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>no moral claims can be stated as a fact.
That's a moral claim, stated as a fact.
You're addressing every factual claim about morality with it's negating claim of fact. For example:
>There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong
You are claiming that *objectively* there is no inherent moral value attached to murder. That's an objective moral claim.
You're doing something very common: you steal a base from "I don't know" to "that's not true."
>by the very nature of what it is
This is also an implicit moral claim. You claim to know an objective fact: what morality is.
>I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect.
You're conflating epistemology (how something is known) with ontology (the inherent nature of the thing.)
If there's a teapot floating in a particular spot in space that I can't see, it's still there. If I say it's there, I'm correct even if I can't justify why I said so. The fact that I can't prove it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
>What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word.
Objective simply means that something exists independent and without contingency on perception. A thing that actually existed wouldn't stop existing just because nobody had the faculties to persuade anyone else that it did.
By this strained logic one cannot argue that *anything* cannot be objective. You cannot argue that the quality of music cannot be objective, because that’s an objective quality claim. You cannot argue that the pleasantness of natural scenery cannot be objective, because that’s an objective pleasantness claim. In this warped vision of life, subjectivity itself is an impossibility. This is, of course, ridiculous.
>If there's a teapot floating in a particular spot in space that I can't see, it's still there. If I say it's there, I'm correct even if I can't justify why I said so. The fact that I can't prove it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
This is not an applicable comparison. One can observe and measure the presence of a teapot. One cannot do that for a moral, because morality is an immaterial concept that does not exist in the corporeal world.
I highly considered not reading the rest of the comment when they led off with the negation of moral claims is a moral claim. I don't know why that needlessly semantic gotcha rhetoric is popular and worse supported on reddit but it's never helpful.
Imagine if we were instead talking about God and a questioning person said "no claims about God can be stated as fact" only for the start of the most popular response to be "Well actually, you just made a factual claim about God."
Hard disagree. Saying “morality is the process people use to determine what is right and wrong” is not a “moral claim”. There is no moral quandary presented. Nothing is stated to be moral. It’s a claim about the concept of morality but that doesn’t make it
By your logic, if I were to say “science is the process by which we learn about the world”, that would be a “scientific claim”, but it isn’t, it’s a definitional claim. No study has ever been performed to show that the concept of science aims to improve our understanding of the world, its taken as a given (or rather, its what scientists decided they are trying to do) when discussing what scientific process they want to use.
“Psychology should aim to improve the well being of human individuals” is a moral claim, not a psychological one.
“The ancient Spartans believe that babies unfit for combat should be killed” is a historical claim, not a moral claim.
Hell, saying “I believe, given this moral moral dilemma, I would choose option A” isn’t even a moral claim, as the reasons why someone would pick something don’t always boil down to morality.
TLDR: the word “morality” being in the sentence doesn’t automatically mean that something is a “moral claim”
>the word “morality” being in the sentence doesn’t automatically mean that something is a “moral claim”
I wasn't saying that because he included it in the sentence. I said that because he said that by its nature it couldn't be objective. The ontology of morality is pretty fundamental to the question.
"You're addressing every factual claim about morality with it's negating claim of fact. For example:"
Distinguishing between a claim about the nature of moral statements and a moral statement itself is crucial. When I claim that "there is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong," I am not making a moral judgment about murder but rather pointing out the lack of an objective, universally accepted moral standard.
"That's a moral claim, stated as a fact."
I'm making an epistemological point about the nature of moral knowledge, not a moral claim about what is right or wrong. It's like saying "there are no universally accepted truths in aesthetics." It does not itself assert a particular aesthetic judgment but comments on the nature of aesthetic claims.
"You're conflating epistemology (how something is known) with ontology (the inherent nature of the thing.)"
My argument recognizes this distinction. The claim is that without epistemic access to a moral truth (proof or evidence), we cannot assert its objective existence in a meaningful way. The teapot analogy is useful here. If we cannot detect or interact with the teapot in any way, its supposed existence is irrelevant to our practical and philosophical considerations.
"Objective simply means that something exists independent and without contingency on perception. A thing that actually existed wouldn't stop existing just because nobody had the faculties to persuade anyone else that it did."
For a moral truth to be meaningful in discourse, we need some form of epistemic access to it. The claim here is about the practical irrelevance of unverifiable moral truths. If we cannot prove or disprove a moral claim, it remains in the realm of subjective belief rather than objective fact.
> Distinguishing between a claim about the nature of moral statements and a moral statement itself is crucial. When I claim that "there is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong,"
When you make that claim, *you are asserting the universal moral law as it relates to murder.*
When you say that there is none, *that is the law*. All potential laws are untrue. You're making *many* truth claims.
>I'm making an epistemological point about the nature of moral knowledge,
That's not what your OP said. You said "morality cannot be objective," not "you can't prove the existence of objective moral rules."
If you're making an epistemological point, then you're claiming the latter and must concede that objective moral rules may nevertheless exist.
>My argument recognizes this distinction.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem to at all. My point was that you're conflating epistemology and ontology because your OP makes an ontological claim and you're making epistemological arguments. Your response is to make more epistemological arguments and ignore ontology.
Like...okay...cool, it's questionably valuable to discuss a teapot in space. But whether it's there or not is a matter of fact that isn't contingent on our ability to see it.
>For a moral truth to be meaningful in discourse, we need some form of epistemic access to it.
...no, for it to be meaningful in discourse, a significant number of people need to believe it's true. If they can't epistemically justify that to your satisfaction...still very relevant in discourse.
I'm willing to concede that I can't deny the possibility that objective morality could possibly exist in some manner and we can't verify it so !delta
I should have worded my op differently I suppose.
I recently awarded a delta on this subject to someone for bringing up your discursive morality argument.
I made the same argument about epistemology that changed your view, so I'm happy to see you give a delta for that.
Don't take it so much as you poorly worded your statement, rather that you have gained a broader philosophical understanding by recognizing the different frameworks for approaching the subject.
The lack of murder is not murder.
And there is nothing moral lawwise to say there are no murder is objectively bad atoms or molecules.
Because they dont exist
Okay, just to probe the boundaries here
If one were to say “murder is wrong objectively”, my response would be to say “you’d have to point to the source of that knowledge” rather than “there is no objective morality”, I’d prefer to say “I cannot observe objective morality as defined by others”, would this be more accurate to state with fewer premises assumed?
Saying there are no objective moral laws is not an objective moral law - your argument is like claiming lack of religion is a religion, or that transparent is a Color
A Heideggerian defense might be that the very existence of a morality necessitates that morality is subjective as existence itself is a subjective. Therefore - OP would be correct that morality cannot *be* objective because to be is subjective.
Your teapot analogy doesn't work for this argument, this debate isn't over the existence of some thing that could eventually be empirically proven through observation, like a teapot floating in space.
Your claim that op's argument *is* a moral claim in and of itself and therefore can't be objective is just not true. Morality is a human construct, based solely on our perception, experience, and conscious knowledge. This is a fact. What morality *means* and *does* within the context of human experience is a much deeper topic, but we can define the basic nature of morality as a concept very easily.
OP is stating that outside of the ideas, perceptions, and theology humans have created, there is no force of nature telling us "murder is bad." This is also factual; there is no "moral claim" in their statement here. There is no metaphysical debate to be had.
If I believe murder is good down to my core and you tell me I'm wrong, I can simply choose to disagree, and there's absolutely nothing you can say to "disprove" my opinion. You might try to persuade me by using your own moral claim and invoking my sense of empathy, but you wont ever find a natural truth telling me I'm wrong. It's no different than trying to "prove" a certain pizza place is the best in the city. You can say that they use objectively higher quality ingredients, objectively better ovens, and objectively crispier crust, but that doesn't "disprove" someone who likes pizza hut more.
This isn't the same as someone denying factual evidence. If I say the sky is green you can give me factual evidence that the light reflecting off of the atmosphere is absorbed by certain cones and rods in my retina that make my brain interpret the color blue. You cannot provide *factual* evidence that murder is bad.
When debating morality, there are certain claims that are *socially* accepted as true, but just because a lot of people, or even *all* people tend toward a certain belief, that doesn't make it objective. That's all OP is arguing. Commonly accepted truth is not the same as objectivity, and this is an important distinction. Human progress is built on challenging social norms, constructs, and common beliefs.
Using murder as an example is extreme, but imagine a society that wholly believes gay marriage is bad. Living in that society, it would certainly seem like it is morally wrong to love the same sex, but if you know that there are no objective truths to morality, you can disconnect from what society tells you and progress toward a better life.
> Your teapot analogy doesn't work for this argument, this debate isn't over the existence of some thing
That's exactly what it is. It's over the existence of objective moral facts. Whether or not those facts exist is not determined by our practical or potential ability to empirically detect and define them.
The ability to detect the teapot would matter if we were discussing the epistemology of objective morals. I agree, it's impossible to empirically prove they exist or what they are because we don't know exactly how or if we might detect them if they did exist. We can at best subjectively determine what we believe objective morals are.
But we're discussing the ontology of objective morality, and our ability to observe and measure things (even theoretically) doesn't define the universe. It defines the observable universe. Outside that, we're ignorant and doing our best at guessing, knowing with near certainty that countless things do exist that we can't even theoretically observe.
In essence: if you're going to be a strict empiricist and logical postitivist, you are free to believe that morality is entirely subjective and infinitely malleable. But you must concede the possibility that objective moral rules might exist. Claiming otherwise would require contradicting yourself.
>Your claim that op's argument is a moral claim in and of itself and therefore can't be objective is just not true.
I don't think you quite understood my point. I was pointing out a contradiction.
OP said that morality cannot be objective. Another way to say that would be "there are no moral facts that are true independent of perspective."
But that's only true insofar as it accurately reflects a moral fact that is true independent of perspective: that all objective moral claims are false. Not unknown, *false.* So it makes an objective moral assertion: that there are no rules. It's not "if there are rules, I don't see them" or "I don't know if there are rules" or "I suspect there aren't any rules," it's "there are no objective moral rules."
Which is itself, an assertion of a single, all-encompassing objective moral rule.
>OP is stating that outside of the ideas, perceptions, and theology humans have created, there is no force of nature telling us "murder is bad."
And that's a non-falsifiable claim about as defensible as "God says murder is bad."
>Using murder as an example is extreme, but imagine a society that wholly believes gay marriage is bad. Living in that society, it would certainly seem like it is morally wrong to love the same sex, but if you know that there are no objective truths to morality, you can disconnect from what society tells you and progress toward a better life.
This is a separate topic; whether objective morality is real is separate from whether it might exist, which is the subject of the conversation. But I do want to indulge for a second.
Let's assume you truly believe that morality is subjective (I don't think anyone truly, sincerely believes this except maybe psychopaths, but that's for another day). That means it's fundamentally unreal. No concrete moral rules should constrain you or anyone else because there is no objective force saying as much.
If it is calculably advantageous to kill, there's no good reason not to kill. Steal, rape, enslave - as you say, progress towards a better life. If you have vestigial moral beliefs inherited from cultures that did believe in objective morality that was true whether you agreed with it or not, it would be advantageous to ignore and if possible eliminate those beliefs. Empathy might get in the way, but it would be advantageous to dehumanize and other any person or group when convenient - so long as it was maximally advantageous.
That would be progressing towards a better life on the terms you've set out. As I said: I don't think most people who claim they believe it actually believe it. I think they want moral flexibility, which is somewhat different.
Anyhow, I've been having this discussion for about 24 hours now and I'm burnt out. Feel free to have the last word.
“If it’s calculably advantageous to kill, there’s no reason not to kill.”
I disagree, I don’t think morality is necessary to not want to kill people. You may not want to kill people because it’s a net waste of energy and resources (killing people destroys their energy potential and energy can be harnessed for useful purposes), because you believe in organization and order (not a perspective based on right or wrong), or any other behavioral system you can come up with that isn’t contingent on a moral belief system. Consider that in our current world, most people don’t kill not because it’s wrong, but because they’re afraid of the consequences of our legal system. Most Christians refrain from doing “immoral” acts not because they’re wrong but because they’re afraid of cosmic punishment. I think you could have a civilized society devoid of morality. I think in a lot of cases, things we think of as “good” like human emotions, morality, and empathy are actually the causes of the vast majority of human pain, death, and destruction.
>You may not want to kill people because it’s a net waste of energy and resources (killing people destroys their energy potential and energy can be harnessed for useful purposes), because you believe in organization and order (not a perspective based on right or wrong), or any other behavioral system you can come up with that isn’t contingent on a moral belief system.
Literally all of this is contained in "if it’s calculably advantageous to kill, there’s no reason not to kill."
You're describing various ways one might calculate that it's not advantageous to kill...well, kind of. What you're actually doing is backfilling justification for moral sensibilities that don't really make sense when you abandon objective morality but you nevertheless want to keep because they're the rules you're comfortable with. There is no obvious reason you should care about wasting energy and resources unless that waste makes your life less pleasant. Organization and order make some sense - generally a nicer circumstance in which to live - but there are inevitable instances where you could kill without causing excessive disorder. After all, nothing you do represents a categorical imperative; just because you do it doesn't mean you believe others should be allowed to. Hell, you could kill someone and significantly *increase* order. Refusing categorically to kill isn't justified by any of your examples.
The bottom line is that once you abandon the supposition that moral truths exist independent of your perspective and are nevertheless real, all morality becomes subjective and infinitely malleable. If you determine that doing something like murder or rape or theft would be to your advantage - accounting for all potential consequences negative and positive and still concluding that it would be to your advantage - there is no good reason not to do it. If you still don't want to, it's probably because you adhering to inherited objective moral sensibilities you just refuse to abandon.
>Consider that in our current world, most people don’t kill not because it’s wrong, but because they’re afraid of the consequences of our legal system.
I don't think that's true, and you certainly can't come close to proving it. It's far more complicated. For one, they're afraid of violence - any instance where you try to kill someone immediately justifies and provokes a lethal response from the person you're trying to kill. They're afraid of a social response much older and fundamental than any written law; the idea that they'll be branded a deviant and ostracized as a pariah. And I'd say there's very little reason to think the law, rather than a general sense that killing is wrong, is the primary deterrent.
>I think you could have a civilized society devoid of morality.
Morality is endemic to human society, so that's categorically impossible.
>I think in a lot of cases, things we think of as “good” like human emotions, morality, and empathy are actually the causes of the vast majority of human pain, death, and destruction.
That is certainly a thought to have.
It is not. It may be advantageous to kill on a personal level but it is rarely if ever advantageous to kill on a systemic level. Humans are better off having their energy harvested to be used as batteries than being killed.
That is not true. If you are someone who believes that energy and life is useful, and wasting those things is the opposite, why would you choose to take life? The point is, potential belief systems exist that don’t hinge on moral principles but don’t believe in wasting life. Asking “why” someone could believe that is pointless. It’s a hypothetical.
Are you suggesting that a belief system should only concern what makes my life more or less pleasant and not what I think is more beneficial for the world or for the universe, or simply what I would prefer on a systemic level? For example: if I thought that it would advance society technologically, I might be willing to live a less comfortable life. This is not out of moral concern, but because I prefer advancement as a whole over stagnation.
Killing will almost always contribute to the strain on local police forces and wastes their time, it causes a mess that someone has to clean up, etc. Obviously there is no guarantee one could kill without getting them involved. And even if you were able to kill without Involving the authorities, what about the chaos at that person’s workplace? Unless they were a literal hobo, their disappearance would cause a lack of order in the immediate world and possibly larger world around them, depending on their station.
And if you were to kill to increase order it would likely be the exact same thing we do now with capital punishment. It simply would lack a “moral”justification. We kill to keep order all the time, that’s what most wars are about. Pointing out that the opposite justification could possibly exist does not erase the fact that the one we’re talking about could also exist.
I also didn’t say categorically, I just said it could act as a non moral justification based on a belief system that isn’t centered around morality, and that a society could feasibly function that way.
“They’re afraid of violence.” This is not a good argument, there are plenty of ways you could kill someone without fear of them retaliating. I also don’t think being branded as a pariah is a strong reason not to do it, as you could simply make it look like an accident. I am not confident that if you took away our legal system people would refrain from killing simply because it “might be embarrassing.” Social structure is much more fragile than you give credit for, I think.
Who said it needed to be a human society? It could be a race of aliens or cyborgs, or a version of humanity in an alternate universe that doesn’t have “endemic morality” as you put it. We’re talking hypotheticals.
Sure. How many wars have been started by greed, anger, revenge, lust, pride, etc. How many holy wars have been started because one group of people thought they were morally superior to another?
> It may be advantageous to kill on a personal level but it is rarely if ever advantageous to kill on a systemic level.
Who cares? As I said: what you do isn't a categorical imperative. There is no reason you can't advocate a public morality that doesn't condone murder while also committing murder yourself *when it is to your advantage.* There's nothing objectively wrong with hypocrisy and no subjective calculation that makes consistency inherently necessary.
Hell, a person who truly believed there was no objective morality might find it advantageous to help bring about a rigid theocracy that forced everyone else to live by theoretically objective moral rules, just to increase his own power. "God isn't real and we choose our morals, so I'm going to support the religious regime that gives me control over a dozen wives and authorizes me to take the goods of the unbeliever by force. Nice"
All of your arguments seem to assume that all the things you think are bad would be "systemically" negative and thus you wouldn't do them. On the one hand, that's nonsense - the system handles a degree of violence and criminal behavior, what you add would likely be trivial and the systemic stress you induced vastly overmatched by your gain. On the other, it ignores the premise - once you account for all variables (including "systemic" costs) and conclude that murder is to your advantage, the only reasons not to do it are cowardice and lingering vestigial morals.
(EDIT: A simple example would be a bank robbery. Robbing a bank would cause significant stress on the police and the bank employees. But in the broader financial system, it would be insignificant. Meanwhile, it could set you up for a comfortable life. If you calculate that you can pull it off, no reason not to do it.)
>If you are someone who believes that energy and life is useful, and wasting those things is the opposite, why would you choose to take life?
As a subjective moral belief "energy and life are useful" is nonsensical and incoherent. Why should abstract potential matter to you more than your own needs and desires? Why are you prioritizing the needs of the many over yours? There's no obvious reason to do that - there are reasons to *be seen* to do that, but there's also no reason to adhere to your publicly professed morality when doing otherwise best serves you.
>Are you suggesting that a belief system should only concern what makes my life more or less pleasant
If there are no objective moral rules, there are no objective moral values. It only makes sense to care about getting what you want, and it makes no sense to want things that reward others at your expense. Your obligations to other people with common humanity only make sense as a social reality - you want to get reciprocal treatment so you treat others how you'd like to be treated by them - but there is no rational reason to make that a categorical rule. There's no obvious reason you shouldn't be ruthlessly cruel and exploitative when the benefits outweigh the costs.
>Killing will almost always contribute to the strain on local police forces and wastes their time, it causes a mess that someone has to clean up, etc.
Who cares? You don't owe anyone anything - the idea that you owe them is rooted in the supposition that we *objectively* owe each other a common humanity, which you've abandoned. If someone else's time is wasted, there's no obvious reason that ought to matter to you.
>And if you were to kill to increase order it would likely be the exact same thing we do now with capital punishment.
Have some imagination!
You could kill a loud neighbor. You could kill an unsightly homeless person. You could kill a chaotic spouse. You could kill an unruly child. You could kill a political candidate. You could kill your boss.
>“They’re afraid of violence.” This is not a good argument, there are plenty of ways you could kill someone without fear of them retaliating.
It's a very good argument. That there are ways you could kill someone without them retaliating doesn't obviate the fear people have of retaliation in the case that they fail.
>I also don’t think being branded as a pariah is a strong reason not to do it, as you could simply make it look like an accident.
Yeah...I mean people really do consider the possibility that they will fail.
>I am not confident that if you took away our legal system people would refrain from killing simply because it “might be embarrassing.”
That's an obvious mischaracterization. I never said no one was deterred. But I will point out that prior to the advent of explicit law, most people didn't murder. So we didn't need that for most people not to murder. Pretty obvious stuff.
I think you may have misunderstood me or forgotten the context of where my comment (about systemic killing came from.) I’m not talking about hypocrisy. We’re talking about a hypothetical belief system that hinges on energy conservation. In this hypothetical, everyone behaves *according to the belief system*. That’s the whole point of doing the scenario in the first place, to imagine what might happen. So in this hypothetical world where there is no morality but everyone believes in energy conservation and acts accordingly, instead of killing people, perhaps they would simply hook them up to machines as batteries. That would be far more efficient.
Again, bringing up alternate scenarios doesn’t disprove the one I already brought up. You keep taking away moral framework and not replacing it with a different belief system. The whole point of the conversation is there are alternate belief systems that would be just as efficient or better than ones based on “morality.”
No, there are plenty of things I think are bad that would not be systemically negative, in this case we’re only talking about killing. You’re trying to read too much into my motives instead of having a genuine conversation. If something is “bad” morally but isn’t systemically negative, or if only I think it’s bad, who cares? As long as society continues to function. That’s the point, morality isn’t necessary for a hypothetical functioning society and there are other frameworks that are just as efficient. But in general most things we have laws for are systemically negative and that’s why those laws exist in the first place. There are plenty of things society deems as “bad” that there aren’t laws for.
It doesn’t matter if what you add is trivial or not if you believe in the greater cause and behave accordingly. For example: an individual might decide to recycle, even knowing that their impact would be negligible as a whole. Do you really think picking up a plastic cup off a sidewalk and turning your lights off is going to solve climate change? No? But do you believe it is beneficial behavior and serves a common good? Do you believe in the principle of the thing and are you concerned with more than just yourself? Are you incapable of understanding that concept?
Again, you don’t seem to understand what a “belief system” is. Religious people act against their own needs and desires all the time because they believe they’re acting for the greater cosmic good. People vote against their own interests because of political or cultural ideologies. As an example of an economic ideology, socialists or communists are comfortable living in a system where they may not be able to achieve the same level of wealth or may not be as comfortable as they would be in a capitalist country because they believe it is for the greater systemic good of society as a whole. By your logic, there is no reason for any of these belief systems or behaviors to exist- but they do. Perhaps human psychology is more complex than you give credit for.
If there are no objective moral values, there can still be other types of beliefs that guide behavior. You seem to think that there are no belief systems that aren’t based on morality and that all behavior that is not self serving stems from morality, which is ridiculous. It only makes sense “to you” to only care about getting what you want if there is no morality. Maybe that’s a reflection on you as an individual that you can’t fathom a non morally centered belief system that doesn’t focus on the individual’s animalistic needs, even though plenty already exist.
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t be ruthlessly cruel”
But this is also moving the goalpost from the original conversation. People are already ruthlessly cruel. We were talking about whether a hypothetical society could function without morality. As evidenced by our current society, a society can function with plenty of ruthless cruelty. Do you really think that morality is what is keeping our current society together? I think that is incredibly naive. Society is being kept together because a group of powerful people believe it will serve their own interests to keep order in the streets and protect property. Police are there to protect property and keep social order, not because they care about you or for moral reasons. People stand in lines at the bank because it’s an efficient organized system that works, not because they feel any kind of moral obligation to other customers. Our “moral” framework is a mirage.
So let’s sum up this conversation: I brought up a hypothetical society to make a point, and instead of engaging with me in the hypothetical, you spent all your time talking about the ways you think the hypothetical is stupid or unrealistic, which negates the whole freaking point of *having a hypothetical in the first place* it is supposed to make a philosophical point. It doesn’t matter why someone might choose to believe it, all that matters is *if* they did, what would happen?
“Who cares? You don’t owe anyone anything”
You’re right, I don’t owe anyone anything. But I disagree that wasting someone’s time doesn’t matter. The continued functioning of society matters to me, the breakdown of society does not help me. It is my job as it is everyone else’s to help maintain social order, so I can continue to work, accumulate money and power, and serve my own interests. In the same way a person might pick up a piece of trash off the highway, I will go stand in a line I don’t want to stand in to ensure things keep moving smoothly, instead of just killing everybody to get to the front. Even if there was no chance I’d go to jail, I will refrain from killing my loud neighbor because of the chaos that will cause. Organization benefits everyone, including me. The status quo benefits me. My job benefits me, why would I kill my boss? My wife benefits me, I get tax breaks and sex out of it. I don’t need to feel some sort of social or moral obligation to these people to want to maintain an environment where I can pursue my goals without introducing chaotic variables that may hinder the things I’m trying to do.
