…that I can’t seem to resist posting here:
I have a question for our materialist friends. Let’s imagine a group of chimpanzees. Say one of the male chimps approaches one of the female chimps and makes chimp signals that he wants to have sexual relations with her, but for whatever reason she’s not interested and refuses. Is it morally wrong for the male chimp to force the female chimp to have sex with him against her will?
If you answer “no it is not morally wrong,” imagine further a group of humans. On the materialist view, a human is just a jumped up hairless ape. Is it morally wrong for a human male to force a human female to have sex with him against her will? If you answer “yes, it is morally wrong,” I certainly agree with you. But please explain why on the materialist view it is not wrong for a hairy ape to force a female to have sex with him, but it is wrong for a hairless ape to force a female to have sex with him.
Link.
- Is it wrong for a man but not for a chimp? Yes, it is wrong for a man but not for a chimp.
- Why is it wrong for a man but not for a chimp?
- It is a meaningful question in regard to a man, whereas it is not for a chimp, because human beings are capable of moral choice, by virtue of many factors, including our theory of mind capacity, our complex social structures and our capacity for linguistic cultural transmission.
- The answer to the meaningful question for a man is “yes”, because prioritizing our own desires the wellbing of others lies at the definitional heart of human morality, and rape is a clear example of such an act.
William, you write, “Because it serves against the purpose humans exist to fulfill.
And what is that purpose? Can you be more specific?
Also, you write,
You seem to be saying that in order for there to be universal wrong, there must be a purpose, and therefore there must be God. This is a circular argument that provides no evidence at all for God, or purpose, or universal morality. It’s more like you need to believe in God in order to have universal morality, or vice versa, but needing to believe in something and it being true are two different things.
I don’t consider morality to be an edict of the interests of god. Morality is a description of how to behave in service of the good purpose of humanity: good is not an arbitrary commodity issued by edict of god; good is an innate, necessary aspect of god, and thus existence.
Because of this, “good” can be discerned via self-evidently true statements much in the same way gravity can be described via self-evidently true statements (or in the same way any presumed-objective commodity can be discerned/described). Such as: it is always wrong to torture children for personal pleasure.
Not all moral statements are self-evidently true. Some must be reasoned. Some are necessarily true when considering the self-evidently true statements. Some are only true provisionally or conditionally. Some are very difficult, perhaps even impossible to figure out.
But, unless one is referring to what one assumes is an objective good, one isn’t “figuring out” anything; they’re just making stuff up. If that is true, why bother worrying about it?
No. That “good” requires a purpose, and that an “objective good” would require an “objective purpose”, is just an obvious rational inference. Although I believe such a purpose exists, I don’t know what it is, other than that it is good. I think it might be necessarily, conceptually out of the reach of any individual human mind.
Circular arguments lead back to one’s premise. IF universal wrong, THEN purpose; IF purpose, THEN god doesn’t lead back to the premise of a universal wrong. It begins with the premise of a universal wrong, and then works logically back to the necessary premise that a god must exist in order to explain how a universal wrong can exist.
I’m not making an argument from evidence, nor am i trying to prove god exists, or prove that morality refers to an objective good, or that an objective good exists, or that an objective wrong exists.
I’m examining the logical ramifications of each premise.
(1) IF morality refers to an objective good, THEN ….
(2) IF morality refers to a subjective good, THEN …
Whether god or an objective good actually exists is entirely irrelevant to my argument here.
The belief that it is always wrong for any person to torture children for personal pleasure is rationally irreconcilable with the view that morality refers to a subjective good. The belief that you have any moral authority (other than might makes right) to step between a father and his abused child is rationally irreconcilable with subjectivist morality. The belief that a person should step up and protect oppressed minorities is rationally irreconcilable with subjectivist morality.
If you don’t mind having rationally irreconcilable beliefs, there’s no reason to concern yourself with my argument here. If you believe that ultimately morality boils down to nothing more than might makes right, such a view is rationally consistent with subjectivist morality.
I don’t really see why one would bother calling “might makes right” morality, though.
Then by what presumed objective principle, authority and/or system can a subjectivist/materialist defy government?
