Hey everyone,

To kick off the year with a bang, I thought I’d write a post about the question that is undeniably at the core of moral philosophy: what does it mean to live a good life?

This is a question that moral philosophers have been asking each other for millennia, perhaps going all the way back to the Stoics, but the truth is that learning how to live predates moral philosophy (see religion).

Various answers have been offered over the years, but it seems to me that the main two that have been given have been divine command theory (i.e., an action is morally good if it is commanded by God) and what some people call “secular humanism.” The latter, I believe, is best captured by a quote from the Greek philosopher Marcus Aurelius:

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

My readers and listeners will undoubtedly realize that I consider myself to be in the second of the two categories, but rather than belabor the point and point out apparent flaws in theism (see here for one of my podcast episodes, in which I do exactly this), I thought I would focus this time on articulating my own position, namely moral constructivism.

But what is moral constructivism?

In looking for a definition for moral constructivism online, I found a number of definitions that seemed rigorous and complete (including one from the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and another one from PhilPapers), but I would like to make my writings increasingly accessible to a wider audience, so I offer the following definition of the term, taken here:

“Moral constructivism is a metaethical* view about the nature of moral truth and moral facts (and properties), so called because the intuitive idea behind the view is that such truths and facts are human constructs rather than objects of discovery.”

*The field of metaethics simply seeks to establish the justification for an ethical framework (i.e., “how do we determine what is good?”). This is in contrast to ethics, which is simply the ethical framework itself (i.e., “what is the right action to take?”). For example, if a trolley is running down a track towards five people and you have the option to divert the trolley so that it only hits one person, ethics would simply ask what action you should take (e.g., pull the lever), whereas metaethics would seek to understand the rationale behind the action (e.g., why should the lever be pulled?).

In other words, to the extent that there are moral truths in our universe, they are not given to us from some divine being. Rather, we construct those rules ourselves and simply see what works and what doesn’t work, but those values will never be objective, as some moral realists (like Sam Harris) or some theists (like William Lane Craig) would have them out to be.

Objection 1:¹ How does this lack of belief in God – and, by extension, divine command theory – not simply cause a person or community to devolve into nihilism (i.e., believing that life has no inherent meaning)?

As Sam Harris told Jordan Peterson in one of their live events together, one doesn’t have to descend into nihilism simply because one abandons their belief in a higher power. One can be a moral realist, like Harris; or, one can be a moral constructivist, like Sean Carroll. Sure, becoming a nihilist is possible, but it’s not clear to me that it is a necessary condition of abandoning one’s faith. Just like there are those who behave pathologically while being a believer, there are those who behave undesirably while not believing in God. And so it goes…

In any case, I think that one point that should be emphasized here is that moral constructivists don’t claim that what they believe to be morally true is final in any sense. In my view, one of the major advantages that secular humanism as a whole has over religion is the intrinsic agnosticism embedded within it, namely the idea that one’s ideas about morality are constantly open to being revised because our understanding of the moral good evolves over time.

This is something that atheist public intellectuals like Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty regularly articulate. Although religious people can naturally experience some doubts as to their understanding of the moral good (and, as I understand it, very often do), it seems to me that wherever they land when the music stops, they will still believe that the moral good is immutable. This would be in contrast to secular humanists, who believe that their understanding of the moral good and the moral good itself are both mutable.

Objection 2: If morality is not objective, then how can one system of morality be said to be better than another?

One analogy that I believe is useful here is one that Sean Carroll used in his podcast introducing the idea of moral constructivism (see here). In the episode, Carroll explains that the rules of morality under constructivism are comparable to the rules of basketball. Basketball’s rules are arbitrary in some sense because humans invented them (those rules did not exist “out there” in the world waiting for us to be discovered), and yet it is fully intelligible to talk about better and worse rules to play with. For instance, goaltending (certain forms of player interference with the ball while it is on the way to the basket) used to be legal until the National Collegiate Athletic Association banned it in 1944. They changed the rules because they believed that the game would be better if the rules that had been constructed were modified, and yet they were able to do this despite the fact that there are no objective rules of basketball “out there in the universe.”

Now that all this is out of the way, I can finally begin to answer the question posed in the title. What does it mean to live a good life? To me, living a good life means first and foremost striving for perfection.

Historically, I believe that the idea of “perfection” is what the great leaders of the world’s religions have been attempting to personify. If religions are, for the most part, systems of beliefs guiding people on how to live, then it would make sense that the people from which those religions are built (e.g., Jesus, the Buddha, etc.) are meant to be emulated to live a good life. (Note the fact that the claim being made here is conditional.)

I believe that this is actually one of the benefits that have stemmed from religion that does not get acknowledged enough. (Let’s at least give credit where credit is due…) Again, yes, there is the other side of this equation that is pathological, but it’s difficult to conceptualize the degree to which religions like Christianity and Buddhism (to name just two religions) have had an impact on our species.

Objection 3: Talking about a system of morality as being better than another may be intelligible without objective morality, but does it really follow from this conclusion that there is such a thing as a “perfect” mode of existence if morality is subjective?

This is a difficult question to answer, and I’m honestly not sure that a “perfect” mode of existence exists if there is no God. (To be frank, I’m leaning towards the answer to this question being “no.”) This being said, what I am sure about is that talking about morality using this kind of language can be useful and genuinely improve people’s lives. For instance, Jordan Peterson regularly talks about the utility of aiming for a goal and taking steps towards achieving this goal. This may be an instance of metaphorical truth, rather than literal truth, a distinction often made between Peterson and Harris (see here).