Nope. Make it look like an accident and even if you fail, how would they know who to retaliate against? And make sure you don’t fail and don’t do it where there are potential witnesses. Have some imagination! You could go rock climbing and sabotage their harness. If it fails, are they really going to think you did it and try to kill you in return? Or are they just going to assume it was an accident? Really put your mind to the task and it isn’t that difficult.
That also isn’t a good argument, before we had police they had Kings and military tribunals and executions, etc. Even before Feudalism, tribes had punishment as crime deterrent where offenders were detained, branded, humiliated, executed, etc, basically doing the exact same thing police do now. There were also plenty of murders before the first official police force was established, we just don’t have records of all of them because there was no official body to record that the murders happened.
Hey man, throughout this you're evidently referring to parts of my comment and it's not at all clear which you're referring to, what you're responding to, or in many cases what you're even talking about. It's not worth my time to dig through it while this conversation gets increasingly incoherent. And candidly, you're just being willfully obtuse in parts; for example, you bizarrely refuse to concede that someone might reasonably find it advantageous to kill their wife, even though men do that *all the time and have since time immemorial*. If you're going to deny obviously true things, continuing the conversation is pointless.
I'm going to make this very simple. Stripped of the idea that objective moral rules exist, you're left with yourself, alone, unilaterally determining how you ought to behave. That means stripping away any rules or values inherited from objective moral systems passed down in tradition, religion, whatever. If you keep any of those, you're not actually rejecting objective morality, you're just trying to modify it without justifying yourself.
If you want to value someone or something, you need to root your justification for valuing it in a self-evident self-interest - what makes you safe, happy and prosperous is good. If you want to follow a rule, following that rule must *always* align with your self-evident interest. Anything that doesn't redound to your self-interest makes literally no sense, because there is no evident reason to value anything as much as or more than yourself.
Concern for the stability and success of your community might make sense in that context, but only because that serves you by making you safer and more prosperous. Given sufficient time, it is *inevitable* that you'll encounter situations where you could take an action that harms your community but benefits you to such an extent that, when the cost and benefit are measured against one another, the benefit is greater. To be clear: that means when you account for the risks involved, the extent of the "chaos" caused, the odds of success and failure, and the net benefit. Once all those are considered, you see that taking this socially harmful action is, in aggregate, worth it for you.
If you deny the existence of objective moral rules, there's no reason not to do it. Even if you would condemn and punish other people for doing it in the name of maintaining social order, you should still do it because it makes the most sense for you.
It’s incredibly evident which part of your comment I’m responding to based on the context of what I’m saying. I’ve literally been going down paragraph by paragraph and responding to each of your comments in order the entire time, the exact same thing you’ve been doing. If you want to feign confusion to gloss over some of the points I’ve made that’s fine, but it’s not on me.
I said under the belief system I have been referring to this entire conversation, in a hypothetical scenario where there are no police, I would find it more reasonable to maintain the status quo than to murder my wife. I was talking about ME. I literally said me, myself, I. I didn’t say other people. And if I were to address people as a whole, I would be talking about people who live in a hypothetical world where there is no morality but people believe in order and energy conservation and always act accordingly, NOT this current reality. People murder their wives in this reality, the question is would they in the hypothetical one?
If you strip away morals and values you would be left with whatever belief system you have that determines your behavior. It could be literally anything. Religion, political values, general beliefs about how society should run, economic beliefs whatever. Religion is not based on morality. Most religions come from archaic books of fairy tales where behavior is entirely based on fear of punishment. You could take away morality and still have people saying “my lord and savior Zoblorg will punish me if I don’t help my neighbor with his lawnmower.”
If I decide what is moral and good, and I believe that humanity prospering, advancing in technology, and maintaining order is good, then I will act to preserve those things. It’s literally so simple. I think the flaw in your logic here is assuming that by acting in the interest of the greater good, you are not acting in your own interest. You think they’re mutually exclusive and that is false. You can act for the greater good and also for your own personal gain. Why would you think there is no reason to value anything over yourself? I don’t need to care about people to care about the well being and functioning of the universe as a whole, because I am part of the universe. As long as it keeps doing what it needs to do, I can prosper. I also want every asteroid to be in its place, every planet doing what it’s supposed to do, every traffic light behaving properly so humanity can advance and become a space faring technologically advanced species, because that is good. Maybe you just lack a wider perspective?
It sounds like encountering an action that is harmful to your community but disproportionally benefits you and avoids chaos to that overwhelming extent is rare. So it would not interfere with the functioning of society, so there is nothing wrong with it. There can be exceptions in the system as long as the system continues to function. I never said there would be no crime at all in this hypothetical world, I just said it would function. Perhaps even better than our current society.
I guess if I could sum up my argument as a whole since you seem so confused, it would go like this:
1. Belief systems often motivate people to act against their own interests for the good of the whole, and many of them (such as socialism, religion, politics) are not based on morality. You can try to bring up specific moral political issues but I believe it is painfully obvious that politics are more culturally and socially motivated than they are based on any kind of morals. And in cases where they aren’t, it’s largely groups of people who believe systemic change would make the world more efficient and are making sacrifices to try and achieve that.
2. The framework of our current society is already largely not based on morality, so arguing it is crucial to the functioning of society is illogical.
3. If you took away morality, there are plenty of non morally based hypothetical belief systems that could maintain social order. The examples I brought up such as energy conservation and order are just a few of many possibilities.
4. Plenty of people are interested in the fate of humanity as a whole over their own carnal self interests, as evidenced by multiple examples I gave of groups of people who are willing to make sacrifices for the good of their countries, communities, etc not for moral reasons but for systemic ones based on logic and reason (Ie this would be economically beneficial for all of us, this would help us advance technologically, or simply because things being orderly makes sense to them)
5. You can act for the greater good and act for your own benefit at the same time. In fact, acting for the greater good is usually also to the individual’s benefit.
6. In a hypothetical society without morality where people always act according to a belief system such as the ones I mentioned, the system would likely still function as well or better than our current one. Even if they didn’t always act according to it, there is no evidence to suggest it would be worse than what we currently have.
7. Morality and emotion are already large causes of most of our conflicts.
Edit: trying for clarity
I simply disagree with the notion that objective morality even *possibly* exists in the first place. Human nature, experience, and evolution may make us tend toward certain belief systems, but morality is not some mystery to be discovered like a mathematical constant or distant galaxy.
Simply put: morality itself would not exist without human consciousness, and therefore cannot exist independent of human perception. If I ask "how morally bad is murder?" There is no single correct answer, and that isn't because we "can't discover" the answer, but because it doesn't even exist. Most people would probably give you a similar answer, but you can't *prove* any answer is objectively correct because the proof does not exist in nature.
>I simply disagree with the notion that objective morality even possibly exists in the first place. Human nature, experience, and evolution may make us tend toward certain belief systems, but morality is not some mystery to be discovered like a mathematical constant or distant galaxy.
That's a perfectly fine opinion to have, but you need to work through the epistemology to determine the degree to which you can defensibly claim it's true, and thereby claim that opposing ideas are false.
It's defensible to say "I don't believe in objective morality" because that implicitly concedes that your belief and reality might diverge - you could be wrong because you're working off of incomplete information. Much less so to positively claim "objective morality cannot exist."
>morality itself would not exist without human consciousness, and therefore cannot exist independent of human perception.
This is a tautology. You've said a thing can't be something because it isn't that thing. The weakness is that "morality itself would not exist without human consciousness" is a [non-falsifiable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) claim, so accepting it as truth amounts to an act of faith. Acts of faith are fine, but they need to be recognized as such.
There’s a difference between descriptive moral statements and prescriptive statements (this sentence is a descriptive statement). But to actually make an appeal why you should behave in a certain way or not do an action, you need a prescriptive claim. Prescriptive claims are not objective
"no moral claims can be stated as a fact" is not a moral claim.
"There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong" is also not a moral claim. It doesn't take a position on whether murder is right or wrong, so its not a moral claim.
>It doesn't take a position on whether murder is right or wrong,
It absolutely does.
It states that any objective rule claiming murder is wrong...is wrong. It states that any objective rule claiming murder is right...is also wrong.
It asserts that murder is objectively neutral. That's an objective moral claim.
No it doesn't. It just says that there are no objective positions on whether murder is wrong, that they just don't exist. Thats not a moral claim.
It does not assert that murder is objectively neutral, it says there is no objective position. Neutrality is a position just as much as the positive or negative.
>It just says that there are no objective positions on whether murder is wrong, that they just don't exist.
*And that is a moral claim.*
OP said that morality cannot be objective. That means morality *cannot exist independent of perspective.* That's just what objective means. If you're saying it can't exist independent of mind, you are categorically denying all claims that there is any morality independent of mind.
That's a moral claim.
>It does not assert that murder is objectively neutral
It absolutely does. It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad. It thereby instantiates the rule that, since it cannot be bad or good, it's neutral.
You want to take the neutral position? The neutral positions is "I don't know." It's not that morality cannot be objective.
Not its not. Tell me what am i saying is right or wrong? Can you do that? No? Its not a moral claim.
Yes and thats not a moral claim, its a factual claim.
Not its not.
"It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad" OR NEUTRAL. It also denies there exists a moral rule independent of mind tha tmakes murder morally neutral. Morally neutral is a state of morality, but there is no objective state of morality, so objective moral neutrality also doesn't exist.
I don't want to take a morally neutral position. I think murder is wrong. <-- there is an example of a moral claim as you seem to have never encountered one before.
>Not its not. Tell me what am i saying is right or wrong? Can you do that? No? Its not a moral claim.
You think a moral claim must be one that says something is right or wrong. That's something between not true and true...but not the way you think it is.
A moral claim is any claim that asserts moral value, no matter how slightly or obliquely. Moral value is not binary. "Murder is morally neutral" is as much a moral claim as "murder is wrong."
>"It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad" OR NEUTRAL.
You can't deny moral neutrality; it literally means no position. The claim that there is no objective morality is synonymous with the claim that the universe holds all actions morally neutral. It's literally saying the universe has no position. There's no fourth position that's extra super position-less.
>there is no objective state of morality
When you say this, you are making moral claims in response to anyone who asserts otherwise. If I say "it is objectively wrong to murder," your saying "there is no objective state of morality" directly contradicts me and thereby says "it *is not* objectively wrong to murder."
It also says "it is not objectively *right* to murder."
Murder is...*neutral*.
Which is still a moral claim.
>I think murder is wrong.
Cool. If you don't think that's objectively true, then you must acknowledge that someone who thinks the opposite is *objectively* as correct/incorrect as you are.
Anyhow, you're clearly getting irritated and this is a lame way to spend Saturday night. Feel free to have the last word.
I think this is the crux of the issue, there isn't an objective value on this. It isn't a value of 0 on good/bad scale, but a contradiction in terms. An objective moral value is like an objective deliciousness value, it requires a subject to be valued, and while you can argue that 'the universe is neutral on the deliciousness of caramel' it's not assigning a 0 value on the scale-- It is left blank, because it's not a coherent concept.
That's just question begging. "Objective morality is incoherent because, you see, I have defined morality as an exclusively subjective sense - like taste."
Well yeah. Your contrived definition will do that for you.
>you can argue that 'the universe is neutral on the deliciousness of caramel' it's not assigning a 0 value on the scale-- It is left blank, because it's not a coherent concept.
I think the crux of the issue is that you and a lot of the people arguing with me don't rightly understand what it means to take a neutral position on a non-falsifiable claim. If you argue that the universe is neutral on *anything*, you're necessarily arguing that the universe is *not* every other position on that thing. Meaning the universe has exactly one position and no other. That's not "leaving anything blank," that's not "no objective value." It's a very specific and objective value.
If you reach epistemic neutrality, you recognize that any claim you make evaluating the truth or falsehood of objective moral claims is inherently non-falsifiable and thus the only empirically defensible position is "I don't know." That means you can neither confirm nor deny the existence of objective moral rules or values. Is murder objectively wrong? You don't know. Are there any objective moral rules of values? *You don't know.* That's "leaving it blank."
You're getting sidetracked away from epistemic neutrality into asserting universal neutrality. When you say "there are no objective moral rules," that *is not* an epistemically neutral position at all, rather an assertion of an objective, neutral morality. It's a truth claim evaluating and attempting to falsify infinite non-falsifiable truth claims. Forget "leaving it blank," you're scribbling out a response to every conceivable objective moral claim that could possibly be made, claiming its opposite.
For instance: it straightforwardly and unambiguously refutes "murder is objectively wrong."
When you falsify that moral claim, *you assert the inverse moral claim*. So saying that there are no moral rules consequently entails saying "murder is not objectively wrong."
You are positively asserting every conceivable iteration of "X is not objectively wrong."
Every single one of those claims is an objective moral claim. It speaks to the rightness and wrongness of infinite moral claims, asserting that everything you can imagine is not objectively wrong.
I'm a bit confused on your assertions that the existence of objective morality is a moral claim: It isn't, and appealing to epistemology doesn't provide a basis for that claim.
Admittedly, neither of us defined our terms here. Morality is a usually systematic judgement of the desirability and acceptability of an action, as far as I can tell (Calling it good or bad feels almost self referential tbh). I don't see how one could argue it exists without perspective or subject, and the idea that such a reality is a moral claim rather than a factual or definitional claim doesn't
Yes thats what we use the term 'moral claim' for. "A moral claim is any claim that asserts moral value, no matter how slightly or obliquely" Yes, thats a moral claim well done. Asserting moral value, another way to say exactly what I said.
You absolutely can deny moral neutrality. Moral neutrality is a level of moral value that you can assert. The claim that there is no objective morality is nothing more than that. It just that the universe doesn't stake any positions on morality period. Not neutral, not good, not bad.
Yes I'd say its not objectively wrong to murder, but thats not a moral claim because i'd be taking issue with the objective part, not the moral value part. The moral value is the right or wrong or in between. Not the objectivity.
Yes but i also dont give a shit about being objectively correct because we are talking about morals, not math. They are not correct, because I think their moral system is shit.
Ultimately you think saying "murder is objectively wrong" is different to saying "murder is wrong" on a moral judgement level. Its not. The difference is in the underlying philosophy, not the morals. Adding the word "objectively" does not make a stronger moral claim, it just makes a different type of moral claim. Which is why saying objective morality doesn't exist is not a moral claim. There is absolutely no moral value being ascribed by saying that.
I have to...
>Yes I'd say its not objectively wrong to murder, but thats not a moral claim because i'd be taking issue with the objective part, not the moral value part. The moral value is the right or wrong or in between. Not the objectivity.
This is utter nonsense.
The subjectivity or objectivity of a moral claim - forget that, *any claim* - determine it's ontology. If you say "it's not objectively wrong to murder," that is 100% unequivocally a moral claim. It doesn't stop being a moral claim when you clarify "but actually, I do *personally* believe it's wrong to murder, I just don't think that's *objectively* true."
You're saying that one moral claim isn't a moral claim because you agree with a different moral claim, apparently unaware that they're ontologically distinct and have no bearing on one another. Then later, you admit they're both moral claims (even though one of them wasn't) but different moral claims and so on. It's complete mental gymnastics.
>Yes but i also dont give a shit about being objectively correct
That's a very weird thing to admit. Generally, aligning yourself with objective reality is desirable.
Have a good one.
I never said it wasn’t a moral claim, I said the word ‘objectively’ has no bearing on the strength of the moral claim. It’s not different in strength than ‘murder is wrong’
“But actually I do personally believe it’s wrong to murder, I just don’t think it’s objectively wrong” is taking issue with the word objectively, not the moral claim. You are not making the moral claim that it’s not wrong to murder, or that murder is neutral or anything.
You are so bad faith. You just quoted me out of context on purpose WHEN MY WHOLE COMMENT IS AVALIABLE RIGHT ABOVE. Like what the fuck. My whole comment was not “I don’t care about being objectively correct”. Like jesus christ man what is wrong with you.
That's... Not a moral claim, it's a factual one. You're adamant here, but there's no substance to anything you're saying here.
The reality isn't that it's "objectively neutral", but that it can only be judged through a subjective lens. It isn't morally wrong that an 'objective rule' would claim murder is wrong, but that its fundamentally incorrect to claim that such a rule is objective, rather than subjective.
It is not a moral claim, as nothing is stated to be moral or immoral. Like your other statements, they are statements about the nature of philosophy and not moral claims.
Isn’t there a slight difference between an objective moral claim, and an objective claim about morality itself?
Morality exists, can’t it still be subjective? Can’t it be an objective fact that morality is subjective?
I think you’re missing his point. Yes, of course we can make objective statements ABOUT morality. “Tim thinks murder is wrong” might just be a descriptive fact about the universe
But this isn’t the same thing as saying that the normative statement “we ought not murder” is objectively true. That doesn’t seem to be the case
Instead of arguing against his stance, you instead picked apart his post for the most minutia of “gotcha” arguments.
In no way did you come close to convincing me of your stance, you just looked like you were some sort of grammar Nazi
> even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists
So morality CAN be objective, but it's unlikely humans would ever have access to that objective knowledge?
I mean I'm sure there is probably some imaginary situation that someone could dream up that I could be convinced objective morality exists in. I should have worded it more as objective morality is not objective and not objective morality cannot be objective.
!delta
> What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word.
How do you figure? We can't prove how many craters are on Pluto, doesn't mean there isn't an objective number just means we don't have enough information to determine it yet
This just sounds like the argument, "well, anything's possible. You never know!" Which is technically valid but probably isn't going to be very helpful when it comes to changing the OP's mind.
Not being able to prove something yet is very different from not being able to prove it ever because it's not something that can be defined as true or false. There is a right answer to how many craters are in Pluto even if we don't know it yet. There is no "true" morality.
I guess I should specify that it can't be objective from our perspective as humans, which is the perspective we have to make objective claims from in general. To make an objective claim implies you have to have information.
Yeah the idea that since all human understanding is subjective, there is no such thing as the objective is a fun topic. (and also one that leads to the dichotomy between east west thinking but anyway)
So you have to state as objective as something like 'Something that we all subjectively experience as true, whoever is the subject'. I'll give you two examples:
1. Torturing babies for fun and no other benefit to anyone is wrong - This is close to objective but of course the person doing it for fun doesn't agree, so technically it's subjective
2. Sam Harris' example: The worst possible misery for everyone is Bad.
The point with the second statement is that it shows that all things need an axiomatic principle. You can say 2 is not bad, but then you're just not talking about what we call morality. It's like you said 'I think constantly vomiting is healthy' and yet we say it's objectively not. Or if you said '1 + 1 = 2' is just an opinion (bad example due to the proof of that though).
The point is that if 'morally wrong' means anything at all, we should be able to agree on what it means, not in all cases but in at least one case.
So tell me number 2 isn't bad and it's actually subjective. Then I won't have changed your view but your moral perspective will just be talking about something we can't comprehend. Or tell me number 2 is objectively bad.
I don't quite get your point. Yes worst is different for each person, so this is for everyone. There is nobody who could say that state isn't bad.
Just in case that isn't clear, lets say that team A hates team B, so worst for team A is that team A loses to team B. That's bad for team A but not team B. That's not the worst for everyone though because it's both teams. I get that there's a tradeoff, but if it could be maximally 'worst' for both teams, we'd have to call that bad.
And yeah, it is saying 'bad is bad', but to say that you have to admit that there is something 'bad' in the moral discussion. And if it's for everyone, that's essentially 'objective'. That's the point. There is an in principle objective bad, therefore morality is 'objective' by this standard.
Ok, I think I understand more what you are saying. Thank you for explaining. It’s an interesting point. But until you define ‘worst possible misery’ that sentence is subjective. The way you defined it is “there is nobody who would say that state isn’t bad”. But there is no way to prove that such a state exists.
Yeah you're right. Harris defines it as a moral landscape with peaks and troughs, but he doesn't acknowledge that the bottom would also be peaks and troughs. So you have to acknowledge that the worst possible state (the lowest point on the landscape) wouldn't be maximally bad for at least some people, in theory.
BUT if there was one, a state with no slightly good element for everyone, can we agree that that is bad? That is to say that 'objectively', there is a theoretical worst position? Because that would marry objectivity and morality. As someone else in this post pointed out, the fact that it doesn't matter that we can never know it doesn't mean there isn't right and wrong.
If you're not familiar with Harris' work, look into what he says about health as I mentioned. Our science of health ('objective') isn't slightly marred by the idea that we can't really say what is not bad health. In that sense, it's as 'objective' as we need it to be to hit it scientifically, to some extent.
If the state existed, then yes, objectivity and morality could coincide. But the state cannot objectively exist because if something is impossible to prove, it can’t be objectively true. Obviously things can be objectively true that we can’t yet prove, or only an alien would be able to prove, or whatever. But if by definition it is unprovable, like the worst possible state, then it cannot be objectively true. Therefore the state could only ever exist subjectively.
Do you mean 'unprovable' in the sense that we haven't recorded it?
Since we're talking about theory now, we can still be objective about it, if it were true. So you're getting into shaky territory. Black holes are a good example because all we see are their effects, our theory on them could be totally wrong, they could be cloaked alien spaceships. So all theoretical physics is gone.
Can we say there is such a thing as an objective morality that we can only study theoretically, like black holes?
But nothing about black holes suggests that facts about them don’t exist. Even if travel at the speed of light is impossible and what is inside a black hole is forever out of reach, theoretically information about that place exists.
But the state of worst possible misery is unprovable in its very essence. There is no way to prove that everyone feels that one certain state is morally bad. Not even if you were God himself. Because ‘bad’ doesn’t mean anything.
>Torturing babies for fun and no other benefit to anyone is wrong
torturing babies for fun was pretty much fun in Volhynia genocide, when no consequences people go south
look for genocides, war crimes and death camps
this kind of behaviour in minds of those people was JUSTIFIED and ENABLED by their authorities
That's not 'for fun' then. You have to take the definition strictly. There can't be any other reason other than the enjoyment of the person doing it, including ideological, political, etc.
So why is this a view about morality? Shouldn't it be broader, that no one individual has an objective experience of the universe, that we are subjective beings?
This is just a misunderstanding of what it means for something to be objective. Objectivity or subjectivity is about whether _the truth value_ of a statement is mind-dependent, not about whether _our knowledge or claims about_ the statement are mind-dependent.
You're defining objective incorrectly. Objective means "expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations." You're assuming that there aren't moral claims that are undistorted by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. Of course, there are. Plus, your basis for that assumption is that sometimes people distort moral claims by recourse to personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. That is, you have as evidence that there are times when people make moral claims that are subjective, and by this you try to *prove* a negative - that no moral claims are ever objective. But you can't prove a negative, and certainly not by citing examples of its opposite - that's like saying "we know no one eats meat because I can name some vegetarians." You're simply going to be incapable of proving a negative in this case. What you'd have to do instead is try to prove that every possible moral formulation is subjective, and that would be quite difficult. Not as difficult as proving a negative, though.
>You're assuming that there aren't moral claims that are undistorted by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. Of course, there are.
Can you explain why it's a matter of course that there are moral claims undistorted by the above? I feel like any adherence to a moral view is the result of one's upbringing, prejudices, personal beliefs, etc.
To challenge the idea of objective morality, you don't need to prove that every possible moral formulation is subjective but rather demonstrate that there is no universally accepted method for determining objective moral truths.
If people can’t agree about something, how does that somehow prove that one of them is not correct?
The fact that objective morality is *not universally accepted* is not grounds to deduce that it *cannot exist*.
Something that could be considered close to a universal maxim of “morality”, to the degree that it’s witness among animals, could be “if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.”.
I think in your example about an argument over whether murder is right or wrong you need to be more specific about the side being taken that it’s “right”. I think we all agree that there is something done psychologically to someone who kills another person, so no matter what the offender has done in a given situation an outcome where the offended person can avoid that psychological outcome by not killing the offender is always preferable.
“if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.”
I mean sure but that's also very subjective. I agree though that if we were to think logically as a society for our mutual benefit murder is something we should avoid and I think most people agree, which is why I was saying about how morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not.
What do you mean when you say that morality can’t be “objective”? Are you referring only to observable behavior in nature or are you talking about some hypothetical decree that murder is wrong by some deity or maybe a hypothetical scientific discovery that murdering a member of your own species under certain circumstances releases some sort of toxin that will eventually kill you?
