Imagine my surprise when I heard that atheism was based on a search for truth. We all know that’s false.
Let’s examine a couple recent examples.
Patrick claimed that I did not provide any links.
You’ll note the complete absence of any links…
I provided links. Patrick lied.
KN claimed that Immanuel Kant was an atheist philosopher.
KN lied,
Patrick demands morals of others while denying that there are any objective moral obligations.
Why do atheists care about what is true and what is immoral?
Why do atheists attack the object of their ignorance?
Ever considered the priesthood?
Consider Upright Biped. He’s been saying literally the same things for many years now, pouncing on each new victim with his ‘ultimate question’ that cannot be answered in any way other then to support his case (he thinks). WJM reminds me of Upright often, he uses the same tactics. The final ‘killer’ point is made beyond which nobody can come back from due to it’s airtight logic. They think.
It’s like they’ve found some kind of local fitness peak and nothing is now capable of pushing them away from it. So round and round they go.
keiths,
FWIW, and as discussed in detail on several past threads I don’t agree with William that his conscience (or mine) is one’s only guide to moral action.
I didn’t say conscience is one’s only guide.
No, that’s not at all what it says.
I can follow the counter-argument; the problem is, as I pointed out in the post you don’t seem to understand, is that the counter-argument relies upon drawing an equivalence between what are presumed to be two very different things. This is where many subjectivists seem to suffer from the incapacity to conceptually differentiate “what they think is true” from “what would be the case if something else is true”.
IOW, the subjectivist believes that, wrt morality, all we or anyone factually has, categorically speaking, are feelings, and so it doesn’t matter if one assigns the label “objective” or “subjective” to those feelings, they are still the same categorical thing – feelings. And objectivists are just “making themselves feel better about acting on their feelings” by claiming that those feelings reference something objective.
And that’s the problem – subjectivists being unable to follow the premise of objective morality as if it was true and understanding that moral sensations under objectivism are not “feelings” in that sense; they represent something categorically different.
It seems to be an impenetrable conceptual barrier.
I’d prefer “emotions” to “feelings” but no matter. What is it that you as as a self-identified objectivist have that you haven’t made up or stolen as a concept?
If you set out your stall and no-one is buying, maybe you’re selling the wrong product.
Your meme is poor, that is all. At UD they seem to have no difficulty allowing themselves to be penetrated by your ideas. Perhaps your argument, depending as it does solely on logic, does better with those with a looser grip on said discipline? What does that tell you, logically speaking, about your argument?
That’s because there isn’t any kind of demonstration of it even being possibly true. Literally, I can’t subscribe to a position I don’t see how even CAN be true. And I don’t see why I should.
Please demonstrate by way of logical argument (a syllogism) that there is an objective morality and how this deductively entails (logical entailment, google it) that I ought to do something.
“God has some particular nature and that nature is what is morally good” does not entail I should do anything.
“God commands that some particular thing is good” does not entail that I should do that thing. And that statement is a subjective definition of moral goodness. I can simply define moral goodness to be something else and then we just have two competing subjective definition of moral goodness.
“God will burn you forever if you don’t” does not entail that I should not do that thing. etc. etc.
NONE of it establishes that there are objective moral oughts, NONE. No theologian, no philosopher, no-one has ever managed to demonstrate otherwise. It can’t be done. Your morality is ALSO subjective. Whatever you define morality as being, is an act by a subject, the act of defining terms is something subjects do. Morality is dependent on acts of defining terms and ideas by subjects, it can’t be anything but subjective.
LoL. So you disagree with your buddy keiths, who claims the Bible has many different humans as its source. Or maybe having muliple sources isn’t so good after all. Make up your minds.
Which of your senses brings all your other senses into “consilience”?
You do realize, don’t you, that appealing to “consilience” does not help you or your Cartesian buddy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience
[This is one of those instances within a thread that probably ought to spawn its own OP.]
What’s to consider?
Would it be better if truth were not malleable in any worldview?
You crack me up. No, really.
It’s like he’s trying to sell beef to a bunch of Hindus.
