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Suppose I am a utilitarian consequentialist who bases my morality on the axiom that we ought to maximize happiness and minimize suffering for as many living creatures as possible. Is it reasonable for someone to challenge that axiom and request a justification for accepting it in the first place? If so, the axiom would no longer be an axiom but a conclusion derived from deeper fundamental principles.

Alternatively, consider that I am a theist who axiomatically believes we ought to follow everything that God commands. Would it make sense to challenge this foundational axiom of theistic morality? If so, it would imply there are deeper fundamental reasons supporting this "axiom," thereby making it no longer an axiom.

In general, if someone builds their ethical system on fundamental axioms, is it reasonable to challenge them and request a justification?

Furthermore, does the exercise of challenging and requesting justification for ethical axioms presuppose that there is only one possible set of axioms that can be justified? What if there is not a single set of ethical axioms that can be justified? How could axiomatic ethical disagreements be resolved in such a scenario?

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    I need to think more about your question. I had a professor for Torts and Legal Philosophy (1990-91), Hugh Gibbons, who wrote a book called Justifying Law: An Explanation of the Deep Structure of American Law. Available for download: biologyoflaw.org/Downloads/index.htm. Hugh argues that animals and humans have coercion problems. But humans also have justice problems. The sense justice means coercion is justified. The justification for law can be detestable or acceptable to our biological sense of justice. Hugh argues this Axiom: The will of each person is worthy of respect.
    – SystemTheory
    Commented Aug 6 at 18:54
  • Economists produce mathematical models that sometimes defy what I consider to be common sense. Some economists find flaws in the models of other economists, and a debate ensues. Sometimes the economist who likes to develop mathematical models will argue: It takes a model to beat a model! I think at the level of deep principles it takes a compelling axiom to beat a less compelling axiom. But people seem to have preferences for the axiom they find most compelling. I think competing ethical or moral axioms form pluralistic schools of thought such as we find in the political factions of economics.
    – SystemTheory
    Commented Aug 6 at 19:06
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    It is reasonable to ask for motivation, which may or may not be justificatory, and even when it is, only partly so, the same as with mathematical axioms. According to Brandom, the meaning of our claims is fleshed out in the game of giving and asking for reasons through argumentative moves that we make based on them. "Arguments" are understood very broadly, far beyond deductive inferences that axioms are the basis of, so they can still remain axioms.
    – Conifold
    Commented Aug 7 at 23:18
  • "When your map doesn't match the terrain, trust the terrain."
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Aug 24 at 12:47

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Although we may not be able to ask for a foundation of an axiom given its definition, I believe we can still rigorously debate an axiom via the following angles:

  1. Demonstrating internal incoherence. If we can demonstrate that an axiom is internally incoherent, we can show that it cannot be correct. For instance, some have attempted to show that the concept of an omnipotent God is incoherent by asking, "Could God create a stone so big He can't lift it?" However, this objection itself is incoherent, because it assumes that there is some threshold of mass beyond which even an omnipotent God could not lift it, which is a contradiction; or else, that the absence of such a threshold is a "weakness" on God's part, which is incorrect. But as another example, if someone gives as their axiom, "There is no absolute truth"; we could respond, "Are you absolutely sure about that?" :)
  2. Demonstrating inconsistency. If we can show that the axiom contradicts other axioms or conclusions, or that it is inconsistent with the person's everyday life, we may be able to uproot the the axiom. For example, if a person says, "I just think we ought to give up eating all dairy products"; you could respond, "Did you know your favorite ice cream has lots of dairy?" You might hear a brief pause, and then, "You know, never mind, I think dairy is just fine."
  3. Demonstrating absurd conclusions. If we can show that an axiom leads to absurd conclusions, either on its own or in conjuncion with other beliefs, we may be able to uproot the axiom. For instance, if a person says, "All morality is relative," we could respond, "What about what Hitler did? Was that maybe wrong for you, but possibly okay for him?" Absurd conclusions often go against beliefs a person may have without admitting that they have them, but which they nonetheless hold to firmly, usually intuitively.
  4. Comparing relative utility. As @JoWehler pointed out in his answer, you can compare which axioms are best at explaining the evidence, and say, "Well, even if you can get by with those axioms, these explain things much better." For instance, if someone says, "Well, I just feel like the disciples made up the story about Jesus rising from the dead," one way we could respond is, "Then why would they die as martyrs for something they knew was a lie? Doesn't it make much more sense that they were convinced Jesus rose from the dead?"

