Claiming that morality is what an objectively real deity objectively commands is all very well, but without a way of knowing which deity is objectively real, it gets us no further forrarder.
Could a theist who claims that theistic morality is objective explain how we can objectively discern which theistic morality is the objective one?
Which is why the presumed self-evidential nature of a thing is a separate commodity from whether or not it is objectively true, which goes back to the actual supposition: is torturing children for personal pleasure wrong, regardless of one’s conceptual framework?
If one holds it as immoral regardless of one’s conceptual framework, then it is held as objectively true.
Your definition, from Merriam-Webster, was the same one I gave at least twice before.
“evident without proof or reasoning “
Let’s do this without the terms “objective” and “self-evident”.
1. If one holds that it is wrong to torture children for personal pleasure without needing any proof, argument, reasoning or evidence;
and
2. If one holds that it is wrong to torture children for personal pleasure regardless of what one’s conceptual framework is, consensus, personal feelings, law, authority, culture, etc.;
and
3. If one wants these views to be logically reconcilable with their fundamental worldview premises,
then
4. They must hold that a creator god (of some sort) exists.
(This is just a brief summation/outline of the longer argument already provided, without the terminology that some seem to be so obsessed with). It’s not to be taken as the entire argument by itself.
William,
Why? It was your choice to use those terms:
Would you like to retract your statement?
And if I were willing to treat “objective” and “absolute” as interchangeable, as you do, then I’d concede the point (probably). But that’s been the very heart of the disagreement between us all this time.
My view, rather, is that the relative-to-a-framework is a second-order claim. It is objectively true that E = mc2, but “‘E=mc2‘ is objectively true” is relative to the framework — in this case, the framework of general relativity. The same point holds about moral truths — “it is always wrong, under all conditions and for anyone, to torture a child” is true relative to the framework of Enlightenment liberalism.
I think William’s real problem is that he can’t get from “I hold X to be objectively true” to “X is in fact objectively true” when X is a moral claim.
There is, but to see it and understand, you have to accept a god for them to be logically consistent… 🙄
OK, thanks.
Then my argument doesn’t apply to you, because – apparently – you think there are reasonably possible conceptual frameworks where it is not immoral to torture children for personal pleasure. It doesn’t matter if we use the terms “objective”, “absolute”, or “subjective” to denote, in a shorthand way, the more spelled-out version of the concept.
Whether or not something is in fact objectively true is entirely irrelevant to my argument. The argument is about the logical consistency between worldview premise and a set of held beliefs about morality, not about whether or not any of it is factually true.
William,
It’s quite relevant. Read what you wrote:
Do you retract that statement, or do you still believe that you can determine the “rules” of objective morality as described therein?
Of course there are such frameworks in which it is not immoral to torture children for pleasure — and of course I (and, I would assume, everyone here) thinks that such frameworks are deeply mistaken about the nature of morality. And of course we (at any rate, I) would be willing to defend our conceptual framework by any means necessary, preferably by persuasion but by force if necessary, against those whose moral judgments clash sufficiently with ours. (WW II being the paradigm of such clash.)
The question is, by what criteria do we judge that our framework is superior to theirs? I would say that our framework is superior to theirs because it enables the further cultivation of human capacities, and enlarges the scope of the moral community. But of course the appeal to those criteria is, at the end of the day, an appeal to our criteria, the criteria we have by virtue of the historical trajectory from Plato to the Gospels, to Locke, Wollstonecraft, and Kan, and to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and so on.
For you, from what I can tell, this historicism is incompatible with objectivity; I do not think it is, any more than historicism about scientific progress is incompatible with scientific objectivity. It is incompatible with absolutism, of course, but not with a pragmatist reconceptualization of objectivity that makes both science and ethics things of this world, and of no other.
The guilty are always the first to proclaim their innocence.
We were doing so well, and then you had to go and try to have your cake and eat it, too. Just like everyone else here.
If conceptual frameworks determine what morality is, then you have no principled, intellectually honest grounds by which to judge the morality that results from other conceptual frameworks “less moral”. Under your “conceptual frameworks” model of morality, it is only the conceptual framework of the morality in question that can judge behavior within that group, and since you hold the “conceptual frameworks” model, you are obligated to admit that you have no principled right to judge their system “less moral” than your own. Which you apparently admit to, realizing that you’re judging it from your own conceptual framework.
