…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.
I don’t trust any “claimed” attributes; I reason them out for myself and would expect others to do the same. And yes, I trust my own reasoning. I don’t have any other option, even if I decide to trust someone else’s reasoning, it’s still my reasoning for trusting them in the first place.
I’ve found that there are very few people with the capacity to reason effectively. Logic seems to be a lost art these days. That’s probably because of decades of academic postmodernism and critical theory seeping into everything.
Elizabeth: Thanks for the heads up on the editing system.
William J Murray,
Logic is a tool that should be used for the task we invented it for and that is for dealing with assertions.
You yourself do this properly when you claim your input assertions are unproven, and you also correctly claim there is no need to prove them for the purposes of reaching a logical conclusion, but then you turn around and claim the conclusion is valid, even while admitting your assertions don’t have to be.
An analogy of your misuse of logic would be a device that accepts as input only units of length, but outputs only units of weight.
Perhaps logic is out of favor because there are so many people trying to reason from unsupported premises. Computers are completely rational, and we have the expression, garbage in, garbage out.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Actually I don’t think it’s a “lost art” – not least because programming is pure logic, and if you get it wrong, your program won’t run. Or will relentlessly do the logical thing, which may not be what you intended. So in some quarters, logical skills are doing just fine. And we will always have mathematicians 🙂
I don’t think “academic postmodernism” is much of a threat. Not in science anyway. Which is why I find the conflation of modern physics with post-modernism bizarre! Modern physics may cause us to question what we thought were our most fundamental premises, but it is nothing if not rigorously logical.
But I do agree that the decline in grammar-teaching (or what was a decline, in the seventies, I think, in the UK anyway, for somewhat PC, post-modern “it’s his idiolect” reasons) was also an assault on logic. If you don’t know that a sentence should have a verb to make sense, then you don’t really understand sense (generic “you” there).
No problem. The edit plug-in is part-broken, but there isn’t an obvious alternative. I hope they upgrade it soon. In the mean time, at least there’s a workaround. It seems to be the popup window generator that is kaput. As long as you open the edit in another browser window it seems to work.
The conclusions are valid in that they inexorably result from the premises I begin with, not “assertions”. I do not assert that god actually exists, or that there is an actual, objective good. I only point out the logical ramifications of beliefs on one side or the other.
My contention is that it is irrational and foolish to live as if X is true, but intellectually insist that it is not, which is the position (IMO) of many moral subjectivists. They must live and argue as if an objective good exists, even while they intellectually deny it. Their constant use of logical fallacies to try and support their position is at least a partial demonstration of the irreconcilable nature of their views.
[blockquote tags fixed by Lizzie]
Let’s say I agree with you that objective good exists, and that it is the treating of others as no lower in priority than one treats oneself (as per the Golden Rule). In other words, that “good” is coterminous with “fair”, or “unbiased”. Or, as a moral philosopher once said (and I keep forgetting who it was – John Rawls?) “Right is what an unbiased judge would decide”.
Why should it be irrational for me to believe that that objective good exists, but not call it God? And, specifically (because all I need is a label), why identify that good/God with the creator of the universe, or with the Intelligent Designer of living things? Why could it not simply be one of the objective realities, like matter, of the universe?
William J Murray,
No one else speaks for me that can tell you more about me than I can.
After stating the above, I am telling you that I don’t live as if an objective good exists.
My morality is relative to other people.
When I disagree with you or anyone, I am not speaking with any claimed objective view-point, as I am limited by the fact of having only one mind, to be subjective.
The key point is that any of us, even theists who claim objective entities exist, are limited by that same restriction, that all statements made by any one of us, can be no more objective than any other person’s statement.
This same limiting factor also applies to the Pope and William Lane Craig.
Everyone speaks subjectively, even if the topic is about objectivity, which means your claim needs at least one mind, external to the speaker, to claim an objective viewpoint.
One mind equals subjectivity.
Morality describes how one “ought” to behave. If one acts how one ought to act, it is called “good”. “Good”, in this sense, is synonymous with “right”. Right behavior = good behavior. “Good” or “right” behavior must be in service of some actual purpose, or else there’s no reason to call one behavior “right” and another “wrong”.