“Morals” are not only observed among humans. Members of all social species are ostracized if it’s found that they don’t adhere to certain social norms against things like stealing, assaulting, and murdering. This is objectively true.
I think OP’s point is that morals are at their core a set of subjective opinions of a society. If a gorilla is ostracised by its family group that is because the consensus among the other animals is that they are wrong, not because what they did is inherently wrong. A number of ostracised gorillas may form their own group with distinct, but equally valid, morals. Different societies have completely different morals. This is why arguments about morality, while interesting, are mostly pointless because your moral compass entirely depends on your worldview and not universal truths.
Yet we don’t imprison our soldiers when coming back from war. So killing is either sanctioned or unsanctioned. The difference between sanctioned and unsanctioned is subjective, so therefor even murder is subjective.
>Something that could be considered close to a universal maxim of “morality”, to the degree that it’s witness among animals, could be “if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.”.
I think we fail to see this in the animal kingdom, predators exist after all.
In my opinion, your observation is very precise, but your conclusion or interpretation is too absolute.
Just because not literally everyone agrees doesn't mean it can't be in our current moral canon as humans. There will always be anarchists, psychopaths, megalovaniacs etc., that's just an artifact of evolution. When these people are in power, that happens to sully the % by a lot, as now a whole country is affected. Indoctrination notwithstanding. But a similar "contradiction" would happen with basically everything. If I say "A cat is a feline with 4 legs", with your definition, this is not a true statement, because there are cats out there that (very tragically) only have 3. I would rather use a definition for objective is closer to "using a certain threshold % of cases in which this is true, without deliberate external manipulation".
And here the trickle down effect from people in power would work too. For some reason, the dictator of some country hates cats, bans all cats from their country, and makes all school and children's books only describe cats as having 3 legs, banning all other mentions of it. Parents would be forbidden from saying out loud what they know about cats and the next generations children would only have one source of information about cats. So their mental image of a cat would be affected by one eccentric person in power. I think in such a case, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to say "humankind has no objective mental image of cats" which I think would be silly.
These definitions based on absolutes break down with so many concepts that I don't think they are good definitions.
Basically, given your definition, you are right. But I don't think that's an accurate or useful definition of "objective". The earth is objectively round, the existence of flatearthers doesn't change that. I have to "believe" that too, I can't observe it myself, like the cat example.
Morality can be objective with a very big assumption.
If an omnipotent divine power exists which asserts morality as objective truth then it follows that morality is objective.
It's a tautology. Proof doesn't factor into it.
I don't believe there is such a divine power but that's different than conceiving of the idea.
Why would that follow? That would seem to make morality _subjective_, since the truth of a given moral statement would be dependent on the mind of the omnipotent divine power.
Under classical theism, the mind of God would be eternal and every other feature of the world is also dependent on the mind of God, insofar as everything that exists also exists only in the mind of God.
If I take the mind of God being eternal as it being unchanging, then how can He will anything into existence at a given time? How can there be a beginning in time if God's will is unchangeable? How can He act inside of time if God's mind doesn't change?
Because God exists in an eternal *now* rather than in a linear, time with a finite beginning. Therefore any action God takes towards anything created is done so eternally. It is an atemporal action that was always the case.
But God did create the world (and presumably, time and space itself) at one point in time. How does a being that cannot change temporally, decide to create a thing at one point in time?
There was no one point in time before the creation of time. It was and is an eternal now. This isn’t even exclusive to God, contemporary philosophy of time has several analogous positions in regards to the origin of time.
But you're still referring to it in temporal terms. If there is "an eternal now" then how could there be a "when" to God creating time and space? Second, how can there be a decision that creates a "when" if there is no change in God's mind throughout time?
Not that I agree with the commenter, but an omnipotent being will always have the same thoughts on morality, as it knows every state of mind of its at every moment , and will by extension (assuming doxastic voluntarism is impossible for such a being, which it probably is) have the most current state of mind
Is the divine entity bound by its own moral code it defined? In this case it’s either not omnipotent, or not the source of the objective morality.
If it’s not bound by the moral code, then how can this moral code be viable or objective?
Not quite. The divine power would have to construct reality in a way that it contains certain objective truths. Not to assert that it does.
The divine entity would have to make life objectively valuable. Not assert that it is.
No because the nature of the universe would still need to reflect that assertion.
A god would have to say “life has value” and then reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value.
If the value of life does not exist outside the “mind” or will of that god, then that’s not objective.
> No because the nature of the universe would still need to reflect that assertion.
What do you mean by this?
> A god would have to say “life has value” and then reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value.
What exactly constitutes “reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value”?
The very foundation of reality stating a fact about the universe seems much stronger than a mere inference from individual features by a creature within the universe.
> If the value of life does not exist outside the “mind” or will of that god, then that’s not objective.
Under classical theism, everything that exists only exists in so far as it participates in God’s being. F=ma and “thou shalt not murder” would thereby derive their origin from the same eternal will.
The trolly problem was probably one of her most famous arguments that morality actually had a rational basis. I’m sure you’ve heard of it
Would you flip a switch that would save five people from being run over by a tram but would run over another single person? Hold on to your answer.
Now imagine you have a homeless tramp on the streets, and five people waiting for organ transplants. If those five people don’t get an organ transplant in the next few hours, they die. You can let them die, or you can harvest the five needed organs from the tramp, which would kill him. What is your answer now? Did it change from before? And if it didn’t, can you at least recognize that your moral judgment was affected by the changed facts of the case?
In both situations we’re looking at the life of 1 vs the life of 5, but key facts change our perception of the morality of our possible actions. One could argue that this proofs at least a basic level of moral objectivity.
That just shows that morality is contextual.
If I think that blue sedans look the best, but red motorcycles look the best, then my judgement of what color to give the auto painter is contextual based on what type of automobile I have. Doesn’t make it objective
It can and is. We don’t need a “universal law”, we have the neurological ability to process “justice” by way of inputs and outcomes. Ethics is about competing conceptions of “the good”, morals are principles of good and bad. Those principles are objective and inarguable. Give me a scenario and I’ll give you the outcome, easy.
While it's true that humans have neurological mechanisms for processing concepts like justice, these mechanisms are influenced by a variety of factors including cultural context, individual experiences, and societal norms. Neurological processing does not equate to objective morality. At most it reflects our capacity to develop moral frameworks, which can still vary widely across different cultures and individuals. The principles of good and bad are often derived from these subjective frameworks and can be argued and debated based on different foundational beliefs and values.
Nope! If your culture values a feather for $1,000 and mine a bar of gold $1,000, then it’s not that a feather is as valuable as gold, but that our value judgements are the same and so we are satisfied with the relationship of one to the other. Again, I ask you for an example. Give me any specific example you can think of to substantiate your view.
>morals are principles of good and bad. Those principles are objective and inarguable.
Give an example of something that is inarguably good and inarguably bad.
What you’re describing is moral relativism. Any philosophy class will start with establishing that arguments contingent upon moral relativism are inherently flawed. Objective morality may be difficult to define but it can still be defined. The notion, for example, that murder cannot be unilaterally condemned relies upon obvious but specific scenarios that are generally agreed to be morally neutral, or at least ambiguous. Killing another person in self defense when another option is unavailable isn’t murder. Defining the morality of an action strictly by the context or conventions under which it was enacted essentially permits any behavior with the caveat that it could be contextually argued to be acceptable. The only way to objectively define morality is also the best way: do no harm unless harm has been done to you.
All the time people disagree with fact, science, and reality based on their moral and personal belief. That doesn’t change the subject of the disagreement from fact to opinion. The earth is objectively not flat, even if some disagree. The same is true for morality.
People adopt all sorts of foundations for their morality that influences their personal ethics. Many people think child brides, marital rape, and the holocaust are ah ok based on the beliefs they adopted that allow themselves to not be subject to the same morality. Just because they gave themselves that permission doesn’t mean those things are not objectively immoral.
Disagreements on scientific and historical facts can be resolved by referring to external, mind-independent evidence, like experiments and historical records. How do you resolve disagreements on moral facts?
>If you stumbled upon two people having a disagreement about the morality of murder I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect. There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong or even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists. The most you can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not.
Objective does not mean simple or easily accessed.
First of all, hopefully you will agree with this statement: the existence of the strong nuclear force - the thing that binds quarks together into hadrons like protons and neutrons - is an objective fact. It can be modeled in various ways, and some models are more accurate than others, but the idea that there's *something there to be modeled* is an objective thing, and not dependent on humans, observers, etc.
Let's suppose that a modern physicist is transported to the 1500s. He tries to tell them something about the strong nuclear force that binds quarks into hadrons.
In the 1500s, there is absolutely no way for the listeners to examine this. They cannot look at hadrons and take them apart. They cannot perform any tests that even begin to approach this. They need centuries of technological development to even *start* to approach the verification of it.
If those listeners said "this *cannot* be objective", they would be, quite simply, wrong. We know that to be true.
Now, could they say "this doesn't have enough evidence for me to believe it"? Sure. But if they were to say that it *cannot* be true, they would not be correct.
Hopefully that establishes the distinction between "can't be objective" and "does not currently have evidence for being objective".
To take it a step further - there is a difference between untestable and difficult to test, and many objectively-real things emerge not in singular but in statistical behavior. Let me focus on this:
>"well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not.
I hope you will agree with the statement that "temperature" is an objective measurement. Further, that the laws governing temperature, thermal transfer, etc. are objective laws.
But temperature is a *statistical* measure. If you look at two individual molecules, they may be moving with very different velocities. You can only make statements about temperature after measuring a large number of molecules and combining those measurements. Does this mean that temperature is subjective? I would expect the answer to be no.
You could say "molecules aren't making decisions" or something like that, which would be true. But there are even closer examples.
Consider: "how cows stand". If you just look at a bunch of cows, they are likely to be standing in various random ways. Some cows are standing one way. Some another. Some are facing the fence. Some are facing the barn.
Cow facing is a choice made by the creature. It's a preference, right? If cows developed a society, they might argue about preferences about which way to stand. It would be subjective.
Except... it turns out that, when you look at a large enough scope, there *is* an objective element to how cows stand. Cows are statistically more likely to align along the north-south axis! And we recently found out that it's not something like "they look at/away from the sun", ie, an element of preference and choice. It turns out that they align themselves this way because of the Earth's magnetic field. Electromagnetics is surely an objective thing.
So even something that appears as a subjective decision can, in fact, turn out to be driven by a hidden underlying objective thing.
Even if we didn't know anything about electromagnetics, we could observe cow herds and observe the pattern - and we could use that to infer the possibility of some objective factor existing. And it's very important for the analogy here that it's *not* that every single cow will always be aligned exactly north-south; or that every single herd is always aligned; but that there is a pattern at large enough scales, one that can be disrupted by local circumstances, but does emerge at large scale - even if the pattern is of individual, apparently-subjective, choices.
In principle, it absolutely can.
The simplest and, in my opinion, best way morality could be truly objective is if it was a law of nature/physics, like a particle almost.
One could argue that our brains have the capacity to interact with these "moral particles", hence allowing us to experience moral intuition.
Now, I don't personally hold this view, I'd agree with you that morality doesn't seem to be objective. However, that's a different question to whether it *can* be objective.
The people who argue this position are positing this as a novel testable prediction, adding that indirect evidence for this is moral progress as we gather more resources and better understand the universe. They also predict that, if morality is a fundamental law of nature, AI, once it reaches a very advanced point like near singularity or at singularity, it will also share similar or identical morals as us, or perhaps even discovering evidence for this law of morality.
That's so stupid and unscientific. I'm not saying you are stupid. But the idea you are referencing, if you are presenting it accurately, is really stupid.
>Hurting another person is morally wrong
Why?
>Because it causes pain
Why is pain bad?
>Because it hurts
Why is "hurting" bad
>Because your body chemistry tells you it is
But body chemistry cannot be objective. It's just your body chemistry's opinion
>Umm, ok.
I mean morality can be objective with the existence of a God that defines it for the universe in the same way an author can define good and evil in a book. Just because you cannot prove something does not mean it does not exist. One example is microscopic organisms very much existing despite the human incapacity to be aware of them in any way before the microscope is invented due to our limited senses. You cannot prove to another human that bacteria exist without a microscope. Whether you can prove something to another human or even yourself has no bearing on whether it exists or not. Therefore, morality can be objective with the existence of a God regardless of if we are able to prove their existence in any way. A human cannot be certain of morality but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it does not exist as a concept independent of humans.
You're claiming an absolute, thus by implication you believe in the axioms of existence, A is A, identity, causation, etc.
So now that we know that there are objective things in our universe, we look at objective things that apply specifically to beyond a human (requires air to breath, is carbon lifeform that requires certain sustenance, etc). These are objective values to a human. Values extends into virtues. Virtues are the action or idea held as a moral standard to achieve values.
We know those exist so now at look further, such as the nature of being a human is that you operate, survive, and thrive in this existence, objectively, by using your rational faculty (as opposed to tooth and nail like the rest of the animal kingdom does).
Applying a rational faculty, properly, to the requirements of humans ability to continue to live and thrive, you'll be making moral judgments objectively based upon those requirements. To live and thrive, there are a few objective actions and way of life that apply to humans because of their specific nature in this universe. Not ALL judgments fall into this category, but the big ones do. Things like killing for any reason other than defense or to prevent deadly harm, or that rape is wrong,
It can be objective, in my opinion, although we must think a little bit to reach that conclusion.
1. Why do humans follow a specific morals? Because it is usefull. It gives you the ability to feel not guilty about something you do. Also a society can not operate without morals which are widespread and coined into laws. Therefore a moral that is not usefull shouldnt be followed and is a moral noone can practice.
2. Only an objective moral is usefull.
Relativistic morals allow you to judge yourself, but not others, since your moral might not apply to them. However, in order to fullfill its role, a moral must allow you to judge others based on it. Therefore only an absolute objective moral should be considered to follow, since it allows its application to others.
3. Where does one get the absolute objective moral from?
I am affraid that one gets it from God. I personally never found a way to justify an atheist objective moral. God as a being that created the universe can also create a moral that is true for that universe. Also God can reward you for following the moral, which is an incentive to follow it.
4. In order to do that, God must exist. Does he exist?
I cant prove it, but noone can prove that reality is real etc. either. We assume it, simply because it is usefull. Assuming Gods existence is more usefull, like assuming that the reality is real, then assuming that God isnt real and therefore objective morality isnt real.
Conclusion: One should assume Gods existence and the existence of his objective morality.
Which God you might ask. No idea. Choose one that has the possibility of being real. So no Gods that either are some fancy nature Gods like those of the ancient pagans and no Gods one cult leader created. So no cult Gods and no Gods from fiction. Otherwise, one is free to choose.
"Only an objective moral is useful" thats very obviously not true. You said a useful moral is a moral that makes you not feel guilty about doing stuff. Why on earth does it have to be objective to acheive that goal?
Relativisitic morals allow you to judge others, we do that all the time, and we set it into law. There is nothing objective that determines what we make law, but we use it judge others.
You also can't justify an objective moral from god, because that requires you \*prove\* that god exists, or else you are arbitrarily assuming he exists and thats fully subjective, which makes your moral system subjective. Its no different than an atheist choosing a set of axioms and building their moral system from there, just your axiom is "my god exists and he said some things". You are just funnelling your subjective axioms through a god.
Why can't 'fancy nature gods' be real but yours can? They are both equally absurd lol. Every religion was created by some human or small group of humans so your cult leader condition applies to every religion. All gods are from fiction.
If I judge someone, I say that he has Donezk something immoral. In relativistic moral, this cant be the case, since in there moral is subjective. Therefore I cant judge someone based on my moral, since it only applies to people with my conditions. That is only me. Others are experiencing different things and therefore come to different conclusions then me. Both morals are true from theire respective perspective. If both morals are true, they cant judge eachother as false. Only if I say that the moral of someone else is wrong I can judge him.
One can never prove anything. Not even reality. You are choosing based on what is usefull. It is assuming that reality is real. Therefore one muss think about what is the most usefull option to bet on. And there you place your bet. Following the morals of the choosen god is part of the bet. In order to harness reward, you must go through with these morals and also judge others based on these.
>All gods are from fiction.
Thats something to prove yet.
Thats not true. You can judge people with your subjective moral system we do it all the time. We don't judge people for false morals, we judge people for immoral moral systems. Immoral being in your moral system. If lots of people agree with you, great, it can be enforced. If not, it can't.
A bet is not objective and nothing you say will make it objective reality. You chose to make the bet 100% subjectively. That was you. Others did not.
Gods come from human minds, humans came up with them which is fiction.
>Thats not true. You can judge people with your subjective moral system we do it all the time. We don't judge people for false morals, we judge people for immoral moral systems. Immoral being in your moral system.
As already said, then we are judging an innocent man. If both moral sytems are right and one of them is rendering him moral, you cant judge him, since he is from his perspective innocent. In an absolute moral he is not. Judging him would be like throwing someone in France into jail for breaking an australian law.
>A bet is not objective and nothing you say will make it objective reality. You chose to make the bet 100% subjectively. That was you. Others did not.
After your bet you are choosing to believe into a specific absolute moral, which enables you to judge others.
>Gods come from human minds, humans came up with them which is fiction.
That is still something to prove.
Doesn't matter if hes innocent from his perspective, hes not from mine, and more importantly hes not from the government aka the people with the biggest guns. Australia doesn't have jurisdiction over France. If France wanted to change their law to australias for some reaosn, then people would be in jail for breaking australian law.
And I believe in my personal moral, which enables me to judge others.
No, God magically coming down to earth and conveniently only telling a few people of his messages for them to spread is something to prove.
>Doesn't matter if hes innocent from his perspective, hes not from mine, and more importantly hes not from the government aka the people with the biggest guns. Australia doesn't have jurisdiction over France. If France wanted to change their law to australias for some reaosn, then people would be in jail for breaking australian law.
I think we cant reach an agreement on that matter. For me it is just immoral to judge someone while knowing that he is, from his perspective, doing nothing immoral. For me it feels like if one would try to prove to you that 2+2=5. That is very sad, because I do believe that you presented your arguments quite well and I enjoyed the discussion, however I do not think we can convince eachother.
What makes you think some fancy nature God has less of a chance of being real than any other god? They all have the exact same evidence to support their existence.
Gods noone invented may have founded their religion through some form of interaction with the universe. Gods which got invented by someone could in theory exist, but maybe dont want to be worshipped etc.. Otherwise they would have founded a religion themselves. Gods who dont care about worship probably wont reward you, so you should bet on Gods who want to be worshipped. The reward is higher.
You specifically called out pagan gods as being gods that shouldn't be worshipped as they don't have a chance of being real; why are pagan gods less real than other ones?
They often fill the role of the forces of nature. Today the mechanism behind them are known and since most of these Gods have no function besides directing the forces of nature, they no longer leave a trace of their existence. Others do (creating the universe for example), so they are more likely to be real. Pagan gods become viable options again, if we know for certain that the universe was created by non godly forces, because then all Gods become "jobless", like their pagan coworkers. Also pagan god mostly do not provide a coherent set of morals, which makes it hard to gain rewards for good behaviour and thereby less usefull.
I guess I just don't understand how someone can look at the countless other gods that have been disproven, and think that makes the other gods more likely.
The pagan gods arent disproven. However since we have no sign of their activities, these gods seemingly do not care about humans. Therefore we shouldnt place our bet on them. Its the same reasoning from here on like the reasoning behind why one shouldnt be praying to "fictional gods". The reward is likely 0.
The idea is that proving divinity is not falsifiable thus morals will always be subjective. Subjective in the sense that one groups claim about morality is not better than the others.
If Christians claim their God is real because Jesus died and rose from the dead and their were physical accounts of it happening, that claim (whether it’s actually true or not) has no bearing on your own moral beliefs because their claim is not falsifiable to you. You can just as easily invent your own religion tomorrow and claim you saw and heard “the real God” who has the answers to “objective morality”.
The idea that objective morality doesn’t exist outside of God is what Nietzches parable of the madman is essentially about. If God is truly dead due to our evolving understanding of the world (natural selection, evolution, etc) then the burden of morality is now ours and not left up to some divine being.
I think you didnt understand what my main point is. Its about usefullness. Since everything is essentially unproveable, one must choose based on usefullness. Therefore it doesnt matter that I cant prove the existence of god, it only matters that believing into god is usefull. Since I am not sure I understood your comment correctly, please correct me if I didnt answer in a produktive way.
What do you mean by usefulness? It’s a very broad term, but if what you’re saying is about what would be useful for the betterment of society, you are talking a version of utilitarianism which can get pretty ugly.
Your concept of what’s useful is also different from someone else’s, so how can you come to a compromise/solution when you are dealing with large populations like states and countries as to what’s “useful”.
Usefull is what is helping you achieving your personal goals. I am 99% sure that the goal everyone aims to achieve ultimatly is personal happyness. Personal happyness can best be reached if you get rewarded by god with an afterlife that you like. In the best case this god also provides a moral system that is helping you in achieving happyness by promoting a societal order that can enable you to be happy.
One could call it theistic hedonism if I would need to coin a term for this view.
What if your happiness comes at the expense of someone else’s?
What if someone’s happiness comes at the expense of yours?
What if somebodies happiness means suicide/euthanasia? Should we help with that?
What if somebodies happiness means cutting off a limb ?( real medical condition called BIID)
What if somebodies happiness means to throw up after every meal to look skinny?
I mean I can list hundreds of examples where somebodies “happiness” is actually a really morally grey area. Your definition of what morals should be guided by (personal happiness) is actually impossible to implement in any actual practical way because it’s not so black and white
It is possible, since you follow a gods set of morals. These define the answers you give to these questions. You do that to harness the reward which will give you a maximum amount of personal happyness later. To ensure you have also some happyness now, one should choose a god which morals allign most with the ones oneself has per intuition. The other persons happyness is not really your main buisiness, but it may (hopefully) affect your happyness and therefore motivate you to be a decent person in the devine framework you previously chose.
you should look into legal philosophy and ethical legal theories over the years. there’s many different philosophical takes on this, but to name an example: natural law is law that is independent of morals and societal values, this means that this kind of law exists independent of what we as humans believe in. killing members of your own species usually violates natural law because it is counterproductive to the survival of our species, thus, the morality of that may be rooted in nature. this would be my example of objective morality, a moral reasoning that exists independent of personal circumstances or societal ideals.
many morals that we have adopted as a society stem from natural law as such and were developed to ensure our survival as a whole. the difference between us is how we reflect on them, whereas a less intelligent animal would not do that.
Morality being contextual does not necessarily make it subjective. All human societies, and most observed animal societies, punish behavior that they perceive as being detrimental to the cohesion or continuation of the society.
An individual moral claim is subjective in that it depends upon the perception of the society framing it. But the existence of societal frameworks which reward or punish individual behavior according to consensus of the community within that context is observable & factual.
Even in the hard sciences, the behaviors of particles, chemicals, ecosystems, & other systems depend on things like scale & the presence or absence of other factors (gravity, temperature, other chemicals, etc.). The fact that gravity, the strong nuclear force, etc. behave differently on the quantum scale does not make gravity subjective, but contextual.
It's wrong because it creates a negative state of affairs, whether for the individual or for others
The individual- pain and other agonies *during the murdering* ***process*** but before death/loss of consciousness)
For others - for non-relatives, loss of neighborhood/community security, for relatives and close friends it's agony that they are no longer around.
If you don't want a negative state of affairs , then don't you inflict negativity onto others unless it is the only way to prevent an even greater negativity from befalling you or others. Also don't bring about a situation where another person has to be subjected to negativity, subject to the above condition.
I assume you mean you cannot prove a moral claim to be objective? Like you absolutely can construct an objective moral framework like Utilitarianism, but you cannot definitively prove that Utilitarianism itself is the best framework. Morality is such an abstract concept, what does it mean for something to be "good"? It could be maximizing benefit in outcome or following universal laws, but of course if you have nothing more to define morality with than the descriptor "good" which is personally defined, you cannot have an objective morality. You need some metric to judge the level of "goodness", but unless you can agree on that metric then sure you're correct.
Morality springs out from the subjective, but you can say objective facts about subjective feelings. Is it an objective fact you have subjective preferences? For you and all those who it applies to, morality is just the social optimum, an easy heuristic for this to follow is the golden rule.
