Q&A: The Spinach Test
The Spinach Test
Question
I have a question about the spinach test. First of all, I’ll define what exactly this test is trying to prove, as I understood it: the test is meant to check whether a certain claim is objective or subjective, and the conclusion from this test regarding morality is that it is objective, because we don’t laugh when we say, “Good thing I wasn’t alive 300 years ago, because then I would have enslaved slaves.”
The question is about another case. This case actually reflects my own way of thinking and the period I live in: truly, enslaving slaves is something objectively immoral, and we project this moral norm onto everything that ever happened.
But if we go back in time to Sweden, for example, where (if I’m not mistaken that is what happened, but even if not, then for the sake of discussion) the custom was that when a person reached old age, he would “release” the public from bearing his burden and jump from a high mountain or something, and if he didn’t want to, they would “help him” (all of course for the public good). And if we came now to those people and told them that this is immoral, they would burst out laughing no less than in the spinach case—what’s immoral about it?! This has always been the custom, and there is a public that has to survive, and that old person can’t become a burden on them!
The same thing can also be said about the future. Suppose that one day a new moral norm is established according to which picking plants (or eating animals) is blatantly immoral and is even considered murder (after all, a plant is a living thing). If we apply the spinach test to that era now—“Good thing I didn’t live 300 years ago, because then I would have eaten lettuce, and that’s cruel”—I don’t think there’s anyone who read that and didn’t chuckle.
The conclusion that seems to emerge from this discussion is that when you apply the spinach test to morality, the result is that you get an objective normative value for our own time, which we then apply to every period—but as stated, it is actually subjective, because it has no real definition and is objective only in our eyes.
And regarding morality in general, isn’t it some kind of modern invention? Did earlier generations think at all in terms of morality, and not only in terms of survival? After all, it’s obvious that in the very beginning people did not think in moral categories and were committed to nothing other than their own survival. And if morality developed over time and reached something like completion only in our own era, then perhaps you really cannot judge earlier generations through the lens of morality, which is in fact objective; they simply did not grasp it, or grasped it only partially in those generations. And maybe in that sense one actually can say that morality is objective, and in that respect the spinach test is right.
But still, it can also be understood that what we define as morality, and what in our view is the good and the right, earlier generations also defined as morality and as the good and the right. And future generations will define it that way too (as in the lettuce case). Then according to that, our morality is still incomplete, and we are not moral, since we eat lettuce; and if so, we are exactly like the ancient Swedes (that is, immoral!).
In conclusion: the spinach test seemingly fails here quite badly, and morality is not really something objective, if it is even anything at all.
I’d be glad to hear your opinion on the matter.
Answer
I don’t understand this comment. The spinach test is a measure for the question of whether we are dealing with a subjective or objective claim. You also agree with that. You are only arguing that morality does not pass the spinach test. Fine, then you are a moral relativist. The spinach test proves nothing. It gives you a diagnostic tool to diagnose yourself.
Moreover, there can be moral questions that have several correct answers, or where the answer depends on the circumstances. There indeed the spinach test will not work. But that does not mean every moral value is like that. For example, when there is no way to care for the elderly in a nursing home, then the method you described is perhaps reasonable. But if there is such a way, then that is a moral principle that would not pass the spinach test (for me).
Discussion on Answer
Morality is completely objective, but it depends on the circumstances and the alternatives.
I can’t understand why morality is objective in your view. If there are any moral truths, we have no way at all of knowing what they are or what they demand, from when is murder forbidden, when is murder forbidden? Why specifically murder? Why isn’t eating lettuce forbidden? How do we know that eating lettuce is a moral thing?
Where does the proof of any moral truths even begin? Seemingly it begins with our moral norm here in our own time. If until now we had not reached the conclusion that “murder is forbidden,” then we also would not have reached the conclusion that this is a moral truth—just as we do not think that not eating lettuce is a moral truth like not murdering. And in another 300 years human beings will come and philosophize about “the moral truth of not eating plants,” and that eating plants is murder and it’s horrifying, etc.
Such truths may really exist; in theory it is a nice idea. But we have no way at all of knowing what they are and how we are supposed to act according to them, certainly not down to the details, and that specifically murder is forbidden but something else is not.
All right, so first of all we’ve moved on from the spinach test. We agreed that the discussion is not connected to it. You are simply arguing in favor of relativistic morality. That is a different debate, and in order to conduct it I need to understand what claims I am supposed to deal with. I can’t identify any argument at all that you are raising in favor of this thesis.