That a behavior can be “right” or “good” must reference a goal or purpose. If a behavior is objectively right, or objectively good, then it must reference an objective purpose – or, if you will, a universally applicable purpose for humans, whether they agree with it or even know about it or not; it is the only premise by which we can point at what consensus, government, authority, or individuals do and, with moral authority, say “what you are doing is wrong”. The purpose of doing good cannot be “to do good”, or it is self-referential and “good” can be defined as anything.
Purpose only exists in the mind of deliberate agents. For there to be an objective purpose for humans, humans must have been created by a deliberate agency capable of implanting in our minds the capacity to discern self-evidently true statements about what is “good”, or its purpose for us.
“Implanting” is a rather unwieldy term – I prefer to think of it as there being universal mind (god), and that human minds are subsets of that mind (like we are subsets of the physical universe), and that we can access intrinsic, fundamental properties of universal mind (such as good in relationship to our objective purpose), which is why and how we can discern fundamental mental constructs like logic, math, geometry, and morality that, IMO, are universal (not meaning that everyone has them perfectly, but that the opportunity exists for anyone of sound mind to access and understand them).
Good doesn’t exist without purpose; purpose doesn’t exist without a deliberate mind. There cannot be an objective “good” that informs how humans “ought” to behave unless they were created by a deliberate agency for a purpose in its mind, and we must also be imbued with the capacity to discern true moral statements.
Might as well call that entity “god”, but there are other arguments besides the argument from morality that are just more efficient to bundle up with the “God” label.
“You yourself do this properly when you claim your input assertions are unproven, and you also correctly claim there is no need to prove them for the purposes of reaching a logical conclusion, but then you turn around and claim the conclusion is valid, even while admitting your assertions don’t have to be.”
That’s supposed to be blockquoted 2 posts up – too late to edit!
William J Murray,
Here’s the view from the other side.
IF there is no god, THEN, no absolute moral code can exist.
IF there is no absolute moral code, THEN we must come up with a workable one of our own for any relationships we have with other humans.
IF there is no other human on Earth, THEN, no moral code is required since anything that person X does, would be agreeable with person X.
If I was the only person on earth, and I got to make up my own moral code because there was no objective good, it could be about my behavior towards animals or the general environment.
There doesn’t have to be other people around for morals to apply.
BTW, Elizabeth,
I don’t think god cares if you call it “god” or not, or even if you recognize/admit it exists. I think all god cares about as far as humans are concerned is that we fulfill our purpose as best we can by doing the right thing (being good).
William J Murray,
Is there anything wrong with the following logic?
IF there is no god, THEN, no absolute moral code can exist.
IF there is no absolute moral code, THEN we must come up with a workable one of our own for any relationships we have with other humans.
I don’t think that’s it, exactly. In my critical thinking class, my students have trouble with critical thinking because they’ve never had it modeled for them before taking this class. The very idea that there are criteria for assessing and evaluating arguments is one that they’re having a hard time accepting. It’s just not part of their culture.
(P.S.: I’ve taught critical theory — from the Frankfurt School to Habermas — and I’ve read quite a bit of ‘postmodernism’ (Derrida, Foucault, etc.). I can assure you that both critical theory and ‘postmodernism’ involve sophisticated reasoning.)
I prefer to look at both as sophisticated anti-reasoning. However, that does explain quite a bit about your posts. I thought you were just being obsessively contrarian, but now I have a more enlightened view.
Yes. There is no reason we “must” come up with a workable anything. If there is no objective good, we are free to do whatever we wish without concern for any necessary consequences.
And exactly how much critical theory and/or post-modernism have you read?
7.5 litres.
Ok. I was using the term appeal to consensus not in the sense of “argument ad populum”. So let’s just leave that terminology out to remove confusion and address the actual point I was trying to make.
When you said 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.” you basically imply this: it would be true for a moral principle to be universal if it is universally held.
WJM said: “Appeal to consensus a common phrase for argument ad populum. I suggest you look it up. Therefore, I’m not making an appeal to consensus.”
Ok. I was using the term appeal to consensus not in the sense of “argument ad populum”. So let’s just leave that terminology out to remove confusion and address the actual point I was trying to make.
When you said 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.” you basically imply this: it would be true for a moral principle to be universal if it is universally held.
Ha ha! Good answer! I’m at about 7.6 litres myself, give or take.
WJM said: “I don’t trust moral applications to what people claim in the name of their god.” and “Theistic morality can simply hold that “good’ is an objective commodity (an intrinsic aspect of god and thus existence)”
I said: “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.”