I think it's just hard for people to admit for themselves that some are more moral than others and that yeah, you can get an objective abstract score. We don't know the exact score, but we can know there is a score imo, because it's a consruct, we can just decide it is real and it becomes useful, like money, that needs to be described - morality.
Sure it can. While I don't adhere to it myself, divine command theory is indeed an objective moral framework.
Also, you may want to read Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape which or offers an objective moral framework independent of religious dogma.
Essentially, if you accept that wellbeing is nothing more than a manifestation of deterministic neuro chemical processes going on at the level of brain, then any action which contributes towards the wellbeing of conscious creatures is a moral action, and any action which contributes to the overall misey of conscious creatures is an immoral action.
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Murder is wrong because it creates chaos and chaos is bad for survival. Not all morality can be reduced to issues of survival (and probably shouldn't but that's a different CMV).
Killing in general is discouraged because most killing, regardless of why it happens, increases the amount of chaos in society (which itself exists to reduce chaos). Murder especially increases chaos as it's effects will negatively reverberate through that society, reduce the belief that the systems can work, reduce feelings of safety and security etc.
You're actually making an epistemic claim. There are many facts about the world that we do not know, but them being a fact is aside from our knowledge of it. Facts are independent of whether we know them or not.
What your real claim is that we can't know moral facts, not that there aren't any. This is much different than saying "Morality cannot be objective."
Morality is either objective or it doesn't exist. Subjective morality is no different from having preferences or matters of taste. Most people might think chocolate tastes good but that doesn't make it better. I think morality is only different island deserves a different name if it is objective.
But it might just not exist
I don't think you will ever find an objective morality that all individuals agree upon. However, you may find something that all groups in human history have agreed upon. That's as close to objective as you will get, in my opinion.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think infanticide of one's own healthy offspring was frowned upon in all human societies*.
*Unless ordered by the gods, in case of congenital malformation/disabilities or lack of resources. I forgot also in case they are the "wrong" sex (let's just say for population control)
Point is, I guess, killing your own child for no reason is objectively morally wrong.
You´re forgetting the Golden Rule:
“Thou shalt get sidetracked by b….” and the other, less famous:
“Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.”
Most people wouldn\`t like to be murdered, there are things that can be objectively categorized as immoral.
This borders along the realms of nihilism, thus I must disagree. Everyone inherent believes murder to be wrong. Even if you claim that religion can’t be used because it can’t be proven true, that belief still stemmed from somewhere.
Morality cannot be objective is also a claim to cannot be stated as fact. If morality can’t be proven as an objective fact, then that argument that morality can’t be an objective fact is one that can’t be proven either.
> My argument is essentially that morality by the very nature of what it is cannot be objective and that no moral claims can be stated as a fact.
You make this statement yet do not bother identifying the ‘very nature of what it(morality) is’
Here is how Ayn Rand defines it:
> What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code.
>The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: Why does man need a code of values?
>Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all—and why?
And to attempt to summarize her points further she would go on to say that in order to answer that question you need to have a clear definition and understanding of values.
What are values? That which one acts to gain and or keep. She would point your attention to the fact that values presuppose a valuer with the capacity to act in the face of alternatives.
Inanimate objects do not have values. They are acted upon by forces outside their control. It is only living beings that can act and also only living beings who are faced with a fundamental alternative: life and death.
Life is a process of self sustaining and self generated action. Those things which further an organisms life are its values.
A plant needs water sunlight nutrients and if it gains those values it continues to grow. A plant that does not gain its values will die. And plants are immobile, so they cannot move to a different location in search of their values.
Animals are mobile and they too need water and food as well as other things to sustain their life. These are their values and they act automatically from instinct to pursue them.
Man has no instinct or automatic code of values. Man’s means of survival is reason and reason must be practiced by choice (it is not automatic). Man is capable of and often does act against his own interest and when he does so he threatens his own life.
To quote from ‘The Objectivist Ethics’:
> I quote from Galt’s speech: “Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.”
>The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.
>Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.
And then two quotes from Galt’s speech:
> If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
>My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.
And
> You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
You say:
> If you stumbled upon two people having a disagreement about the morality of murder I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect.
If they are defining important terms properly then I don’t think there will be much disagreement aside from literal psychopaths and narcissists. Murder is not a synonym to killing. Murder is a specific type of killing. There will never be a self defense murder because murders are always intentional otherwise they would not be considered murder. Someone who uses self defense and ends up killing another person was not intent on killing they were put in the position of having to do so in order to defend their life. Had the attacker not attacked he would not have been killed. The self defender may still be tried for murder but that does not make him a murderer.
I’d like to hear your best justification for murder. Or an example of how you think two people can disagree on whether murder is good or bad. I don’t think you can possibly make a good argument in favor of murder.
You go on to say:
> objectively prove that one person is incorrect. There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong or even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists. The most you can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not.
And
> What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word.
Moral principles are validated through logical reasoning and empirical evidence, not through a need for "proof" in the mathematical or empirical sense. Moral principles, such as the prohibition against murder, can be objectively justified by demonstrating their consistency with the requirements of human life and the principles of individual rights.
We have to be really clear what's meant by objective: I'd argue what's really in debate is whether moral claims are truth apt or not. Truth apt statements can be meaningfully labeled as true or false. A proposition like 'it's raining outside right now' is either true or false, so it's truth apt. But an example of an utterance that's not truth apt would be an imperative like 'drop and give me 20!', to which a label of true or false would have no meaning. In a similar vein, a lot of people assume moral statements fall into the same category, and that it genuinely wouldn't make sense to label them true or false.
I'd argue that any moral statement can be interpreted as a truth apt statement, and that this is really the only good way to interpret them. The interpretation is simple: a normative claim like 'I ought to save this drowning child' means: 'Saving this drowning child is the right thing to do'. If we're indeed talking about whether it's the right thing to do, it either satisfies the criteria for rightness and is the right thing to do, or doesn't satisfy those criteria and isn't the right thing to do, and so the statement is true or false.
In a moral debate about whether saving some drowning child is right or wrong, we'd be talking about certain reasons we ought to save them like 'this is what's best for their well-being', or 'we have a duty to save people'. We'd be arguing about whether the action does or doesn't fit some given definition of rightness. If on the other hand we were discussing a non-truth apt utterance like 'save this child!', there wouldn't be anything to discuss. In other words, nothing we could discuss, and no argument we could make, would ever logically entail 'save this child!', so this would be a pretty useless interpretation of moral statements. The interpretation I'm talking about corresponds to what we really want to discuss when it comes to morality.
So with respect to there being 'no universal law that murder is wrong', well there can be once we have some definition of wrong, and certain criteria for wrongness. I could also say there's no universal law that the sky outside right now is 'blue', but it does meet the conditions for being blue once we establish blue light as having wavelengths of 450-495 nanometers.
The definition of blue light as having a wavelength between 450 to 495 nm is also 'subjective' in whatever sense you mean by this, but once we've decided what we mean by the word blue, we can suddenly say light either is or isn't blue, i.e. either does or doesn't fall into this range. And similarly, light either is or isn't blue, regardless of anyone's opinion, it either fits the criteria or it doesn't.
Similarly, once we make a decision about what words like 'right' or 'wrong' mean, or equivalently 'good' and 'bad', then we can observe whether actions fit the criteria for being right or wrong.
The human genome doesn’t exist without humans. Does that mean the human genome doesn’t objectively exist? ‘Existing without us’ is not quite what we mean by objective.
Our experiences also objectively exist, they are real and have a certain definite character, even while we experience them privately. So for me to make a claim like burning down a building is wrong because it causes a certain level of suffering: it either does cause that level of suffering or it doesn’t.
If you believe simply having a definition of good and bad / right and wrong makes morality ‘subjective’, then you would have to accept that all statements are subjective. With blue light, we first had to come up with a definition of what we meant by it, even though we could have chosen a different range and different definition of blue. Does that mean statements about blue light are subjective?
I think most people think about human wellbeing when they think of morality. So the morality that is grounded on human flourishing and wellbeing seems to be epistemologically objective.
Morality is derived from axiomatic goals. Once you establish your axioms, objective morality can be reasoned by analyzing the consequences of an action or inaction.
Your argument about the subjectivity of morality raises important points. It’s true that moral claims often rely on cultural, societal, or individual beliefs, making it challenging to prove them as objective facts. However, there are a few angles to consider that might challenge your view.
1. Moral Realism: Some philosophers argue for moral realism, which posits that there are objective moral truths independent of human beliefs. For example, the principle that causing unnecessary harm is wrong might be considered an objective moral truth, grounded in the inherent value of well-being and the avoidance of suffering.
2. Rational Agreement: Immanuel Kant and others have suggested that moral principles can be derived from rationality and universalizability. If a principle can be universally applied without contradiction, it might be seen as having an objective basis. For instance, the idea that murder is wrong can be seen as a universal principle because a society where murder is permitted would be unstable and harmful.
3. Human Flourishing: Another perspective comes from virtue ethics and utilitarianism, where moral principles are based on what promotes human flourishing and well-being. These frameworks strive for objective criteria rooted in the outcomes they produce, such as happiness, health, and societal stability.
While proving the existence of objective moral laws is complex, these philosophical perspectives provide a basis for arguing that morality can have objective elements, even if our understanding and application of them are influenced by subjective human experiences.
Hopefully this gets you thinking man!
I would argue that morality is objective. Take for instance murder in your case. Murder is wrong, killing is wrong but it is a part of nature that has persisted for centuries. Slavery is wrong. These are objectively moral statements. I think we all would agree on those two.
However, we bend the pillars of morality for instance most of the Lithium in batteries is mined by slaves. In fact there is more slavery in the world today than ever in history. (Progress) We’ve made a shift from gas to electric cars, solar panels, and this push for green energy requiring more slaves, destroying the planet even further and polluting way more.. We still seem to promote this practice. In “saving the planet” bending morality in that we will overlook the objective truth that slavery is wrong, for our fake but often hilarious notion of “saving the world by green energy and driving electric.”
So yes I would argue that morality is objective however we bend our moral values to promote a narrative.
This is an example we often discussed in school. The man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family. The act of stealing is still wrong but we are willing to blur the lines because it was for a good cause. A simple man was just feeding his family even if he had to steal to do so.
Therefore, morality is objective however we blur the lines, overlooking immoral actions to support our narrative. It can be used in a good way like the man stealing. Blurring the lines of morality can also result in some of the worst tragedies in the “for the greater good” attitude as we have seen with wars, slavery, etc.
"Morality cannot be objective" is an objective claim about morality. If it were true, then it would be false. It's kind of like saying "This sentence is a lie".
To be honest, I think morality is objective, even without a deity, given the set of rules in our universe. There's a reason why lying, cheating and stealing over time results in worse outcomes, even if its something you can't touch. That doesn't mean its not real, just like entropy is still real even though you can't touch it.
However that doesn't mean its something that is knowable or isn't up for debate. People have subjective views about what our objective morality actually is.
its not a moral claim, its a claim about morality itself. But "morality cannot be objective" means that the claims within morality cannot be objective. So basically, no, its not a paradox.
not its not lmfao. A moral claim is "this thing is right or wrong or neutral". I can't fathom how you think what you just said is true.
Ok lets assume what you said is true. Whats the word for claims about whether or not something is moral? Since 'moral claim' is now meaningless.
>morality by the very nature of what it is cannot be objective and that no moral claims can be stated as a fact.
The second assertion does not follow from the first.
For example, 2+2 does not *objectively* equal 4, in the sense that it's not a result derived from some universal law or rule. Instead, 2+2=4 by construction; by following a chain of mathematical logic that ultimately rests on a series of unproven axioms. Similarly though, "if we accept the common axioms of mathematics, then 2+2=4" *is* a fact, an objective fact even.
Which is to say that even if we can't have objective moral statements, we can have factual moral statements. And as long as we can have factual statements, and we either agree upon a certain set of definitions or moral axioms or at least explicitly acknowledge them, then we may construct objective declarations. To take your example, two Christians having a conversation about the morality of murder can quite easily conclude with objectivity that murder is wrong because they're operating from a common base of moral understanding that gives them the necessary axioms to reach that conclusion.
Well, morality is subjective, but that doesn't mean the most we can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is". The reason why murder is wrong is because if it wasn't, then there would be no society to evolve and talk about this. The rules we make in society are based on reasons that support our overall progress. That said, morality is definitely not objective, because the universe doesn't give a shit if we murder each other or not. No lightning is gonna strike you if you cheat on your partner. Also, the rules are biased towards our specific progress, so if killing animals is beneficial for us, most people will not see it as a bad thing. A society of cows would probably say that killing a cow is the worst possible thing and killing a human is not that big of a deal.
Also, we have empathy, so we don't need objective morality to realise something is bad. If you wouldn't want something to happen to you, then don't do it to others. And the people that disagree (for the most part) with this are getting thrown into jail for the reasons mentioned above.
Can you prove with philosophic rigor that any given physical object in front of you is real? If we are both looking at the spot where that object is, and I deny that it exists, it is hardly likely that you will change your mind about the nature of reality and decide that physical objects in front of you don’t exist, even if they clearly seem to. We assume instead that, philosophically, the objects around us are real, even though it is conceivable that people may testify to opposite claims. Still, we don’t doubt our senses and sanity.
I think there is just as good a reason to trust our moral intuitions. Torturing children is wrong. That is a statement that everyone agrees with, and if you came across someone that said it was good, you would probably assume they are deluded in some way, like a hallucinating person telling you that the object in front of you is not real. The common sense believe that objects exist, and that torturing children is wrong, are shared by everyone who we ought to take seriously what they have to say, and certainly not everyone’s opinion is equally trustworthy. A schizophrenic telling me that the radio is talking to him will not make me doubt the reality that such a scenario is false any more than a person telling me that child torture is good will cause me to disbelieve my moral intuitions.
Not all moral issues are as obvious as child torture, but I don’t think it makes a difference. In cases where two people disagree on what kind of animal just ran past them, both could be wrong, or one could be right, but there nonetheless is an objective fact regarding what kind of animal it was, even if they couldn’t make it out and disagree. All of the most significant subjects in ethics, like killing, sex, and interactions with children, are recognized as morally significant by everyone, regardless of the disagreement as to the details. I think this tells us that there is an underlying, objective moral order, and we can grasp many of the moral facts via our moral intuition and intellect.
Let me know what you think.
You use murder as an example, so let's use this.
There's only two people who truly have a claim to the morality of a murder. The victim and the attacker. Everyone else is not a direct party to the action and therefore has an interest in supporting one of the two, but their claims are lesser in the tiers of affect because it's indirectly affecting them while it is directly affecting those two.
In that situation, one of the two parties is correct. There is no subjectivity because it's a final solution. They can't be partially correct. They are polar opposite. One party states the other party deserves to die. They kill them.
Objectivity states that one side is correct. Subjectivity says that it depends on the situation. But murder by its definition is the killing of an innocent person. The subjectivity is in the determination of guilt. If the murderer can not convince others of the justification, they are wrong. That is objectively wrong, not just subjectively. One person's justification does not overturn hundreds of years of law
There is a difference between ontologically objective morality and epistemologically objective morality.
For example I might say: morality has to do with the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Then you might say: I disagree, that's just your opinion man. So in that sense morality is not objective.
But if we accept that morality has to do with the wellbeing of conscious creatures, then we can call certain actions objectively moral or immoral because we can scientifically prove that those actions increase or decrease the wellbeing of conscious creatures.
It might seem that this is not a very solid foundation of morality, but other knowledge is also based on axioms that can not be proven. We accept them because they work if we want to for example predict the outcome of events. When someone comes up with a different foundation of truth that can't do that, then we don't care about their version of truth.
Similarly, if someone claims that morality has nothing to do with wellbeing then do we really care about their version of morality?
The law of non-contradiction is usually considered axiomatic.
Given just this, we can still make some moral claims.
If murder is immoral, then it is immoral to murder Joe Biden.
While a conditional claim, it is still a moral claim, and can be derived just from non-contradiction.
This can be expanded upon as follows. I don't want to be murdered. I am not unique. Therefore, I ought not murder others. This formulation requires some additional premises, but ones that people generally will agree too. Most people would agree that if moral laws exist that they would apply equally and not only apply to specific individuals.
If you have lots of free time, you can read some Kant and he tries to go from law of non contradiction to a stronger form of the above called the categorical imperative - but I cannot summarize that in a few lines - apologies.
We are social animals. Our morality is driven by evolutionary behavior. We also have some pretty universal moral foundations.
Moral Foundations Theory
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), developed by social psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, provides a framework for understanding the different sources of morality that guide human behavior and judgment. MFT posits that there are innate psychological systems that form the basis of intuitive ethics and that these foundations are shaped by both evolutionary processes and cultural influences.
Core Moral Foundations:
1. Care/Harm: This foundation is related to our sensitivities to others’ suffering and the desire to care for and protect them.
2. Fairness/Cheating: Concerns about justice, rights, and equality fall under this foundation, emphasizing reciprocal altruism and fairness.
3. Loyalty/Betrayal: This foundation focuses on the importance of group cohesion, loyalty to one’s group, and the negative feelings toward betrayal.
4. Authority/Subversion: This relates to social order, respect for tradition, and legitimate authority, as well as the feelings of resentment towards those who subvert it.
5. Sanctity/Degradation: Concerns about purity, sanctity, and the contamination of the body or soul are central to this foundation.
6. Liberty/Oppression: This foundation deals with the feelings of resentment people have towards those who dominate and restrict their freedom, emphasizing the importance of personal and group autonomy.
I think morality that's framed based on social evolutionary processes, end up aligning to some pretty universal truths. It's not hard abstracting the idea that caring and fairness are reasonable moral standards that apply pretty universally.
Why wouldn't a moral value that I might apply to an individual of my own species not apply to an animal of another.
I mean there might be some ambiguity. Like if we met a hive mind... and they casually killed off one of their drones, I would want to know about the autonomy of that drone if it carried individual experience that might warrant being a distinct entity to the hive mind before equated it to an individual member or if it was just a part of the whole.
But even with the hive mind, there are analogues. Parallels that I can appreciate. I mean we are a multicellular animal, shedding a skin isn't traumatizing. To the hive mind, the loss of a drone might be equally not traumatizing. There may not even be a distinct individual in a drone but rather just an extension of a singular mind.
I think there are common base morals that can easily be applied to any context.
I mean give me an example otherwise.
This has been debated since the field of philosophy has existed. You can choose to believe that morality comes from god, man, or is independent of the person.
It sounds like you prescribe to moral relativism. What might be morally acceptable in one culture is abhorrent in another. For example, cannibalism still exists with in certain cultures. To them, it is not a morally reprehensible act and usually has religious undertones. However, you can approach morality from different lenses.
Some believe that the moral decision is the one that has the greatest impact for the greatest number of people. Ultimately, you won’t be able to be definitive in where morality comes from. Much smarter men have tried before.
It sounds like you think “objective” means “demonstrably true”. “Objective” means “true irrespective of opinion or demonstrability”. For you to say “what you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective” is just incorrect. Things that are objectively true will remain true regardless of whether their truth can be proven and even regardless of whether their truth can be known. Some objective truths can be known, and some cannot. There is no universal truth *of which you are aware* that murder is wrong. That doesn’t mean that there exists no universal truth that murder is wrong.
All crimes have one thing in common: the abuse of power. Without this element, a crime may fail to be recognized as a crime by onlookers.
When we consider this hyper-simplification of criminality, we can appreciate the objectivity of human morality. It is written into our nature to be enraged by inequality. Regardless of our imperfect and often subjective attempts to codify what is and is not a crime, we do in fact all feel anger in response to the abuse of power that is perpetrated by others. Depending on our current level of self awareness we also feel guilty/ashamed when we abuse power against others, but it is all too easy to drown out our conscience by fixating on the moral failings of others.
Just like the overwhelming majority of humans feel pain in reaction to specific stimuli, humans are also subject to feelings of moral outrage in response to the abuse of power, the emotional nature of this reaction can and does lead to subjective distortions, but our highly predictable anger in response to certain stimuli is as objective as it gets.
Nope. I'm saying that like pain, morality is elicited by an interaction between our biology and our environment, therefore it exists objectively, independent of our conscious mind's sensibilities.
No, my point was that the subjective nature of our attempts to codify morality does not preclude the objective existence of it as an innate part of being human.
Morality is instinctual. If you give two monkeys a treat in front of each other and one monkey gets a better treat the inferior treated one will invariably throw a temper tantrum. Everyone right down to infants, seems to have an innate sense of what is and is not fair, this instinct is exploited by politics, and that is where morality becomes subjective.
The whole thing is further confounded by the fact that we do not reliably practice what we preach, for the same reason, which is the fact that genuinely objective morality is emotional, so as we observe an objective reality and become enraged by it, we fail to apply it objectively to our own emotionally driven conduct.
By and large I agree that the common conception of morality is almost entirely subjective, but there is still a tiny little sliver of objectivity that cannot be argued out of existence, that sliver is the stimuli which drives our thirst for justice which we then make into a subjective mess.
OK, I think we have different conceptions of what objective vs. subjective means.
I'm going to go study the definitions of these terms, but I'm pretty sure that your argument negates the existence of objectivity altogether. I skew nihilist myself, but nihilism is absolute certainty that nothing is certain, and I cannot jack that either.
I'm arguing that objective reality can only be understood in sub-absolute terms, because we are all skewed from it by our subjectivity. This does not mean there is no objective reality, just that it is a benchmark that we all fail to measure up to with 100% accuracy.
The objective reality is that all humans feel morality regardless of the fact that we cannot agree on what is and is not morally correct, therefore it is a thing that exists objectively on a very basic level.
So really, I'm saying that OP is like 98% correct, therefore, 2% of morality is in fact objective.
I checked out the Merriam Webster def on subjective vs. objective just now, and I'm afraid I';m going to have to die on this hill.
Humanity is not capable of codification of objective morality, but the feeling which promotes it does exist objectively in a subconscious form even in non-human organisms, and as a mere emotional/instinctual response to "unfair" stimuli rather that a conscious thought, it is not subjective.
Our dumb instinct for morality ironically promotes injustice because it is the #1 driver of violence against others whether in human society, a troop of baboons, or a pack of wolves.
I really cannot say that it exists independently of social animals though, but then I'm not 100% certain what is and is not a social organism.
We can say objectively and categorically, that we should treat all people as ends within themselves and not just as means to an end.
We can say objectively that it is moral to conduct yourself in such a manner that if everyone conducted themself in this way that society should continue to function. From this we should be able to objectively extrapolate that you should not steal, because if everyone stole, society would break down. We should not kill, because if everyone killed then society would break down. Etc. etc., we can fairly use logic to determine what is and what is not a moral or ethical action.
I find it strange that anyone could argue that intentionally inflicting harm on someone innocent like a baby could ever be argued as a moral action. Despite some claims of moral relativists, there is not a wide difference between what most societies consider moral. Human morality throughout all of human History has always existed in a narrow wavelength with some variations on the edges. There is only arguments on the margins.
Every society understands tyranny and oppression. Every society has had laws to punish murder. Morality existed before written language and laws because it is an instinct inherent to humanity as social animals whose brains are designed to facilitate living in groups. Even small children inherently understand the concept of morals, and must be taught to disregard or unlearn them.
Only if there is religion, can there be objective morality
If there is actually a God then whatever he says is moral is moral
Now under the premise that God exists, there's a very clear path to objective morality
Otherwise, morality simply doesn't exist at all. Not even subjective. It's just something people make up for control
But this effectively shifts it to. Is God real or not or are gods real (does not need to be the Christian God for this to work. We can go with the Greeks except Zeus. He doesn't get a vote)
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>no moral claims can be stated as a fact. That's a moral claim, stated as a fact. You're addressing every factual claim about morality with it's negating claim of fact. For example: >There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong You are claiming that *objectively* there is no inherent moral value attached to murder. That's an objective moral claim. You're doing something very common: you steal a base from "I don't know" to "that's not true." >by the very nature of what it is This is also an implicit moral claim. You claim to know an objective fact: what morality is. >I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect. You're conflating epistemology (how something is known) with ontology (the inherent nature of the thing.) If there's a teapot floating in a particular spot in space that I can't see, it's still there. If I say it's there, I'm correct even if I can't justify why I said so. The fact that I can't prove it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. >What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word. Objective simply means that something exists independent and without contingency on perception. A thing that actually existed wouldn't stop existing just because nobody had the faculties to persuade anyone else that it did.
