objective morality, for the umpteenth time

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Another discussion of objective morality has broken out, so I thought I would provide a home for it.

579 thoughts on “objective morality, for the umpteenth time”

  2. OMagain: And if the commandments did nothing and achieved nothing, what was the point of them at all?

    You really don’t know anything about what the bible says do you?

    quote:

    So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
    (Gal 3:24)

    and
    But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
    (Gal 3:22)
    and
    What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
    (Rom 7:7)
    end quote;

    peace

  3. OMagain: Says the guy who derails every thread he participates in.

    Congratulations OMagain you have successfully derailed yet another thread by attacking your straw-man god.

    Apparently the first 1,000 were not enough for you

    You must be so proud

    peace

  4. fifthmonarchyman: Congratulations OMagain you have successfully derailed yet another thread by attacking your straw-man god.

    Apparently the first 1,000 were not enough for you

    You must be so proud

  5. keiths: I see that fifth is failing for Jesus again.

    And whining that I’ve derailed a thread when he’s responded to every post I’ve made.

    Hit that ignore button FMM. You’ll feel so much better.

  7. OMagain: And whining that I’ve derailed a thread when he’s responded to every post I’ve made.

    I’m usually not going to ignore when people blaspheme my God or disparage my friends. Especially if they directly address me when they do it.

    If that means that every silly childish attack must be responded to that is a cross I will have to bear.

    That does not mean that I don’t wish that we could talk about something else for a change.

    peace

  8. fifthmonarchyman: The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

    He didn’t fix a day this weekend, did he? Cause, I mean, I’ve got a lot of shit to do right now. Could you maybe ask him to push it at least a couple months?

    Actually sometime during the summer of 2019 would be perfect. Thanks in advance.

  9. keiths:

    I see that fifth is failing for Jesus again.

    OMagain:

    And whining that I’ve derailed a thread when he’s responded to every post I’ve made.

    Hit that ignore button FMM. You’ll feel so much better.

    fifth:

    I’m usually not going to ignore when people blaspheme my God or disparage my friends. Especially if they directly address me when they do it.

    If that means that every silly childish attack must be responded to that is a cross I will have to bear.

    I think Jesus would prefer if someone else bore that particular cross. Someone bright enough not to make arguments like this:

    Do you think that adding a commandment or two would have meant less rape and slavery?

    If it did not work for murder or adultery what would make you think it would work for rape?

  10. Now’s a good time to point out that even if the ridiculous morality of the Bible came straight from a real God, that wouldn’t make it an objective morality. It would just be God’s subjective morality.

  11. walto: Actually sometime during the summer of 2019 would be perfect. Thanks in advance.

    Well ok but that just means that the injustice and suffering in the world will continue to fester till then.

    Remember you asked for it so that is on you

    😉

    peace

  12. keiths: Someone bright enough not to make arguments like this:

    It’s hard to fathom the mindset of someone who would worship a being that sets up rules knowing that they won’t make any difference solely for the purpose of after death saying “well, I did tell you the rules” and them sending them to eternal damnation.

  13. OMagain: It’s hard to fathom the mindset of someone who would worship a being that sets up rules knowing that they won’t make any difference solely for the purpose of after death saying “well, I did tell you the rules” and them sending them to eternal damnation.

    It’s even harder to fathom the mindset of someone who would setup a strawman with those odd characteristics.

    I guess the best we can do is posit that irrational hatred will make you imagine strange things.

    Hatred is a virus of the mind and like a virus it mucks up it’s host

    peace

  14. fifthmonarchyman: Well ok but that just means that the injustice and suffering in the world will continue to fester till then.

    Remember you asked for it so that is on you

    😉

    peace

    Yeah, I’m good with that. Thanks.

  15. walto: Yeah, I’m good with that. Thanks.

    Same here. It’s ironic that those who preach acceptance of misery in this life to ensure eternal reward in the (supposed) next life now have a problem with you leaving misery to fester…..

    Double standards much?

  16. walto: Yeah, I’m good with that. Thanks.

    The peanut gallery here thinks God is a moral monster for allowing that sort of stuff to continue and here you are actively seeking to put off the eventual remedy.