I agree that when humans attempt to subjectively describe or interpret that which we presume is objectively existent, we often end up with different, even contradictory descriptions. Because witnesses all describe the suspect in a crime differently, even contradicting each other, doesn’t mean the suspect himself is a subjective commodity; it just means that humans are fallible and disagree even when describing even an objectively existent commodity.
I asked: “what basis do you have to claim that you are correct over a person engaging in a behavior you think is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior?”
WJM answered: “On the basis of the principle that “good” is a universal, objective commodity that results in the existence of self-evidently true moral statements humans can discern.”
What you are saying here is nothing more than asserting that you discerned correctly what “good” is, whereas the other person discerned incorrectly what “good” is. Justifying this assertion would necessitate a reliable, objective means to make this discernment. What are those means?
William J Murray,
If your argument hinges on god or an objective good, what makes you think you won’t find them?
If you yourself can’t find them, what happens to your world-view?
We’ve been over most of this before, and you didn’t make much progress justifying this view of yours before, so I don’t see much use getting back into details here. I’ll just say this: you still haven’t made any logical or evidentiary connection between “good is an innate, necessary aspect of god” and “good can be discerned via self-evidently true statements”. Connecting the two statements with the words “because of this” does not create the logical or evidentiary connection you may wish to exist. And I have no idea what self-evidently true statements about gravity are supposed to be.
If you replace “self-evidently true” with “obvious and practically universal” I completely agree with you here.
We’ve been over this many times also. One is figuring stuff out when one is following the evidence. And there is lots of evidence and data to follow when it comes to figuring out the origin and purpose of morality.
On the other hand, one is pretty likely to be in the business of making stuff up when one is referring to absolute standards that are simply ASSUMED to exist.
My argument doesn’t hinge on them being actual commodities. I’m not “looking” for them.
I’m not looking for them in the first place, so “not finding them” won’t affect my worldview one bit.
No, I said the principle is what provides me the basis for the act. I didn’t say that I “correctly discerned” what good is; people can have the correct, necessary basis to justify the act, but their interpretation (or inference) of “what is good” can be wrong.
Justifying the assertion only requires a necessary basis and a sound rational inference; proving the assertion would require a “reliable, objective means”. This isn’t an attempt to prove that any particular moral assertion is true, but rather the necessary logical consequences of beliefs.
We either agree that it is always wrongfor anyone to torture children for personal pleasure, or we do not.
If we agree on that, then only the premise of morality that is assumed to refer to an objective good is rationally reconcilable with that belief. If you believe that it is not always wrong to torture children for fun, then that belief is rationally reconcilable with subjectivist morality. If that is your position, we have no argument.
My argument is only with those who erroneously believe that they can on the one hand agree that it is always wrong to torture children for fun, and on the other hold that morality refers to a subjective good. Those are rationally irreconcilable beliefs.
Whether or not in fact there is an actual, objective good, or if in fact god exists, or if one can prove that any particular moral assertion is in fact true or not are entirely irrelevant considerations to my argument, which is a purely hypothetical logical analysis of the logical ramifications of each premise.
You and others keep conflating my argument with an attempt to prove something I’m not trying to prove.
So I’m to take from this that you’re completely ignorant of billions of humans who ask, “What else is morality about, if not serving the will of God?”, or thousands of years of moral philosophy that have explored moral various moral frameworks, including might makes right, pragmatism, hedonism, will-to-power, etc.? Really?
A rational justification for why I should accept that morality is about “human flourishing and well-being” and not anything else I would prefer to insert as being what morality is definitionally “about”.
Also, you’re missing the same thing Elizabeth was missing when she attempted the same definitional fiat; if the Nazis are exterminating Jews “for the well-being and flourishing of humanity”, then it is moral by definition, correct? If not, then how does one distinguish a true moral claim from a false one under your definition of morality, if the person is justifying their act via their belief that it ultimately serves the best interests of humanity?
Also, not stemming from atheistic premises, you can’t.
Behavior cannot be “right” or “wrong” unless it serves a purpose; there cannot be an objective right or wrong without an objective purpose; a purpose for a thing can only exist in the mind of an intelligent agency; if the intelligent agency we are referring to is any individual human agency, then if I have in my mind a different purpose for human existence, that purpose is not objective, it is subjective, and so then morality refers to a subjective commodity.
