For a duty towards an animal would have to be directed at someone, and if the lights are out and there’s no-one home, then any talk of duties or obligations is meaningless. To be sure, a magnanimous person, motivated by a disinterested ethic of reverence for all living things, might still wish to alleviate the feelings of pain occurring in animals, even while recognizing that these feelings belonged to no-one. But it would no longer be possible to maintain that animals are morally significant “others.” The most we could say is that insofar as they are organisms, animals have a biological “good of their own.” If we adopted this biocentric view, then we would deplore any wanton harm done to animals, just as we would the felling of a Californian redwood tree. But the notion that animals belong on a psychological or moral continuum with us would be forever shattered. For if animals have no “selves,” then they are not “they,” and their pain doesn’t warrant our pity.
VJ Torley has posted an interesting argument regarding animals’ ability to suffer and the ethical implications of various interpretations of animal consciousness. Although VJ has his own conclusions, his post seem to invite discussion rather than agreement or disagreement. He emphasizes the limits of science rather than simply attacking science. I would suggest he also demonstrates some limits to philosophy.
Mapou helpfully sets up the main line of discussion:
Why beat around the bush? Science cannot even prove that humans are conscious, let alone animals. There is no experiment that can directly detect consciousness. It is a subjective phenomenon. We may know that we are conscious but we can only assume that other humans are equally conscious.
Mapou goes on to say that he considers animals to be meat robots and outside of any consideration of their welfare. I would argue that we draw our lines of demarcation on some basis other than evidence or logic. I personally think this problem of demarcation cannot be solved by reason.
I think we as individuals draw the line between creatures that merit ethical consideration and those that don’t, and I think we do this for purely emotional reasons. Some of us see someone home behind the eyes of non-humans.
William J. Murray,
Oh, for God’s sake! That is the only option available to us IF we want to evaluate the nature of other subjective experiences. If we don’t want to, it is neither here nor there. I wasn’t saying we are compelled to exercise empathy! Is this a new board game you’re developing? Equivocation? Amuse your friends and frustrate your enemies by seeing how many wrong ends you can get out of the one stick?
You can actually do what you like, sunshine! If such an approach made sense to you, go for it. Unfortunately, for those of us that can actually empathise, it is not a sense we can turn on and off. Because I can sense the harm and pleasure that others feel, it affects the things I do. But if you think you can be moral – have a set of behavioural principles – and yet not have any understanding of the feelings of any other individual, then you probably can. I can’t.
Did I say you should? I was explaining why subjective morality does not have the consequences you think it should. Necessarily, that involves explaining the rationale of my moral choices, which are grounded in how I feel about my own and others’ behaviours. Though I feel I might as well explain carpentry to a duck.
Nope – I’m not convinced that sociopaths even have a conception of morality (since a large chunk of it is down to one’s behaviour towards others, which requires some means of understanding that, and how, others feel). If someone regards other humans as equivalent to rocks or carrots, in the way one feels one ‘ought’ to treat them, then my conception of morality is likely to be alien to them. I don’t think we’d even be talking about the same thing. But as regards a less hyperbolic example, someone thinking it immoral to (say) covet their neighbour’s wife would be entirely entitled to hold that view.
Your misreading of it is hanging out there as a testament to your determination to miss the point. And the fact that you fail to understand that I am NOT telling anyone else how to be moral, is precisely the point I’ve been making. Morality for you seems largely about controlling others – how to persuade them to do what you want them to do (even if you rationalise it in terms of what Absolute Morality wants them to do). Yet, advocating a morality based upon personal feelings and empathy with the personal feelings of others, you call me a sociopath. I don’t think you know what the word means.
Detention isn’t the only alternative, although it remains a last resort. I’m not aware of any successful therapy for people who lack empathy or who have been convicted of molesting children. Perhaps there are exceptions, but they are rare.
I’m afraid what is needed is something that societies are reluctant to do, and that is deny trust to some people. Permanently.
Nothing but pure evasion here.
In the first place, I don’t have to make the case that anyone holds morality “in the same sense” as you or I. Under your premise there is no standard basis for morality in the first place, so people are not expected to have morality “in the same sense” as anyone else. That makes how anyone holds their morality the same in principle as anyone else. So, you have once again argued in contradiction to your premise.
Secondly, you certainly cannot be seriously arguing that Hitler or Torquemada or an Osama Bin Ladin or a Stalin did not act as they felt right, which is all your version of morality requires to justify any behavior and make it the equivalent of your own morality.
As I said, I have no argument for those who consider mass murderers and child molesters to be, in principle, as moral as anyone else.
Well, almost — but not quite. What Murray seems to want to say here is one of two different things:
(1) we would need to posit an objective morality in order to explain to the Nazis why we were justified in stopping the Holocaust by any means necessary;
(2) we would need to posit an objective morality in order to explain to ourselves why we were justified in stopping the Holocaust by any means necessary;
But I’m not sure either (1) or (2) is right.