Thus, I would say that although we may not be able to ask for the foundation of axioms given their definition, they are still open to plenty of rigorous artillery fire of debate.

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    You seem to have failed to understand the issue in God creating a stone he cannot lift. Either God isn't powerful enough to create a stone he cannot lift, or he's not powerful enough to lift any created stone. Although that's somewhat of a primary-school-level criticism of Christianity or a tri-omni god (quite literally: people have discussed this when they were in primary school). It relates to valid questions about the bounds of omnipotence, but Christianity has far bigger problems, like lack of evidence, what space-/timeless even means or God being loving when hell/suffering exists.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 7 at 23:54
  • Someone eating (non-vegan) ice cream when advocating for giving up dairy may point to them being hypocritical, but it doesn't say much about the validity of their arguments (see also: "tu quoque" fallacy).
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 7 at 23:55
  • There's been a lot more said about moral relativism than what one can reasonably counter with "but Hitler tho". A relativist might argue that Hitler was wrong relative to the culture at the time, or some could say Hitler himself (and/or the people in that culture) believed his actions to be moral. Just because that idea makes you uncomfortable doesn't make it false. And we can still use our modern respect for human rights and equality to argue and fight against that (even at the time, other countries fought against that).
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 7 at 23:55
  • Your disciple thing is just a strawman and a misrepresentation of history. Either you're lying or you have no idea what you're talking about (or you should spend less time listening to dishonest apologists). The gospels were written decades after the events in question, written by anonymous authors. People aren't saying those authors were martyrs, and the disciples themselves (to the extent that they actually existed) didn't need to have made anything up for the resurrection to have been largely made up, whereas the claims people make about the disciples being martyrs is questionable at best.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 7 at 23:55
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I'd say it is reasonable - simply because it might turn out those axioms needs refinement / aren't actually the basic axioms.

To take your examples:

"we ought to maximize happiness and minimize suffering for as many living creatures as possible". This is trying to optimize for three variables that might be at odds with each other. This opens many questions like, "is it more important to maximize happyness or minimize suffering?", "is it more important to support as many living creatures as possible, or a smaller, happier number? How much less? Or if not, what suffering is acceptable?". The point of challenging the axiom is to refine it, and see how the underlying axioms need to be formulated, or which weaknesses each possible answer has.

"we ought to follow everything that God commands" immediately evokes the question "Why?", the answer to which can replace that axiom. There are many possible answers to this, and the point of challenging the axiom is to poke at the underlying set of axioms, and choose a suitable one, or see where each one has shortcomings.

In conclusion, challenging axioms can lead one to a more basic set of axioms, refined and distilled from what was started with.

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Utilitarianism can argue for well-being as the goal via e.g. empathy, the golden rule, the veil of ignorance and peaceful coexistence. The basic idea is that I don't want to suffer, I don't want other people to make me suffer, I would like other people to help me not suffer, and I don't like seeing people suffer or living in a world where suffering is condoned. It seems most conducive to these desires for me to try to minimise the suffering of others, for the direct effect of them not suffering, and the indirect effect of them being more likely to oppose my suffering.

Meanwhile, a theist wouldn't just be tied to the axiom that "we ought to follow everything that God commands", but this would also include the claim that God exists, and the claim that God has commanded some specific things, and commonly also that you'll be tortured for all eternity if you don't follow those commands (although there's some conflict about whether following the commands even matters if you've already been forgiven, but that's a whole other discussion). These are not moral "oughts", but rather truth claims. And these are truth claims that aren't considered to be true by atheists (and by theists from other religions, or other denominations within the same religion).