It is only if that which created humanity (and imbued it with free will) had a purpose in mind that humans can have a universal, objective purpose and moral obligations whether we realize it or not and whether we accept it or not. That is the only way that we can have objectively true moral rights and wrongs and the ability to act on them regardless of what we believe or how we individually define morality.
Well, silly me. I had thought that this thread was about moral right and wrong, and not at all about objective right and wrong.
Then there is no need for your logic.
Logic requires assertions of the type, TRUE/FALSE, but since FALSE is not a condition your assertions can take, then you do not have boolean values to work with.
You have in effect, hard-wired your assertions leaving half of your truth table unpopulated.
You could have simply asserted, “There is a god”, without the logical exercise.
I have made no such assertion.
It is a key assertion of your original argument months ago that only theism provides a rational world-view.
In order to have a common purpose for humans and an absolute good, someone had to provide that purpose and common good, therefore god.
If you say a god is not required for your world-view, I will eat my hat! 🙂
WJM, you stated: It’s [a belief in objective morality] the only rational inference available from the only premise that provides a basis for me to be able to step between a man and his abused child and say “What you are doing is wrong and I have the moral authority to at least try and stop you.”
How about: Empathy for a defenseless child who’s being abused.
I apologize in advance if I’m way off, but, in all honesty, maybe you’re a psychopath. Maybe you don’t have the ability to empathize with others, and can’t see how anyone would. If so, I think your belief in god given morality performs a critical function for you. I applaud those who are born without the almost universal human traits of empathy, compassion, feeling, to nevertheless find a way to live a moral life.
I was thinking over what I’d posted yesterday, and I thought there are some further aspects of my view that would benefit from criticism.
The key idea is this: norms are social. They are not private, mental entities (as feelings and desires are), and they are not part of the basic Furniture of the Cosmos (as studied by the natural sciences). By norms I mean the standards and criteria employed for assessing theories, theorems, and moral beliefs. There are different kinds of norms: epistemic norms, ethical norms, and maybe others. (But those are the two that stand out: epistemic norms, or norms of belief, and ethical norms, or norms of conduct.)
On this view, norms are authoritative, but it’s a always-in-principle, frequently-in-practice provisional authority. There aren’t any unchallengeable norms. Norms can be, are, and should be challenged in all sorts of ways — in the case of ethical norms, often in response to various kinds of suffering, of coming to see suffering beings, esp. suffering human beings, as members of the moral community from which they had previously been excluded.
What there is not, on this account, is anything deeper than the norms themselves which grounds them or justifies them. There’s nothing necessary about any particular set of norms (the contingency of cultural-political history) and there’s nothing necessary about normativity, either (the contingency of evolutionary history).
What counts as “good science” is subject to change, and so too what counts as “ethical conduct”. Aristotle saw nothing unethical about slavery. That’s not our view today, thank goodness. No doubt our descendents, if there are any, will wonder at how we could have been so blind as to the suffering caused by the institutions we take for granted, just as we wonder at Aristotle’s blindness. For that matter, what counts as “a good argument” is subject to change. If one translates many of Aristotle’s arguments into symbolic logic, several errors are easy to see.
I think that this way of putting my thoughts is clearer than pouring them into the mold of “objective or subjective?”, which is not a distinction I have much use for. (Some, yes. But not much.)
As to where norms came from, I suspect that the answer to that question lies in an account of the transition from primate communication systems to hominid proto-languages and human languages. But giving an account of how normativity emerges from nature, or how infants are initiated into normativity through socialization and acculturation, is not grounding those norms on something deeper than themselves.
Best,
Carl
P.S.: I’d like to register my deep discomfort that this conversation was posed as a question about rape. Given the high rate of sexual assaults, it’s not asking for too much empathy and imagination for us to pose the question as to how comfortable we’d be using that example if we knew that a survivor of sexual assault was reading this conversation and wanted to contribute to it.
I agree that when humans attempt to subjectively describe or interpret that which we presume is objectively existent, we often end up with different, even contradictory descriptions.
Yes, it’s important to note that the existence of objective morality is a presumption. Furthermore, in practice it is inevitable that its understanding will be subjective. So as I see it, you have nothing to argue for — one way or another, you arrive at subjective morality.