For the fact is that the Nazis did not see Jews, homosexuals, Roma (“Gypsies”), or the disabled as being members of the moral community, and undertook extraordinary efforts to eliminate those groups in their entirety. The Nazi simply does not inhabit the same moral universe as a Western, educated, bourgeois liberal of the 21st century. And it really isn’t clear to me how we could have inculcated them in our values by reason alone. I don’t see how any appeal to “objective morality” would have justified our actions to the Nazis, such that they would appreciate that we were morally right to kill them.
So much, then, for (1). But as for (2), the appeal to “objective morality” is just redundant — it doesn’t add anything new to the reasons we have already for thinking that the Third Reich was the enemy of humanity, and that it had to be stopped by any means necessary.
You do not have to know what is objectively moral in order to know that morality must refer to an objective commodity or else it it fails into nothing more than “might makes right”. If morality is a subjective commodity, then anything goes, and the final arbiter of “what is moral” is might and/or manipulation of some sort.
It is only if one assumes that morality refers to an objective commodity that there can be a debate about moralty that is anything more than rhetoric and manipulation.
They’re both right, if by “explain” you mean “rationally justify” beyond “because we felt like it and had the power to do so.”
If one holds that morality is just whatever they feel it is, there is no need to postulate that your moral views may be erroneous. Erroneous compared to what? That’s like saying that enjoying the flavor of chocolate pie might be an erroneous enjoyment; it makes no sense to even speak of having an erroneous moral view. Morals, to the atheist/materialist, are just statements that reflect what they enjoy/do not enjoy. Period.
Therefore, there is no rational argument to be had about “what is moral” and “what is not moral”; they are merely statements of personal preference. When Allan Miller says that he doesn’t think that what Hitler did was moral, that is the equivalent of saying that he doesn’t think Hitler was doing what Hitler felt was the right thing to do. It’s an absurd comment to say from the context of Miller’s premises; you cannot judge the personal preferences of others in any meaningful way from the perspective of your own personal preferences.
Saying “I don’t think what Hitler did was moral”, under moral relativism, is absurd. Of course what Hitler did was moral(under Allan Miller’s premises) – it’s the very definition of moral, under relativism: doing what you personally, subjectively think is right. Allan Miller might as well say “I don’t think Hitler liked dogs” when all the historical evidence points otherwise. All the historical evidence points to the fact that Hitler thought annihilating the Jews was the right thing to do; that is all Allan Miller’s moral system has by which to evaluate as moral or not the actions of any individual – whether or not they personally thought “it’s the right thing to do”.
That it would be immoral for Allan to do it is entirely irrelevant. Allan is attempting to have his relativistic cake and eat it too.
The only way to **rationally justify** or argue any action as moral or not moral, or to rationally justify moral interventions, is if morality is assumed to be an objective commodity that can be used to evaluate the moral behavior of others.
If not, then we’re all the moral equivalent of Nazis, without a rational case to make otherwise.
Now, if one holds that morality refers to some objective commodity with necessary consequences, then they have a reason to attempt to verify that they have correct moral views. They have reason to question that they may have erroneous moral views and may need to change them. They have a reason to be careful and thoughtful in their behavior. They have a reason to seek to refine their moral views and become more moral people, and have a valid reason to act when morally obligated. Such a view provides a rational authority to act when it is morally required.
The concept of subjective morality offers no such reasons, and no impetus to think that one’s moral views might be “wrong”; in fact, it promotes the idea that moral views cannot be wrong, and that all moral views are essentially the same.
What’s right about this is the idea that norms (including moral norms, but not only those) essentially involve the idea of constraint. To follow a norm is to have one’s behaviors constrained in some way or other.
What’s wrong about this is the idea that the norms themselves must be authorized or legislated by something other than those norms. For the norms are the grounds for whatever will count as authorized for us. The appeal to something beyond those norms is akin the following thought:
Three things have gone badly wrong here.
Firstly, it simply begs the question against the coherence of “groundless grounds”. It would need to be shown that a ground must have a ground of its own in order to count as a ground in the first place. In the absence of such an account, it is mere assertion that groundless grounds are arbitrary impositions of will.
Secondly, the appeal to grounds for our grounds threatens an infinite regress. The regress-blocker must be a groundless ground, regardless of whether the groundless grounds are human or divine. (A few other participants have pressed this point before; I’m just doing so again.)
Thirdly, although groundless grounds cannot be justified by anything deeper than themselves (since then they would not be groundless), they can be explained. For example, one could give a cultural-historical account of the process whereby we Western bourgeois liberals acquired, owing largely to the conceptual revolutions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, our moral norms. And one could also give an evolutionary (natural-historical) account of the process whereby normativity as such emerged from older kinds of mammalian and primate social behavior. Those accounts would not justify our norms (unless justification itself could be fundamentally historical in form and content), but they would explain them.
We are social animals, after all. What WJM seems to overlook is the social rules should extend to everyone in the group, and in an ideal world, to everyone. The psychopath’s desire to eat babies is outweighed as a right by the right of babies not be eaten.