If you are willing to impose your moral rules upon others via force (for no principled reason other than that they are “sufficiently unlike you”), then the only principle available for justification is might makes right, which I doubt you hold as a sound moral principle. Thus, your moral views are betrayed as self-defeating and incoherent – but, as you’ve said, you are under no obligation to have views that are rationally coherent.
That’s where it comes in mighty handy to not have to justify views according to worldview premise, because here you can’t.
I’d say that your compatibalist redefinitions of terms and selectively turning of a blind eye to the undesirable logical conclusions only serve to deceive yourself, but from what you wrote above, you’re apparently fully aware of what you are doing.
You are, of course, free to believe whatever you wish, whether it is rational or not. You are even free to redefine “rational” so that you can say your views are “rationally consistent”, if you wish. There’s no law against it.
I suppose some people ARE bounded in a nutshell and count themselves king of infinite space, without any bad dreams at all.
There is a continuing confusion between:
A) I hold that it is self-evidently wrong to torture children for personal pleasure regardless of the consensus, personal feelings, law, authority, culture in which the act takes place.
B) Regardless of the consensus, personal feelings, law, authority, culture of the person making the judgement it will be self-evidently wrong to them that torturing children for personal pleasure is wrong.
With some exceptions for bizarre cases mentioned above, I agree with A but not B. Does that make me subjective or objective?
WJM
Following on – 2 seems to be ambiguous in the sense I explained above. If you take it to mean (A ) – I hold it to be wrong whatever the culture in which the act was done – then I don’t see how it differs from 1. So I guess you mean (B ) – everyone must find it to be self-evidently wrong whatever their conceptual framework. This strikes me as false. I am sure the vast majority of people would agree that child torture for pleasure is wrong. But Aztec culture seemed to condone child sacrifice including an element of torture. They presumably did not find it self-evidently wrong.
It is self evidently wrong for the simple reason that the person enjoying torturing children doesn’t see it as wrong. Therefore it is not wrong in all frames of reference.
Mark Frank,
Would you be willing to go so far as to say that (A) is explained by one’s having acquired the language-game of moral discourse?
What Murray wants to say is neither (A) nor (B) but, it seems to me, something more like this:
Part of the difficulty that Murray and I have with each other here is that he wants “objectively true” to mean “transcending all possible conceptual frameworks”.
So “p is objectively true” means “p is true, regardless of one’s conceptual framework, and no alternation in conceptual framework will make it the case that p is false.” And he then uses “subjective” to mean “anything relative to a language-game or conceptual scheme”, which is why he thinks that I’m fundamentally confused in holding (as I do) that the distinction itself between objective and subjective is only intelligible, as distinction, within some conceptual scheme or other.
(The question, “which conceptual scheme is the right one?” is, however, not a question that I reject out of hand. I think it’s a really important and interesting question. I’m not quite as much of a relativist as my talk of ‘conceptual schemes’ would indicate.)
No, I’m using the phrase “objectively true” to mean “transcending all reasonably possible conceptual frameworks”. (I say “reasonably possible” to avoid hyperskeptical absurdity.) I don’t care if you call it “objectively true” or “absolutely true” or “banana pudding”, what I mean is “transcending all reasonably possible conceptual frameworks”.
If one holds that X (the moral statement in question) is true and binding regardless of all reasonably possible conceptual frameworks, then …. (insert rest of argument). If you do not hold that to be true, then you hold that there are reasonably possible conceptual frameworks where torturing children for personal pleasure is factually moral, and thus you have no principled right to judge it otherwise, since it that conceptual framework that decides what morality is for those in that conceptual framework. You certainly cannot have any principled reason to act against them unless your morality endorses using force against others for no reason other than that they are “sufficiently unlike” you.
I don’t think you’re “confused” about it at all. Yes, that is how I am referring to “subjective”. If you don’t like that term, we can call what I am referring to as “butterscotch” or whatever term you like. The term I am using doesn’t matter. What matters is the concept the term is a placeholder for. You seem entirely caught up on the terms “objective” and “subjective” as if they are important in and of themselves.