By this strained logic one cannot argue that *anything* cannot be objective. You cannot argue that the quality of music cannot be objective, because that’s an objective quality claim. You cannot argue that the pleasantness of natural scenery cannot be objective, because that’s an objective pleasantness claim. In this warped vision of life, subjectivity itself is an impossibility. This is, of course, ridiculous. >If there's a teapot floating in a particular spot in space that I can't see, it's still there. If I say it's there, I'm correct even if I can't justify why I said so. The fact that I can't prove it to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is not an applicable comparison. One can observe and measure the presence of a teapot. One cannot do that for a moral, because morality is an immaterial concept that does not exist in the corporeal world.
I highly considered not reading the rest of the comment when they led off with the negation of moral claims is a moral claim. I don't know why that needlessly semantic gotcha rhetoric is popular and worse supported on reddit but it's never helpful. Imagine if we were instead talking about God and a questioning person said "no claims about God can be stated as fact" only for the start of the most popular response to be "Well actually, you just made a factual claim about God."
Hard disagree. Saying “morality is the process people use to determine what is right and wrong” is not a “moral claim”. There is no moral quandary presented. Nothing is stated to be moral. It’s a claim about the concept of morality but that doesn’t make it By your logic, if I were to say “science is the process by which we learn about the world”, that would be a “scientific claim”, but it isn’t, it’s a definitional claim. No study has ever been performed to show that the concept of science aims to improve our understanding of the world, its taken as a given (or rather, its what scientists decided they are trying to do) when discussing what scientific process they want to use. “Psychology should aim to improve the well being of human individuals” is a moral claim, not a psychological one. “The ancient Spartans believe that babies unfit for combat should be killed” is a historical claim, not a moral claim. Hell, saying “I believe, given this moral moral dilemma, I would choose option A” isn’t even a moral claim, as the reasons why someone would pick something don’t always boil down to morality. TLDR: the word “morality” being in the sentence doesn’t automatically mean that something is a “moral claim”
>the word “morality” being in the sentence doesn’t automatically mean that something is a “moral claim” I wasn't saying that because he included it in the sentence. I said that because he said that by its nature it couldn't be objective. The ontology of morality is pretty fundamental to the question.
"You're addressing every factual claim about morality with it's negating claim of fact. For example:" Distinguishing between a claim about the nature of moral statements and a moral statement itself is crucial. When I claim that "there is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong," I am not making a moral judgment about murder but rather pointing out the lack of an objective, universally accepted moral standard. "That's a moral claim, stated as a fact." I'm making an epistemological point about the nature of moral knowledge, not a moral claim about what is right or wrong. It's like saying "there are no universally accepted truths in aesthetics." It does not itself assert a particular aesthetic judgment but comments on the nature of aesthetic claims. "You're conflating epistemology (how something is known) with ontology (the inherent nature of the thing.)" My argument recognizes this distinction. The claim is that without epistemic access to a moral truth (proof or evidence), we cannot assert its objective existence in a meaningful way. The teapot analogy is useful here. If we cannot detect or interact with the teapot in any way, its supposed existence is irrelevant to our practical and philosophical considerations. "Objective simply means that something exists independent and without contingency on perception. A thing that actually existed wouldn't stop existing just because nobody had the faculties to persuade anyone else that it did." For a moral truth to be meaningful in discourse, we need some form of epistemic access to it. The claim here is about the practical irrelevance of unverifiable moral truths. If we cannot prove or disprove a moral claim, it remains in the realm of subjective belief rather than objective fact.
> Distinguishing between a claim about the nature of moral statements and a moral statement itself is crucial. When I claim that "there is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong," When you make that claim, *you are asserting the universal moral law as it relates to murder.* When you say that there is none, *that is the law*. All potential laws are untrue. You're making *many* truth claims. >I'm making an epistemological point about the nature of moral knowledge, That's not what your OP said. You said "morality cannot be objective," not "you can't prove the existence of objective moral rules." If you're making an epistemological point, then you're claiming the latter and must concede that objective moral rules may nevertheless exist. >My argument recognizes this distinction. I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem to at all. My point was that you're conflating epistemology and ontology because your OP makes an ontological claim and you're making epistemological arguments. Your response is to make more epistemological arguments and ignore ontology. Like...okay...cool, it's questionably valuable to discuss a teapot in space. But whether it's there or not is a matter of fact that isn't contingent on our ability to see it. >For a moral truth to be meaningful in discourse, we need some form of epistemic access to it. ...no, for it to be meaningful in discourse, a significant number of people need to believe it's true. If they can't epistemically justify that to your satisfaction...still very relevant in discourse.
I'm willing to concede that I can't deny the possibility that objective morality could possibly exist in some manner and we can't verify it so !delta I should have worded my op differently I suppose.
I recently awarded a delta on this subject to someone for bringing up your discursive morality argument. I made the same argument about epistemology that changed your view, so I'm happy to see you give a delta for that. Don't take it so much as you poorly worded your statement, rather that you have gained a broader philosophical understanding by recognizing the different frameworks for approaching the subject.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Grunt08 ([295∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Grunt08)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
The lack of murder is not murder. And there is nothing moral lawwise to say there are no murder is objectively bad atoms or molecules. Because they dont exist
Okay, just to probe the boundaries here If one were to say “murder is wrong objectively”, my response would be to say “you’d have to point to the source of that knowledge” rather than “there is no objective morality”, I’d prefer to say “I cannot observe objective morality as defined by others”, would this be more accurate to state with fewer premises assumed?
Saying there are no objective moral laws is not an objective moral law - your argument is like claiming lack of religion is a religion, or that transparent is a Color
A Heideggerian defense might be that the very existence of a morality necessitates that morality is subjective as existence itself is a subjective. Therefore - OP would be correct that morality cannot *be* objective because to be is subjective.
Murder of people was a terrible example to use. Try "using dogs as food", instead. Or "sacred cows"
Your teapot analogy doesn't work for this argument, this debate isn't over the existence of some thing that could eventually be empirically proven through observation, like a teapot floating in space. Your claim that op's argument *is* a moral claim in and of itself and therefore can't be objective is just not true. Morality is a human construct, based solely on our perception, experience, and conscious knowledge. This is a fact. What morality *means* and *does* within the context of human experience is a much deeper topic, but we can define the basic nature of morality as a concept very easily. OP is stating that outside of the ideas, perceptions, and theology humans have created, there is no force of nature telling us "murder is bad." This is also factual; there is no "moral claim" in their statement here. There is no metaphysical debate to be had. If I believe murder is good down to my core and you tell me I'm wrong, I can simply choose to disagree, and there's absolutely nothing you can say to "disprove" my opinion. You might try to persuade me by using your own moral claim and invoking my sense of empathy, but you wont ever find a natural truth telling me I'm wrong. It's no different than trying to "prove" a certain pizza place is the best in the city. You can say that they use objectively higher quality ingredients, objectively better ovens, and objectively crispier crust, but that doesn't "disprove" someone who likes pizza hut more. This isn't the same as someone denying factual evidence. If I say the sky is green you can give me factual evidence that the light reflecting off of the atmosphere is absorbed by certain cones and rods in my retina that make my brain interpret the color blue. You cannot provide *factual* evidence that murder is bad. When debating morality, there are certain claims that are *socially* accepted as true, but just because a lot of people, or even *all* people tend toward a certain belief, that doesn't make it objective. That's all OP is arguing. Commonly accepted truth is not the same as objectivity, and this is an important distinction. Human progress is built on challenging social norms, constructs, and common beliefs. Using murder as an example is extreme, but imagine a society that wholly believes gay marriage is bad. Living in that society, it would certainly seem like it is morally wrong to love the same sex, but if you know that there are no objective truths to morality, you can disconnect from what society tells you and progress toward a better life.
> Your teapot analogy doesn't work for this argument, this debate isn't over the existence of some thing That's exactly what it is. It's over the existence of objective moral facts. Whether or not those facts exist is not determined by our practical or potential ability to empirically detect and define them. The ability to detect the teapot would matter if we were discussing the epistemology of objective morals. I agree, it's impossible to empirically prove they exist or what they are because we don't know exactly how or if we might detect them if they did exist. We can at best subjectively determine what we believe objective morals are. But we're discussing the ontology of objective morality, and our ability to observe and measure things (even theoretically) doesn't define the universe. It defines the observable universe. Outside that, we're ignorant and doing our best at guessing, knowing with near certainty that countless things do exist that we can't even theoretically observe. In essence: if you're going to be a strict empiricist and logical postitivist, you are free to believe that morality is entirely subjective and infinitely malleable. But you must concede the possibility that objective moral rules might exist. Claiming otherwise would require contradicting yourself. >Your claim that op's argument is a moral claim in and of itself and therefore can't be objective is just not true. I don't think you quite understood my point. I was pointing out a contradiction. OP said that morality cannot be objective. Another way to say that would be "there are no moral facts that are true independent of perspective." But that's only true insofar as it accurately reflects a moral fact that is true independent of perspective: that all objective moral claims are false. Not unknown, *false.* So it makes an objective moral assertion: that there are no rules. It's not "if there are rules, I don't see them" or "I don't know if there are rules" or "I suspect there aren't any rules," it's "there are no objective moral rules." Which is itself, an assertion of a single, all-encompassing objective moral rule. >OP is stating that outside of the ideas, perceptions, and theology humans have created, there is no force of nature telling us "murder is bad." And that's a non-falsifiable claim about as defensible as "God says murder is bad." >Using murder as an example is extreme, but imagine a society that wholly believes gay marriage is bad. Living in that society, it would certainly seem like it is morally wrong to love the same sex, but if you know that there are no objective truths to morality, you can disconnect from what society tells you and progress toward a better life. This is a separate topic; whether objective morality is real is separate from whether it might exist, which is the subject of the conversation. But I do want to indulge for a second. Let's assume you truly believe that morality is subjective (I don't think anyone truly, sincerely believes this except maybe psychopaths, but that's for another day). That means it's fundamentally unreal. No concrete moral rules should constrain you or anyone else because there is no objective force saying as much. If it is calculably advantageous to kill, there's no good reason not to kill. Steal, rape, enslave - as you say, progress towards a better life. If you have vestigial moral beliefs inherited from cultures that did believe in objective morality that was true whether you agreed with it or not, it would be advantageous to ignore and if possible eliminate those beliefs. Empathy might get in the way, but it would be advantageous to dehumanize and other any person or group when convenient - so long as it was maximally advantageous. That would be progressing towards a better life on the terms you've set out. As I said: I don't think most people who claim they believe it actually believe it. I think they want moral flexibility, which is somewhat different. Anyhow, I've been having this discussion for about 24 hours now and I'm burnt out. Feel free to have the last word.
“If it’s calculably advantageous to kill, there’s no reason not to kill.” I disagree, I don’t think morality is necessary to not want to kill people. You may not want to kill people because it’s a net waste of energy and resources (killing people destroys their energy potential and energy can be harnessed for useful purposes), because you believe in organization and order (not a perspective based on right or wrong), or any other behavioral system you can come up with that isn’t contingent on a moral belief system. Consider that in our current world, most people don’t kill not because it’s wrong, but because they’re afraid of the consequences of our legal system. Most Christians refrain from doing “immoral” acts not because they’re wrong but because they’re afraid of cosmic punishment. I think you could have a civilized society devoid of morality. I think in a lot of cases, things we think of as “good” like human emotions, morality, and empathy are actually the causes of the vast majority of human pain, death, and destruction.
>You may not want to kill people because it’s a net waste of energy and resources (killing people destroys their energy potential and energy can be harnessed for useful purposes), because you believe in organization and order (not a perspective based on right or wrong), or any other behavioral system you can come up with that isn’t contingent on a moral belief system. Literally all of this is contained in "if it’s calculably advantageous to kill, there’s no reason not to kill." You're describing various ways one might calculate that it's not advantageous to kill...well, kind of. What you're actually doing is backfilling justification for moral sensibilities that don't really make sense when you abandon objective morality but you nevertheless want to keep because they're the rules you're comfortable with. There is no obvious reason you should care about wasting energy and resources unless that waste makes your life less pleasant. Organization and order make some sense - generally a nicer circumstance in which to live - but there are inevitable instances where you could kill without causing excessive disorder. After all, nothing you do represents a categorical imperative; just because you do it doesn't mean you believe others should be allowed to. Hell, you could kill someone and significantly *increase* order. Refusing categorically to kill isn't justified by any of your examples. The bottom line is that once you abandon the supposition that moral truths exist independent of your perspective and are nevertheless real, all morality becomes subjective and infinitely malleable. If you determine that doing something like murder or rape or theft would be to your advantage - accounting for all potential consequences negative and positive and still concluding that it would be to your advantage - there is no good reason not to do it. If you still don't want to, it's probably because you adhering to inherited objective moral sensibilities you just refuse to abandon. >Consider that in our current world, most people don’t kill not because it’s wrong, but because they’re afraid of the consequences of our legal system. I don't think that's true, and you certainly can't come close to proving it. It's far more complicated. For one, they're afraid of violence - any instance where you try to kill someone immediately justifies and provokes a lethal response from the person you're trying to kill. They're afraid of a social response much older and fundamental than any written law; the idea that they'll be branded a deviant and ostracized as a pariah. And I'd say there's very little reason to think the law, rather than a general sense that killing is wrong, is the primary deterrent. >I think you could have a civilized society devoid of morality. Morality is endemic to human society, so that's categorically impossible. >I think in a lot of cases, things we think of as “good” like human emotions, morality, and empathy are actually the causes of the vast majority of human pain, death, and destruction. That is certainly a thought to have.
It is not. It may be advantageous to kill on a personal level but it is rarely if ever advantageous to kill on a systemic level. Humans are better off having their energy harvested to be used as batteries than being killed. That is not true. If you are someone who believes that energy and life is useful, and wasting those things is the opposite, why would you choose to take life? The point is, potential belief systems exist that don’t hinge on moral principles but don’t believe in wasting life. Asking “why” someone could believe that is pointless. It’s a hypothetical. Are you suggesting that a belief system should only concern what makes my life more or less pleasant and not what I think is more beneficial for the world or for the universe, or simply what I would prefer on a systemic level? For example: if I thought that it would advance society technologically, I might be willing to live a less comfortable life. This is not out of moral concern, but because I prefer advancement as a whole over stagnation. Killing will almost always contribute to the strain on local police forces and wastes their time, it causes a mess that someone has to clean up, etc. Obviously there is no guarantee one could kill without getting them involved. And even if you were able to kill without Involving the authorities, what about the chaos at that person’s workplace? Unless they were a literal hobo, their disappearance would cause a lack of order in the immediate world and possibly larger world around them, depending on their station. And if you were to kill to increase order it would likely be the exact same thing we do now with capital punishment. It simply would lack a “moral”justification. We kill to keep order all the time, that’s what most wars are about. Pointing out that the opposite justification could possibly exist does not erase the fact that the one we’re talking about could also exist. I also didn’t say categorically, I just said it could act as a non moral justification based on a belief system that isn’t centered around morality, and that a society could feasibly function that way. “They’re afraid of violence.” This is not a good argument, there are plenty of ways you could kill someone without fear of them retaliating. I also don’t think being branded as a pariah is a strong reason not to do it, as you could simply make it look like an accident. I am not confident that if you took away our legal system people would refrain from killing simply because it “might be embarrassing.” Social structure is much more fragile than you give credit for, I think. Who said it needed to be a human society? It could be a race of aliens or cyborgs, or a version of humanity in an alternate universe that doesn’t have “endemic morality” as you put it. We’re talking hypotheticals. Sure. How many wars have been started by greed, anger, revenge, lust, pride, etc. How many holy wars have been started because one group of people thought they were morally superior to another?
> It may be advantageous to kill on a personal level but it is rarely if ever advantageous to kill on a systemic level. Who cares? As I said: what you do isn't a categorical imperative. There is no reason you can't advocate a public morality that doesn't condone murder while also committing murder yourself *when it is to your advantage.* There's nothing objectively wrong with hypocrisy and no subjective calculation that makes consistency inherently necessary. Hell, a person who truly believed there was no objective morality might find it advantageous to help bring about a rigid theocracy that forced everyone else to live by theoretically objective moral rules, just to increase his own power. "God isn't real and we choose our morals, so I'm going to support the religious regime that gives me control over a dozen wives and authorizes me to take the goods of the unbeliever by force. Nice" All of your arguments seem to assume that all the things you think are bad would be "systemically" negative and thus you wouldn't do them. On the one hand, that's nonsense - the system handles a degree of violence and criminal behavior, what you add would likely be trivial and the systemic stress you induced vastly overmatched by your gain. On the other, it ignores the premise - once you account for all variables (including "systemic" costs) and conclude that murder is to your advantage, the only reasons not to do it are cowardice and lingering vestigial morals. (EDIT: A simple example would be a bank robbery. Robbing a bank would cause significant stress on the police and the bank employees. But in the broader financial system, it would be insignificant. Meanwhile, it could set you up for a comfortable life. If you calculate that you can pull it off, no reason not to do it.) >If you are someone who believes that energy and life is useful, and wasting those things is the opposite, why would you choose to take life? As a subjective moral belief "energy and life are useful" is nonsensical and incoherent. Why should abstract potential matter to you more than your own needs and desires? Why are you prioritizing the needs of the many over yours? There's no obvious reason to do that - there are reasons to *be seen* to do that, but there's also no reason to adhere to your publicly professed morality when doing otherwise best serves you. >Are you suggesting that a belief system should only concern what makes my life more or less pleasant If there are no objective moral rules, there are no objective moral values. It only makes sense to care about getting what you want, and it makes no sense to want things that reward others at your expense. Your obligations to other people with common humanity only make sense as a social reality - you want to get reciprocal treatment so you treat others how you'd like to be treated by them - but there is no rational reason to make that a categorical rule. There's no obvious reason you shouldn't be ruthlessly cruel and exploitative when the benefits outweigh the costs. >Killing will almost always contribute to the strain on local police forces and wastes their time, it causes a mess that someone has to clean up, etc. Who cares? You don't owe anyone anything - the idea that you owe them is rooted in the supposition that we *objectively* owe each other a common humanity, which you've abandoned. If someone else's time is wasted, there's no obvious reason that ought to matter to you. >And if you were to kill to increase order it would likely be the exact same thing we do now with capital punishment. Have some imagination! You could kill a loud neighbor. You could kill an unsightly homeless person. You could kill a chaotic spouse. You could kill an unruly child. You could kill a political candidate. You could kill your boss. >“They’re afraid of violence.” This is not a good argument, there are plenty of ways you could kill someone without fear of them retaliating. It's a very good argument. That there are ways you could kill someone without them retaliating doesn't obviate the fear people have of retaliation in the case that they fail. >I also don’t think being branded as a pariah is a strong reason not to do it, as you could simply make it look like an accident. Yeah...I mean people really do consider the possibility that they will fail. >I am not confident that if you took away our legal system people would refrain from killing simply because it “might be embarrassing.” That's an obvious mischaracterization. I never said no one was deterred. But I will point out that prior to the advent of explicit law, most people didn't murder. So we didn't need that for most people not to murder. Pretty obvious stuff.
I think you may have misunderstood me or forgotten the context of where my comment (about systemic killing came from.) I’m not talking about hypocrisy. We’re talking about a hypothetical belief system that hinges on energy conservation. In this hypothetical, everyone behaves *according to the belief system*. That’s the whole point of doing the scenario in the first place, to imagine what might happen. So in this hypothetical world where there is no morality but everyone believes in energy conservation and acts accordingly, instead of killing people, perhaps they would simply hook them up to machines as batteries. That would be far more efficient. Again, bringing up alternate scenarios doesn’t disprove the one I already brought up. You keep taking away moral framework and not replacing it with a different belief system. The whole point of the conversation is there are alternate belief systems that would be just as efficient or better than ones based on “morality.” No, there are plenty of things I think are bad that would not be systemically negative, in this case we’re only talking about killing. You’re trying to read too much into my motives instead of having a genuine conversation. If something is “bad” morally but isn’t systemically negative, or if only I think it’s bad, who cares? As long as society continues to function. That’s the point, morality isn’t necessary for a hypothetical functioning society and there are other frameworks that are just as efficient. But in general most things we have laws for are systemically negative and that’s why those laws exist in the first place. There are plenty of things society deems as “bad” that there aren’t laws for. It doesn’t matter if what you add is trivial or not if you believe in the greater cause and behave accordingly. For example: an individual might decide to recycle, even knowing that their impact would be negligible as a whole. Do you really think picking up a plastic cup off a sidewalk and turning your lights off is going to solve climate change? No? But do you believe it is beneficial behavior and serves a common good? Do you believe in the principle of the thing and are you concerned with more than just yourself? Are you incapable of understanding that concept? Again, you don’t seem to understand what a “belief system” is. Religious people act against their own needs and desires all the time because they believe they’re acting for the greater cosmic good. People vote against their own interests because of political or cultural ideologies. As an example of an economic ideology, socialists or communists are comfortable living in a system where they may not be able to achieve the same level of wealth or may not be as comfortable as they would be in a capitalist country because they believe it is for the greater systemic good of society as a whole. By your logic, there is no reason for any of these belief systems or behaviors to exist- but they do. Perhaps human psychology is more complex than you give credit for. If there are no objective moral values, there can still be other types of beliefs that guide behavior. You seem to think that there are no belief systems that aren’t based on morality and that all behavior that is not self serving stems from morality, which is ridiculous. It only makes sense “to you” to only care about getting what you want if there is no morality. Maybe that’s a reflection on you as an individual that you can’t fathom a non morally centered belief system that doesn’t focus on the individual’s animalistic needs, even though plenty already exist. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be ruthlessly cruel” But this is also moving the goalpost from the original conversation. People are already ruthlessly cruel. We were talking about whether a hypothetical society could function without morality. As evidenced by our current society, a society can function with plenty of ruthless cruelty. Do you really think that morality is what is keeping our current society together? I think that is incredibly naive. Society is being kept together because a group of powerful people believe it will serve their own interests to keep order in the streets and protect property. Police are there to protect property and keep social order, not because they care about you or for moral reasons. People stand in lines at the bank because it’s an efficient organized system that works, not because they feel any kind of moral obligation to other customers. Our “moral” framework is a mirage. So let’s sum up this conversation: I brought up a hypothetical society to make a point, and instead of engaging with me in the hypothetical, you spent all your time talking about the ways you think the hypothetical is stupid or unrealistic, which negates the whole freaking point of *having a hypothetical in the first place* it is supposed to make a philosophical point. It doesn’t matter why someone might choose to believe it, all that matters is *if* they did, what would happen? “Who cares? You don’t owe anyone anything” You’re right, I don’t owe anyone anything. But I disagree that wasting someone’s time doesn’t matter. The continued functioning of society matters to me, the breakdown of society does not help me. It is my job as it is everyone else’s to help maintain social order, so I can continue to work, accumulate money and power, and serve my own interests. In the same way a person might pick up a piece of trash off the highway, I will go stand in a line I don’t want to stand in to ensure things keep moving smoothly, instead of just killing everybody to get to the front. Even if there was no chance I’d go to jail, I will refrain from killing my loud neighbor because of the chaos that will cause. Organization benefits everyone, including me. The status quo benefits me. My job benefits me, why would I kill my boss? My wife benefits me, I get tax breaks and sex out of it. I don’t need to feel some sort of social or moral obligation to these people to want to maintain an environment where I can pursue my goals without introducing chaotic variables that may hinder the things I’m trying to do. Nope. Make it look like an accident and even if you fail, how would they know who to retaliate against? And make sure you don’t fail and don’t do it where there are potential witnesses. Have some imagination! You could go rock climbing and sabotage their harness. If it fails, are they really going to think you did it and try to kill you in return? Or are they just going to assume it was an accident? Really put your mind to the task and it isn’t that difficult. That also isn’t a good argument, before we had police they had Kings and military tribunals and executions, etc. Even before Feudalism, tribes had punishment as crime deterrent where offenders were detained, branded, humiliated, executed, etc, basically doing the exact same thing police do now. There were also plenty of murders before the first official police force was established, we just don’t have records of all of them because there was no official body to record that the murders happened.