It is certainly true that if conscience is a sensory ability at all like “the five senses,” then it might seem as if there are “moral facts” that one “perceives” with such an ability, just as one perceives the sensible properties of observable objects with “the five senses”.
The difficulty is that there is no reason to believe that conscience is anything at all like a sensory ability.
One can assume it if one wishes, sure. For that matter, one could assume that the brain is made of cheese, or that quarks are actually tiny elves. By all means, assume away!
But there is no reason to believe that this is so. For one thing, the analogy does not help us make sense of the phenomenology of moral experience — or at least it does not fit my phenomenology of moral experience. I certainly do not experience the stirrings of conscience as anything at all like seeing or hearing objects. While I can accept that there are indeed “moral facts”, one’s awareness of moral facts is strikingly unlike one’s awareness of the common and proper sensibles.
However, it is also true that emotivism as a metathical theory was dead on arrival from the very beginning. As was moral subjectivism, for similar reasons. I’m not crazy about WJM’s claim that subjectivism leads to emotivism, but it’s not too far from the truth.
And the idea that moral facts are themselves socially constructed or the result of social conventions is absurd, because that account would deprive us of the ability to make sense of the idea that a social construction (e.g. race) or social convention (e.g. racism) could be morally suspect.
My provisional conclusion is that moral subjectivism is incoherent. And moral objectivism is also incoherent. If those are the only options, then there is no acceptable metathical theory.
Good thing for me I work in philosophy of mind, which has no difficulties at all! 🙂
But didn’t William deny that this is his position?
Maybe the basic stumbling block is that atheists can’t conceive of any alternative to Law/Command and thus treat all theists as if that is where they are coming from.
LoL!
WJM,
Out of interest, do you personally believe what you call objective morality exists in the way you argue that it logically must exist? Or are you just passing the time arguing for the sake of it?
Out of interest, do you personally believe that it would be better if truth were not malleable in any worldview? Or are you just passing the time arguing for the sake of it?
Can something simultaneously exist by logical necessity/fiat and yet not actually exist?
That seems about right. It seems to me that ethics is an attempt to systematize what is unsystematizable.
I think that’s the same problem, an attempt to systematize what is unsystematizable. We are all different, so there cannot be a “one size fits all” kind of account. What’s needed, is to look at the underlying processes and motivations, instead of the implementation details.
Or swampland in Florida
Wouldn’t be the first time TSZ was likened to a swamp, and probably not the last.
I regard that view more pessimistic than mine. I think that some version of moral realism is coherent and plausible. I was only trying to say that there is no good metaethical theory if one were to accept WJM’s dichotomy of emotivism and natural law theory. As it is, I do not accept that dichotomy.
That seems like a dismissal of cognitive science and psychology. I think that philosophy of mind is a perfectly legitimate project so long as it stays close to cognitive science and phenomenology.
True, except William is the one with the swamp in this case
William J. Murray,
Your responses suggest otherwise. Here is the comparison I proposed. The decision as to whether subjectivism or objectivism is logically superior is being decided by someone with no commitment to either position. Let’s call them ‘Schrodinger’s moralist’. They are neither subjectivist nor objectivist. They are looking for you to persuade them to buy objectivity, whether on its own merits or as all that is left once subjectivity has been demolished.
So you say “if you adopt the position of a subjectivist, all you have to ground morality is ‘feelings’. If, on the other hand, you adopt the position of an objectivist, morality can be grounded in something outside of not just yourself, but all of humanity”.
Well and good, but what your recent responses seem to suggest is that this would-be moralist cannot even evaluate these competing claims without first adopting the objectivist position. That would be ridiculous. In evaluating a claim, one … uh … ‘assumes the position’. First one adopts the subjectivist stance. Then the objectivist. It’s not (contrary to your claim) about assuming subjectivism is true while evaluating objectivism, any more than it is the reverse.
From all that I have seen, nothing about the objectivist position seems to possess more logical weight. So the choice must boil down to a preference. Does one ‘feel’ that the only logical approach is to assume some kind of cosmic accounting, with an eventual bringing-to-book? Well, I don’t.