“Right one” according to what principle of arbitration? As you said, you cannot, in principle, help but judge which one is right except by the criteria of your own “conceptual scheme”, which you agree is relative to other conceptual schemes, and apparently you believe that morality is generated by “conceptual schemes” – leaving you no option but self-reference when judging other conceptual schemes.
At the end of the day, as I pointed out, you can have no principled conceptual right to judge the moral merit of other conceptual schemes unless there is something outside of conceptual schemes that ultimately determines what morality is.
Morality is not generated by conceptual schemes.
Moral schemes are generated to rationalize our likes and dislikes.
Why do I need a worldview justification for my moral concepts before I’m justified to use them to judge other people’s actions as right or wrong? Isn’t that the whole point of having moral concepts in the first place?
fG
This is not entirely accurate, Petrushka. That is, in some cases of child-predatory activity, the predator is aware that his (almost always a he) behavior is “wrong” and feels real guilt about it. There are many case studies on this.
What is more interesting, however, are the people who do NOT feel such activities are wrong and even after years of incarceration and psychological treatment, insist that their behavior was not only not immoral, but was based on love and kindness.
Yes, but then you are being philosophically inconsistent and hypocritical and…ho hum…engaging in a stolen concept. As such, your morals would then just boil down to “might makes right”, assuming you held people accountable to your inconsistent moral concepts using might. Your morals might boil down to “bribery makes right” if you just went around bribing everyone to adhere to your moral principles. You know…like the the church did for centuries…
The argument only applies to those that believe their beliefs must be rationally reconcilable with their worldview premises. There’s no law against having incoherent beliefs. You can call yourself an atheist that believes in god – there’s no law against it. In fact, Liz often tries to have it both ways. She’s an atheist that kinda believes in a what could be called “god”, if one really stretched the definition … if I remember correctly. But then, who cares with an incoherent belief system anyway?
William J. Murray,
So how about people who are not afraid to admit that we actually don’t know where our sense of morality comes from? Are they to be scorned when they use theirs to judge actions as right or wrong?
fG
WJM
That moves the question to what makes conceptual framework “reasonably possible”. The Aztecs seemed to find torturing and killing children to be not only morally acceptable but actually required. What makes their conceptual framework not “reasonably possible”?
I accept that. I, like most of us, judge other conceptual schemes according to my own. This doesn’t make it whimsical and I think there is a sense in which one moral framework or set of principles can supersede or be superior to another. This is based on knowing things or being aware of arguments that the others are not aware of. We can argue for our moral principles. They are not grabbed out of thin air. For example, you can imagine arguing “you believe in child torture” but that’s because you are believe it is required by a god that doesn’t exist. Or “you feel you must take revenge to protect the honour of your clan/family/group/religion but that’s because you haven’t appreciated how this leads to never-ending cycles of vendetta which get nowhere”. This is not the same as having an ultimate justification or argument. It just allows a method of comparing moral principles.
The question is where does theism/Christianity come in. How does it allow you to rise above this?
How about people who know where their sense of morality comes from and know it comes from their evolutionary and cultural history?
Of course they’re to be scorned, because it not, theists would have zero excuse to feel superior to somebody.
After all, by their own standards – not by the “nonobjective” “illogical” “unsupported” standards of the “atheo-materialists” – by their own standards of obey-gods-law, theists perform objectively worse on almost every behavior: infidelity and divorce, child abuse (beating, physical torture, sexual abuse and rape), and all kinds of crimes from fraud to murder are committed by a higher percentage of god-believers than non-believers.
So in pure envy and protection of their self-esteem in the face of their own failures by their own standards, theists must pretend that other people doing good/avoiding doing bad are actually wrong if they’re doing it “for the wrong reason”, eg humanism, or empathy, or social norms which work for the general welfare. Oh no, those non-sinners are to be scorned for being good without god.
God without god? Un-possible. By definition.
Problem solved. At least for a certain class of mean-minded theists.
I used to ask theists/anti-evolutionists whether the percentage of child rapists was higher among biology teachers or among clergy.
