Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshman in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

The sex positive agenda (waged by Reich, Kinsey, and socialist feminists) seeks to end ALL moral judgments regarding sexual pairings of ANY kind (regardless of sex, age, relation, marital status, number, or species of partner(s)). The proponents seek to see everyone sexually active at every age and since they see orgasm as a birthright, they are defiantly anti-abstinence. They call it ‘unhealthy’ but the real issue is that self-restraint and saying NO are counter to their whole worldview.

Methinks the author is missing something obvious.

There are different varieties of “truths” or “facts.”

To my mind a fact is something that can be objectively demonstrated: 2+2=4; gravity causes things to fall down. All facts are truths.

But not all truths are facts. “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” for example. That is not a “fact,” moral or otherwise. It cannot be demonstrated, because it is based on principles that are outside the physical realm. In fact, while I believe “these truths” ARE truths, it is also true that no two people are equal in any measurable sense.

IOW, there are several types of truths. Facts are just one of them.

See my parents were nuts. They thought that it was their responsibility to teach me right from wrong. They were some how under the impression that it was schools responsibility to teach me Readn, writing, and rithmatic.

They took me Church, made me go to Sunday school.

My Father taught me how to hold doors open for ladies (Yes young man, your sisters are ladies.) and how to have a firm handshake, because a mans word is his bond.

We were taught to have responsibility by having chores around the house, and how to save money rather than waste it on foolish items, because you didn't know when it was going to be a rainy day.

Boy were they screwed up.

...There are different varieties of “truths” or “facts.”
To my mind a fact is something that can be objectively demonstrated: 2+2=4; gravity causes things to fall down. All facts are truths.

I would agree that there different varieties of "truth" or "facts", but I like better the way the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen put it in his debate with Gordon Stein:

"...The assumption that all existence claims are questions about matters of fact, the assumption that all of these are answered in the very same way is not only over simplified and misleading, it is simply mistaken. The existence, factuality or reality of different kinds of things is not established or disconfirmed in the same way in every case.
We might ask , "Is there a box of crackers in the pantry?" And we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we go about answering questions determining the reality of say, barometric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radio activity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you're now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty. In such cases, one does not do anything like walk to the pantry and look inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions, and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case.
Just think of the differences in argumentation and the types of evidences used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, magicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists. It should be obvious from this that the types of evidence one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question..."
http://www.brianauten.com/Apologetics/apol_bahnsen_stein_debate_transcript.pdf

Cordially,

Thanks much.

I know what I was trying to say, but darn if I can figure out how to say it properly.

I just know that isolating all statements about the world into the two simple categories of fact and opinion is foolish.

The author of the piece is doing this also, by claiming that certain categories of such statements should be reclassified from opinion to facts. I don’t believe there are moral facts, though there are certainly moral truths, such as that all men are created equal.

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