And psychopaths who are untreatable need to be detained to protect everyone else who can play by the social rules and who do not kill and eat each other.
@ William Murray
Do you think it’s time you had a stab at responding to Keiths?
Not according to the psychopath, and under the logic of moral subjectivity, the only thing that “outweighs” his desire is the power of other who decide to stop him. There is no superior moral authority outside of might under relativism.
I generally don’t respond to the patently absurd. Just because you can answer a question doesn’t mean the answer is justified by one’s premises.
As far as your “groundless grounds” argument, under debate here are two premises – two competing grounds, one of which is true. Morality either refers to an objective commodity, or morality refers to a subjective commodity (your attempts at redefining such terms notwithstanding and ignored). One of those two “grounds” (premises) is true.
If the premise of subjective morality is true, then there are certain logical consequences. If the premise of objective morality is true, then there are certain rational consequences that are irreconcilable with the subjective premise.
The fact is that nobody (other than sociopaths) actually behave as if the subjective premise is true. The fact is that everyone (other than sociopaths) behave as if the objective premise is true. The fact is that you cannot even get through an argument about morality without the subjectivists arguing in a manner that can only be extrapolated from the objectivist premise – such as your statement that the predilection to eat babies is “outweighed” by the baby’s “right to live”; that’s only true if you impose your personal moral system on the scenario and those involved as if it is taken as an objectively valid moral evaluation.
The simple fact is that under moral relativism, “good” and “bad” are nothing more than liking or not liking “vanilla” and “chocolate”; sensations that are completely subjective and personal. It’s absurd to argue that those who enjoy chocolate should be served first because their right to enjoy chocoloate outweighs the rights of vanilla lovers.
You and others are only trying to find some way to justify moral views and judgements that are simply not rationally reconcilable with moral relativism because you find the necessary, logical implications of moral relativism unpalatable.
Under moral relativism, what Hitler did, and what Gandhi did, and what Jesus did, and what Bin Ladin did, and what Stalin did, and what Torquemada did, are morally equivalent because they all did what they thought right. There is no exterior arena or criteria, under moral relativism, from which to pass moral judgement on what others have done other than whether or not they believed that what they did was right. If they believed what they were doing was right, under moral relativism, then it was a moral action – a good action.
If that conclusion is morally unacceptable, then you are logically required to ditch the premise that necessarily produces it. If as a moral relativist you cannot admit that there is no principled difference between you and hitler, and that the difference between saving the Jews and gassing them is in principle the same as preferring vanilla to chocolate, all you’re doing is deceiving yourself and/or others.
I would be overlooking it had I made an argument about “social rules”. I have made no such argument. If you are saying that “morality” necessarily is about “social rules” which apply to everyone, then you have either made a faulty argument (since I am under no obligation to subjectively interpret morality as you do) or you have contradicted yourself (implying an objectively true moral system that “should” extend to everyone and is factually about “social rules”).
It’s really quite simple; if you don’t want to live in the same moral bucket as Hitler et al, you cannot hold that morality is subjective in nature. There must be something other than personal taste to get you out of that cesspool. Saying you like chocolate and he likes vanilla doesn’t provide a meaningful moral distinction between the two of you.
William J. Murray,
What you seem to not appreciate is that not all of us here are willing to accept the terms of the debate as you’ve laid them out. Certainly I am not! On the contrary, I think the terms of the debate as you’ve laid them out here rest on conflating a great many different distinctions: the cognitive and the emotive, the objective and the subjective, and the absolute and the relative.
You want to argue that once one has rejected emotivism, then one must reject subjectivism and relativism — or, put conversely, that once one has rejected moral absolutes, then there’s no stopping point on the slippery slope to nihilism. The problem is that every time someone proposes a perfectly good stopping-point, all you can say is, “that’s not a stopping point!”.
For example, there’s a perfectly reasonable distinction to draw here between (a) one’s own actions are constrained by norms that confront me as objectively valid with regard to those actions, and (b) those norms themselves are constrained by something beyond themselves. You seem to think that rejecting (a) logically entails rejecting (a), and that seems utterly false. There’s no reason why (a) logically depends on (b).
There are, of course, metaphysical explanations for (a) that appeal to something like (b). But metaphysical explanations are just different from logical justifications, and you seem to be conflating those two.
Of course you aren’t, and I greatly appreciate the dodging, weaving and in particular your sophistry and indulgent, semantic quackery. It’s quite satisfying.
“Perfectly good” by who’s subjective criteria? As I said, you cannot even make a case against objective morality without invoking it.
There’s no such thing as an “objectively valid norm”. A norm is a consensus view held in the minds of members of society. “Objectively valid” would mean that the proposition was true regardless of what consensus believed about it. You’re bastardizing the term “objective” in order to be able to semantically imply something that is unavailable under your premise, much like the idea of “compatibalist free will”. This is the kind of knot-laden sophistry one must employ in order to hide from themselves the simple, rational ramifications of the premises they hold to be true.