One might well feel that way. But what I’m not seeing, other than in various transparent attempts to disbar subjectivists from even formulating an opinion, is any sound logical argument tipping the scales in favour of objectivism. ‘Accept subjectivism and you do things because you feel like it’ is as valid as ‘accept objectivism and you do things because someone else feels like it’ (not Natural Law morality, but still objective). That is, a cartoon position, held by no-one and shorn of nuance.
Mung,
William has categorically stated that he is a Natural Law moralist. He may not use the words, but that’s what it amounts to. Furthermore, I was making a general statement that includes the rest of you as well (hence ‘the theist’, not ‘William’).
What would be interesting is a debate where William and a Divine Command moralist slug it out. He disagrees with you almost as much as me. But you are more than happy to hold his coat on this one – All For One against a common enemy, right?
It’s not my job to make the Objectivist case for you. If you have an alternative to Law and Command, educate me and I will add it to the list. Better yet if it provides a counterexample to my statement that ‘is’ and ‘ought’ come from the same place in Objective Moralities. I’d be happy to qualify the statement if untrue.
Have I stated somewhere that I am a Divine Command moralist?
That seems to be the way of things here at TSZ. Is that wrong?
Given that you capitalize the word “Law,” one might be forgiven for thinking you were making reference to something other than natural law?
Mung,
I’ve no idea. ‘The theist’ remains a general term. Not only was it not ‘Just William’, it was not ‘Just William And Mung’. What else is there, beyond divine command and natural law, with or without capitals?
You could just ask.
Mung,
And?
Actually, just to deal with this, this was in response to my suggestion that WJM and ISIS have moral equivalence. Now of course I don’t really think that, but if he says that subjectivity forces moral equivalence with Hitler, then one can make exactly the same move inserting an objective moralist of one’s choosing. The defence that they are ‘a different kind of objectivist’ is piss-poor, given that we have no idea what Hitler’s moral basis was, if any.
Consider Bentham, a hedonist who claimed that pleasure’s being an (or the only) intrinsic good is self-evident, and then concluded that those actions are moral which produce the most goodness in the world (counting each person as one). That’s an objective morality theory, isn’t it?
But if you accused Bentham of being either a command or natural law theorist, he’d probably challenge you to a duel!
walto,
Fair enough, but I suspect WilliamnMung would consider that a subjective morality. Equivocal understanding of terms being one of the issues in all this.
Mung,
If you mean that in the sense of ‘incorrect’, I’d say yes. Your perception of the extent of agreement among atheists here does not jibe with mine, at any rate.
Kantian Naturalist,
Notice that KN applies two different kinds of criticisms against objective morality and subjective morality; he rejects objective objective morality on the grounds that “there is no reason to believe that conscience is a sensory capacity” and seemingly supports that perspective by saying that he personally doesn’t experience conscience as if it is a kind of sensory capacity.
Does ones personal kind of experience of a thing constitute a basis for claiming that “there is no reason” to accept that thing’s objective existence? If one is color blind, is that sufficient reason for such a universal proclamation that “there is no reason” for anyone to accept the fact that color experience corresponds to some objective physical reality?
Even KN admits the proposition just doesn’t fit his experience; so, how on Earth can his assertion that there is “no reason to consider conscience a sensory capacity” reasonably follow?
Answer: it does not reasonably follow. Perhaps others experience conscience differently from KN and this provides them good reason to consider it objective. Also, there’s the fact that we all behave as if morality is objective in nature; is that not good reason to adopt at least the provisional belief that it is? Third, what if the premise is required in order to construct a rationally sound moral model that includes accounting for our actual behavior (as if morality was objective). Is that not a “good reason” to adopt the belief?
Additionally, If KN doesn’t experience conscience as being categorically different than other subjective emotions/preferences, then his experience of conscience is indeed different from my own. I do not experience conscience as an emotion or a preference, but rather as something that can direct me against my preferences without any emotional commitment whatsoever. It’s something I know I should do because it is the right thing to do – not because I want to, not because it fulfills any emotional need or will offer me emotional reward. For example, if a person drops their wallet and nobody else sees it, I’d prefer to take their money and toss their wallet. I take it back to them not because I give a crap about them or want a reward; I do it because my conscience tells me it’s the right thing to do.