WJM answered: “I don’t trust any “claimed” attributes; I reason them out for myself and would expect others to do the same. And yes, I trust my own reasoning. I don’t have any other option, even if I decide to trust someone else’s reasoning, it’s still my reasoning for trusting them in the first place.”
When I say “claimed”, WJM, I obviously mean “claimed by you”. Who else would I be talking about? Whether you reasoned your way to this claim yourself or trusted someone else’s reasoning does not make any difference for this discussion.
So, back to the issue: If the morality you apply holds that “good’ is an aspect of god, you OBVIOUSLY DO trust your moral application to a god and the attributes you claim this god has.
I other words, these two statements:
1) “I don’t trust moral applications to what people claim in the name of their god.”
2) “Theistic morality can simply hold that “good’ is an intrinsic aspect of god.”
…are mutually exclusive.
WJM: “I’ve found that there are very few people with the capacity to reason effectively.”
Thanks for the chuckle…
🙂
Toronto said: “IF there is no absolute moral code, THEN we must come up with a workable one of our own for any relationships we have with other humans.”
WJM answered: “There is no reason we “must” come up with a workable anything. If there is no objective good, we are free to do whatever we wish without concern for any necessary consequences.”
Huh? What world do you live in where not having workable solutions for relationships with other humans DOESN’T have inevitable (quite unpleasant) consequences???
WJM said: “If a behavior is objectively right, or objectively good, then it must reference an objective purpose – or, if you will, a universally applicable purpose for humans, whether they agree with it or even know about it or not; it is the only premise by which we can point at what consensus, government, authority, or individuals do and, with moral authority, say “what you are doing is wrong”.
There you go again. Your claim of “moral authority” in reference to this claimed “objective good” is completely hollow. I would like to remind you of the following exchange, since you never responded to it:
WJM 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 (or government or authority, etc.) 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.
That’s nonsense. Yes, we must, in the same sense that we must use language to communicate with other human beings, n the same sense that we must use tools like fire and sharp sticks to compensate for our physical lack of fur and claws, and even in the same sense that we must come to a basic acceptance of gravity – it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. It’s required in being evolved physical organisms with a long developmental process from helpless birth. We must come up with some workable mutually-agreed morality because we have to live with each other; human animals who failed to do so have been (nearly) eliminated in evolution. If our biology were different, if we were not evolved social primates, we would not sense a “must” to come up with a moral code for dealing with our human family – but the world is not different, and you are an evolved social primate with all that entails.
It’s obvious there are necessary consequences to acting on one’s desire to jump out of tall trees in disregard of gravity. Unfortunately for would-be moral societies, it’s not as obvious that there are always consequences to acting on desire to “do whatever we wish”. And it’s not at all obvious which set of morals are the most workable or the easiest to agree upon.
That’s why we’re still groping our collective way to a global understanding of morality. That, and because there are no such things as either god or objective good, out there somewhere. Think how much easier it would be if there were!
Apologies if this is a double post – I tried submitting this a half hour ago and it has not appeared in the thread.
William J Murray,
Are you saying only god is the source of necessary consequences but not a father whose child your actions may threaten?
OK, but what about my other question:
I think all god cares about are ants. He lives 17.8 million light years away, and doesn’t yet know we exist. His favourite colour is green. No-one can reason like WJM? Huh!
I answered that question.
If the father doesn’t know who harmed his child, he can’t do anything about it as far as action against that person. “Necessary consequences” means that it doesn’t matter if nobody else knows, or even if nobody else cares, there are consequences to moral & immoral intentional behavior.
You can equivocate all reasoning, facts, first principles, evidence, etc. into statements that people are just “claiming” something that they cannot “know” because they might be in error about it or about the principles and facts that support their reasoning and conclusions.
At the end of the day, you have to trust your moral (and all other) reasoning to something you hold valid in some sense and for some reason, or else you’re just filling up the air with critical theory rhetoric and burning the rational landscape up. I agree that I must trust my moral reasoning to some proposed value, like anyone else who is not either irrational or a sociopath. However, there’s a difference between trusting moral reasoning to a propositional value and trusting it to a claimed-as-true value.