I imagine it takes an enormous amount of academic “training” in order to use the term “objectively valid norm” with a straight face.
William J. Murray,
And whereas you see me as indulging in sophistry and semantic quackery, I see you as operating with far too crude and simplistic set of concepts, and then chastising me (and others here) for refusing to do the same. By my lights, you don’t have a sufficiently rich set of concepts to do justice to the phenomena you are talking about. Whereas perhaps you think I am trying to make things more complicated than they really are, I see you as trying to make things simpler than they really are.
Alan Fox:
Not to be confused with social insects.
Kantian Naturalist,
No, you’re the only one here utilizing Rube Goldberg philosophy. The others in the debate are using the same philosophical toolset as I, they just don’t care to admit what their premises demand. I hope they appreciate the cover you attempt to provide for them, though. You and I both know they aren’t attempting any sort of “sophisticated” philosophical rebuttal.
And, for the record, anyone that uses the term “objective” to mean “a view most people in a society share” is, in my book, dedicated to intellectual self-deception.
As long as we’re making distinctions, I have found it very useful to distinguish between ethics and morality. For morality, I include cultural mores, and social practices that are considered right or wrong for reasons of tradition or religion. The Aztecs, for example, were a very moral people according to their own lights, but were they ethical in subjecting other groups to mass murder in the name of their rain-god?
Morality can include ethics, and ideally the overlap should be nearly complete, but tradition often serves to have us violate our empathy-based ethical inclinations. Ethics doesn’t have to based on emotions, but on a value system that simply acknowledges the common humanity of all of us, and admits that there is no possible objective standard that could render one human being superior to any other.
What most people here are referring to as morality, I would call ethics. The reason I chose the term that way is simply because so much religious culture has subsumed “morality” into its medieval rules for sexual behavior and class status. Too much baggage, in other words. “Ethics” is a bit of a cleaner term.
William,
Your entire argument rests on a claim that you cannot support. Do you understand how irrational that is?
You say:
For the fourth time, my challenge to you:
Can you defend your claim, or are you here just to blow smoke?
William J. Murray,
That’s poorly constructed. Of course I can have an opinion on whether someone else’s behaviour accords with my personal code of conduct, or that of a group. And on whether a sense of right or wrong even participates in their thought processes.
No. There is a distinction between simply doing something, and doing it because you think it ‘right’. It’s equivocating the use of the word ‘right’. Animals do things, we could say they think them ‘right’, but would assume they do not possess a moral sense in the way we might conceive it. Ditto the sociopath, if they lack even the subjective conception of ‘right and wrong’.
Furthering political ends, annihilating a group whom you despise, etc are not necessarily moral simply because you consider them ‘the right thing to do’. I don’t think every political decision comes under the banner of ‘morality’. Genocide certainly does, but typically in the negative. Just because someone thinks it morally wrong to commit it does not mean that someone else who does it thinks it morally right. They may simply not care either way.
OK, let’s agree arguendo that Hitler did what he thought was ‘right’ as a moral judgement, something more than politically expedient or relating to a conception (right/wrong) that was simply alien to him.
I must (you say) regard his moral judgement as equally valid as mine. So, why was he not morally right under your premises? Because Objective Morality wouldn’t concur. How do you know? It’s self-evident? To whom? Certainly not to Hitler. To you, then. In your opinion, Hitler was not doing what Objective Morality would wish. You have simply reified subjectivity, and wrapped it up in philosophical pretension with a side order of “anyone who disagrees with me is, by so doing, declaring themselves to be a sociopath”. .
OK, suppose he was a Moral-Objectivist? His morality was grounded in the only rationally defensible position known to WJM: Objective Morality. Good old Hitler. And yet WJM, while approving of the rational basis by which H conducts his moral affairs, finds himself at odds with H over whom Objective Morality would agree with. WJM’s opinion, again. It’s blindingly obvious to all but WJM that he, too, must resort to the subjective. He could try the ‘all right-thinking-people’ gambit, but has already disallowed consensus.
Some objective morality? Seems to imply there is a choice among objective moralities. llanitedavemakes an excellent point when he distinguishes ethics and morality:
William Murray seems reluctant to identify the source of his moral code but presumably he complies with the ethical rules of the community which he is a part of. Maybe he is able to even to contribute at least by supporting and helping to elect representatives who can modify and improve those ethical rules. What Murray has plainly been unable to demonstrate is that there is any other source for ethical behaviour than that developed by human society. The very act of a social way of life results in the development of appropriate rules and behaviour. Claims of external sources of morality and ethics are indemonstrable but the ability of humans to imagine and create myths is seemingly endless.
This is just wrong-headed. I strongly disagree with Catholic morality, while at the same time refuting that it is “God-given”. We can certainly argue whether different ethical rules are better than others on solely pragmatic criteria such as fairness.
ETA And I can empathise with some of the ethical tenets of Tibetan Buddhism without having to accept a divine source for the ideas.
