Ethics as Beliefs about Morality

Kenneth Cauthen

The essay that was formerly on this page was published in THE ETHICS OF BELIEF: A BIO-HISTORICAL APPROACH, 2 VOLUMES (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing Co., 2001). A version of it was presented at the Highlands Institute Conference, Highlands, NC, June 23-27, 2000). A brief summary is included here.
I am a skeptic, a relativist, and a pragmatist. Ethics as a form of intellectual inquiry does not provide answers to moral questions. Historically and culturally located communities and their members with beliefs about right and wrong do. Some of these beliefs may reflect an objective moral order in the universe and thus be universally valid. But we have no way of knowing for sure whether there is such an order and which beliefs, if any, correspond to it. To debate about whose beliefs are right, true, or correct is futile and a waste of time.

Ethics should begin with the actual beliefs of some community or some or one of its members. It does not proceed as a disinterested, ahistorical, rational inquiry into the objectively valid principles of right and wrong, good and evil. Ethicists can describe, analyze, and revise a given set of historically contingent beliefs but cannot determine by the autonomous methods of ethics as a culturally-transcendent form of philosophical investigation which are true. Only people doing ethics can indicate which moral beliefs they believe to be true. Ethical views can be discovered or tested only by using the resources available to a given group or individual in some particular historical, cultural location. This is what relativism means.

Communities and their members can say that they believe their views to be objectively true. We can all give witness to what we cannot deny in the light of the best we know from all sources and based on what experience teaches us about what happens in real life when certain theories are lived out in practice. When we have done all we can to give the best reasons for believing as we do and for rejecting the alternatives, we will leave it at that.

I invite comments, refutation, and suggestions.

Please remove * in my e-mail address before sending. The * was added to thwart spammers. Thank you. My E-Mail Address

This is one of a series of essays on this site. For the rationale behind them and for a complete list of topics, see: Theological Essays Presently, the following essays are available: About the Author
A List of my Books
What I Believe Interpreting the Bible Today
The Authority of the Bible
Using the Bible with Integrity
Ways of Acquiring Moral Truth
Natural Law and Moral Relativism
What is Truth -- and Does it Matter?
A Doctrine of God
Hints Toward a Doctrine of God
Trinity: God, Christ, Spirit
God as Masculine and Feminine
Theodicy: the Problem of Evil
Theodicy: A Heterodox Alternative
The Many Faces of Evil
Christ and Christians
A Critique of Niebuhr's Christ and Culture
The Incompatibility of Christianity and Civilization
Christian Ethics
Process Christian Ethics
The Ethics of Belief
Relativism, Morality, Belief
Capital Punishment
Physician Assisted Suicide
Bioethical Decision-Making
Prostitution
Abortion
Drug Policy
Homosexuality
Theology and Ecology
Religion and Politics
Science and Theology
Church and State
A Short Biographical Sketch For fun I have rewritten some Mother Goose Rhymes for an electronic age. Mother Goose Goes Electronic

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Last Updated: Friday, June 15, 2001, 11:55 AM