    Are you sure you want to subject yourself to their wrath? They have repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t have the patience or mercy that God has.

    peace

  18. OMagain: Same here.

    What????

    You would deliberately seek to prolong all the suffering and injustice in the world?

    You monster

    OMagain: It’s ironic that those who preach acceptance of misery in this life to ensure eternal reward in the (supposed) next life now have a problem with you leaving misery to fester

    I don’t know anyone who preaches “acceptance of misery in this life to ensure eternal reward”.

    Certainly no Bible believing Christian would do that

    peace

  19. There really only two ways to stop injustice misery and suffering in the world.

    1) You can eliminate the people and punish the guilty
    2) You can supernaturally change people’s hearts

    I thank God he chooses option two for the time being. It’s incredibly messy and requires lots of patience and grace on his part but I’m alive because he still takes this approach.

    I also thank God that his patience is not with out limit

    peace

  21. dazz:
    All I want to know about judgment day is, will there be plenty ass?

    Depends if it thumbs up or thumbs down.

  22. fifthmonarchyman: Well ok but that just means that the injustice and suffering in the world will continue to fester till then.

    Remember you asked for it so that is on you

    😉

    peace

    In other words, another Patriots Super Bowl win.

  23. newton: In other words, another Patriots Super Bowl win.

    Finally some thing we can all agree on.

    Bill Belichick is definitely the great red dragon and Tom Brady is the beast that does it’s bidding.

    His number is 12 which is 6 times 2 and he repeatedly scores 6 points.

    666——– coincidence? I think not

    then there is this

    http://www.espn.com/blog/philadelphia-eagles/post/_/id/19620/members-of-the-eagles-find-common-ground-through-spiritual-devotion

    peace

  26. fifth,

    There really only two ways to stop injustice misery and suffering in the world.

    1) You can eliminate the people and punish the guilty
    2) You can supernaturally change people’s hearts

    I thank God he chooses option two for the time being. It’s incredibly messy and requires lots of patience and grace on his part but I’m alive because he still takes this approach.

    First of all, neither of those would solve the problem of misery and suffering due to disease, drought, earthquakes, floods, etc.

    Second, your supposedly omnipotent God could “supernaturally change people’s hearts” in a — well, in a heartbeat. Yet he doesn’t. Why is that? Is he too weak? Is it because he’s an ass who wants the suffering to continue for a while? What’s your explanation?

    The question doesn’t occur to you, of course. You’re a believer, not a thinker.

  27. Well, Keiths, I guess I should thank you. I swore off commenting more than a year ago, and you’ve helped me remember why: it’s a useless blood-sport. Now that the clowns have shown up, I realize I’m wasting my time. You can declare this some kind of victory, but no one who matters to me will care.

    sean s.

  28. You’re rationalizing, sean.

    Nothing about “the clowns showing up” prevents you from making your case for objective morality and responding to my counterarguments.

    If you can defend your notion of objective morality, then do so. If you can’t, then be honest and acknowledge that.

  29. fifth,

    In attempting to defend Yahweh and biblical morality, you’ve written:

    Do you think that adding a commandment or two would have meant less rape and slavery?

    If it did not work for murder or adultery what would make you think it would work for rape?

    If commandments are that useless, then why did God issue so many of them?

    Your argument is pitiful.

  30. Let test the objective morality…

    Let’s say someone is attracted to animals and he is told that being attracted to them may not necessarily be morally unacceptable, if he keeps it to himself. Following through on his attractions may not be…

    But he doesn’t want to curb his desires…He thinks it is unfair…
    So, he tries to convince as many people as possibly that his attraction to animals is ok. He finds other people with the same attractions to animals and they start a campaign to make sexual attraction to animals normal… and the story goes on…
    Some time in the future marring animals is legalized in US, as signed by Donald Trump…

    Is having sexual attraction towards animals and having sexual relations with them subjectively moral or not?

  31. J-Mac:

    Let test the objective morality…

    <snip long and confused rant about bestiality>

    What does any of that have to do with whether morality is objective?

  33. J-Mac:

    ” Is having sexual attraction towards animals … subjectively moral or not?”

    It depends on the person … that’s what ‘subjective’ means.

    But on that matter, do you think being attracted to animals is objectively moral or not ?