In a pluralist society such as ours, we will at some point encounter such a scenario:
Objective moralist #1 & Subjective materialist #1 agree that action X is “good”
Objective moralist #2 & Subjective materialist #2 disagree
A government mutually formed and consented to has the best chance to resolve this situation with without bloodshed, tyranny or the like – and this is done by some processes of legislation and/or judicial review. As such, the operating “morality” of the government is, by necessity, subjective – a representation of those governed and their individual contributions towards resolution.
But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. — Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Viriginia (1782)
I’ve never said that morality – which is a description of “oughts” in relation to a good – was anything other than subjective. We can either premise that what morality refers to is objective (an objective good), or subjective (a subjective good). Those premises lead to entirely different conclusions.
Descriptions of things are alway subjective; the thing being described is either assumed to be objective or subjective.
Then those that lack empathy have no moral obligation? Or, if someone is of a similar bent as the Father, and his empathy lies with the father, then if the child gets away and you grab him up and return him, is that a moral act? If I feel empathy for the terminally diseased and mentally deficient, and that empathy leads me to end their lives so they don’t have to “suffer” any more, is that a good moral choice? If I have empathy for poor lost souls who are on their way to hell (not that I believe in hell) and I believe torture is the only way to save them, is that application of empathy moral? I may even find torture horrific, but I’m willing to set aside my revulsion to try and save the soul of those under the influence of evil?
Do you really want to trust moral application to empathy? I don’t. Anything can be justified in the name of “empathy”.
A god is not required for my world view. The only thing required for my world view is my belief that a god exists. God doesn’t actually have to exist for my worldview to be rationally coherent and consistent.
WJM claimed: “Only the moral objectivist can point at the behavior of others and say, “that behavior is wrong” for the person engaging in it”.
I asked: what basis do you have to claim that you are correct over a person engaging in a behavior you think is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior?
WJM answered: “On the basis of the principle that “good” is a universal, objective commodity that results in the existence of self-evidently true moral statements humans can discern.” and “the principle is what provides me the basis for the act. I didn’t say that I “correctly discerned” what good is; people can have the correct, necessary basis to justify the act, but their interpretation (or inference) of “what is good” can be wrong.”
You have just admitted that you cannot discern whether you are correct and the other person is wrong. This means that you have, contrary to your assertion, absolutely no basis for claiming that you are correct over the other person engaging in a behavior you think is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior.
I said: Justifying this assertion [that you are correct and the other person is wrong] would necessitate a reliable, objective means to make this discernment. What are those means?
WJM answered: “Justifying the assertion only requires a necessary basis and a sound rational inference”
You have just shown that you lack this necessary basis.
William J Murray,
That applies to ..any.. belief then, and ..any.. world-view held by anyone.
It also makes your world-view necessarily subjective, since it is your ..belief.. and not ..evidence.., that grounds it.
There must be something that can differentiate your world-view from others that are also based solely on a belief in them.
Your logic is also based on unvalidated assertions and are therefore not support for your argument.
In order for someone to adopt your world-view, he must first accept on faith, that god exists, but once this happens, there is no need for your logic.
WJM said: “Do you really want to trust moral application to empathy? I don’t. Anything can be justified in the name of “empathy”.”
Do you really want to trust moral application to a god (and this god’s claimed “objective, necessary” attributes) someone happens to believe in? I don’t. Anything can be justified in the name of somebody’s “god”.
I agree. That’s why I don’t trust moral applications to what people claim in the name of their god.
Do you guys even read my posts?
No, I didn’t. I said exactly the opposite. Because I admit I am not infallible doesn’t mean i cannot discern. Are scientists fallible when they discern the characteristics of a physical commodity? Certainly. That doesn’t mean they cannot discern those characteristics.
Are scientists fallible when they discern the characteristics of a physical commodity? Certainly. That doesn’t mean they cannot discern those characteristics.
And scientists are able to assess those (natural) characteristics independently and still come to the same conclusion by virtue of the scientific method. So are you suggesting that morality can be examined scientifically, and further, that objective, universal moral principles can be discovered regardless of the examiner, their circumstances, or their beliefs?
I’m saying that fallibility doesn’t mean one cannot discern the characteristics of a thing, and yes, universal moral principles can be discerned – to varying degrees of success – by anyone with free will and functional reason (logic).
Note: I did not say that everyone will discern them, or try to discern them, or get them right even if they do try. Humans don’t have to try to discern them; they can choose to ignore them; and they are fallible. I also didn’t say every human has free will.