You declare that we have no way of knowing, but we do have a way of knowing what they demand, and we all know it very well. It does indeed depend on the circumstances, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the moral instruction for the given circumstances is completely clear to us, and there is not even any dispute about it. So what are you basing the declaration on that we have no way of knowing?
You are looking for proofs, but there are no proofs for anything. Do you have proof that what you see really exists? Do you have proof that exactly one straight line passes between two points? And yet the overwhelming majority of people accept this because it is what they see or experience directly. The same is true of morality. Skeptics can always keep looking for proofs forever and never find them. That is true in every field, not only regarding morality.
I claim that morality is completely subjective (if it exists at all).
Suppose that in your opinion we do have the ability to know, then I ask again: if from now on people say that you don’t eat plants, will that be considered a moral truth? After all, we all agree on it. That is exactly what happened throughout history: everyone agreed in a certain period that enslaving slaves was fine. One time I’m a slave and afterward I enslave someone else—that’s the norm. (Again—a moral truth of enslavement?)
You decide that what you determine is moral because it is clear to us (intuition or I don’t know what), but those are exactly the same tools that people used in the past to say what was okay or not okay to do, and they reached different conclusions.
Quite apart from proofs or not, there is no basis at all for the foundational assumptions that morality is objective. It is objective for you, and therefore it does not make you laugh to say, “Good thing I wasn’t alive 300 years ago, because then I would have enslaved slaves,” while it does make you laugh, “Good thing I wasn’t alive 100 years ago, because then I would have eaten lettuce.” And the morality of that time was also objective for its own time—they wouldn’t have laughed (let’s just say) at “Good thing I wasn’t alive 2,000 years ago, because then I would have crucified people,” but they would laugh when you say, “Good thing I wasn’t alive 300 years ago, because then I would have enslaved slaves.”
The tools you are proposing do not seem useful for determining an objective moral truth that is correct for every generation and all humanity.
You are simply insisting on making declarations without arguments, repeating the same thing over and over, and not reading what I write to you. I said that it is possible to know. That means that what people say changes nothing. So they say it—so what? There is indeed moral progress throughout history, just as there is scientific progress. Does that mean science too is a subjective convention?
There is no basis for foundational assumptions at all—not regarding morality and not regarding anything else. And I already gave examples.
And finally, a moral truth depends on circumstances, and therefore it is not correct to say that it is true for every generation and for all humanity. And that is not moral relativism but dependence on circumstances.
You can of course deny everything and hold onto subjective morality. Just don’t present it as though you have arguments. You don’t.
What exactly are your foundational assumptions for the fact that there is objective morality? You said that we have the ability to know what the moral truths are and what they demand. What is the basis of that?
And besides, scientific claims are factual claims, and that is one thing, whereas the claim that “murder is forbidden” is not such a claim, as you said in your book (if I’m not mistaken).
The fact that there is scientific progress, based on factual claims about the world, is one thing. Moral progress is harder to assume.
I’m done. I’m wasting my words for nothing.
I only asked a fairly basic question for this discussion.
I don’t think I’m repeating the same things. I responded to your claim that we have a way of knowing, by saying that this is the same way that has been used over the years and led to a different result. About that one could say: one master said one thing and another master said another, and they do not actually disagree.
Scientific progress is not relevant here. If people 3,000 years ago had used the same tools as scientists today, it is very likely that they would not have reached different results.
This comparison does not seem relevant.
In addition, you referred to the example of the old man whom they threw off a mountain. You said that in a case where there is no way to take care of him, then maybe there is room for that—but even that is subjective, because for another person, even in a situation where we send him to a nursing home and I give up my next vacation, even in such a case throwing him off a mountain is moral.
The circumstances in which you decide that something is moral or not—according to what are they determined?
Suppose that indeed we all know the same moral truths from certain foundational assumptions. What way do we have to know under what circumstances act A will be considered moral and act B not, or vice versa?
And why do you think morality ultimately does pass the spinach test (even in your own view)? After all, in the end people do laugh today if you tell them, “Good thing I don’t eat lettuce.”
You are simply repeating the exact same thing again. Read what I wrote. That’s it, I’m done.
So you agree with the claim that morality is not objective?
Also in the case of the old man, you say that if it’s possible to send him to a nursing home then why not, but for someone else it is still immoral to send an old man to a nursing home and give up the vacation in Thailand, so is it still immoral or is it moral?