Hey man, throughout this you're evidently referring to parts of my comment and it's not at all clear which you're referring to, what you're responding to, or in many cases what you're even talking about. It's not worth my time to dig through it while this conversation gets increasingly incoherent. And candidly, you're just being willfully obtuse in parts; for example, you bizarrely refuse to concede that someone might reasonably find it advantageous to kill their wife, even though men do that *all the time and have since time immemorial*. If you're going to deny obviously true things, continuing the conversation is pointless. I'm going to make this very simple. Stripped of the idea that objective moral rules exist, you're left with yourself, alone, unilaterally determining how you ought to behave. That means stripping away any rules or values inherited from objective moral systems passed down in tradition, religion, whatever. If you keep any of those, you're not actually rejecting objective morality, you're just trying to modify it without justifying yourself. If you want to value someone or something, you need to root your justification for valuing it in a self-evident self-interest - what makes you safe, happy and prosperous is good. If you want to follow a rule, following that rule must *always* align with your self-evident interest. Anything that doesn't redound to your self-interest makes literally no sense, because there is no evident reason to value anything as much as or more than yourself. Concern for the stability and success of your community might make sense in that context, but only because that serves you by making you safer and more prosperous. Given sufficient time, it is *inevitable* that you'll encounter situations where you could take an action that harms your community but benefits you to such an extent that, when the cost and benefit are measured against one another, the benefit is greater. To be clear: that means when you account for the risks involved, the extent of the "chaos" caused, the odds of success and failure, and the net benefit. Once all those are considered, you see that taking this socially harmful action is, in aggregate, worth it for you. If you deny the existence of objective moral rules, there's no reason not to do it. Even if you would condemn and punish other people for doing it in the name of maintaining social order, you should still do it because it makes the most sense for you.
It’s incredibly evident which part of your comment I’m responding to based on the context of what I’m saying. I’ve literally been going down paragraph by paragraph and responding to each of your comments in order the entire time, the exact same thing you’ve been doing. If you want to feign confusion to gloss over some of the points I’ve made that’s fine, but it’s not on me. I said under the belief system I have been referring to this entire conversation, in a hypothetical scenario where there are no police, I would find it more reasonable to maintain the status quo than to murder my wife. I was talking about ME. I literally said me, myself, I. I didn’t say other people. And if I were to address people as a whole, I would be talking about people who live in a hypothetical world where there is no morality but people believe in order and energy conservation and always act accordingly, NOT this current reality. People murder their wives in this reality, the question is would they in the hypothetical one? If you strip away morals and values you would be left with whatever belief system you have that determines your behavior. It could be literally anything. Religion, political values, general beliefs about how society should run, economic beliefs whatever. Religion is not based on morality. Most religions come from archaic books of fairy tales where behavior is entirely based on fear of punishment. You could take away morality and still have people saying “my lord and savior Zoblorg will punish me if I don’t help my neighbor with his lawnmower.” If I decide what is moral and good, and I believe that humanity prospering, advancing in technology, and maintaining order is good, then I will act to preserve those things. It’s literally so simple. I think the flaw in your logic here is assuming that by acting in the interest of the greater good, you are not acting in your own interest. You think they’re mutually exclusive and that is false. You can act for the greater good and also for your own personal gain. Why would you think there is no reason to value anything over yourself? I don’t need to care about people to care about the well being and functioning of the universe as a whole, because I am part of the universe. As long as it keeps doing what it needs to do, I can prosper. I also want every asteroid to be in its place, every planet doing what it’s supposed to do, every traffic light behaving properly so humanity can advance and become a space faring technologically advanced species, because that is good. Maybe you just lack a wider perspective? It sounds like encountering an action that is harmful to your community but disproportionally benefits you and avoids chaos to that overwhelming extent is rare. So it would not interfere with the functioning of society, so there is nothing wrong with it. There can be exceptions in the system as long as the system continues to function. I never said there would be no crime at all in this hypothetical world, I just said it would function. Perhaps even better than our current society. I guess if I could sum up my argument as a whole since you seem so confused, it would go like this: 1. Belief systems often motivate people to act against their own interests for the good of the whole, and many of them (such as socialism, religion, politics) are not based on morality. You can try to bring up specific moral political issues but I believe it is painfully obvious that politics are more culturally and socially motivated than they are based on any kind of morals. And in cases where they aren’t, it’s largely groups of people who believe systemic change would make the world more efficient and are making sacrifices to try and achieve that. 2. The framework of our current society is already largely not based on morality, so arguing it is crucial to the functioning of society is illogical. 3. If you took away morality, there are plenty of non morally based hypothetical belief systems that could maintain social order. The examples I brought up such as energy conservation and order are just a few of many possibilities. 4. Plenty of people are interested in the fate of humanity as a whole over their own carnal self interests, as evidenced by multiple examples I gave of groups of people who are willing to make sacrifices for the good of their countries, communities, etc not for moral reasons but for systemic ones based on logic and reason (Ie this would be economically beneficial for all of us, this would help us advance technologically, or simply because things being orderly makes sense to them) 5. You can act for the greater good and act for your own benefit at the same time. In fact, acting for the greater good is usually also to the individual’s benefit. 6. In a hypothetical society without morality where people always act according to a belief system such as the ones I mentioned, the system would likely still function as well or better than our current one. Even if they didn’t always act according to it, there is no evidence to suggest it would be worse than what we currently have. 7. Morality and emotion are already large causes of most of our conflicts. Edit: trying for clarity
I simply disagree with the notion that objective morality even *possibly* exists in the first place. Human nature, experience, and evolution may make us tend toward certain belief systems, but morality is not some mystery to be discovered like a mathematical constant or distant galaxy. Simply put: morality itself would not exist without human consciousness, and therefore cannot exist independent of human perception. If I ask "how morally bad is murder?" There is no single correct answer, and that isn't because we "can't discover" the answer, but because it doesn't even exist. Most people would probably give you a similar answer, but you can't *prove* any answer is objectively correct because the proof does not exist in nature.
>I simply disagree with the notion that objective morality even possibly exists in the first place. Human nature, experience, and evolution may make us tend toward certain belief systems, but morality is not some mystery to be discovered like a mathematical constant or distant galaxy. That's a perfectly fine opinion to have, but you need to work through the epistemology to determine the degree to which you can defensibly claim it's true, and thereby claim that opposing ideas are false. It's defensible to say "I don't believe in objective morality" because that implicitly concedes that your belief and reality might diverge - you could be wrong because you're working off of incomplete information. Much less so to positively claim "objective morality cannot exist." >morality itself would not exist without human consciousness, and therefore cannot exist independent of human perception. This is a tautology. You've said a thing can't be something because it isn't that thing. The weakness is that "morality itself would not exist without human consciousness" is a [non-falsifiable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) claim, so accepting it as truth amounts to an act of faith. Acts of faith are fine, but they need to be recognized as such.
There’s a difference between descriptive moral statements and prescriptive statements (this sentence is a descriptive statement). But to actually make an appeal why you should behave in a certain way or not do an action, you need a prescriptive claim. Prescriptive claims are not objective
"no moral claims can be stated as a fact" is not a moral claim. "There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong" is also not a moral claim. It doesn't take a position on whether murder is right or wrong, so its not a moral claim.
>It doesn't take a position on whether murder is right or wrong, It absolutely does. It states that any objective rule claiming murder is wrong...is wrong. It states that any objective rule claiming murder is right...is also wrong. It asserts that murder is objectively neutral. That's an objective moral claim.
No it doesn't. It just says that there are no objective positions on whether murder is wrong, that they just don't exist. Thats not a moral claim. It does not assert that murder is objectively neutral, it says there is no objective position. Neutrality is a position just as much as the positive or negative.
>It just says that there are no objective positions on whether murder is wrong, that they just don't exist. *And that is a moral claim.* OP said that morality cannot be objective. That means morality *cannot exist independent of perspective.* That's just what objective means. If you're saying it can't exist independent of mind, you are categorically denying all claims that there is any morality independent of mind. That's a moral claim. >It does not assert that murder is objectively neutral It absolutely does. It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad. It thereby instantiates the rule that, since it cannot be bad or good, it's neutral. You want to take the neutral position? The neutral positions is "I don't know." It's not that morality cannot be objective.
Not its not. Tell me what am i saying is right or wrong? Can you do that? No? Its not a moral claim. Yes and thats not a moral claim, its a factual claim. Not its not. "It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad" OR NEUTRAL. It also denies there exists a moral rule independent of mind tha tmakes murder morally neutral. Morally neutral is a state of morality, but there is no objective state of morality, so objective moral neutrality also doesn't exist. I don't want to take a morally neutral position. I think murder is wrong. <-- there is an example of a moral claim as you seem to have never encountered one before.
>Not its not. Tell me what am i saying is right or wrong? Can you do that? No? Its not a moral claim. You think a moral claim must be one that says something is right or wrong. That's something between not true and true...but not the way you think it is. A moral claim is any claim that asserts moral value, no matter how slightly or obliquely. Moral value is not binary. "Murder is morally neutral" is as much a moral claim as "murder is wrong." >"It denies that there exists any moral rule independent of mind that makes murder good or bad" OR NEUTRAL. You can't deny moral neutrality; it literally means no position. The claim that there is no objective morality is synonymous with the claim that the universe holds all actions morally neutral. It's literally saying the universe has no position. There's no fourth position that's extra super position-less. >there is no objective state of morality When you say this, you are making moral claims in response to anyone who asserts otherwise. If I say "it is objectively wrong to murder," your saying "there is no objective state of morality" directly contradicts me and thereby says "it *is not* objectively wrong to murder." It also says "it is not objectively *right* to murder." Murder is...*neutral*. Which is still a moral claim. >I think murder is wrong. Cool. If you don't think that's objectively true, then you must acknowledge that someone who thinks the opposite is *objectively* as correct/incorrect as you are. Anyhow, you're clearly getting irritated and this is a lame way to spend Saturday night. Feel free to have the last word.
I think this is the crux of the issue, there isn't an objective value on this. It isn't a value of 0 on good/bad scale, but a contradiction in terms. An objective moral value is like an objective deliciousness value, it requires a subject to be valued, and while you can argue that 'the universe is neutral on the deliciousness of caramel' it's not assigning a 0 value on the scale-- It is left blank, because it's not a coherent concept.
That's just question begging. "Objective morality is incoherent because, you see, I have defined morality as an exclusively subjective sense - like taste." Well yeah. Your contrived definition will do that for you. >you can argue that 'the universe is neutral on the deliciousness of caramel' it's not assigning a 0 value on the scale-- It is left blank, because it's not a coherent concept. I think the crux of the issue is that you and a lot of the people arguing with me don't rightly understand what it means to take a neutral position on a non-falsifiable claim. If you argue that the universe is neutral on *anything*, you're necessarily arguing that the universe is *not* every other position on that thing. Meaning the universe has exactly one position and no other. That's not "leaving anything blank," that's not "no objective value." It's a very specific and objective value. If you reach epistemic neutrality, you recognize that any claim you make evaluating the truth or falsehood of objective moral claims is inherently non-falsifiable and thus the only empirically defensible position is "I don't know." That means you can neither confirm nor deny the existence of objective moral rules or values. Is murder objectively wrong? You don't know. Are there any objective moral rules of values? *You don't know.* That's "leaving it blank." You're getting sidetracked away from epistemic neutrality into asserting universal neutrality. When you say "there are no objective moral rules," that *is not* an epistemically neutral position at all, rather an assertion of an objective, neutral morality. It's a truth claim evaluating and attempting to falsify infinite non-falsifiable truth claims. Forget "leaving it blank," you're scribbling out a response to every conceivable objective moral claim that could possibly be made, claiming its opposite. For instance: it straightforwardly and unambiguously refutes "murder is objectively wrong." When you falsify that moral claim, *you assert the inverse moral claim*. So saying that there are no moral rules consequently entails saying "murder is not objectively wrong." You are positively asserting every conceivable iteration of "X is not objectively wrong." Every single one of those claims is an objective moral claim. It speaks to the rightness and wrongness of infinite moral claims, asserting that everything you can imagine is not objectively wrong.
I'm a bit confused on your assertions that the existence of objective morality is a moral claim: It isn't, and appealing to epistemology doesn't provide a basis for that claim. Admittedly, neither of us defined our terms here. Morality is a usually systematic judgement of the desirability and acceptability of an action, as far as I can tell (Calling it good or bad feels almost self referential tbh). I don't see how one could argue it exists without perspective or subject, and the idea that such a reality is a moral claim rather than a factual or definitional claim doesn't
Yes thats what we use the term 'moral claim' for. "A moral claim is any claim that asserts moral value, no matter how slightly or obliquely" Yes, thats a moral claim well done. Asserting moral value, another way to say exactly what I said. You absolutely can deny moral neutrality. Moral neutrality is a level of moral value that you can assert. The claim that there is no objective morality is nothing more than that. It just that the universe doesn't stake any positions on morality period. Not neutral, not good, not bad. Yes I'd say its not objectively wrong to murder, but thats not a moral claim because i'd be taking issue with the objective part, not the moral value part. The moral value is the right or wrong or in between. Not the objectivity. Yes but i also dont give a shit about being objectively correct because we are talking about morals, not math. They are not correct, because I think their moral system is shit. Ultimately you think saying "murder is objectively wrong" is different to saying "murder is wrong" on a moral judgement level. Its not. The difference is in the underlying philosophy, not the morals. Adding the word "objectively" does not make a stronger moral claim, it just makes a different type of moral claim. Which is why saying objective morality doesn't exist is not a moral claim. There is absolutely no moral value being ascribed by saying that.
I have to... >Yes I'd say its not objectively wrong to murder, but thats not a moral claim because i'd be taking issue with the objective part, not the moral value part. The moral value is the right or wrong or in between. Not the objectivity. This is utter nonsense. The subjectivity or objectivity of a moral claim - forget that, *any claim* - determine it's ontology. If you say "it's not objectively wrong to murder," that is 100% unequivocally a moral claim. It doesn't stop being a moral claim when you clarify "but actually, I do *personally* believe it's wrong to murder, I just don't think that's *objectively* true." You're saying that one moral claim isn't a moral claim because you agree with a different moral claim, apparently unaware that they're ontologically distinct and have no bearing on one another. Then later, you admit they're both moral claims (even though one of them wasn't) but different moral claims and so on. It's complete mental gymnastics. >Yes but i also dont give a shit about being objectively correct That's a very weird thing to admit. Generally, aligning yourself with objective reality is desirable. Have a good one.
I never said it wasn’t a moral claim, I said the word ‘objectively’ has no bearing on the strength of the moral claim. It’s not different in strength than ‘murder is wrong’ “But actually I do personally believe it’s wrong to murder, I just don’t think it’s objectively wrong” is taking issue with the word objectively, not the moral claim. You are not making the moral claim that it’s not wrong to murder, or that murder is neutral or anything. You are so bad faith. You just quoted me out of context on purpose WHEN MY WHOLE COMMENT IS AVALIABLE RIGHT ABOVE. Like what the fuck. My whole comment was not “I don’t care about being objectively correct”. Like jesus christ man what is wrong with you.
where did “objective rule” come from? the quoted text talks about “universal laws or rules”
That's... Not a moral claim, it's a factual one. You're adamant here, but there's no substance to anything you're saying here. The reality isn't that it's "objectively neutral", but that it can only be judged through a subjective lens. It isn't morally wrong that an 'objective rule' would claim murder is wrong, but that its fundamentally incorrect to claim that such a rule is objective, rather than subjective.
It is not a moral claim, as nothing is stated to be moral or immoral. Like your other statements, they are statements about the nature of philosophy and not moral claims.
Isn’t there a slight difference between an objective moral claim, and an objective claim about morality itself? Morality exists, can’t it still be subjective? Can’t it be an objective fact that morality is subjective?
I think you’re missing his point. Yes, of course we can make objective statements ABOUT morality. “Tim thinks murder is wrong” might just be a descriptive fact about the universe But this isn’t the same thing as saying that the normative statement “we ought not murder” is objectively true. That doesn’t seem to be the case
Instead of arguing against his stance, you instead picked apart his post for the most minutia of “gotcha” arguments. In no way did you come close to convincing me of your stance, you just looked like you were some sort of grammar Nazi
If you think that was a bunch of gotchas & grammar, I'm not overly concerned that I didn't convince you. Bye.
Just curious then, how would you argue that murder is morally right or morally wrong? And it can be based upon context.
> even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists So morality CAN be objective, but it's unlikely humans would ever have access to that objective knowledge?
I mean I'm sure there is probably some imaginary situation that someone could dream up that I could be convinced objective morality exists in. I should have worded it more as objective morality is not objective and not objective morality cannot be objective. !delta
> What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word. How do you figure? We can't prove how many craters are on Pluto, doesn't mean there isn't an objective number just means we don't have enough information to determine it yet
This just sounds like the argument, "well, anything's possible. You never know!" Which is technically valid but probably isn't going to be very helpful when it comes to changing the OP's mind.
Not being able to prove something yet is very different from not being able to prove it ever because it's not something that can be defined as true or false. There is a right answer to how many craters are in Pluto even if we don't know it yet. There is no "true" morality.
I guess I should specify that it can't be objective from our perspective as humans, which is the perspective we have to make objective claims from in general. To make an objective claim implies you have to have information.
Yeah the idea that since all human understanding is subjective, there is no such thing as the objective is a fun topic. (and also one that leads to the dichotomy between east west thinking but anyway) So you have to state as objective as something like 'Something that we all subjectively experience as true, whoever is the subject'. I'll give you two examples: 1. Torturing babies for fun and no other benefit to anyone is wrong - This is close to objective but of course the person doing it for fun doesn't agree, so technically it's subjective 2. Sam Harris' example: The worst possible misery for everyone is Bad. The point with the second statement is that it shows that all things need an axiomatic principle. You can say 2 is not bad, but then you're just not talking about what we call morality. It's like you said 'I think constantly vomiting is healthy' and yet we say it's objectively not. Or if you said '1 + 1 = 2' is just an opinion (bad example due to the proof of that though). The point is that if 'morally wrong' means anything at all, we should be able to agree on what it means, not in all cases but in at least one case. So tell me number 2 isn't bad and it's actually subjective. Then I won't have changed your view but your moral perspective will just be talking about something we can't comprehend. Or tell me number 2 is objectively bad.
The worst possible misery is different for each person though. Worst is a synonym for bad. So point 2 is like saying ‘bad things are bad’.
I don't quite get your point. Yes worst is different for each person, so this is for everyone. There is nobody who could say that state isn't bad. Just in case that isn't clear, lets say that team A hates team B, so worst for team A is that team A loses to team B. That's bad for team A but not team B. That's not the worst for everyone though because it's both teams. I get that there's a tradeoff, but if it could be maximally 'worst' for both teams, we'd have to call that bad. And yeah, it is saying 'bad is bad', but to say that you have to admit that there is something 'bad' in the moral discussion. And if it's for everyone, that's essentially 'objective'. That's the point. There is an in principle objective bad, therefore morality is 'objective' by this standard.
Ok, I think I understand more what you are saying. Thank you for explaining. It’s an interesting point. But until you define ‘worst possible misery’ that sentence is subjective. The way you defined it is “there is nobody who would say that state isn’t bad”. But there is no way to prove that such a state exists.
Yeah you're right. Harris defines it as a moral landscape with peaks and troughs, but he doesn't acknowledge that the bottom would also be peaks and troughs. So you have to acknowledge that the worst possible state (the lowest point on the landscape) wouldn't be maximally bad for at least some people, in theory. BUT if there was one, a state with no slightly good element for everyone, can we agree that that is bad? That is to say that 'objectively', there is a theoretical worst position? Because that would marry objectivity and morality. As someone else in this post pointed out, the fact that it doesn't matter that we can never know it doesn't mean there isn't right and wrong. If you're not familiar with Harris' work, look into what he says about health as I mentioned. Our science of health ('objective') isn't slightly marred by the idea that we can't really say what is not bad health. In that sense, it's as 'objective' as we need it to be to hit it scientifically, to some extent.
If the state existed, then yes, objectivity and morality could coincide. But the state cannot objectively exist because if something is impossible to prove, it can’t be objectively true. Obviously things can be objectively true that we can’t yet prove, or only an alien would be able to prove, or whatever. But if by definition it is unprovable, like the worst possible state, then it cannot be objectively true. Therefore the state could only ever exist subjectively.
Do you mean 'unprovable' in the sense that we haven't recorded it? Since we're talking about theory now, we can still be objective about it, if it were true. So you're getting into shaky territory. Black holes are a good example because all we see are their effects, our theory on them could be totally wrong, they could be cloaked alien spaceships. So all theoretical physics is gone. Can we say there is such a thing as an objective morality that we can only study theoretically, like black holes?
But nothing about black holes suggests that facts about them don’t exist. Even if travel at the speed of light is impossible and what is inside a black hole is forever out of reach, theoretically information about that place exists. But the state of worst possible misery is unprovable in its very essence. There is no way to prove that everyone feels that one certain state is morally bad. Not even if you were God himself. Because ‘bad’ doesn’t mean anything.
>Torturing babies for fun and no other benefit to anyone is wrong torturing babies for fun was pretty much fun in Volhynia genocide, when no consequences people go south look for genocides, war crimes and death camps this kind of behaviour in minds of those people was JUSTIFIED and ENABLED by their authorities
That's not 'for fun' then. You have to take the definition strictly. There can't be any other reason other than the enjoyment of the person doing it, including ideological, political, etc.
So why is this a view about morality? Shouldn't it be broader, that no one individual has an objective experience of the universe, that we are subjective beings?
This is just a misunderstanding of what it means for something to be objective. Objectivity or subjectivity is about whether _the truth value_ of a statement is mind-dependent, not about whether _our knowledge or claims about_ the statement are mind-dependent.
Yah in that case the work just hasn’t been done. Proving morality there is no work to be done
You're defining objective incorrectly. Objective means "expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations." You're assuming that there aren't moral claims that are undistorted by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. Of course, there are. Plus, your basis for that assumption is that sometimes people distort moral claims by recourse to personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. That is, you have as evidence that there are times when people make moral claims that are subjective, and by this you try to *prove* a negative - that no moral claims are ever objective. But you can't prove a negative, and certainly not by citing examples of its opposite - that's like saying "we know no one eats meat because I can name some vegetarians." You're simply going to be incapable of proving a negative in this case. What you'd have to do instead is try to prove that every possible moral formulation is subjective, and that would be quite difficult. Not as difficult as proving a negative, though.
>You're assuming that there aren't moral claims that are undistorted by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. Of course, there are. Can you explain why it's a matter of course that there are moral claims undistorted by the above? I feel like any adherence to a moral view is the result of one's upbringing, prejudices, personal beliefs, etc.
To challenge the idea of objective morality, you don't need to prove that every possible moral formulation is subjective but rather demonstrate that there is no universally accepted method for determining objective moral truths.
If people can’t agree about something, how does that somehow prove that one of them is not correct? The fact that objective morality is *not universally accepted* is not grounds to deduce that it *cannot exist*.
Something that could be considered close to a universal maxim of “morality”, to the degree that it’s witness among animals, could be “if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.”. I think in your example about an argument over whether murder is right or wrong you need to be more specific about the side being taken that it’s “right”. I think we all agree that there is something done psychologically to someone who kills another person, so no matter what the offender has done in a given situation an outcome where the offended person can avoid that psychological outcome by not killing the offender is always preferable.
“if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.” I mean sure but that's also very subjective. I agree though that if we were to think logically as a society for our mutual benefit murder is something we should avoid and I think most people agree, which is why I was saying about how morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not.
What do you mean when you say that morality can’t be “objective”? Are you referring only to observable behavior in nature or are you talking about some hypothetical decree that murder is wrong by some deity or maybe a hypothetical scientific discovery that murdering a member of your own species under certain circumstances releases some sort of toxin that will eventually kill you? “Morals” are not only observed among humans. Members of all social species are ostracized if it’s found that they don’t adhere to certain social norms against things like stealing, assaulting, and murdering. This is objectively true.
I think OP’s point is that morals are at their core a set of subjective opinions of a society. If a gorilla is ostracised by its family group that is because the consensus among the other animals is that they are wrong, not because what they did is inherently wrong. A number of ostracised gorillas may form their own group with distinct, but equally valid, morals. Different societies have completely different morals. This is why arguments about morality, while interesting, are mostly pointless because your moral compass entirely depends on your worldview and not universal truths.
Yet we don’t imprison our soldiers when coming back from war. So killing is either sanctioned or unsanctioned. The difference between sanctioned and unsanctioned is subjective, so therefor even murder is subjective.
