To those who say "Nothing is real," I once replied, "That's great, but how does the nothing work?"
Suppose you learned, suddenly and definitively, that nothing is moral and nothing is right; that everything is permissible and nothing is forbidden.
Devastating news, to be sure—and no, I am not telling you this in real life. But suppose I did tell it to you. Suppose that, whatever you think is the basis of your moral philosophy, I convincingly tore it apart, and moreover showed you that nothing could fill its place. Suppose I proved that all utilities equaled zero.
I know that Your-Moral-Philosophy is as true and undisprovable as 2 + 2 = 4. But still, I ask that you do your best to perform the thought experiment, and concretely envision the possibilities even if they seem painful, or pointless, or logically incapable of any good reply.
Would you still tip cabdrivers? Would you cheat on your Significant Other? If a child lay fainted on the train tracks, would you still drag them off?
Would you still eat the same kinds of foods—or would you only eat the cheapest food, since there's no reason you should have fun—or would you eat very expensive food, since there's no reason you should save money for tomorrow?
Would you wear black and write gloomy poetry and denounce all altruists as fools? But there's no reason you should do that—it's just a cached thought.
Would you stay in bed because there was no reason to get up? What about when you finally got hungry and stumbled into the kitchen—what would you do after you were done eating?
Would you go on reading Overcoming Bias, and if not, what would you read instead? Would you still try to be rational, and if not, what would you think instead?
Close your eyes, take as long as necessary to answer:
What would you do, if nothing were right?
The existence of objective moral values seems to have been a topic in the discussion below. I would like to state my view on the matter, since it connects to the original article. I define objective moral values as moral values that exist independently of the existence of life.
I do not believe that any objective moral values exist and I usually argue as follows: I ask three questions: When did objective moral values come into existence? Have we ever observed them or how can we observe them? Do we need objective moral values to explain anything that we cannot otherwise explain?
First question: A reasonable answer is that objective moral values exist in the same manner that mathematics or logic exists, and how they came into existence or in what manner they exist is a topic in itself and I will not address the issue further here. I will just state that this seems to be a reasonable answer to the question, but I am already having doubts.
Second question: I will go out on a limb here and suggest that no one has ever observed an objective moral value, but it is interesting how it could be observed. Probably not by suddenly observing divine letters in the sky. For me it is actually a problem just imagining how to observe an objective moral value. But let us assume that someone has a better imagination than I, thou increasing my doubts.
Third question: The third question is what I really consider to be the nail in the coffin, since I can not think of anything that we actually need objective moral values to explain in this universe. Every phenomenon I can think of is better explained by something else, so by Occam's razor I choose to not include objective moral values into my world view.
So what I instead believe exist are subjective moral values, and then I mean subjective in the sense that for example preference of art is subjective. For example if I state that a particular piece of art is beautiful then I do not state that it is beautiful in a higher objective sense, but instead that it is beautiful to me.
The answer to the above questions are very different for subjective moral values. First question: I believe subjective moral values came into existence when life came into existence, since subjective moral values depend of life itself and they exist perhaps in the same sense that thoughts exists.
Second question: Subjective moral values are observed every day, at least in an indirect way. When I decide to buy ecological groceries I express a subjective moral value. In the same way I believe every living thing express subjective moral values through behaviour, for example an antelope running away from a lion, then the antelope expresses that it would not like to be eaten and as such being eaten is bad according to the antelope, while the lion has a subjective moral value that the antelope being eaten by the lion is good.
Third question: Subjective moral values also has some explanatory power, if we know the subjective moral values of an individual we can pretty much explain that individual's behaviour.
So to conclude I do believe all living organisms express and have subjective moral values, which are dependent on the organism itself and that there is no objective moral values which can ever be observed. And to connect with the original post I would not be very alarmed in that situation since it goes well with my current view of reality.
Sorry for the long comment. I tried shortening it down a bit, but now I instead I feel like I have excluded a lot of important points and that my arguments are a bit brief. I hope you get the overall idea.