  34. Fifth:

    I thank God he supernaturally change people’s hearts

    I thought god left us alone ? (theodicy, free will and all that).

    pizza.

  35. graham2:
    J-Mac:

    ” Is having sexual attraction towards animals … subjectively moral or not?”

    It depends on the person … that’s what ‘subjective’ means.

    But on that matter, do you think being attracted to animals is objectively moral or not ?

    Let’s compare it to stealing…
    Is being attracted to stealing objectively moral or not?

  36. graham2, to fifth:

    I thought god left us alone ? (theodicy, free will and all that).

    Fifth is a Calvinist. He accepts predestination and believes in compatibilist free will.

  37. J-Mac,

    Let’s compare it to stealing…
    Is being attracted to stealing objectively moral or not?

    No, because objective morality doesn’t exist.

    How do you answer your own question?

  38. J-Mac,
    Since you raised the bestiality stuff, I thought you may give us just a hint on your position.
    But you asked a direct question, my answer is that I think being attracted to animals is not a moral question to begin with, ie: the question is nonsensical.
    But back to your question, could you tell us if you think animal attraction is objectively moral or not ?
    While you are at it, you might tell us how you know it is objectively whatever it is.

  39. graham2, to J-Mac:

    But you asked a direct question, my answer is that I think being attracted to animals is not a moral question to begin with, ie: the question is nonsensical.

    J-Mac is almost certain to misconstrue that, so let me step in.

    J-Mac,

    Graham2 is talking about the attraction. He hasn’t addressed bestiality itself.

  40. graham2:

    I thought god left us alone ? (theodicy, free will and all that).

    I’m a Calvinist and a compatibilist . Folks like me believe in something called irresistible Grace. I’m extremely grateful that God did not choose to “leave me alone”

    Plantinga’s free will defense was really just about the observation that God’s permitting evil can be morally justified if it results in some invaluable good that would not have occurred otherwise.

    It could be any conceivable good

    Instead of libertarian freewill I think a better candidate for that invaluable good is Amazing Grace.

    peace

  41. Ok, here, as promised, is an excerpt of a paper of mine in which I define a “subjectivity,” at least as it applies to judgments of prudential value. I understand that is a thread on moral values, but I think it’s pretty easy to see how one could get an analogous definition of “subjective moral value judgment” with a couple of substitutions.

    [It is generally accepted] that there is nothing to what makes a [subjective] statement about S’s well-being true or false that is not in some manner exhausted by S’s attitudes. To be wrong about a self-directed prudential value claim must be taken to be tantamount to being wrong about “I enjoy pasta,” “That looks red to me,” or “I am thinking.” No doubt, strong cases have been made that assertions of that sort still may be mistaken, due, perhaps to language malfunctions, conceptual confusions or the like (see, e.g., Russell, Peirce, Sellars and other fallibilists on this matter), but they can be wrong only in so peculiar a way that we may call such occasions “passing strange.” They are not, in any event, the sorts of claims that can be shown to be false by scientific investigation. I will take this difficulty of controversion to be a mark of legitimately subjective propositions—including those involving self-directed prudential value claims.
    I believe the following conception of subjectivity meets all the criteria set forth above:

    T is a subjective theory of prudential value=def. According to T, there are no value judgments P such that (i) P is true, and (ii) there is no person S for whom P is a subjective judgment.

    P is a subjective judgment of some person Si only if (i) Si believes P, and (ii) necessarily, for all persons S, if S believes that P, then it would be passing strange if not-P.

    It could be objected that we may, because of doubts or internal conflicts, be unsure whether we do or don’t like something. There may even be instances in which someone both loves and hates something at the same time. But it should be remembered that I make no requirement either that each of S’s subjective judgements be doubt-free or that the entire batch of them be internally consistent. Both P’s truth and P’s falsity could be passing strange for S. As already indicated, the “strangeness” is intended to be a sign of the peculiar relationship S has with P, a relationship that need not entail either certainty or self-consistency. The strangeness of being wrong about such “subjective” claims as “This looks green to me” (or “Scallops taste good to me”) is a function of a “psycho-epistemic” principle that makes some types of knowledge even “easier” to come by than such Moorean achievements as “This is a chair.”