That’s right. There is no absolute, objective moral standard against which all behavior can be measured. Many lay claim to such a standard. None have been demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction. None have achieved the dominance you might expect if such a thing existed as a truly objective phenomenon.
Even if we assume that there is some superior alien intelligence that wants to impose its morality on us, even if it claimed to be some Supreme Authority, we would still be entitled to task the same sort of questions you ask. On what grounds do you claim overriding authority for your moral prescriptions? What makes your moral judgements any better than mine? Why should we take you at your word?
On the other hand, if there is no supreme, objective moral authority what else is there but our own personal judgements? You argument that, in the absence of any objective standard, there is no way to distinguish between the behavior of a Hitler and a Ghandi, is simply wrong, in my view. You and I and, I suspect, the vast majority of the world’s population can and do make such a distinction. You may object that such views are poorly-grounded but it can be done.
On an empirical approach, regardless of any presumptions about a source, the first questions to asked are things like, what are morals for, what purpose do they serve? The simple answer is that their function seems to be, broadly, to regulate the way people behave towards each other in society and, to a lesser extent, towards other living things. If you want a rationale for such behavior it is to be found in the recognition that, individually, we are weak, fragile and vulnerable creatures whose chances of survival are greatly improved in a community of our fellows. Anything which tends to promote the cohesion of such societies is, therefore, beneficial.
For example, the amoral sociopath might well argue that, in the absence of any objective morality, his preference for raping and murdering others is morally equivalent to caring for and protecting others. There is no way to distinguish between them. But that isn’t quite correct. If there is no objective measure of morality then what remains is our subjective views. In fact, if there is no objective measure then our subjective views are all there ever was in the first place. If the consensus of our subjective views is that kindness and consideration of others is the best way to behave, what are the grounds for ignoring that?
The sociopath can argue that, without an objective moral standard, we have no grounds for objecting to his behavior. The overwhelming majority of the rest of society most definitely prefer that they, their family and friends not be raped and murdered. Whose view prevails? Ultimately, the majority because that is the expression of their common interests. Morality is the consensus that what is best for all of us in society is best for each of us. It may be based on emotion, instincts and half-baked rationalizations but it’s the best we have been able to come up with so far.
WJM ,
You do not have to know what is objectively moral in order to know that morality must refer to an objective commodity or else it it fails into nothing more than “might makes right”.
That seems like conflating two different things, morality and the enforcement of morality. If “a” is objectively moral, then nothing should preclude me from arriving at the same conclusion that ” a ” is moral, especially if objective morals have some logical basis.
If morality is a subjective commodity, then anything goes, and the final arbiter of “what is moral” is might and/or manipulation of some sort
Even if morality is objective we have no reason to believe otherwise, without a knowledge of the basis of the objective morality. Is that your premise that we have that knowledge?
Morality is not just understanding right and wrong, but is also carries with it obligation and authority to act. Free will can be used to deny anything – even that which is obviously immoral. Fundamental moral statements are not derived logically; they are held as self-evidently true. Other moral statements or considerations can be inferred logically from self-evidently true moral statements.
The basis of moral knowledge is that which we perceive the landscape of morality with: our conscience. As with any perception of an objectively existent commodity, we must always be aware that our perception may be faulty and our interpretations incorrect, which is why reason must be applied to check our moral views. As with most knowledge built from perception of that which we consider to be objectively existent, it begins with experience and the translation of that experience into a rational framework for behavior.
I didn’t claim mine were better than yours. You, like others, are making the ongoing mistake that I am arguing for some particular morality. I am not. I am making the case that the premise of objectively existent morality is rationally necessary for normal behavior and for a rationally consistent worldview for anyone who is not a sociopath.
I am making the case that there are only two logical options open to moral relativists in the real world of how the actually live; sociopathy or hypocrisy. This is not an argument that any particular moral code written down in some form is the “correct” one. It is certainly not an argument that my moral code is better than yours.
It is entirely possible that you behave far more morally than I do even while holding morally views that are not rationally reconcilable with your worldview premises.
Because the sociopath wants to ignore them. That’s all the rational justification anyone needs for ignoring any subjective conventions. The subjectivist sociopath need not worry about any necessary consequences to his/her amoral behavior; all he/she needs consider is what he/she can get away with.
If, however, the sociopath believes that morality is an objective commodity and not just the subjective convention of a group, and that there are necessary (inescapable) consequences to moral/immoral behavior, then they have reason to consider their actions beyond what other people might hold them accountable for. After all, a sociopath isn’t necessarily committed behaviorally to doing wrong things (as psychopaths often are), they just don’t have the empathy or conscience the rest of us have that we can use to navigate the moral landscape. Like a blind man that needs to be taught how to successfully navigate the landscape around him, a sociopath can be taught to behave morally – but they cannot be taught to behave morally if they have no reason to think the world they cannot see even exists in the first place.
