Moral Nihilism

January 7, 2023

When we ask “where does morality come from” there are three clear options. First, morality may be objective and exist independently from human influence. Second, morality may be relative to a certain perspective, whether a person or a culture. Finally, morality may simply not exist and is instead a sort of fictional make-believe formula created by humans. This last option is what is known as moral nihilism. Moral nihilists the existence of moral qualities, moral requirements, or moral goods and bads. It is first important to note that nihilism and moral nihilism are not the same thing. A nihilist generally rejects the existence of any objective truth and meaning in life, and this leads to a rather potent dose of pessimism typically tied to the phrase “nothing really matters”. Moral nihilists, however, exclusively deny moral truths and are still capable of caring deeply about the world around them. There are two important forms of moral nihilism to understand: expressivism and error theory. Error theory, founded by J.L. Mackie, is the concept that morality is pure fiction and that any attempt to make a moral claim is to fall into systematic error. Error theory is to morality as atheism is to religion.  Error theory has three main claims (1) There are no moral things in the world, (2) No moral judgment or justification is true, (3) All attempted moral judgments always fail to correctly describe the moral nature of something. The resulting conclusion is that moral knowledge is essentially a sham, that it is fully fictitious, and that any attempt at a moral claim necessitates systematically falling into error. Expressivism, the other main (and way more confusing) form of moral nihilism, also believes in the first two numbered statements above, however unlike the error theorist, the expressivist does not find a systematic error in the moral claims we make. Instead the expressivist believes that moral claims are not an attempt to define truths and falsities, but are instead statements like commands or exclamations. These types of statements like “go outside” or “owie” cannot be true or false. Expressivism is very complex, and while I won’t go into all the details here, I highly recommend reading more into it. In short, the error theorist believes that moral claims are meant to state the truth but fail, whereas the expressivist believes that moral claims are not really claims at all, but rather expressions in the form of commands or questions, or exclamations.

So, why be a moral nihilist? One of the main appeals of moral nihilism is that the argument for its validity is strong. There is little reason to believe that morality is different from other artificial constructs of society. Humans are creatures driven by reason and emotion. Moral nihilism explains why we may categorize the rightness of something as a way to organize our principles and beliefs so they may be applied to daily life. By forming the social construct of morality we are able to add a certain value to our beliefs beyond our meager sphere of influence. Another appeal is that while moral nihilism denies the existence of morals, it does not prevent a person from caring about morality. A moral nihilist may still deeply care about being a good person and partaking in what is considered moral behavior. It is simply that the moral nihilist believes that an action another may see as morally wrong, is instead unappealing or repulsive. Moral nihilism is not without its critics though. Moral nihilism demands that no action in any situation can be bad or good by nature. The problem is that in some cases this seems absolutely incorrect. Take the holocaust for example. In a situation of such mass horror and unjustified carnage, it seems difficult to not accept its moral wrongness. Moral nihilism is fully reliant on the simple claim that morality is fictitious. It is reasonable to reject moral nihilism simply because one may believe that moral truths do exist. It is also fair to say that the moral nihilist, while he/she may care about being a good person, may struggle to find places for growth when compared to an individual who has a standard of morality to compare their actions and themselves against (such as virtue ethics).

I do personally tend towards moral nihilism when asked “where do morals come from?” Each of the main metaethical theories have strong arguments for and against them, however the clean result that moral nihilism provides, that morals aren’t real, is very appealing.