I don’t claim there is a god; I don’t claim there is an objective good; I don’t claim that morality stems from an objective good. I make the argument that IF we accept that morality refers to a subjective good, it results in logical, necessary conclusions that we cannot function under in a practical sense (if we are aware of them and actually tried to live accordingly)
That doesn’t mean I claim them to be true, or that god exists or has certain attributes; it just means that unless we accept those things, our belief system becomes irreconcilable with how we must act in the world, and it ultimately becomes internally inconsistent. God as a first, founding principle is necessary for many logical reasons.
The same holds true for my view of the attributes of god; they are propositional, not claimed as true. They solve (as necessary premises) logical problems that arise in several different epistemological and ontological arguments about the nature of being and how we acquire knowledge.
I operate in the moral system I do not because I know it to be true, but because I have reasoned that it is the only way that morality means anything other than – ultimately – might makes right. Just as I might be in error about the physical world, but I am compelled by existence to form working theories about how to live and operate in it, I might be in error about morality, but I am compelled by my mental existence in a framework of moral experiences about “right” and “wrong” to do “good” and prevent “evil”, and to do that I must try to understand as best I can what that means and how to best go about it.
William J Murray,
You’re argument, as stated by you above, is just as valid as a child who while not claiming there actually is a monster under his bed, avoids any consequences from a possible monster under his bed, by acting as if there actually was one.
A child with the courage to look under his bed, no longer fears the monster, since there is no evidence that he actually exists, and can now function as if he had free will.
If god exists, I can’t believe that he wouldn’t be prouder of someone who showed courage over someone who’s waiting for a rule book to keep him safe from the consequences of his own decisions.
WJM said: “At the end of the day, you have to trust your moral (and all other) reasoning to something you hold valid in some sense and for some reason or else you’re just filling up the air with critical theory rhetoric and burning the rational landscape up. I agree that I must trust my moral reasoning to some proposed value, like anyone else who is not either irrational or a sociopath.”
Halleluja! WJM – you have just realized that your foundation for moral reasoning is the exact same foundation as most other people’s – and is just as valid as most other people’s – and not one iota MORE valid than most other people’s.
WJM said: “However, there’s a difference between trusting moral reasoning to a propositional value and trusting it to a claimed-as-true value.”
That’s only true if a propositional value becomes more meaningful than a claimed-as-true value via testing of the proposition against real world evidence/data. That is explicitly not true for the values you proposed (i.e. the existence and attributes of a god).
WJM: “You can equivocate all reasoning, facts, first principles, evidence, etc. into statements that people are just “claiming” something that they cannot “know” because they might be in error about it or about the principles and facts that support their reasoning and conclusions.”
The point I was addressing is the following: it is faulty reasoning to state that the morality you apply holds that “good’ is an aspect of god, and claim at the same time that you DO NOT trust your moral application to a god and this god’s attributes. So it is very curious (to the point of being a fallacy) that you accuse ME of “equivocating your reasoning” to claiming something you cannot know, for two reasons:
1) YOU have admitted, again and again and again, that calling something absolutely, objectively true that you cannot know to be true is EXACTLY what you are doing
2) your reasoning is faulty to start with, as I have just shown
WJM said: “The same holds true for my view of the attributes of god; they are propositional, not claimed as true. They solve (as necessary premises) logical problems that arise in several different epistemological and ontological arguments about the nature of being and how we acquire knowledge.”
Apart from the fact that I strongly disagree (the proposition of a god creates many more logical problems than it solves), I don’t think we have any evidence that reality has any obligation to conform to anybody’s solutions for any proposed logical problem.
WJM said: “I operate in the moral system I do not because I know it to be true, but because I have reasoned that it is the only way that morality means anything other than – ultimately – might makes right. I might be in error about morality, …”
And again, we are back to the core issue you keep avoiding: Your claim of “moral authority” in reference to your “objective good” is completely hollow. You MAY BE WRONG about what good is. You have no way of finding out, one way or the other. This means that you have, contrary to your assertion, absolutely no basis for claiming that you are correct over another person engaging in a behavior you think is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior, … other than, what you call “might makes right”.
WJM said: “I am compelled by my mental existence in a framework of moral experiences about “right” and “wrong” to do “good” and prevent “evil”, and to do that I must try to understand as best I can what that means and how to best go about it.”
Yes. Exactly. JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
[I have no idea why I keep acquiring new monsters… any ideas, Elizabeth?]