  42. fifth: Thank you for answering, or did you ? I have no idea what all that word salad means.
    So god let me do all that bad stuff because it will result in a greater good ? Is that what you are saying ? So I should keep it up ? … I’m starting to like this idea.

    pizza.

  43. walto: T is a subjective theory of prudential value=def. According to T, there are no value judgments P such that (i) P is true, and (ii) there is no person S for whom P is a subjective judgment.

    I see already that the definiens needs to start with:
    T is a theory of prudential value and,,,

  44. walto,

    I believe the following conception of subjectivity meets all the criteria set forth above:

    T is a theory of prudential value=def. According to T, there are no value judgments P such that (i) P is true, and (ii) there is no person S for whom P is a subjective judgment.

    That doesn’t make sense to me, either in terms of moral or prudential values. You’re saying that a value judgment has to belong to someone in order to be subjective. But why? Why wouldn’t “it’s morally wrong to wear plaids with stripes” count as a subjective value judgment, even if no one believes it? It’s certainly not objective.

  45. This doesn’t make sense to me either:

    P is a subjective [value] judgment of some person Si only if (i) Si believes P, and (ii) necessarily, for all persons S, if S believes that P, then it would be passing strange if not-P.

    Here’s a counterexample:

    Suppose Melania sincerely asserts that it’s objectively evil to wear plaids with stripes. In this case P is a value judgment, and Melania believes it, but it would not be “passing strange” if not-P.

    So according to your definition, her judgment is not subjective!

    That’s not right. The fact that she considers her judgment to be objective does not make it objective.

  46. graham2: So god let me do all that bad stuff because it will result in a greater good ?

    God has a good reason for not forcing you to stop just yet. You don’t have a good reason for not stopping.

    If you think about it for just a minute you will see that it makes sense. the morality of an act is tied up with the intention behind it.

    You don’t see the big picture you can’t know the final outcome of your evil acts and you don’t have good intentions when you do them. You should stop doing them immediately and repent. I’m quite sure that absent God’s intervening grace you won’t do that.

    peace

  47. keiths:
    This doesn’t make sense to me either:

    Here’s a counterexample:

    Suppose Melania sincerely asserts that it’s objectively evil to wear plaids with stripes. In this case P is a value judgment, and Melania believes it, but it would not be “passing strange” if not-P.

    So according to your definition, her judgment is not subjective!

    That’s not right.The fact that she considers her judgment to be objective does not make it objective.

    You don’t quite have the idea. Melania’s judgment is objective just in case she can’t be sure she’s right about it. So the question is moved to the epistemic realm. Does she have the slightest evidence for making this claim? Certainly, she might not. Melania is an objectivist in this case, but she could be dead wrong. You don’t want to make it impossible even to assert that there’s such a thing as objective morality.

    The point is to enable us to tell whether a value judgment is objective, in that limited sense, by what the valuer is intending to express. But fear not: there being “such a thing as objective morality” in that restricted sense, can give little solace to those who are objectivists. It’s like saying “Goldbach’s conjecture is true” is an objective assertion: that doesn’t make it true.

  48. walto: Melania’s judgment is objective just in case she can’t be sure she’s right about it. So the question is moved to the epistemic realm.

    I would say that it’s not her judgement that is objective but the object of her judgement.

    The question “Should I wear plaids with stripes?” has an objective answer just in case I could be wrong about my decision to wear plaids with stripes.

    peace

  49. fifthmonarchyman: I would say that it’s not her judgement that is objective but the object of her judgement.

    The question “Should I wear plaids with stripes?” has an objective answer just in case I could be wrong about my decision to wear plaids with stripes.

    peace

    Yes, that might be better. Thanks. It’s a bit weird to say that an object is objective, though. I’ll work on this.

  50. walto: It’s a bit weird to say that an object is objective, though.

    Actually I think the connection between object and objective is actually very important and hints at the essence of what it means to be objective.

    Cognition involves an observer, an object that is observed and a signal that connects them in some way.

    To be objective is to exist independent of the me the observer.

    Objective reality is the reality that exists independent of my observation.

    If you deny objective reality what you are really doing is denying a reality that exists independent of you.

    In the same way if you deny objective morality what you really are doing is denying the existence of a morality that exists independent of your judgement.

    peace

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