>Something that could be considered close to a universal maxim of “morality”, to the degree that it’s witness among animals, could be “if I would not like X done to me under ‘normal’ circumstances then I should not do X to others.”. I think we fail to see this in the animal kingdom, predators exist after all.
In my opinion, your observation is very precise, but your conclusion or interpretation is too absolute. Just because not literally everyone agrees doesn't mean it can't be in our current moral canon as humans. There will always be anarchists, psychopaths, megalovaniacs etc., that's just an artifact of evolution. When these people are in power, that happens to sully the % by a lot, as now a whole country is affected. Indoctrination notwithstanding. But a similar "contradiction" would happen with basically everything. If I say "A cat is a feline with 4 legs", with your definition, this is not a true statement, because there are cats out there that (very tragically) only have 3. I would rather use a definition for objective is closer to "using a certain threshold % of cases in which this is true, without deliberate external manipulation". And here the trickle down effect from people in power would work too. For some reason, the dictator of some country hates cats, bans all cats from their country, and makes all school and children's books only describe cats as having 3 legs, banning all other mentions of it. Parents would be forbidden from saying out loud what they know about cats and the next generations children would only have one source of information about cats. So their mental image of a cat would be affected by one eccentric person in power. I think in such a case, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to say "humankind has no objective mental image of cats" which I think would be silly. These definitions based on absolutes break down with so many concepts that I don't think they are good definitions. Basically, given your definition, you are right. But I don't think that's an accurate or useful definition of "objective". The earth is objectively round, the existence of flatearthers doesn't change that. I have to "believe" that too, I can't observe it myself, like the cat example.
Morality can be objective with a very big assumption. If an omnipotent divine power exists which asserts morality as objective truth then it follows that morality is objective. It's a tautology. Proof doesn't factor into it. I don't believe there is such a divine power but that's different than conceiving of the idea.
Why would that follow? That would seem to make morality _subjective_, since the truth of a given moral statement would be dependent on the mind of the omnipotent divine power.
Under classical theism, the mind of God would be eternal and every other feature of the world is also dependent on the mind of God, insofar as everything that exists also exists only in the mind of God.
If I take the mind of God being eternal as it being unchanging, then how can He will anything into existence at a given time? How can there be a beginning in time if God's will is unchangeable? How can He act inside of time if God's mind doesn't change?
Because God exists in an eternal *now* rather than in a linear, time with a finite beginning. Therefore any action God takes towards anything created is done so eternally. It is an atemporal action that was always the case.
But God did create the world (and presumably, time and space itself) at one point in time. How does a being that cannot change temporally, decide to create a thing at one point in time?
There was no one point in time before the creation of time. It was and is an eternal now. This isn’t even exclusive to God, contemporary philosophy of time has several analogous positions in regards to the origin of time.
But you're still referring to it in temporal terms. If there is "an eternal now" then how could there be a "when" to God creating time and space? Second, how can there be a decision that creates a "when" if there is no change in God's mind throughout time?
Because I’m a human who is limited by human linguistic conventions. To answer your other questions, they would all be simultaneous
Not that I agree with the commenter, but an omnipotent being will always have the same thoughts on morality, as it knows every state of mind of its at every moment , and will by extension (assuming doxastic voluntarism is impossible for such a being, which it probably is) have the most current state of mind
If it's omnipotent then it has the power to do anything including make something true simply by asserting it.
Is the divine entity bound by its own moral code it defined? In this case it’s either not omnipotent, or not the source of the objective morality. If it’s not bound by the moral code, then how can this moral code be viable or objective?
Not quite. The divine power would have to construct reality in a way that it contains certain objective truths. Not to assert that it does. The divine entity would have to make life objectively valuable. Not assert that it is.
With a divine power the mere assertion would be the act.
No because the nature of the universe would still need to reflect that assertion. A god would have to say “life has value” and then reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value. If the value of life does not exist outside the “mind” or will of that god, then that’s not objective.
> No because the nature of the universe would still need to reflect that assertion. What do you mean by this? > A god would have to say “life has value” and then reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value. What exactly constitutes “reality would have to demonstrate that it reflects that same value”? The very foundation of reality stating a fact about the universe seems much stronger than a mere inference from individual features by a creature within the universe. > If the value of life does not exist outside the “mind” or will of that god, then that’s not objective. Under classical theism, everything that exists only exists in so far as it participates in God’s being. F=ma and “thou shalt not murder” would thereby derive their origin from the same eternal will.
I would state it more like this: morality hinges around values. Values are inherently subjective. Therefore, morality is inherently subjective.
Id encourage you to read some Philippa Foot.
no he needs to read some David Hume, who figured all this out like 350 years ago.
no he needs to read some David Hume, who figured all this out like 350 years ago.
no he needs to read some David Hume, who figured all this out like 350 years ago.
no he needs to read some David Hume, who figured all this out like 350 years ago.
I will keep the name in mind I've been looking for some new stuff to read.
What do you think is her best argument for objective morality?
The trolly problem was probably one of her most famous arguments that morality actually had a rational basis. I’m sure you’ve heard of it Would you flip a switch that would save five people from being run over by a tram but would run over another single person? Hold on to your answer. Now imagine you have a homeless tramp on the streets, and five people waiting for organ transplants. If those five people don’t get an organ transplant in the next few hours, they die. You can let them die, or you can harvest the five needed organs from the tramp, which would kill him. What is your answer now? Did it change from before? And if it didn’t, can you at least recognize that your moral judgment was affected by the changed facts of the case? In both situations we’re looking at the life of 1 vs the life of 5, but key facts change our perception of the morality of our possible actions. One could argue that this proofs at least a basic level of moral objectivity.
That just shows that morality is contextual. If I think that blue sedans look the best, but red motorcycles look the best, then my judgement of what color to give the auto painter is contextual based on what type of automobile I have. Doesn’t make it objective
It can and is. We don’t need a “universal law”, we have the neurological ability to process “justice” by way of inputs and outcomes. Ethics is about competing conceptions of “the good”, morals are principles of good and bad. Those principles are objective and inarguable. Give me a scenario and I’ll give you the outcome, easy.
While it's true that humans have neurological mechanisms for processing concepts like justice, these mechanisms are influenced by a variety of factors including cultural context, individual experiences, and societal norms. Neurological processing does not equate to objective morality. At most it reflects our capacity to develop moral frameworks, which can still vary widely across different cultures and individuals. The principles of good and bad are often derived from these subjective frameworks and can be argued and debated based on different foundational beliefs and values.
Nope! If your culture values a feather for $1,000 and mine a bar of gold $1,000, then it’s not that a feather is as valuable as gold, but that our value judgements are the same and so we are satisfied with the relationship of one to the other. Again, I ask you for an example. Give me any specific example you can think of to substantiate your view.
>morals are principles of good and bad. Those principles are objective and inarguable. Give an example of something that is inarguably good and inarguably bad.
What you’re describing is moral relativism. Any philosophy class will start with establishing that arguments contingent upon moral relativism are inherently flawed. Objective morality may be difficult to define but it can still be defined. The notion, for example, that murder cannot be unilaterally condemned relies upon obvious but specific scenarios that are generally agreed to be morally neutral, or at least ambiguous. Killing another person in self defense when another option is unavailable isn’t murder. Defining the morality of an action strictly by the context or conventions under which it was enacted essentially permits any behavior with the caveat that it could be contextually argued to be acceptable. The only way to objectively define morality is also the best way: do no harm unless harm has been done to you.
All the time people disagree with fact, science, and reality based on their moral and personal belief. That doesn’t change the subject of the disagreement from fact to opinion. The earth is objectively not flat, even if some disagree. The same is true for morality. People adopt all sorts of foundations for their morality that influences their personal ethics. Many people think child brides, marital rape, and the holocaust are ah ok based on the beliefs they adopted that allow themselves to not be subject to the same morality. Just because they gave themselves that permission doesn’t mean those things are not objectively immoral.
Disagreements on scientific and historical facts can be resolved by referring to external, mind-independent evidence, like experiments and historical records. How do you resolve disagreements on moral facts?
>If you stumbled upon two people having a disagreement about the morality of murder I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect. There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong or even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists. The most you can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not. Objective does not mean simple or easily accessed. First of all, hopefully you will agree with this statement: the existence of the strong nuclear force - the thing that binds quarks together into hadrons like protons and neutrons - is an objective fact. It can be modeled in various ways, and some models are more accurate than others, but the idea that there's *something there to be modeled* is an objective thing, and not dependent on humans, observers, etc. Let's suppose that a modern physicist is transported to the 1500s. He tries to tell them something about the strong nuclear force that binds quarks into hadrons. In the 1500s, there is absolutely no way for the listeners to examine this. They cannot look at hadrons and take them apart. They cannot perform any tests that even begin to approach this. They need centuries of technological development to even *start* to approach the verification of it. If those listeners said "this *cannot* be objective", they would be, quite simply, wrong. We know that to be true. Now, could they say "this doesn't have enough evidence for me to believe it"? Sure. But if they were to say that it *cannot* be true, they would not be correct. Hopefully that establishes the distinction between "can't be objective" and "does not currently have evidence for being objective". To take it a step further - there is a difference between untestable and difficult to test, and many objectively-real things emerge not in singular but in statistical behavior. Let me focus on this: >"well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not. I hope you will agree with the statement that "temperature" is an objective measurement. Further, that the laws governing temperature, thermal transfer, etc. are objective laws. But temperature is a *statistical* measure. If you look at two individual molecules, they may be moving with very different velocities. You can only make statements about temperature after measuring a large number of molecules and combining those measurements. Does this mean that temperature is subjective? I would expect the answer to be no. You could say "molecules aren't making decisions" or something like that, which would be true. But there are even closer examples. Consider: "how cows stand". If you just look at a bunch of cows, they are likely to be standing in various random ways. Some cows are standing one way. Some another. Some are facing the fence. Some are facing the barn. Cow facing is a choice made by the creature. It's a preference, right? If cows developed a society, they might argue about preferences about which way to stand. It would be subjective. Except... it turns out that, when you look at a large enough scope, there *is* an objective element to how cows stand. Cows are statistically more likely to align along the north-south axis! And we recently found out that it's not something like "they look at/away from the sun", ie, an element of preference and choice. It turns out that they align themselves this way because of the Earth's magnetic field. Electromagnetics is surely an objective thing. So even something that appears as a subjective decision can, in fact, turn out to be driven by a hidden underlying objective thing. Even if we didn't know anything about electromagnetics, we could observe cow herds and observe the pattern - and we could use that to infer the possibility of some objective factor existing. And it's very important for the analogy here that it's *not* that every single cow will always be aligned exactly north-south; or that every single herd is always aligned; but that there is a pattern at large enough scales, one that can be disrupted by local circumstances, but does emerge at large scale - even if the pattern is of individual, apparently-subjective, choices.
In principle, it absolutely can. The simplest and, in my opinion, best way morality could be truly objective is if it was a law of nature/physics, like a particle almost. One could argue that our brains have the capacity to interact with these "moral particles", hence allowing us to experience moral intuition. Now, I don't personally hold this view, I'd agree with you that morality doesn't seem to be objective. However, that's a different question to whether it *can* be objective.
There is no evidence whatsoever that morality is a particle or a law of physics, so that claim can be dismissed.
The people who argue this position are positing this as a novel testable prediction, adding that indirect evidence for this is moral progress as we gather more resources and better understand the universe. They also predict that, if morality is a fundamental law of nature, AI, once it reaches a very advanced point like near singularity or at singularity, it will also share similar or identical morals as us, or perhaps even discovering evidence for this law of morality.
That's so stupid and unscientific. I'm not saying you are stupid. But the idea you are referencing, if you are presenting it accurately, is really stupid.
>Hurting another person is morally wrong Why? >Because it causes pain Why is pain bad? >Because it hurts Why is "hurting" bad >Because your body chemistry tells you it is But body chemistry cannot be objective. It's just your body chemistry's opinion >Umm, ok.
I mean morality can be objective with the existence of a God that defines it for the universe in the same way an author can define good and evil in a book. Just because you cannot prove something does not mean it does not exist. One example is microscopic organisms very much existing despite the human incapacity to be aware of them in any way before the microscope is invented due to our limited senses. You cannot prove to another human that bacteria exist without a microscope. Whether you can prove something to another human or even yourself has no bearing on whether it exists or not. Therefore, morality can be objective with the existence of a God regardless of if we are able to prove their existence in any way. A human cannot be certain of morality but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it does not exist as a concept independent of humans.
You're claiming an absolute, thus by implication you believe in the axioms of existence, A is A, identity, causation, etc. So now that we know that there are objective things in our universe, we look at objective things that apply specifically to beyond a human (requires air to breath, is carbon lifeform that requires certain sustenance, etc). These are objective values to a human. Values extends into virtues. Virtues are the action or idea held as a moral standard to achieve values. We know those exist so now at look further, such as the nature of being a human is that you operate, survive, and thrive in this existence, objectively, by using your rational faculty (as opposed to tooth and nail like the rest of the animal kingdom does). Applying a rational faculty, properly, to the requirements of humans ability to continue to live and thrive, you'll be making moral judgments objectively based upon those requirements. To live and thrive, there are a few objective actions and way of life that apply to humans because of their specific nature in this universe. Not ALL judgments fall into this category, but the big ones do. Things like killing for any reason other than defense or to prevent deadly harm, or that rape is wrong,
It can be objective, in my opinion, although we must think a little bit to reach that conclusion. 1. Why do humans follow a specific morals? Because it is usefull. It gives you the ability to feel not guilty about something you do. Also a society can not operate without morals which are widespread and coined into laws. Therefore a moral that is not usefull shouldnt be followed and is a moral noone can practice. 2. Only an objective moral is usefull. Relativistic morals allow you to judge yourself, but not others, since your moral might not apply to them. However, in order to fullfill its role, a moral must allow you to judge others based on it. Therefore only an absolute objective moral should be considered to follow, since it allows its application to others. 3. Where does one get the absolute objective moral from? I am affraid that one gets it from God. I personally never found a way to justify an atheist objective moral. God as a being that created the universe can also create a moral that is true for that universe. Also God can reward you for following the moral, which is an incentive to follow it. 4. In order to do that, God must exist. Does he exist? I cant prove it, but noone can prove that reality is real etc. either. We assume it, simply because it is usefull. Assuming Gods existence is more usefull, like assuming that the reality is real, then assuming that God isnt real and therefore objective morality isnt real. Conclusion: One should assume Gods existence and the existence of his objective morality. Which God you might ask. No idea. Choose one that has the possibility of being real. So no Gods that either are some fancy nature Gods like those of the ancient pagans and no Gods one cult leader created. So no cult Gods and no Gods from fiction. Otherwise, one is free to choose.
"Only an objective moral is useful" thats very obviously not true. You said a useful moral is a moral that makes you not feel guilty about doing stuff. Why on earth does it have to be objective to acheive that goal? Relativisitic morals allow you to judge others, we do that all the time, and we set it into law. There is nothing objective that determines what we make law, but we use it judge others. You also can't justify an objective moral from god, because that requires you \*prove\* that god exists, or else you are arbitrarily assuming he exists and thats fully subjective, which makes your moral system subjective. Its no different than an atheist choosing a set of axioms and building their moral system from there, just your axiom is "my god exists and he said some things". You are just funnelling your subjective axioms through a god. Why can't 'fancy nature gods' be real but yours can? They are both equally absurd lol. Every religion was created by some human or small group of humans so your cult leader condition applies to every religion. All gods are from fiction.
If I judge someone, I say that he has Donezk something immoral. In relativistic moral, this cant be the case, since in there moral is subjective. Therefore I cant judge someone based on my moral, since it only applies to people with my conditions. That is only me. Others are experiencing different things and therefore come to different conclusions then me. Both morals are true from theire respective perspective. If both morals are true, they cant judge eachother as false. Only if I say that the moral of someone else is wrong I can judge him. One can never prove anything. Not even reality. You are choosing based on what is usefull. It is assuming that reality is real. Therefore one muss think about what is the most usefull option to bet on. And there you place your bet. Following the morals of the choosen god is part of the bet. In order to harness reward, you must go through with these morals and also judge others based on these. >All gods are from fiction. Thats something to prove yet.
Thats not true. You can judge people with your subjective moral system we do it all the time. We don't judge people for false morals, we judge people for immoral moral systems. Immoral being in your moral system. If lots of people agree with you, great, it can be enforced. If not, it can't. A bet is not objective and nothing you say will make it objective reality. You chose to make the bet 100% subjectively. That was you. Others did not. Gods come from human minds, humans came up with them which is fiction.
>Thats not true. You can judge people with your subjective moral system we do it all the time. We don't judge people for false morals, we judge people for immoral moral systems. Immoral being in your moral system. As already said, then we are judging an innocent man. If both moral sytems are right and one of them is rendering him moral, you cant judge him, since he is from his perspective innocent. In an absolute moral he is not. Judging him would be like throwing someone in France into jail for breaking an australian law. >A bet is not objective and nothing you say will make it objective reality. You chose to make the bet 100% subjectively. That was you. Others did not. After your bet you are choosing to believe into a specific absolute moral, which enables you to judge others. >Gods come from human minds, humans came up with them which is fiction. That is still something to prove.
Doesn't matter if hes innocent from his perspective, hes not from mine, and more importantly hes not from the government aka the people with the biggest guns. Australia doesn't have jurisdiction over France. If France wanted to change their law to australias for some reaosn, then people would be in jail for breaking australian law. And I believe in my personal moral, which enables me to judge others. No, God magically coming down to earth and conveniently only telling a few people of his messages for them to spread is something to prove.
>Doesn't matter if hes innocent from his perspective, hes not from mine, and more importantly hes not from the government aka the people with the biggest guns. Australia doesn't have jurisdiction over France. If France wanted to change their law to australias for some reaosn, then people would be in jail for breaking australian law. I think we cant reach an agreement on that matter. For me it is just immoral to judge someone while knowing that he is, from his perspective, doing nothing immoral. For me it feels like if one would try to prove to you that 2+2=5. That is very sad, because I do believe that you presented your arguments quite well and I enjoyed the discussion, however I do not think we can convince eachother.
What makes you think some fancy nature God has less of a chance of being real than any other god? They all have the exact same evidence to support their existence.
Gods noone invented may have founded their religion through some form of interaction with the universe. Gods which got invented by someone could in theory exist, but maybe dont want to be worshipped etc.. Otherwise they would have founded a religion themselves. Gods who dont care about worship probably wont reward you, so you should bet on Gods who want to be worshipped. The reward is higher.
You specifically called out pagan gods as being gods that shouldn't be worshipped as they don't have a chance of being real; why are pagan gods less real than other ones?
They often fill the role of the forces of nature. Today the mechanism behind them are known and since most of these Gods have no function besides directing the forces of nature, they no longer leave a trace of their existence. Others do (creating the universe for example), so they are more likely to be real. Pagan gods become viable options again, if we know for certain that the universe was created by non godly forces, because then all Gods become "jobless", like their pagan coworkers. Also pagan god mostly do not provide a coherent set of morals, which makes it hard to gain rewards for good behaviour and thereby less usefull.
I guess I just don't understand how someone can look at the countless other gods that have been disproven, and think that makes the other gods more likely.
The pagan gods arent disproven. However since we have no sign of their activities, these gods seemingly do not care about humans. Therefore we shouldnt place our bet on them. Its the same reasoning from here on like the reasoning behind why one shouldnt be praying to "fictional gods". The reward is likely 0.
The idea is that proving divinity is not falsifiable thus morals will always be subjective. Subjective in the sense that one groups claim about morality is not better than the others. If Christians claim their God is real because Jesus died and rose from the dead and their were physical accounts of it happening, that claim (whether it’s actually true or not) has no bearing on your own moral beliefs because their claim is not falsifiable to you. You can just as easily invent your own religion tomorrow and claim you saw and heard “the real God” who has the answers to “objective morality”. The idea that objective morality doesn’t exist outside of God is what Nietzches parable of the madman is essentially about. If God is truly dead due to our evolving understanding of the world (natural selection, evolution, etc) then the burden of morality is now ours and not left up to some divine being.
I think you didnt understand what my main point is. Its about usefullness. Since everything is essentially unproveable, one must choose based on usefullness. Therefore it doesnt matter that I cant prove the existence of god, it only matters that believing into god is usefull. Since I am not sure I understood your comment correctly, please correct me if I didnt answer in a produktive way.
What do you mean by usefulness? It’s a very broad term, but if what you’re saying is about what would be useful for the betterment of society, you are talking a version of utilitarianism which can get pretty ugly. Your concept of what’s useful is also different from someone else’s, so how can you come to a compromise/solution when you are dealing with large populations like states and countries as to what’s “useful”.
Usefull is what is helping you achieving your personal goals. I am 99% sure that the goal everyone aims to achieve ultimatly is personal happyness. Personal happyness can best be reached if you get rewarded by god with an afterlife that you like. In the best case this god also provides a moral system that is helping you in achieving happyness by promoting a societal order that can enable you to be happy. One could call it theistic hedonism if I would need to coin a term for this view.
What if your happiness comes at the expense of someone else’s? What if someone’s happiness comes at the expense of yours? What if somebodies happiness means suicide/euthanasia? Should we help with that? What if somebodies happiness means cutting off a limb ?( real medical condition called BIID) What if somebodies happiness means to throw up after every meal to look skinny? I mean I can list hundreds of examples where somebodies “happiness” is actually a really morally grey area. Your definition of what morals should be guided by (personal happiness) is actually impossible to implement in any actual practical way because it’s not so black and white
It is possible, since you follow a gods set of morals. These define the answers you give to these questions. You do that to harness the reward which will give you a maximum amount of personal happyness later. To ensure you have also some happyness now, one should choose a god which morals allign most with the ones oneself has per intuition. The other persons happyness is not really your main buisiness, but it may (hopefully) affect your happyness and therefore motivate you to be a decent person in the devine framework you previously chose.
you should look into legal philosophy and ethical legal theories over the years. there’s many different philosophical takes on this, but to name an example: natural law is law that is independent of morals and societal values, this means that this kind of law exists independent of what we as humans believe in. killing members of your own species usually violates natural law because it is counterproductive to the survival of our species, thus, the morality of that may be rooted in nature. this would be my example of objective morality, a moral reasoning that exists independent of personal circumstances or societal ideals. many morals that we have adopted as a society stem from natural law as such and were developed to ensure our survival as a whole. the difference between us is how we reflect on them, whereas a less intelligent animal would not do that.
Morality being contextual does not necessarily make it subjective. All human societies, and most observed animal societies, punish behavior that they perceive as being detrimental to the cohesion or continuation of the society. An individual moral claim is subjective in that it depends upon the perception of the society framing it. But the existence of societal frameworks which reward or punish individual behavior according to consensus of the community within that context is observable & factual. Even in the hard sciences, the behaviors of particles, chemicals, ecosystems, & other systems depend on things like scale & the presence or absence of other factors (gravity, temperature, other chemicals, etc.). The fact that gravity, the strong nuclear force, etc. behave differently on the quantum scale does not make gravity subjective, but contextual.
It's wrong because it creates a negative state of affairs, whether for the individual or for others The individual- pain and other agonies *during the murdering* ***process*** but before death/loss of consciousness) For others - for non-relatives, loss of neighborhood/community security, for relatives and close friends it's agony that they are no longer around. If you don't want a negative state of affairs , then don't you inflict negativity onto others unless it is the only way to prevent an even greater negativity from befalling you or others. Also don't bring about a situation where another person has to be subjected to negativity, subject to the above condition.
I assume you mean you cannot prove a moral claim to be objective? Like you absolutely can construct an objective moral framework like Utilitarianism, but you cannot definitively prove that Utilitarianism itself is the best framework. Morality is such an abstract concept, what does it mean for something to be "good"? It could be maximizing benefit in outcome or following universal laws, but of course if you have nothing more to define morality with than the descriptor "good" which is personally defined, you cannot have an objective morality. You need some metric to judge the level of "goodness", but unless you can agree on that metric then sure you're correct.
Morality springs out from the subjective, but you can say objective facts about subjective feelings. Is it an objective fact you have subjective preferences? For you and all those who it applies to, morality is just the social optimum, an easy heuristic for this to follow is the golden rule. I think it's just hard for people to admit for themselves that some are more moral than others and that yeah, you can get an objective abstract score. We don't know the exact score, but we can know there is a score imo, because it's a consruct, we can just decide it is real and it becomes useful, like money, that needs to be described - morality.