Similarly, there is no reason for people to care what their empathy and conscience tells them if they are being taught that such things are nothing more than subjective feelings that do not carry with them necessary consequences. People are free to desensitize themselves and set aside their conscience because all it is, as they have been taught, is just another subjective feeling they can ignore if they feel like it will benefit them.
This is the dangerous social path of demoting morality to the position of being nothing more than a subjective, personal sensation.
It’s not my job in this argument to make such a demonstration. My argument here is not to prove that objective morality exists, or to explain what it is. My argument here is that the premise of objectively-existent morality is necessary to rationally justify how people actually think and behave.
IF you think that it is always immoral, in any society at any time, to torture children for personal pleasure, and if you would feel obligated to intervene even at your own expense if such was occurring, and if you would feel authorized to intervene regardless of the beliefs of those involved, AND if you think “might makes right” is NOT a valid moral maxim, then you think, act and behave as if morality is an objective commodity, not as if it is all relative and subjective.
If you would not feel compelled to intervene, and if you could just shrug your shoulders and think “eh, it’s none of my business”, then I suggest most people would consider you about as immoral as the one committing the torture. I further suggest that anyone who could do that is, pretty much, already a sociopath.
Under my premise, the opportunity exists for Hitler to be wrong about the “rightness” of exterminating the Jews. Under the subjective premise, there is no such opportunity! Under the subjective premise, Hitler was necessarily doing the right thing, morally, because moral right = whatever anyone individually thinks is the right thing to do. The only rational conclusion for a rational moral subjectivist is to admit that as far as any moral “good” exists – people doing what they think was right – exterminating the Jews was a good thing for Hitler to do.
But, since you and other cannot face that necessary conclusion if subjective morality is true, you say absurd things like “I don’t think that what Hitler did was a good thing” as if some objective standard was applicable. Your category error, non-sequitur comment “I personally don’t agree with what Hitler did” is like saying “well, I personally don’t agree with Hitler’s choice of vanilla ice cream”. It’s a non-sequitur. It doesn’t make sense from the subjective-morality framework. If you agree that morality is a subjective personal choice, then you are implicitly authorizing everyone to do what they think is right, and defining such choices as “good” in the only sense available – people doing what they think is right. Including Hitler.
This means that if you are a moral subjectivist, then you agree that gassing jews was a good thing as long as those that gassed them felt it was the right thing to do, and that it was also a good thing for those that stopped the Nazis to stop them as long as they thought it was the right thing to do, and that it was a good thing for the Jihadists to fly their planes into the buildings as long as they thought it was the right thing to do. That’s what “good” means under moral subjectivism, your personal predilections notwithstanding. Saying “I don’t agree with their actions only serves as semantic cover for the fact that what you believe fully authorizes and endorses such behavior in principle – as long as someone thinks it is right, then it is a moral good – even if it would be a morally bad thing for you to do it, it was morally good for them to do it.
Some aspects of it are self-evident. Other aspects must be reasoned from the self-evident and from experience. You know the same way you know anything – by accumulating experiential information via your senses (in this case, your conscience) and using reason to generate as rational and as good a picture of the moral landscape as you can, keeping in mind that humans are fallible and capable of both willfully denying the obvious and misinterpreting sensory data.
I don’t think it takes a whole lot of careful thought to recognize it is immoral to attempt to exterminate an entire ethnic group.
William,
That’s incorrect.
Since I hold that morality is subjective, any moral judgment I make is implicitly qualified with the phrase “by my standards.” So when I say that it is immoral everywhere and always to torture children merely for personal pleasure, I am saying that it is immoral by my standards, and I am acknowledging that my standards are ultimately subjective.
None of that makes it impossible or illogical to act on my (subjective) standards. An artist doesn’t need objective standards of beauty in order to create beautiful works of art, and I don’t need objective moral standards in order to act morally.
This has absolutely nothing to do with what people mean when they say that morality is subjective.
You can say that in your opinion triangles have four sides; that you can say such a thing doesn’t confer rationality upon the statement. You are making a category error. The only criteria available under moral subjectivism of the relative good or evil of an act is whether or not the person committing the act thought it was the right thing to do. What **you** think about committing the act is entirely irrelevant to the intrinsic (under subjectivism) moral worth of the act in its relationship to the actor/believer.
Your “standards” are not transferable; they cannot be used to evaluate the moral worth of any behavior; to do so would be to necessarily refute the principle of subjective morality. You are obligated, under moral subjectivism, to find any action morally good if the actor felt it was the right thing to do. Otherwise, you are committing a fundamental logical error and being a hypocrite with regards to the subjectivist principle.
Your “standards” (set of moral proclivities) can (under the principle of moral relativism) only be applied to your acts; they cannot be applied to others because there is no transpersonal means of evaluation; morality is, under subjectivism, entirely limited to the relationship between an actor/believer and the acts they commit.