William J Murray,
What humans don’t have free will?
That’s interesting.
Which universal moral principles have been discerned thus far?
And by whom?
I should have said “universally true moral statements”. But, as far as universally true moral principles go, here’s a couple that come to mind:
(1) One should never be cruel (harm other living beings for personal gratification).
(2) Other people should never be treated merely as tools (means) in service of personal goals (ends).
Other than myself, quite a few people throughout history. Many cultures throughout history have had similar basic moral rules. As a general moral principle, a version of the golden rule, or the categorical imperative, can be found in virtually every major culture and religion.
A few examples:
Hinduism:
Confucianism:
Bahai:
Native Americans:
Roman pagan religion:
Taoism:
Zoroastrianism:
Socrates:
What is difficult for anyone in any particular culture to do, IMO, is to rationally separate the mores of their culture from that which can be rationally justified from self-evidently true moral statements. One of the problems is that people often assign authorities the power to decide such things for them (such as, government or priesthood), and for various reasons will just go along with whatever authority says.
IMO, people should always rationally examine morality themselves and not just go blindly along with consensus or authority.
William J Murray,
I agree with this entire post 🙂
And that’s a very nice anthology of Golden Rule versions.
William J Murray,
Thanks for the list, and an admirable list it is.
However….
….to paraphrase your own concerns regarding subjective morality earlier in the thread – what’s to stop someone from harming others because they themselves see being harmed as a virtue?
Ethics can be embarrassed by the most primitive inquiry, and it makes no difference whether we hold our morality to be objective or otherwise.
To consensus and authority I would further add blind adherence to logic or rationality, especially when ethics are concerned.
Nothing stops anyone from doing anything (morally speaking), or from subjectively believing that morality = whatever they want. However, the only way to rationally support condemnation of that view is if we assume that what morality refers to is objective in nature, and that that perspon is either mistaken, midguided, or – pardon the term – evil (deliberately immoral).
I have no idea what you mean by “embarrassed”. It is perfectly possible to hold good morality and condemn bad morality and have an entirely irrational worldview; my argument is about the rational consistency and coherency of such views.
Well, we agree on that, then, but the problem arises when one examines by what logical principle they have the right to question consensus or authority or assert any other basis for their moral views.
I don’t know what you mean by “blind adherence to logic or rationality”, unless it is to provide an “out” if you discover you have logically contradictory views or a logically insufficient basis for your views on morality. One’s views on morality are either rationally supportable, or they are not. One is certainly not obligated to have rationally supportable moral views. If you’re only going to use logic where it is convenient, why bother with it at all?
Blondes, people nicknamed “Junior”, and anyone that owns a Chevy Volt.
William J Murray,
These are certainly fine sentiments, but their interpretation gets a bit complex.
For one thing your rule number one rules out most of what individuals and societies do in response to “crime.” Both punishment and revenge are in most instances counterproductive in terms of reforming offenders. They are certainly less effective than other possible measures. They persist mainly because hurting people who have hurt us is gratifying.
Rule number two would rule out the concept of employment, since modern societies consider labor to be fungible, completely separate from the person doing the labor.
Your universal moral rules bring to mind the immortal speech from the movie, “Animal House”:
Only when one uses interpretation in a deliberate effort to equivocate meaning, like equivocating “justice” or “punishment for crime” with “personal gratification”, but for some people everything boils down to personal gratification, and there’s no way to rationally argue in the face of that kind of equivocation.
As for your “employment” argument, offering a job treats others as ends (of intrinsic value or worth), enslaving them treats them as things.
I said: “You have just admitted that you cannot discern whether you are correct and the other person is wrong.”
WJM said: “No, I didn’t. I said exactly the opposite. Because I admit I am not infallible doesn’t mean i cannot discern.”
I really have to spell it out for you?
This is what YOU said: “I didn’t say that I correctly discerned what good is; people can have the correct, necessary basis to justify the act, but their interpretation (or inference) of “what is good” can be wrong.”
Which means: you could be WRONG. And the other person could be RIGHT.
This means that you have, contrary to your assertion, absolutely no basis for claiming that you are correct over the other person engaging in a behavior you think is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior.
All you have is your BELIEF that you are right. Which the exact same thing the other person has: the BELIEF that there are right.