Now, does KN similarly reject subjective morality because he doesn’t experience morality as if it is subjective in nature? I think KN, like the rest of us, actually acts as if his moral views are indeed universally true and binding or else he wouldn’t be politically active in seeking socially just systems of governance. Interestingly, even though this would be the proper continuation of his critique of both concepts, he disposes with subjective morality on purely rational grounds. Note that even though previously I had asked him to logically critique my form of natural law moral objectivism, he offers no logical objections to my form of moral objectivism. All he has offered is a very weak “that’s not how I personally experience conscience”.
KN said:
Both KN and I agree that moral subjectivism and “social construct” morality are no good, rationally speaking. Yet, other than dismissing the premise, he has yet to provide a rational argument against my form of objective morality, even though I invited him to do so. If you’re going to claim it is “incoherent”, KN, present your argument.
William J. Murray,
I don’t. I may have mentioned this. That you think I/we do does not support the ‘is that not good reason …?’ follow-on.
Agreed. As dazz mentioned a ways back, ‘objective’ really ought to be defined if any sense is going to be made here. ‘Subjectivism’ too, I think, since, e.g., keiths/Narnie says it’s not a form of relativism, and, if it isn’t, I guess I don’t know what he/she means by the term.
Allan said;
This response is quite bizarre. I’ve read the term “autistic literalism” somewhere and have found it quite a good term to use to characterize this kind of response. It’s responses like this that support my view that many people I interact with are in fact biological automatons, incapable of independent conceptual processing.
Do you not understand the concept of accepting a premise arguendo and then examining the logic proceeding from it by arguing from within that perspective?
If objectivism is true, then conscience is not a “feeling”. If subjectivism is true then conscience is a feeling. One of the fundamental premises to my argument is that conscience is not “feeling”, so to say to the neutral moral judge that under both systems, all you have are “feelings” would be a lie. That would be like me saying that under both systems, conscience is a sensory capacity. That is a lie. That is not what conscience is held to be under moral subjectivism.
And so, you reduce all of morality down to personal preference. As I have said many times, if you are okay with “because I feel like it, because I can” morality, I have no argument to offer. That’s a logically sound moral system, even if it is only sociopaths that can actually live that way.
Once again, you show an inability to offer an argument against moral objectivism without drawing from assumed-true subjectivist premises (and, indeed, without resorting to long-corrected mistaken assumptions about what kind of moral system I’m actually arguing for.) Indeed, I think you might be incapable of actually making an argument that assumes other premises true arguendo. Students are asked all the time to assume positions they don’t actually hold and make the best argument they can for that position for purposes of debate competitions.
It just seems to me that you’ve never held an internal debate of this sort in an attempt to criticize your own views. You keep claiming that the argument against moral subjectivism is “cartoonish”, or not “nuanced”, or makes claims about moral subjectivists that aren’t true, yet you never once, that I know of, have laid out your moral system/philosophy for anyone to evaluate. It’s easy to keep saying “nyah, nyah, you didn’t hit me, you didn’t hit me” with my criticisms, but until we turn the light on your moral views, how would anyone know?
William J. Murray,
William, maybe you could edit your last post to indicate who/which post(s) you are responding to there.
“Objective”, from Merriam-Webster: involving or deriving from sense perception or experience with actual objects, conditions, or phenomena
“Subjective”, from Merriam-Webster: arising from conditions within the brain or sense organs and not directly caused by external stimuli
Fixed.
Those don’t really capture what anybody is talking about here, do they? Do you take moral objectivity to be a causal notion?
I’d hope we could do better than those crappy defs, anyhow.
So? Until you actually tell us what your subjective moral system is and explain how it corresponds to your behavior, this is an empty statement.
I have stated repeatedly that I consider conscience to be a sensory capacity that feeds us information from an objectively-existent moral landscape. What do you think that means?
how does that work, then?
I don’t know how it works.
William J. Murray,
So your syllogism fails.
That has no bearing on whether your syllogism fails or not. Your declaration is incorrect. It is not ‘correct unless you tell me what your moral system is’.
I believe scientists call this “making shit up”.