You seem to be laboring under the erroneous the notion that I’m claiming to somehow operate from something other than premises that are subjectively chosen. I’ve never claimed otherwise – in fact, I’ve stated exactly that. Everything we think, and all knowledge that is gathered, all beliefs are all subjectively chosen and subjectively held. If that is what you are attempting to get me to acknowledge, it’s a trivial point.
The difference between the premise I have subjectively chosen, and the premise someone else has subjectively chosen (in the case of this argument, we’ll call them “person X”), is that my premise is that “what is good” is an objective commodity, while the premise that person X has chosen is that “what is good” is a subjective commodity. My subjectively held premise is that good is objective, while the subjectively-held premise person X holds is that good is subjective.
From there, we reason to the conclusions. The conclusion of person X’s premise is A. The conclusion that results from my premise is B. A and B are different conclusions, whether or not they factually represent anything about the real world. I don’t claim the logical excercise proves anything about the real world whatsoever; all it shows is that, like with any string of inferences from particular premises, some things are consistent with the premise, and some things are not consistent with the premise.
What is not consistent with person X’s string of logic from his premise is that morality can be anything other than, ultimately, might makes right, or that there are some things that are always wrong in every case, or that one cannot justify all things as moral. Those concepts are incompatible with the premise that “good” is a subjective commodity – whether or not good is a subjective commodity in real life.
I don’t claim my premise is objectively true, or objectively valid; I’m just arguing what the logical consequences are of the two propositions. My argument doesn’t remove anyone from Plato’s cave, nor do I claim it accesses anything outside of Plato’s Cave.
I detect nothing in your argument that distinguishes the philosophy of morality from any other form of mental masturbation.
the morality that governs societies and is sometimes codified into law is not objective, It is implemented by decree or by consent, by leaders or by plebiscites. It can be arbitrarily comprehensive or it can be least common denominator.
I see no one even disagreeing with this, except perhaps in the wording.
But I would go a bit farther and argue that human language isn’t precise enough to formulate axioms or premises worth the effort to apply formal logic. If it were, we could have enforcement by computer instead of by judges and juries. We would not have to have millions of lawyers giving contradictory opinions.
Moral assertions are simply too fuzzy to fit into formal containers and yield objective answers to specific cases.
WJM said: “You seem to be laboring under the erroneous the notion that I’m claiming to somehow operate from something other than premises that are subjectively chosen.”
Sigh. No. I am questioning the notion stated BY YOU, in which you are claiming that the premises you are operating under give you “moral authority” to claim that another person’s view on the morality of a certain behavior is wrong, and to attempt to stop them from this behavior.
WJM said: “What is not consistent with person X’s string of logic from his premise is that morality can be anything other than, ultimately, might makes right.”
What is not consistent with your string of logic is that morality can be anything other than what you call “might makes right”.
Perhaps I should have said that the premise hypothetically grants the capacity for moral authority other than “might-makes-right”. If the premise were true, it wouldn’t magically imbue peple with objective knowledge about it or cause them to act on it without error.
Hypothetically? So you agree that in reality it doesn’t?
WJM said: “Perhaps I should have said that the premise hypothetically grants the capacity for moral authority other than “might-makes-right”. If the premise were true, it wouldn’t magically imbue peple with objective knowledge about it or cause them to act on it without error.”
Hypothetically? So you agree that in actuality it doesn’t?
William J Murray,
If proposition A is true, then behaving as if it were true would be a wise thing to do.
If proposition B is true, then behaving as if it were true would be a wise thing to do.
But if A is true, and you behave as if B is true, that’s unwise.
The reverse is also true, in that if B is true and you behave as if A is, you are again acting unwisely.
So we have four scenarios, not two.
This where your argument fails, when you disregard two of the four possible situations.
This is why I and many others have tried to point out to you, that if you try to apply your argument to real life, you must “validate” your “assertions”.
Hypothetically means, “IF X were true …”. It doesn’t mean X isn’t true.
I don’t disregard them at all; they feature prominently in my argument. Non-sociopathic people must behave and argue as if B is false; there’s no way to live, argue, or even discuss things – when it comes to morality and how people ought to behave – as if B is true. There’s nothing to argue about in the first place under moral subjectivism because, to a moral subjectivist that lived up to that view, others holding the subjective view that morality referred to an objective good would just be another subjective view of morality, necessarily as valid as their own. There would be no reason to argue about it, or argue against any religious, cultural, consensus, or government-enforced morals because they would all be as subjectively valid as any other.