WJM, answering the question which universal moral principles have been discerned thus far:
“As far as universally true moral principles go, here’s a couple that come to mind:
(1) One should never be cruel (harm other living beings for personal gratification).
(2) Other people should never be treated merely as tools (means) in service of personal goals (ends).
And by whom?
Other than myself, quite a few people throughout history. Many cultures throughout history have had similar basic moral rules. As a general moral principle, a version of the golden rule, or the categorical imperative, can be found in virtually every major culture and religion.”
Hm. That’s curious. What you say here sounds a lot like an appeal to consensus. According to you that’s a no-no as a means to gauge moral rules.
If it was an appeal to consensus, I’d claim the moral princple was true because those sources agreed on it. I didn’t make that claim. I offered those moral principles as examples of universal moral principles one could discern, and some examples of those who have discerned the same moral principle (in various subjective variations) to answer Woodbine’s question.
Almost. An appeal to consensus would also encompass the claim that those sources agreed on it because it was true. But I guess that’s not what you meant; you saying “As a general moral principle, a version of the golden rule, or the categorical imperative, can be found in virtually every major culture and religion.” is just a coincidence. My bad.
WJM said: “If it was an appeal to consensus, I’d claim the moral princple was true because those sources agreed on it. I didn’t make that claim.”
An appeal to consensus would also encompass the claim that those sources agreed upon the principle because it was true. But I guess that’s not what you meant. My bad. You saying this: “As a general moral principle, a version of the golden rule, or the categorical imperative, can be found in virtually every major culture and religion.” is just an unrelated coincidence then.
I said: “Do you really want to trust moral application to a god (and this god’s claimed “objective, necessary” attributes) someone happens to believe in? I don’t. Anything can be justified in the name of somebody’s “god”.
WJM said: “I agree. That’s why I don’t trust moral applications to what people claim in the name of their god. Do you guys even read my posts?”
Yes, I do read your posts, WJM. Here is one of them: “Theistic morality can simply hold that “good’ is an objective commodity (an intrinsic aspect of god and thus existence)”
So, if this is the theistic morality you hold to, then you trust your moral application to a god and this god’s claimed “intrinsic” attributes.
However, the only way to rationally support condemnation of that view is if we assume that what morality refers to is objective in nature, and that that perspon is either mistaken, midguided, or – pardon the term – evil (deliberately immoral).
I strongly disagree. To repeat, one important and necessary function of a pluralistic government is to provide a legal framework more broad than any single moral absolute — allowing a religiously diverse society to flourish through tolerance. Thus the rational support for condemnation comes from secular law which may, in part or whole, be derived from one or more moral systems. It makes no difference if said systems are objective or subjective, it only matters that a consensus found the will to enact the law.
Just to clarify the use of the word “true” in the context of my point: it would be true for a moral principle to be universal if it is universally held. Which is pretty much what you seemed to confirm with an appeal to consensus in saying “As a general moral principle, a version of the golden rule, or the categorical imperative, can be found in virtually every major culture and religion.”
Nope. That’s not what “appeal to consensus” means. Appeal to consensus a common phrase for argument ad populum. I suggest you look it up.
From Wiki:
From Nizkor:
Therefore, I’m not making an appeal to consensus.
“An appeal to consensus would also encompass the claim that those sources agreed upon the principle because it was true.”
Should be blockquoted above.
Done. I think, at least in Firefox, if you right-click on the edit link (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) and select “Open link in new tab” you should get an edit window that works. I’d be interested to know if this is true! It works for me.
Government intrinsically has no such “important” or “necessary function” as you have described, except in your convenient re-definition of what “government” is.
Refusing to admit that one’s capacity and willingness to point to consensus, authority, government, or other individuals and condemn wrong behavior and try to get it changed necessarily relies upon the premise of an objective good often generates these kind of logical fallacies when moral subjectivists attempt to defend their rationally irreconcilable beliefs.
Elizabeth redefines “morality” to cover her lack of basis for a universally applicable moral principle; you redefine “government” to provide cover for the fact that, after appealing to government, you have no basis for challenging government itself when it comes to its moral edicts. Therefore, if you live in a government that rules by Sharia law, you have no alternative but to morally support the genital mutilation of young girls, stonings of women that have been raped, etc.