Shyun J. Ahn 安 丁 秀賢

The following suddenly came to my mind yesterday while driving to the swimming pool: I am a staunch moral realist (moral facts exist and we have access to the truth through reason), yet I think moral reasoning takes some degrees of religiosity, or faith.

This is problematic because, in the post about fate and God, I argue that “a god surpasses human will and reason,” so discrediting religious people’s faith based on its unreasonableness is pointless. If moral reasoning surpasses human reason in the same manner, then it would be erroneous to subscribe to moral realism because moral truth is beyond human will and reason.

In the post about moral reasoning and religiosity, I try to bypass this problem by arguing that “religiosity does not have to interrupt your reasoning…[because] Morality takes some degree of religiosity, not in the process of reasoning but in the process of inciting motivation and action.” However, in the most recent post, I argue that moral reasoning by definition entails normative strength, which urges us to act in a certain way. In other words, in moral reasoning, “the process of reasoning” and “the process of inciting motivation and action” are not separate entities.

Therefore, I can’t ignore the clash between religiosity and human reason in moral reasoning. Can I resolve this contradiction or should I revise some of my theses? We’ll see.