If, like beauty, you agree that morality lies in the eye of the beholder, then by what authority or obligation would you stop an artist from painting and selling what were to you ugly paintings, but were to a great many people beautiful paintings? What would give you the obligation or authority to stop the Nazis from gassing Jews, or stop an adult from abusing a child? Do you get to impose your idea of “beauty” on others simply because you have the power to do so?
Your argument fails because there is no such thing as absolute morality. Ethics, morality is something humans have and can argue about for years past and years to come. Being a pragmatist and discounting rationalism, I can be satisfied with this as we are social animals and I would rather share my life with others in compromise and mutual respect than live alone holding to my supposedly rational tenets.
My argument is not dependent on absolute morality actually existing.
Don’t bother trying to correct William’s overly simplistic conception of things; he’ll only accuse you of sophistry and neither you nor he will gain anything as a result.
“Correct it” by what by what objective standard of philosophy, Mr. Semantic Apocalypse?
William,
I see little point in continuing here when you have started a thread at Uncommon Descent on the same theme and also since UD rules on insulting fellow commenters seem non-existent there and you have not made the slightest impression on anyone here.
If you had actually taken the time to read my contributions to that thread, you would have seen that I do not accept Bakker’s argument for the semantic apocalypse or for semantic nihilism. I simply find the argument fascinating and worthy of a response. Apparently the capacity to be excited by positions one does not accept is lost on you.
Since you have already rejected my conception of objectivity as mere sophistry, I doubt it would be beneficial to either of us for me to make yet one more quixotic attempt at dialogue.
It was always going to be a question of who got bored first.
William,
Likewise, you can assume that objective morality exists, but that doesn’t confer rationality upon your assumption, or upon the moral system you base on that irrational assumption.
No. Under subjective morality, the rightness of an action depends on the particular moral system under which it is evaluated. If I hold that it is always and everywhere immoral to torture children merely for pleasure, then any such act, regardless of who commits it, is immoral under my system. If a particular psychopath disagrees, that’s fine; the act is still immoral under my system, though it might be moral under his.
Fortunately, gratuitous child torture is considered immoral under most of the subjective moralities held by humans in the 21st century.
You are assuming that the “intrinsic moral worth” of an act is defined only by the actor. Why exclude those who are affected by the act? Why exclude others who are not directly involved?
That’s wrong, as I explained above. Under subjective morality, any behavior can be evaluated. It’s just that by definition, the “moral worth” of the behavior depends on the particular moral system under which it is being evaluated. Nothing incoherent about that.
Definitely false, as explained above. If the actor felt it was the right thing to do, then it might be moral under his or her moral system, but that does not obligate anyone else to deem it moral under their own system.
You’re repeating your error. Any act by any actor can be judged under a subjective moral system. It’s just that the judgment need not match the judgment rendered under a different moral system.
None, and I wouldn’t even try, because ugly paintings are not immoral under my system. I may prefer paintings that I consider beautiful, but I don’t regard ugly paintings as immoral, which puts the lie to your silly claim that subjective morality is nothing more than mere preference, like preferring vanilla ice cream over chocolate.
My own moral system.
I don’t want to impose my idea of beauty on others. But even if I wanted to and possessed dictatorial power, I couldn’t do it. I could burn all the paintings I considered ugly, and punish the artists who produced them, but none of that would prevent others from continuing to regard those paintings as beautiful.
Eliminating ugly paintings does not make my personal standards of beauty the only valid ones, and eliminating immoral (according to me) behaviors does not make my moral system “true” or “objective”. Might does not make right.
WJM
Fundamental moral statements are not derived logically; they are held as self-evidently true.
Other moral statements or considerations can be inferred logically from self-evidently true moral statements.
Let’s see, give me a self evident true statement which does not involve recreational torture, and let’s see if it can be derived logically from some more basic shared human experience.
The basis of moral knowledge is that which we perceive the landscape of morality with: our conscience. As with any perception of an objectively existent commodity, we must always be aware that our perception may be faulty and our interpretations incorrect, which is why reason must be applied to check our moral views.
Sounds reasonable, though sort of a weak basis for enforcing your subjective moral judgement on others. So in your view how does the conscience work? In other words what makes a conscience a reliable instrument to detect objective morality?
As with most knowledge built from perception of that which we consider to be objectively existent, it begins with experience and the translation of that experience into a rational framework for behavior.
Sounds like it is based on subjective evaluation. So basically , unless one believes the moral authority objectively revealed the objective moral code directly, we are in the same boat in forming a moral code. Again unless we know something about how an objective moral code comes to exist. That would put us closer to evaluating our approximation.
Barry Arrington, on the UD thread:
The opposition in this debate appears to have a rather shaky grasp on the usage of the term ‘self-evident’. They seemingly take their definitional cue from the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence rather than something with more epistemological rigour. For all their philosophical pretensions, the commission of logical fallacies appears to trouble them not one bit. Insist a broadly-held consensus is actually an irrefutable objective truth, and insist that anyone who disagrees does not count!
Why? In the first place, the existence of one self-evidently true moral statement makes my case. In the second place, a truth that is derived from something else is not a self-evident truth.
