Insufficient Christianity: Chapter 2.1

The last lines of the first chapter of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity read:

First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

I have more to say about these assertions; happily, Lewis' next chapter is written to address potential objections to these claims.  He acknowledges that some people will say that our knowledge of the "Moral Law" is simply herd instinct, as he puts it.  Lewis counters that:

. . . feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires--one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.

This is not much of a counter-argument.  To put is simply, Lewis is begging the question; the situation itself decides between the two instincts, and one acts according to whichever is strongest.  He seems to anticipate this obvious objection:

If' two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of' the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same.

It seems that the only point that Lewis has to stand on, here, is that if you refuse to help the victim in question, or consider fleeing instead of helping, you will "feel bad," and that this is proof of something else, distinct, in your mind, telling you to choose the morally correct action.  However, if you do choose to help the person in danger, and put yourself at risk in the process, you will still feel fear - does this mean that there is a distinct, universal "Self-Preservation Law" that is telling you to protect your own welfare?  These two different biological instincts necessarily have different subjective "feels" to them; if you help him, you will feel fear and very possibly regret for choosing that action; if you don't help him, your biological instinct to help other human beings in your community will similarly cause you to feel shame and regret.  There simply is no third factor of "ultimate universal morality" necessary.  Lewis states with great authority, "The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct."  Yes, yes it can.  It says, "I am your 'herd instinct.'  I am a crucially important biological function, thoroughly evolved, such that I am absolutely crucial to the success of human societies.  Wake me up."

Lewis offers yet another explanation of why the "Moral Law" cannot be a natural instinct of humanity:

If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call ' good,' always in agreement with the rule of right behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage.

It certainly looks like Lewis is just playing word games, here.  There most certainly is an impulse to act "in agreement with the rule of right behavior" - the impulse to act in agreement with the rule of right behavior.  Again, Lewis seems to be begging the question; he simply takes the human desire to call oneself an ethical, moral person, and claims, as an unstated premise, that this desire is not itself a human instinct.

He further attempts to justify this premise by claiming that the "Moral Law" sometimes tells us to suppress an instinct, and sometimes tells us to encourage it, and that therefore the "Moral Law" cannot be itself an instinct.  However, we can easily imagine a situations where one instinct would influence the strength of other instincts; our desire for physical contentment might tell us to physically relax, or to eat, or to have sex at some times, and to work to earn a living or fight off an attacker at other times, as appropriate.  A desire to have a strong family unit might encourage our sexual impulses (if we have a suitable partner handy and/or have few children already), or it might serve to suppress our sexual impulses (if the object of that sexual attraction is not a suitable partner, or is not our partner at all, or if we already have children that require our immediate attention, etc.).

Basically, as near as I can tell, what Lewis is saying here is; "My argument rests entirely on my assertion that all human beings possess (to some degree or another) a knowledge of what I call the Moral Law.  Even though everybody has some impulse towards the Moral Law, there is no such thing as an instinct that is similar to the Moral Law."  I have to give credit where credit is due, though; this is possibly the most convoluted, semantically-layered circular argument that I've ever heard.

Another significant portion of this chapter seems intended to refute moral relativism.  I agree with this portion, but for different reasons that I assume C.S Lewis would claim.  He says that "The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other."  It is vitally important in any such debate that you define what you mean by "morality" itself.  There are many who claim very seriously that "morality" is whatever the will of God dictates, whereas a Secular Humanist like myself will insist that a more genuine ethical system only takes into account the interests, for benefit and for harm, of self-aware, sentient beings.  Others will have their own differing ideas of what morality itself is.

So when Lewis says that some notions of morality are more right than others, he is absolutely correct . . . if everyone agrees on what morality itself is.  Lewis seems to be implying that if you acknowledge that other conceptions of morality than your own exist, you are somehow also endorsing those moral systems as being as legitimate as your own.  I can acknowledge that Christian morality exists while acknowledging that something that might be highly moral according to biblical morality might be horribly immoral according to my Secular Humanist morality.

Lewis wraps up this chapter with yet more bizarre semantics; he acknowledges that some will object to the assertion that morality has been extremely constant throughout human civilization.  He imagines a person pointing out the very significant differences in morality between human society burning witches a couple hundred years ago, whereas today we would never do such a thing.  Lewis explains that the morality of the situation hasn't changed - if there really were women who sold their soul to the devil in exchange for supernatural powers, and were using those powers to torment innocent people, we would certainly be morally justified in punishing them.  There is no moral advancement in not executing witches when you don't believe that witches exist.  This is true, so far as it goes, but Lewis had previously implied, very strongly, that he believes that those who violate the Moral Law are aware that they are enacting moral evil:

What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.

What Lewis says about those who, in centuries past, burned witches alive, can be said exactly, word-for-word, about Nazi Germany.  If there really were huge demographics of sub-human "people" bent on the destruction of our society, then of course we would be justified in punishing them!

*Sigh*  To my mind, there isn't much difference between the moral incompetence of murderous witch-burning mobs and Nazi Germany.  Lewis seems to be strongly implying that Nazi Germany was terribly immoral, and we were justified in judging them for their actions.  Conversely, he seems to be saying that those who burned witches alive in centuries past were simply . . . what?  Mistaken?  Misinformed?  Where would Lewis draw the line between a simple lack of relevant knowledge and genuine immorality?  Lewis is meandering all over the place, attempting to establish his contradictory assertions.

Of course, Ziztur and I do, in fact, agree that there exists an objective moral reality.  We just dispute that C.S. Lewis has succeeded, in any way, in establishing it's supernatural nature.

Ref:  Mere Christianity Online