Never got an answer. Never got the name of a single biology teacher who has been arrested or charged with molestation.
I think, fG, that this gets back to a point that Mike Elzinga repeats: William’s argument boils down to an attempt to demonize atheists. In this case he’s trying to make a big deal about some supposed inconsistency between the atheistic worldview and their basis for morality. “See what atheism leads to? Huh? Huh? Inconsistency, stealing concepts, and broadly accepting evil because they have no basis to judge anyone else! Now if you accept my world view and the inherent God that must exist given it, we…hell…you’re on the path to a rational life!” Rah, rah…
petrushka,
Well, I don’t want to hang my own self-esteem on the idea that no (atheo-materialist) biology teacher has ever been arrested for raping a student. Maybe it’s happened once or twice, maybe it hasn’t.
But your point is correct that there is a theist culture thoroughly saturated in god-makes-objective-moral-laws-and-you-must-obey, despite which it totally fails not only to obey those laws but also fails to punish their own people. To protect their evil they break yet another of their own gods-law: “render unto Caesar” by actively refusing to hand over their lawbreakers to secular justice. Protecting the powerful at the expense of our most vulnerable!
I think there’s a living analogy there: the RWA theist and their destructive domination of “lesser” living creatures such as children; compare with: the RWA god-entity and its destructive domination of all living creatures including the theist himself.
I’m not hanging my hat on the good behavior of atheists.
I would, however, bet that secular institutions are less likely than churches to protect employees found to have molested children.
I say this having worked for seven years as a family counselor in children’s protective services. That included investigating cases and testifying in court.
I did see one instance where school employees hesitated to report a parent accused by a child. The child eventually raised enough hell to bring the police in, and then the feces hit the fan.
As usual, William is attempting to shift the discussion away from his own moral system to the faults he perceives in the moral systems of others.
Yet his own moral system is full of holes that he has failed to address:
Let’s be clear: Murray’s complaint isn’t about whether or not non-theists can be moral agents, but about the consistency of moral judgments with overall world-view. And there, his point is that
(1) One has a principled right to criticize other moral systems if and only if one believes that there is a transcendent standpoint, external to all moral systems, which determines which moral system is correct;
(2) If one believes that there is such a standpoint, then one ought to believe that only God could determine that standpoint.
Murray’s argument is not directed against those who reject (1), but only against those who accept (1) but reject (2).
However, I think that Murray would also want to say that if one does not believe that there is some transcendent standpoint from which conflicts between moral systems can be adjudicated, then there is no principled ground at all on the basis of which one could rationally prefer one’s own morality over a different one (e.g. the warrior ethos of ancient Greece, or the Nazis, or whatever).
So one way of responding to Murray here would be to show that a principled basis for preferring one’s morality over that of others — or that of others over one’s own, if one finds in the moral discourse and practice of a different culture reasons for altering one’s views, as often happens — does not depend on believing that there is some transcendent standpoint.
I believe in laws and consensus, not for principled reasons, but because I think they serve me and my family and my descendants better than laws derived from revealed religion.
It’s not principled, It’s selfish. I believe the golden rule and its derivatives and spin-offs best serve my interests.
In addition to received laws and customs, I have my own preferences that I will argue for, hoping that my voice will go into the grinder that makes consensus.
There are good reasons why rule of law is gradually replacing revealed religion as the grounding for morality. Wherever it has been tried it has been preferred.
How can I be attempting to “demonize” atheists, when I have flatly stated that they are as capable moral agents as anyone else, regardless of their rationales? Is arguing that someone’s views are logically inconsistent with their worldview premises the same as “demonizing” them?
Certainly not. Most of us are just trying to do the best we can. This is an argument about the reasoning, not about what group or individual is more moral than the next.
Any principle one comes up with that doesn’t reference an objective (absolute) standard can be waved off as the product of their own conceptual framework, in equal competition with any other principle from any other conceptual framework.
As far as I an tell, there’s just no way to win that argument without reference to an assumed objective standard that transcends any conceptual framework. And, honestly, I don’t see how one can rationalize the use of force to intervene on the acts of others without such an assumed standard.
Sectarians are notorious for playing the “morality game.”