It is a sense that interacts with the moral landscape, in a similar fashion to our other senses as they interact with that which generates those sensations. What makes it reliable would be the same thing that makes any other sense reliable to whatever degree they are reliable; the application of rational analysis to what we are perceiving, coupled with the admission that we are fallible in our observation and interpretation of that which we hold to be objectively existent.
All of our evaluations of any sensory input is through subjective evaluation. The only question is whether or not we believe what we are sensing to be objectively existent and subject to rational examination.
No, we are not. “Forming a moral code” based on the premise that morality is subjective in nature is an entirely different boat, leading to an entirely different location, than “trying to figure out the moral code” based on the premise that morality is objective in nature. The former cannot get you to moral obligation and authority; only the latter can.
That would be like saying that unless we know how the world came to exist we cannot gain an approximation of how to navigate the landscape our senses reveal and logic evaluates.
Children are just meat robots, so torturing them is impossible.
Mark Frank,
You don’t seem to be understanding the argument about non-sequitur nature of judging the morality of the acts of others. Here’s a better explanation.
Morality is a description of “right” and “wrong” acts, things we should and should not do. An act can only be “right” or “wrong” in relationship to a purpose. If morality is subjective in nature, then our morality (what we should and shouldn’t do) is a reflection of our individual goals or the purposes we are serving. Only we know what purposes we are serving (our moral structure, unless we tell others), so only we know if our actions serve those purposes and thus are moral.
The is where the “beautiful vs ugly” painting hinders the argument rather than serves it, because you are entitled to your opinion about whether or not the painting, from your perspective, achieves the goal of “beauty”.
The problem is that, under subjective morality, we all get to choose our own goals and purposes that guide our choices. Thus you and the nazi are not offering opinions that converge on the same goal – a beautiful painting; you are offering an opinion on actions that serve different goals. You are saying that the painting is not good because it is not beautiful when the painter may not have been striving for a beautiful painting in the first place.
When you say that what the Nazis did was “immoral”, what you are really saying that the actions do not serve your goals or purposes, and thus are not “good” – but, they are not intended to serve your goals or purposes; they are intended to serve the Nazi’s. Under moral relativism, the only way an action can be meaningfully (rationally) judged to be right or wrong is in relation to the goal it was intended to serve. That would be the only way to determine a good act from a bad one because there is no objective, universal purpose by which to judge acts, and the value of an act cannot be rationally judged according to purposes it was not intended to serve.
That would be like saying a painting is not a good painting because it is ugly, when the painter was not trying to serve the purpose of creating a beautiful painting in the first place, but rather was, say, attempting to create an ugly painting. Your claim that the painting “is not good” is a non-sequitur because you are not judging it according to the purpose it was intended to serve; you are instead judging the worth of the painting based on criteria entirely irrelevant and contradictory to the reason it was painted in the first place.
This is why, when a moral relativist judges as immoral the acts of others who are actually acting in accordance with their own purposes, their subjectivist position fails and their innate sense of objective morality is on display. The Nazis’ goals were to purify the human race and eliminate what they saw as lesser races; gassing the Jews was an act intended to serve that purpose. That is the only way the relative “good” or “evil” of the act can be rationally judged – by whether or not it served the purpose it was intended to serve.
So, under moral relativism, the only way to rationally judge the relative “goodness” of any act is to judge it according to the purpose it was intended to serve, not according to some other purpose the moral relativist has in their mind. To judge the acts of others according to your own purposes (moral structure) and not theirs, and to feel authorized and obligated to intervene to stop them from acting to serve their own purposes is to operate as if the acts of others should serve your particular subjective goals and purposes, as if your individual goals and purposes are universally applicable in judging the “rightness” of the acts of others.
And that is something unavailable under moral relativism – at least, unavailable to anyone actually living as if moral relativism was true.
William,
I don’t think you see the (irrational) implications of your own statements.
Regarding “absolute morality”, you write:
Yet you also say:
Let that sink in.
Now suppose that you and I both feel that child abuse is wrong. According to you, you are morally entitled to intervene to prevent child abuse, but I am not. What is the difference? You are entitled to intervene because you have assumed something that you do not know and do not even pretend to know.
Your moral authority derives from an assumption that you yourself admit is baseless.
It’s the height of irrationality.
WJM @UD:
Likewise, if someone is going to intervene in my activities, they better come with something more substantive than “I believe in an objective moral standard which you are transgressing, so stop it or …”.
This could run and run!
WJM,
In the first place, the existence of one self-evidently true moral statement makes my case.
It would be hard to construct a moral system based on the one self evident truth offered so far. You see my interest is not solely a justification for the authority to impose one’s moral system on another but also the manner in which the actual moral system is derived. Whether the premise that “there exists an objective moral code ” is useful in the code’s determination.
In the second place, a truth that is derived from something else is not a self-evident truth.
Exactly my thinking, that is why I wanted an example .