* If it's true that not following those commands would lead to you being tortured for all eternity, then one can make a utilitarian argument for promoting the following of those commands (although following them yourself for that reason would be more egoist, i.e. just for your own benefit). But the sticking point, like I said above, is that many people don't consider that to be true.

Speaking more generally...

It's certainly someone's prerogative to request a justification for your moral goal, but it's also your prerogative to call that an axiom and say you have no justification.

Although if you have a moral goal that other people don't agree with, and you simply call that an axiom, don't be surprised if you're unable to convince anyone else of that goal, or if people call you immoral.

If you care about being a moral person, having your beliefs correspond to what's true, having a consistent worldview and being consistent in how you treat others, then you should care about having justifications for your positions. Calling something an "axiom" is functionally indistinguishable from simply saying you have no justification for it. For something to "truly" be an axiom, it would need to be impossible to justify it, which I'm not convinced is truly ever the case (but some people certainly think so... and justifying something to others is definitely different from justifying it to yourself). If you care about having justifications, calling something should be an axiom should be a last resort.

Does the exercise of challenging and requesting justification for ethical axioms presuppose that there is only one possible set of axioms that can be justified?

No, there doesn't just need to be a single moral goal. You just need to convince someone that some moral goal is something they should want. That doesn't preclude the existence of other moral goals.

How could axiomatic ethical disagreements be resolved in such a scenario?

If you treat moral goals as unjustified axioms, then you can't really resolve disagreements. But if you treat them as justified conclusions, then you can ask for that justification, and evaluate it with reason and evidence.

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  • "Utilitarianism can argue for well-being as the goal via e.g. empathy, the golden rule, the veil of ignorance and peaceful coexistence" - Wouldn't these things become the actual axioms? Then the problem shifts to now having to justify those.
    – user77058
    Commented Aug 6 at 18:36
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    @user77058 Empathy is an emotion and a way of looking at the world. The golden rule, the veil of ignorance and peaceful coexistence are arguments, so not axioms. Moral goals may ultimately boil down to desires or emotions, which one can maybe call axioms, but I'd argue you should question those desires and try to figure out why you feel that and whether that's a reasonable desire, and whether it's reasonable to build a moral framework on top of that.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 6 at 18:53
  • How do you determine if a desire is reasonable? Reasonable according to what, and why? Can you give me an example?
    – user77058
    Commented Aug 6 at 20:09
  • @user77058 Let's say you have a distaste for gayness and you desire to just never see any gay people like holding hands or getting married or whatever. One might question where that desire comes from - it might come from e.g. in part you yourself not being gay, or it might be due to social conditioning and stigma (which is a poor reason by itself, because that would allow bad conditioning to persist). We might then question what's reasonable to do with that belief - what would happen if e.g. everyone tries to make themselves more comfortable by oppressing people for something they can't change
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 6 at 22:47
  • For the sake of grasping the general principle from the particular example, you seem to be saying that a desire/emotion is unreasonable if (1) the desire/emotion can be traced back to a belief in factual claims about the world and (2) those factual claims are unjustified. Well. Then what happens if a desire/emotion cannot be traced back to a belief in factual claims about the world? For example, suppose a psychopath derives a profound pleasure from seeing people being tortured alive. There is no deeper cognitive belief underlying that. They just enjoy it, and that's it. What's wrong with that?
    – user77058
    Commented Aug 7 at 2:59
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Axioms are axioms, i.e. propositions marked as “premisses without proof”. Hence it does not make sense to require a derivation of axioms.

Nevertheless one can ask for arguments which support why taking just these axioms and not others. Possible reasons for choosing specific axioms are the conclusions which follow and explain certain facts, i.e. the achievements of a theory which is grounded on those axioms.

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  • This should be the Accepted answer.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Aug 24 at 12:55

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