Anyway, let’s try to break down some of what it means to live a “perfect” life. I particularly like the use of analogies while discussing these types of ideas because it can be remarkably easy to get lost in the abstractions when discussing moral philosophy. I also believe analogies can be quite persuasive (see here), so I use a few more below.

(I) Intellectual perfection (usually referred to as intellectual honesty or intellectual humility)

For intellectual perfection, I will channel my inner Robert Anton Wilson and point people to model-agnosticism, which “consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial” (taken from here). In other words, if one were to used Richard Dawkins’ spectrum of theistic probability, see below, one would never be a 1 or a 7 for belief in God and also any other belief, be it political, economic, philosophical, COVID-related, etc. It’s difficult to imagine someone correcting their misconceptions when they are 100% convinced of their beliefs…

(1) Strong theist. 100% probability of God. In the words of Carl Jung: “I do not believe, I know.”

(2) De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100%. “I don’t know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.”

(3) Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50% but not very high. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.”

(4) Completely impartial. Exactly 50%. “God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.”

(5) Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50% but not very low. “I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.”

(6) De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. “I don’t know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”

(7) Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one.”

As arrogant as Richard Dawkins may seem sometimes, he claims to be a 6 in his book, although he has said to be closer to 6.9 in later interviews (see here). For the record, I consider myself to be a 6.

(II) Emotional perfection

I wasn’t sure if I was going to have a section on emotionality in this post, but while doing research on Wilson, I came across this video (worth listening to) and realized that there does seem to be such a thing as emotional perfection (i.e., entirely removing emotional compulsion) in Eastern traditions. Wilson mentions yoga in the video, but I’m more familiar with mindfulness meditation. If any reader should be interested in trying this type of meditation, I would recommend Sam Harris’ Waking Up application.

(III) Spiritual perfection

The hippie in me wanted to include a section on spirituality, which I realize can be a loaded term for some. While looking up definitions for the term “spirituality,” I realized that merely trying to define the term proves to be fairly challenging. I believe the term “spiritual but not religious” encapsulates part of what I’m trying to convey here. Anyway, rather than spend too much time on this, I think I’ll simply point to the following two ideas:

(a) Finding meaning or purpose in your life. As Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

(b) Taking on responsibility, which is something regularly echoed by Peterson. This includes taking on responsibility for yourself, for your family, and for your community. At the risk of sounding controversial, I believe that not being responsible for those three is not a good thing.

Now that I’m seeing these two concepts next to each other, I realize the degree to which these two ideas are tightly connected and that they are really nothing more than two sides of the same coin (i.e., taking on responsibility gives your life meaning and purpose).

(IV) Physical perfection

I can probably keep this section short as I don’t believe there will much controversy regarding what I say here. I won’t claim to write anything revolutionary in here, but staying in shape (i.e., working out or being active) and eating healthy are the two things that come to mind for me when I think of “physical perfection.”

I’ve actually had a number of fairly inspiring experiences on the treadmill where I imagine the comprehensive actualization of my full physical potential, my full moral potential, my full intellectual potential, etc. This degree of inspiration doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I do get chills throughout my body. If I was Christian, I would no doubt believe that this was God speaking to me. Alas, I am not Christian, so I must come to a different conclusion.

(V) Moral perfection

All right, so I suppose this entire blog post has led up to this. What does it mean to strive towards moral perfection?

The truth is, once again, I don’t believe that one needs an objective standard of morality to claim that an action is good or bad. I understand the theistic counterargument that one needs objective morality to make objective claims of good and evil, but I don’t buy the idea that one needs objective morality to make any claims about morality. To be frank, I’m sympathetic to Christopher Hitchens when he says that it is insulting to suggest that one needs a divine frame of reference to claim that something like murder is morally wrong.

In any case, an analogy may help me illustrate the point. When one claims that going to the gym and working out regularly is a good thing for your body, does anyone ever interject claiming that talking about “good” in the physical sense is only intelligible if one believes in an objective “physical” standard? Of course not. This would be silly. Anyone can make claims of what it means to live a good physical life, despite the fact that we do not have divine command theory equivalent for physical health.

Sure, someone could claim that being a couch potato and eating pizza and drinking liquor every day is a good thing to do for your body, but do we really need the concept of revealed truth for us to see how wrong such a statement would be?

In any case, I would like to wrap this up as this blog post is already a fair bit longer than I had anticipated (which hopefully explains the lack of publications lately). I think there are a number of values that one can attempt to embody to live a good life, including, in no particular order: love, honesty, kindness, respect, and creativity.

Finally, I think that attempting to help other people grow is an incredibly important goal to have. It’s one thing to embody the values listed above, but it’s another thing entirely to allow other people to grow in such a way that they embody these values. One could even go one step further and act in such a way that their peers allow their own friends to grow into increasingly good moral agents. Once this is achieved, the consequences can have a tremendous impact on one’s community and on the world as a whole.

I think the only way to go even further is to act in such a way that allow other people to grow physically, emotionally, etc., and to have this effect ripple out in the community, rather than simply focusing on the moral dimension.

In any case, I think I’ll leave it at that for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

¹ I listened to William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics last year and I thought that the fact that the author included objections to his own arguments in his book helped him construct stronger arguments. Thus, I’ve used the same strategy here.