Eliminating morality: methods and reasons

This thesis examines the practical implications presented by moral scepticism and moral error theory, and asks the question recently coined by Matt Lutz (2014) – ‘Now What?’. In other words, assuming that moral statements are false or unjustifiable, what should our response be? The thesis examines the prospects for eliminating morality from our lives, for becoming moral abolitionists. In Part 1, we motivate our question and examine the main alternatives to abolitionism. We begin by introducing reasons for moral scepticism, focusing primarily on moral error theory. We follow this up by examining two of the most discussed answers to the Now What? question. These are ‘insulationism’, the idea that we should insulate ourselves from the truth of moral error theory and carry on acting in accordance with morality, and ‘fictionalism’, the idea that we should continue by pretending to believe in morality. In Part 2, we turn to the primary focus of the thesis. We introduce the idea that, in contrast to these other two suggestions, we should eliminate or abolish morality, which is to cease doing either of the following: 1. Acting on moral reasons (that is, we no longer do things because we, or others, think they are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’); or 2. Making genuine moral judgements (that is, we no longer think things like ‘killing is wrong’ as an expression of our own beliefs/attitudes). While this suggestion is simple enough to state, there are a number of issues that we need to address. The first, examined in Part 2, are issues in application – that is, what eliminating morality actually implies and the methods of doing so. The second, examined in Part 3, are issues with motivation – that is, since many philosophers have rejected eliminating morality, what reasons do we have for eliminating morality? The thesis aims to address these issues.