Within the Abrahamic religions alone, there have been thousands of years of sectarian squabbling, nit-picking, word-gaming, ostracizing, executions and burning of each other at the stake, and splintering into exclusive enclaves of self-righteousness; all of which suggests that none of them has the corner on moral rectitude.
Furthermore, in Western culture at least, sectarian “morality” has evolved and has been constrained by secular law and lessons from the Enlightenment. For example, the Salem Witch Trials and executions ended when secular institutions stepped in.
And we no longer burn people at the stake; there is no longer a death penalty in our secular society for “heresy” no matter how much some sectarians would like to return society to those sectarian laws of the past. Any John Calvin who arose today would be thrown in prison for their role in burning a Michael Servetus at the stake with slow-burning, green wood.
Murray’s arguments suggest that he is simply another rigid sectarian, despite his “disclaimers” about his “religion.”
The problem with the notion of a “transcendent moral viewpoint” is that sectarians all believe they have exclusive access to the deity that supposedly has such transcendence, while others outside their sect don’t. How does Murray prove that he has such access?
Reasoning inside the vacuum of one’s head gets nowhere.
What is irrational, William, about doing what we think is right, and avoiding doing what we think is wrong?
Hitler, Stalin, Torquemada, Gacy, and Dahmer could equally ask me the same question you just did.
The rationality of any action depends on the sound, warranted premises and proper logical inferences that justify one’s choices.
William,
The logical holes in your own moral system are crying out for attention.
Well, you do say it rather pejoratively and with some rather obvious arrogance with regard to your basis for morality and large doses of disdain for such perceived “hypocrisy” and “concept stealing”. So yeah, it really seems like demonizing to me.
You are not making sense to me William. First you say that moral truths are self-evident, which you define “evident without proof or reasoning”. You also stipulate that atheists are as capable of finding these moral truths self-evident as theists.
But then you say that atheists are irrational for doing what they consider right, and avoiding what they consider wrong, even though no “proof or reasoning” is, as per your definition, required to know which is which.
And why I ask you why it is irrational for an atheist to do what she considers right and avoid what she considers wrong, you start talking about Torquemada et al, and telling me that:
Despite having said, a priori, that NO reasoning is required in order to know that certain actions are wrong.
Do you not see why your position is difficult to understand?
Strikes me that to talk of morality as if it is independent of feelings or the subject is to misunderstand empathy, which is surely the wellspring of morality.
I don’t see the word “objective” as a good fit, and I reject the notion of a moral standard independent of frameworks. Morality is a fluid process of negotiations between empathic beings, not a standing pool.
Lizzie, I think that you and Murray are talking past one another here. You’re talking about using one’s moral principles to guide conduct; he’s talking about the consistency of those principles with the overarching structure of one’s worldview. His claim is that the non-theistic worldview cannot explain why we have the self-evident moral truths that we have.
More precisely, a non-theist and a theist can and will agree on certain moral judgments, and regard those moral judgments as self-evident, but the non-theist is unable to fit those self-evident moral truths into his or her overarching world-view. in a wholly rationally satisfactory way, whereas the theist is able to do so.
That’s a great way of putting it, thanks. But I’m left wondering if all the effort William has expended to get that point across which you (hopefully) have explained in a way I can grok was wasted as it seems that the non-theist actually behaves in a more moral way when measured on many (so it seems to me) different aspects of behavior. I’ve given several examples on several threads. Citations available if desired.
So if the goal was to make some kind of point about morality then what was it given the above William? Dispute it if you like.
Seems to me the goal (the moral thing to do, the reason why William continues to argue with those who steal their tools of argumentation) should be to make more people less satisfied with their worldview, not fewer as I presume you’d desire. Then outcomes are better for all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
Because someone does something that they have not rationally justified doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It just means they haven’t rationally justified it.
No reasoning is required to recognize a self-evident truth. No reasoning is required to act on it. Reasoning IS required to reconcile the existence of that truth, and the rationale for actions taken from knowing that truth, with one’s worldview premises.
Anyone can know (recognize) that X is wrong and know they have a right and an obligation to intervene; that doesn’t mean that such knowledge, rights and obligations are justifiable under their worldview premises.