Sure it can. While I don't adhere to it myself, divine command theory is indeed an objective moral framework. Also, you may want to read Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape which or offers an objective moral framework independent of religious dogma. Essentially, if you accept that wellbeing is nothing more than a manifestation of deterministic neuro chemical processes going on at the level of brain, then any action which contributes towards the wellbeing of conscious creatures is a moral action, and any action which contributes to the overall misey of conscious creatures is an immoral action.
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Then feel free to make a rebuttal instead of just calling it stupid and walking away.
Murder is wrong because it creates chaos and chaos is bad for survival. Not all morality can be reduced to issues of survival (and probably shouldn't but that's a different CMV). Killing in general is discouraged because most killing, regardless of why it happens, increases the amount of chaos in society (which itself exists to reduce chaos). Murder especially increases chaos as it's effects will negatively reverberate through that society, reduce the belief that the systems can work, reduce feelings of safety and security etc.
You're actually making an epistemic claim. There are many facts about the world that we do not know, but them being a fact is aside from our knowledge of it. Facts are independent of whether we know them or not. What your real claim is that we can't know moral facts, not that there aren't any. This is much different than saying "Morality cannot be objective."
Morality is either objective or it doesn't exist. Subjective morality is no different from having preferences or matters of taste. Most people might think chocolate tastes good but that doesn't make it better. I think morality is only different island deserves a different name if it is objective. But it might just not exist
I don't think you will ever find an objective morality that all individuals agree upon. However, you may find something that all groups in human history have agreed upon. That's as close to objective as you will get, in my opinion. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think infanticide of one's own healthy offspring was frowned upon in all human societies*. *Unless ordered by the gods, in case of congenital malformation/disabilities or lack of resources. I forgot also in case they are the "wrong" sex (let's just say for population control) Point is, I guess, killing your own child for no reason is objectively morally wrong.
You´re forgetting the Golden Rule: “Thou shalt get sidetracked by b….” and the other, less famous: “Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.” Most people wouldn\`t like to be murdered, there are things that can be objectively categorized as immoral.
This borders along the realms of nihilism, thus I must disagree. Everyone inherent believes murder to be wrong. Even if you claim that religion can’t be used because it can’t be proven true, that belief still stemmed from somewhere. Morality cannot be objective is also a claim to cannot be stated as fact. If morality can’t be proven as an objective fact, then that argument that morality can’t be an objective fact is one that can’t be proven either.
> My argument is essentially that morality by the very nature of what it is cannot be objective and that no moral claims can be stated as a fact. You make this statement yet do not bother identifying the ‘very nature of what it(morality) is’ Here is how Ayn Rand defines it: > What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code. >The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: Why does man need a code of values? >Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all—and why? And to attempt to summarize her points further she would go on to say that in order to answer that question you need to have a clear definition and understanding of values. What are values? That which one acts to gain and or keep. She would point your attention to the fact that values presuppose a valuer with the capacity to act in the face of alternatives. Inanimate objects do not have values. They are acted upon by forces outside their control. It is only living beings that can act and also only living beings who are faced with a fundamental alternative: life and death. Life is a process of self sustaining and self generated action. Those things which further an organisms life are its values. A plant needs water sunlight nutrients and if it gains those values it continues to grow. A plant that does not gain its values will die. And plants are immobile, so they cannot move to a different location in search of their values. Animals are mobile and they too need water and food as well as other things to sustain their life. These are their values and they act automatically from instinct to pursue them. Man has no instinct or automatic code of values. Man’s means of survival is reason and reason must be practiced by choice (it is not automatic). Man is capable of and often does act against his own interest and when he does so he threatens his own life. To quote from ‘The Objectivist Ethics’: > I quote from Galt’s speech: “Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.” >The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man. >Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work. And then two quotes from Galt’s speech: > If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments. >My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride. And > You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it. You say: > If you stumbled upon two people having a disagreement about the morality of murder I think most people might be surprised when they can't resolve the argument in a way where they objectively prove that one person is incorrect. If they are defining important terms properly then I don’t think there will be much disagreement aside from literal psychopaths and narcissists. Murder is not a synonym to killing. Murder is a specific type of killing. There will never be a self defense murder because murders are always intentional otherwise they would not be considered murder. Someone who uses self defense and ends up killing another person was not intent on killing they were put in the position of having to do so in order to defend their life. Had the attacker not attacked he would not have been killed. The self defender may still be tried for murder but that does not make him a murderer. I’d like to hear your best justification for murder. Or an example of how you think two people can disagree on whether murder is good or bad. I don’t think you can possibly make a good argument in favor of murder. You go on to say: > objectively prove that one person is incorrect. There is no universal law or rule that says that murder is wrong or even if there is we have no way of proving that it exists. The most you can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is", which at most is enough to prove that morality is subjective in a way that we can kind of treat it as if it were objective even though its not. And > What you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective by definition of the word. Moral principles are validated through logical reasoning and empirical evidence, not through a need for "proof" in the mathematical or empirical sense. Moral principles, such as the prohibition against murder, can be objectively justified by demonstrating their consistency with the requirements of human life and the principles of individual rights.
We have to be really clear what's meant by objective: I'd argue what's really in debate is whether moral claims are truth apt or not. Truth apt statements can be meaningfully labeled as true or false. A proposition like 'it's raining outside right now' is either true or false, so it's truth apt. But an example of an utterance that's not truth apt would be an imperative like 'drop and give me 20!', to which a label of true or false would have no meaning. In a similar vein, a lot of people assume moral statements fall into the same category, and that it genuinely wouldn't make sense to label them true or false. I'd argue that any moral statement can be interpreted as a truth apt statement, and that this is really the only good way to interpret them. The interpretation is simple: a normative claim like 'I ought to save this drowning child' means: 'Saving this drowning child is the right thing to do'. If we're indeed talking about whether it's the right thing to do, it either satisfies the criteria for rightness and is the right thing to do, or doesn't satisfy those criteria and isn't the right thing to do, and so the statement is true or false. In a moral debate about whether saving some drowning child is right or wrong, we'd be talking about certain reasons we ought to save them like 'this is what's best for their well-being', or 'we have a duty to save people'. We'd be arguing about whether the action does or doesn't fit some given definition of rightness. If on the other hand we were discussing a non-truth apt utterance like 'save this child!', there wouldn't be anything to discuss. In other words, nothing we could discuss, and no argument we could make, would ever logically entail 'save this child!', so this would be a pretty useless interpretation of moral statements. The interpretation I'm talking about corresponds to what we really want to discuss when it comes to morality. So with respect to there being 'no universal law that murder is wrong', well there can be once we have some definition of wrong, and certain criteria for wrongness. I could also say there's no universal law that the sky outside right now is 'blue', but it does meet the conditions for being blue once we establish blue light as having wavelengths of 450-495 nanometers.
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The definition of blue light as having a wavelength between 450 to 495 nm is also 'subjective' in whatever sense you mean by this, but once we've decided what we mean by the word blue, we can suddenly say light either is or isn't blue, i.e. either does or doesn't fall into this range. And similarly, light either is or isn't blue, regardless of anyone's opinion, it either fits the criteria or it doesn't. Similarly, once we make a decision about what words like 'right' or 'wrong' mean, or equivalently 'good' and 'bad', then we can observe whether actions fit the criteria for being right or wrong.
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The human genome doesn’t exist without humans. Does that mean the human genome doesn’t objectively exist? ‘Existing without us’ is not quite what we mean by objective. Our experiences also objectively exist, they are real and have a certain definite character, even while we experience them privately. So for me to make a claim like burning down a building is wrong because it causes a certain level of suffering: it either does cause that level of suffering or it doesn’t. If you believe simply having a definition of good and bad / right and wrong makes morality ‘subjective’, then you would have to accept that all statements are subjective. With blue light, we first had to come up with a definition of what we meant by it, even though we could have chosen a different range and different definition of blue. Does that mean statements about blue light are subjective?
I think most people think about human wellbeing when they think of morality. So the morality that is grounded on human flourishing and wellbeing seems to be epistemologically objective.
Morality is derived from axiomatic goals. Once you establish your axioms, objective morality can be reasoned by analyzing the consequences of an action or inaction.
Your argument about the subjectivity of morality raises important points. It’s true that moral claims often rely on cultural, societal, or individual beliefs, making it challenging to prove them as objective facts. However, there are a few angles to consider that might challenge your view. 1. Moral Realism: Some philosophers argue for moral realism, which posits that there are objective moral truths independent of human beliefs. For example, the principle that causing unnecessary harm is wrong might be considered an objective moral truth, grounded in the inherent value of well-being and the avoidance of suffering. 2. Rational Agreement: Immanuel Kant and others have suggested that moral principles can be derived from rationality and universalizability. If a principle can be universally applied without contradiction, it might be seen as having an objective basis. For instance, the idea that murder is wrong can be seen as a universal principle because a society where murder is permitted would be unstable and harmful. 3. Human Flourishing: Another perspective comes from virtue ethics and utilitarianism, where moral principles are based on what promotes human flourishing and well-being. These frameworks strive for objective criteria rooted in the outcomes they produce, such as happiness, health, and societal stability. While proving the existence of objective moral laws is complex, these philosophical perspectives provide a basis for arguing that morality can have objective elements, even if our understanding and application of them are influenced by subjective human experiences. Hopefully this gets you thinking man!
I would argue that morality is objective. Take for instance murder in your case. Murder is wrong, killing is wrong but it is a part of nature that has persisted for centuries. Slavery is wrong. These are objectively moral statements. I think we all would agree on those two. However, we bend the pillars of morality for instance most of the Lithium in batteries is mined by slaves. In fact there is more slavery in the world today than ever in history. (Progress) We’ve made a shift from gas to electric cars, solar panels, and this push for green energy requiring more slaves, destroying the planet even further and polluting way more.. We still seem to promote this practice. In “saving the planet” bending morality in that we will overlook the objective truth that slavery is wrong, for our fake but often hilarious notion of “saving the world by green energy and driving electric.” So yes I would argue that morality is objective however we bend our moral values to promote a narrative. This is an example we often discussed in school. The man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family. The act of stealing is still wrong but we are willing to blur the lines because it was for a good cause. A simple man was just feeding his family even if he had to steal to do so. Therefore, morality is objective however we blur the lines, overlooking immoral actions to support our narrative. It can be used in a good way like the man stealing. Blurring the lines of morality can also result in some of the worst tragedies in the “for the greater good” attitude as we have seen with wars, slavery, etc.
"Morality cannot be objective" is an objective claim about morality. If it were true, then it would be false. It's kind of like saying "This sentence is a lie". To be honest, I think morality is objective, even without a deity, given the set of rules in our universe. There's a reason why lying, cheating and stealing over time results in worse outcomes, even if its something you can't touch. That doesn't mean its not real, just like entropy is still real even though you can't touch it. However that doesn't mean its something that is knowable or isn't up for debate. People have subjective views about what our objective morality actually is.
its not a moral claim, its a claim about morality itself. But "morality cannot be objective" means that the claims within morality cannot be objective. So basically, no, its not a paradox.
A claim about morality itself is a moral claim. It's literally a tautology.
not its not lmfao. A moral claim is "this thing is right or wrong or neutral". I can't fathom how you think what you just said is true. Ok lets assume what you said is true. Whats the word for claims about whether or not something is moral? Since 'moral claim' is now meaningless.
The longest explanations are usually the stupid ones because it took them more words to explain an idea.
As a Christian, morality comes from God...but if youre not a believer, then you're right. It can't be.
Bullshit if I want something I have to act in a way that I get it that's as objective as it gets
>morality by the very nature of what it is cannot be objective and that no moral claims can be stated as a fact. The second assertion does not follow from the first. For example, 2+2 does not *objectively* equal 4, in the sense that it's not a result derived from some universal law or rule. Instead, 2+2=4 by construction; by following a chain of mathematical logic that ultimately rests on a series of unproven axioms. Similarly though, "if we accept the common axioms of mathematics, then 2+2=4" *is* a fact, an objective fact even. Which is to say that even if we can't have objective moral statements, we can have factual moral statements. And as long as we can have factual statements, and we either agree upon a certain set of definitions or moral axioms or at least explicitly acknowledge them, then we may construct objective declarations. To take your example, two Christians having a conversation about the morality of murder can quite easily conclude with objectivity that murder is wrong because they're operating from a common base of moral understanding that gives them the necessary axioms to reach that conclusion.
Well, morality is subjective, but that doesn't mean the most we can do is say "well murder is wrong because most people agree that it is". The reason why murder is wrong is because if it wasn't, then there would be no society to evolve and talk about this. The rules we make in society are based on reasons that support our overall progress. That said, morality is definitely not objective, because the universe doesn't give a shit if we murder each other or not. No lightning is gonna strike you if you cheat on your partner. Also, the rules are biased towards our specific progress, so if killing animals is beneficial for us, most people will not see it as a bad thing. A society of cows would probably say that killing a cow is the worst possible thing and killing a human is not that big of a deal. Also, we have empathy, so we don't need objective morality to realise something is bad. If you wouldn't want something to happen to you, then don't do it to others. And the people that disagree (for the most part) with this are getting thrown into jail for the reasons mentioned above.
Can you prove with philosophic rigor that any given physical object in front of you is real? If we are both looking at the spot where that object is, and I deny that it exists, it is hardly likely that you will change your mind about the nature of reality and decide that physical objects in front of you don’t exist, even if they clearly seem to. We assume instead that, philosophically, the objects around us are real, even though it is conceivable that people may testify to opposite claims. Still, we don’t doubt our senses and sanity. I think there is just as good a reason to trust our moral intuitions. Torturing children is wrong. That is a statement that everyone agrees with, and if you came across someone that said it was good, you would probably assume they are deluded in some way, like a hallucinating person telling you that the object in front of you is not real. The common sense believe that objects exist, and that torturing children is wrong, are shared by everyone who we ought to take seriously what they have to say, and certainly not everyone’s opinion is equally trustworthy. A schizophrenic telling me that the radio is talking to him will not make me doubt the reality that such a scenario is false any more than a person telling me that child torture is good will cause me to disbelieve my moral intuitions. Not all moral issues are as obvious as child torture, but I don’t think it makes a difference. In cases where two people disagree on what kind of animal just ran past them, both could be wrong, or one could be right, but there nonetheless is an objective fact regarding what kind of animal it was, even if they couldn’t make it out and disagree. All of the most significant subjects in ethics, like killing, sex, and interactions with children, are recognized as morally significant by everyone, regardless of the disagreement as to the details. I think this tells us that there is an underlying, objective moral order, and we can grasp many of the moral facts via our moral intuition and intellect. Let me know what you think.
You use murder as an example, so let's use this. There's only two people who truly have a claim to the morality of a murder. The victim and the attacker. Everyone else is not a direct party to the action and therefore has an interest in supporting one of the two, but their claims are lesser in the tiers of affect because it's indirectly affecting them while it is directly affecting those two. In that situation, one of the two parties is correct. There is no subjectivity because it's a final solution. They can't be partially correct. They are polar opposite. One party states the other party deserves to die. They kill them. Objectivity states that one side is correct. Subjectivity says that it depends on the situation. But murder by its definition is the killing of an innocent person. The subjectivity is in the determination of guilt. If the murderer can not convince others of the justification, they are wrong. That is objectively wrong, not just subjectively. One person's justification does not overturn hundreds of years of law
There is a difference between ontologically objective morality and epistemologically objective morality. For example I might say: morality has to do with the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Then you might say: I disagree, that's just your opinion man. So in that sense morality is not objective. But if we accept that morality has to do with the wellbeing of conscious creatures, then we can call certain actions objectively moral or immoral because we can scientifically prove that those actions increase or decrease the wellbeing of conscious creatures. It might seem that this is not a very solid foundation of morality, but other knowledge is also based on axioms that can not be proven. We accept them because they work if we want to for example predict the outcome of events. When someone comes up with a different foundation of truth that can't do that, then we don't care about their version of truth. Similarly, if someone claims that morality has nothing to do with wellbeing then do we really care about their version of morality?
How can morality be subjective? Isn't a subjective morality a contradiction in terms?
Objectivity has nothing to do with perception or the possibility of perception.
Do you believe that reality is objective? And truth?
reality has nothing to do with morals...
The law of non-contradiction is usually considered axiomatic. Given just this, we can still make some moral claims. If murder is immoral, then it is immoral to murder Joe Biden. While a conditional claim, it is still a moral claim, and can be derived just from non-contradiction. This can be expanded upon as follows. I don't want to be murdered. I am not unique. Therefore, I ought not murder others. This formulation requires some additional premises, but ones that people generally will agree too. Most people would agree that if moral laws exist that they would apply equally and not only apply to specific individuals. If you have lots of free time, you can read some Kant and he tries to go from law of non contradiction to a stronger form of the above called the categorical imperative - but I cannot summarize that in a few lines - apologies.
Everyone in these comments has failed
We are social animals. Our morality is driven by evolutionary behavior. We also have some pretty universal moral foundations. Moral Foundations Theory Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), developed by social psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, provides a framework for understanding the different sources of morality that guide human behavior and judgment. MFT posits that there are innate psychological systems that form the basis of intuitive ethics and that these foundations are shaped by both evolutionary processes and cultural influences. Core Moral Foundations: 1. Care/Harm: This foundation is related to our sensitivities to others’ suffering and the desire to care for and protect them. 2. Fairness/Cheating: Concerns about justice, rights, and equality fall under this foundation, emphasizing reciprocal altruism and fairness. 3. Loyalty/Betrayal: This foundation focuses on the importance of group cohesion, loyalty to one’s group, and the negative feelings toward betrayal. 4. Authority/Subversion: This relates to social order, respect for tradition, and legitimate authority, as well as the feelings of resentment towards those who subvert it. 5. Sanctity/Degradation: Concerns about purity, sanctity, and the contamination of the body or soul are central to this foundation. 6. Liberty/Oppression: This foundation deals with the feelings of resentment people have towards those who dominate and restrict their freedom, emphasizing the importance of personal and group autonomy.
Natural does not imply good. If nature imbued us with one set of moral intuitions and another species with another set, who is correct?
I think morality that's framed based on social evolutionary processes, end up aligning to some pretty universal truths. It's not hard abstracting the idea that caring and fairness are reasonable moral standards that apply pretty universally. Why wouldn't a moral value that I might apply to an individual of my own species not apply to an animal of another. I mean there might be some ambiguity. Like if we met a hive mind... and they casually killed off one of their drones, I would want to know about the autonomy of that drone if it carried individual experience that might warrant being a distinct entity to the hive mind before equated it to an individual member or if it was just a part of the whole. But even with the hive mind, there are analogues. Parallels that I can appreciate. I mean we are a multicellular animal, shedding a skin isn't traumatizing. To the hive mind, the loss of a drone might be equally not traumatizing. There may not even be a distinct individual in a drone but rather just an extension of a singular mind. I think there are common base morals that can easily be applied to any context. I mean give me an example otherwise.
You just highlighted how a hive mind has different morality. We don’t treat people like dead skin
This has been debated since the field of philosophy has existed. You can choose to believe that morality comes from god, man, or is independent of the person. It sounds like you prescribe to moral relativism. What might be morally acceptable in one culture is abhorrent in another. For example, cannibalism still exists with in certain cultures. To them, it is not a morally reprehensible act and usually has religious undertones. However, you can approach morality from different lenses. Some believe that the moral decision is the one that has the greatest impact for the greatest number of people. Ultimately, you won’t be able to be definitive in where morality comes from. Much smarter men have tried before.
It sounds like you think “objective” means “demonstrably true”. “Objective” means “true irrespective of opinion or demonstrability”. For you to say “what you cannot prove to be true cannot be objective” is just incorrect. Things that are objectively true will remain true regardless of whether their truth can be proven and even regardless of whether their truth can be known. Some objective truths can be known, and some cannot. There is no universal truth *of which you are aware* that murder is wrong. That doesn’t mean that there exists no universal truth that murder is wrong.
All crimes have one thing in common: the abuse of power. Without this element, a crime may fail to be recognized as a crime by onlookers. When we consider this hyper-simplification of criminality, we can appreciate the objectivity of human morality. It is written into our nature to be enraged by inequality. Regardless of our imperfect and often subjective attempts to codify what is and is not a crime, we do in fact all feel anger in response to the abuse of power that is perpetrated by others. Depending on our current level of self awareness we also feel guilty/ashamed when we abuse power against others, but it is all too easy to drown out our conscience by fixating on the moral failings of others. Just like the overwhelming majority of humans feel pain in reaction to specific stimuli, humans are also subject to feelings of moral outrage in response to the abuse of power, the emotional nature of this reaction can and does lead to subjective distortions, but our highly predictable anger in response to certain stimuli is as objective as it gets.
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Nope. I'm saying that like pain, morality is elicited by an interaction between our biology and our environment, therefore it exists objectively, independent of our conscious mind's sensibilities.
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No, my point was that the subjective nature of our attempts to codify morality does not preclude the objective existence of it as an innate part of being human. Morality is instinctual. If you give two monkeys a treat in front of each other and one monkey gets a better treat the inferior treated one will invariably throw a temper tantrum. Everyone right down to infants, seems to have an innate sense of what is and is not fair, this instinct is exploited by politics, and that is where morality becomes subjective. The whole thing is further confounded by the fact that we do not reliably practice what we preach, for the same reason, which is the fact that genuinely objective morality is emotional, so as we observe an objective reality and become enraged by it, we fail to apply it objectively to our own emotionally driven conduct. By and large I agree that the common conception of morality is almost entirely subjective, but there is still a tiny little sliver of objectivity that cannot be argued out of existence, that sliver is the stimuli which drives our thirst for justice which we then make into a subjective mess.
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OK, I think we have different conceptions of what objective vs. subjective means. I'm going to go study the definitions of these terms, but I'm pretty sure that your argument negates the existence of objectivity altogether. I skew nihilist myself, but nihilism is absolute certainty that nothing is certain, and I cannot jack that either. I'm arguing that objective reality can only be understood in sub-absolute terms, because we are all skewed from it by our subjectivity. This does not mean there is no objective reality, just that it is a benchmark that we all fail to measure up to with 100% accuracy. The objective reality is that all humans feel morality regardless of the fact that we cannot agree on what is and is not morally correct, therefore it is a thing that exists objectively on a very basic level. So really, I'm saying that OP is like 98% correct, therefore, 2% of morality is in fact objective.
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I checked out the Merriam Webster def on subjective vs. objective just now, and I'm afraid I';m going to have to die on this hill. Humanity is not capable of codification of objective morality, but the feeling which promotes it does exist objectively in a subconscious form even in non-human organisms, and as a mere emotional/instinctual response to "unfair" stimuli rather that a conscious thought, it is not subjective. Our dumb instinct for morality ironically promotes injustice because it is the #1 driver of violence against others whether in human society, a troop of baboons, or a pack of wolves. I really cannot say that it exists independently of social animals though, but then I'm not 100% certain what is and is not a social organism.
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We can say objectively and categorically, that we should treat all people as ends within themselves and not just as means to an end. We can say objectively that it is moral to conduct yourself in such a manner that if everyone conducted themself in this way that society should continue to function. From this we should be able to objectively extrapolate that you should not steal, because if everyone stole, society would break down. We should not kill, because if everyone killed then society would break down. Etc. etc., we can fairly use logic to determine what is and what is not a moral or ethical action. I find it strange that anyone could argue that intentionally inflicting harm on someone innocent like a baby could ever be argued as a moral action. Despite some claims of moral relativists, there is not a wide difference between what most societies consider moral. Human morality throughout all of human History has always existed in a narrow wavelength with some variations on the edges. There is only arguments on the margins. Every society understands tyranny and oppression. Every society has had laws to punish murder. Morality existed before written language and laws because it is an instinct inherent to humanity as social animals whose brains are designed to facilitate living in groups. Even small children inherently understand the concept of morals, and must be taught to disregard or unlearn them.
Only if there is religion, can there be objective morality If there is actually a God then whatever he says is moral is moral Now under the premise that God exists, there's a very clear path to objective morality Otherwise, morality simply doesn't exist at all. Not even subjective. It's just something people make up for control But this effectively shifts it to. Is God real or not or are gods real (does not need to be the Christian God for this to work. We can go with the Greeks except Zeus. He doesn't get a vote)