a moral system to stabilize a group's society and enhance cooperation. For this to be the case, a moral system must genuinely reflect the true, just, good, and beautiful. If a moral system genuinely reflects the true, just, good, and beautiful, it substantially or entirely stabilizes the group's structures and populace and is fitness-enhancing. structural stability necessitates internal cohesion, cooperative members, well-functioning institutions, and minimal disparity in behavioral norms to prevent volatile social frictions. For individuals to be stable, they must be physically and psychologically healthy. Achieving fitness requires a reproduction rate above replacement for most if not all, group members and their offspring. If a moral system fails to stabilize its structures or people or improve the group's fitness, one can conclude that particular moral system inaccurately reflects what is true, just, good, or beautiful.

The preceding criteria imply that, although reason may fall short in demonstrating whether a moral system has precisely abstracted and represented the true, good, just, and beautiful, the effects of a moral system are not similarly inadequate. Essentially, we can discern a sound moral system by its outcomes. Thus, I pose these questions to James Lindsay and Jonathan Pageau: Have the moral systems derived from the Enlightenment made Western societies more stable? Have they contributed to the well-being of its people, deterring instances of self-harm or lives leading to premature deaths or deaths of despair? Has their fitness seen improvement? If any of these conditions falter, then at least some of the moral systems derived from the Enlightenment in the West have failed, indicating an inaccurate reflection of the true, good, just, or beautiful.

I've tried to present a succinct argument outlining the issues that Lindsay and Pageau are grappling with. It is not meant to be exhaustive and does not strive for absolute precision. I welcome feedback on this argument, acknowledging that I may have oversimplified or addressed matters more broadly than warranted. Still, it's essential to recognize this as a general overview rather than a definitive or precise analysis. I trust you found it engaging, and I look forward to returning to more long-form pieces in the near future.