So, as you say, since one cannot live as if B is true, and the only alternative is A, the wise thing to do is act as if A is true, which is what I do. Non-sociopathic moral subjectivists are the onse acting as if A is true while promoting B as true.
WJM:
1) If Chopping the heads off girl scouts for amusement is wrong
in any and all circumstances than objective morality exists.
2) Chopping the heads off girl scouts for amusement is wrong
in any and all circumstances.
3) Therefore, objective morality exits.
Counter:
1) If Chopping the heads off girl scouts for amusement is wrong in any and all circumstances than objective morality exists.
2) Chopping the heads of girl scouts for amusement in any and all circumstances is wrong.
3) (ahem) Jupiter can exist and not exists at the same time and in the
same sense.
The moral subjectivist suffers absolutely no difficulty in conducting their own affairs in accord with their own moral code. The logical difficulty you seem to be expecting us to suffer is in our ability to justify extension of our moral code to cover others – by law, religious diktat, and do on. We would be ‘illogical’ in attempting to do so.
Suppose that the world outwith William J Murray was composed entirely of moral subjectivists. WJM alone believes that morality is an objective quality – or rather believes that it is logical to act as if that is the case. In terms of self-governance, WJM is acting just like everyone else – he has simply externalised the moral sense in some way – the ‘still, small voice’. In terms of stopping one of the moral subjectivists from acting a certain way (ie, the rest of humanity), WJM is on a hiding to nothing.
“You can’t do that because there is an objective moral standard”.
“No there isn’t! You just think there is, and have no more idea than me what it wants”.
“But I’ve got logic on my side!”.
“No you haven’t! It’s hardly logical to expect me to adhere to your viewpoint on the unproven case re: the objectivity of morality”.
“I’m not! I’m merely saying that you have no logical basis to act as if morality is subjective”.
“But I think it is – we all do. And we all tend to settle on the same moral code, so it’s hardly a problem”.
Let’s try the opposite tack: everybody in the world is a moral objectivist except me. Obviously, the same conversation would play out. But a lot more people would weigh in on your side – ie, “might makes right”. You may all decide (for example) that the objective moral standard dictates that I MUST wear a beard, or that I will be arrested if I am on the streets during 5-times-a-day prayers, despite the fact that I do not believe there is anyone listening or who gives a shit about the status of my facial hair.
But of course what really happens is that the moral objectivists start squabbling among themselves as to what Objective Morality actually considers moral and immoral. I would probably agree on many of the points – killing, theft … in fact, cut to the chase: anything that causes suffering to sentient creatures. Sometimes one gets an I, Robot-style dilemma – that’s where ethics comes in.
But so much of this so-called objective standard is nothing of the sort. Thou Shall Not Masturbate; Thou Shalt Not Use Contraception; Thou Must Believe in Something Spiritual; Evolutionism is Evil…
junkdnaforlife: If everybody says that chopping off … etc is wrong, that says nothing about the existence of objective morality. You are assuming that the only possible cause for universal agreement is the existence of an objective morality to source it. Which is unproven.
We simply have a lot of people subjectively agreeing that it is wrong.
I never said otherwise. In fact, I have said repeatedly that moral subjectivists can lead as moral a life as moral objectivists. This isn’t an argument about “what happens in the world”; this is a logical argument about the necessary logical ramifications of certain premises (not that most people care or can even logically arbit their beliefs) and if certain beliefs and hypothetical actions stemming from those beliefs are consistent with those premises.
A moral subjectivist can stop a man from beating his wife or child just as easily as a moral objectivist; they just can’t offer a valid premise that authorizes their condemnation and action to intervene other than, ultimately, “might makes right” – which (hypocritically) validates the father beating his wife or child by any moral view he might subjectively hold.
junkdnaforlife:
Precisely.
Allan Miller said:
As I said: might makes right. I have no argument with moral subjectivists who admit that “might makes right” is, ultimately, the premise their morality refers to.
Is there a qualitative difference (in your view) between “might makes right” and “consensus makes more likely to be upheld”? When a subjectivist intervenes to stop a wife-beater, how can you decide that his/her moral position appeals to might more than consensus?
Can you explain, line by line, how you are concluding that “moral subjectivis[m]” implies that “might makes right”?