There are a number of professed atheists in this forum. I was curious as to what sort of moral imperative atheists are beholden to when presumably no one is looking. Speaking as a theist, I am constantly cognizant that there is a God who considers what I do and is aware of what I do, even though that awareness on my part may not always result in the moral behavior which I aspire to. But let’s take a fairly mundane example — say theft. We’re talking about blatant theft in a context where one could plausibly or even likely get away with it. I affirm to you that as a Christian, or more relevantly possibly, as a theist, I would never do that. Possibly it has just as much to do with my consideration for the feelings and rights of some other individual, who has “legal” possession of said items, as it has to do with my awareness of an omniscient creator who is aware of what I’m doing and who would presumably not bless me if I violated his laws. I mean, I care about the rights of other people. And, considering other moral tableaus, those of a sexual nature for example — I would personally never consider going to a prostitute for example, in that I feel empathy for that person, and how they are degrading themselves in the sight of God, and how I would not want to contribute to their degradation, so that my own human lust would never result in me victimizing another human being in that way. So in summary, there are all sorts of constraints on my personal behavior that stem directly from my belief in God, and I am honestly curious about the inner life of professed atheists in such matters. In other words, do atheists for example, in such junctures of moral decision, only consider whether they can get away with it, i.e escape the detection of human authorities? I am just honestly curious about the inner life of atheists in such matters.
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But that’s exactly how proofs work, even if hypothetical, and that’s exactly how I determined what “X” had to be in order for the formula to work and produce what it needed to produce – a moral system that avoids “because I feel like it, because I can”, avoids command-authority, and corresponds to experiential reality. If the variable (premise about what kind of morality must exist in order to meet the other requirements of the formula) must be 37.726, then that is what it is.
You seem to take issue with this. Neither you nor I know for certain that morality is objective or subjective, which is what having “X” as a placeholder means – we don’t know for certain the value of X. As opposed to your “37.726” though, it’s more analogous to say that the value of X is “1” or “2” – objective or subjective. It’s hardly an arbitrarily-chosen value for X.
“1” (subjective morality) doesn’t match experience, because we act, and must act, as if “1” is false. We must argue as if it is false – note how keiths argues that his feeling authorize his capacity to intervene on others even though he intellectually knows their moral rules cannot be of any lesser intrinsic validity.
Is “because I feel like it” a valid moral premise? Of course not. It is the antithesis of a valid moral premise. “Because I feel like it” permits everything. If keiths holds X moral today because he feels like it, and wakes up tomorrow feeling like X is immoral, then X can be moral one day and immoral the next according to the premise of “how I feel about it”.
Note how KN attempts to distance himself from subjective morality and impose a definitional fiat to grant his morality objective status and when called on it attempts to redefine the term “objective”.
They go to such contortions in order to maintain that X, in our moral formula, be anything other than the only available other value. It can’t be “1” and still produce a morality worth caring about but they are unwilling to accept that it must be 2 if it is not 1 because of the logical implications of what “2” means.
Perhaps you should (re)consider the fact you are unable to give any examples of “objective” morality other then it’s immoral to torture children.
Your formula also has a single value, that the torture of children is immoral. You appear unwilling to accept the logical implications of this.
I see this as two different meanings for “moral relativism”.
For keiths, moral relativism is that moral judgments made in India are relative to the culture there.
For BruceS, moral relativism is that his moral judgments about events in India are required to be relative to the cuture there. Presumably, keiths agrees with BruceS about the caste system, but sees this as making a judgment relative to the Western culture to which he belongs.
I’ve always taken “moral relativism” to be as keiths seems to be using it, rather than as BruceS seems to be using it.
To be fair, under “2” – objective morality – there are several possibilities, such as comman-authority morality, sense of morality generated by genetics (which would still be operationally subjective, like a taste for vanilla), and perhaps a handful of natural law variations.
If my particular natural law version of objective morality is to some degree different than others, what of it? It’s still not an arbitrary value for X; it is at least developed along the lines of other proposed values for X, and actually (IMO, anyway) solves the essential X problem.
I think you don’t need to settle that issue to hold a reasoned discussion about a particular moral challenge. You don’t need to agree on a the right mettaethics to engage in a practical ethics discussion, as long as you are willing to grant that the other participants are all rational. It seemed to me that your approach prevented you from granted that to atheists.
I do have to think that atheists can be rational even if they are not moral relativists. I think you are wrong to claim that they are not, but I am still exploring detailed arguments for that case. That is one reason I enjoy many of the exchanges in this forum.
For now, my justification is it reflects the philosophical consensus. Following a principled process which includes peer review, engagement with opponents ideas, logical arguments, inference to best explanation, and so on, most philosophers agree that moral relativism is wrong. This despite remaining deep differences about metaethics.
Similarly, I accept the scientific consensus on the general nature of evolution and what it constitutes, even though there is considerable scientific controversy about the details like the roles of various mechanisms (eg natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection) or functionality of sequences of the genetic code.
Of course, I recognize that neither appeal to consensus is likely to convince you. I am not trying to do so.
Hmmm…good point. Nicely put Keith.
I don’t believe correct moral judgements are relative to one’s culture. Perhaps to the overall condition of humanity and comparable moral agents. Not sure about that one. But definitely not to a particular cultures.
Emphasis on correct is what is important to me to distinguish. (With a recognition of fallibility).
It is not a fact that I am unable, to wit:
It is self-evidently and objectively immoral to bear false witness against (or for) a person for no reason other than personal dislike or personal gain.
It is self-evidently and objectively immoral to destroy the property of another out of nothing more than malice or envy.
The fact is that I am unwilling to accommodate your incessant irrelevant challenges. I only need one such moral statement to justify the model. Whether or not any others exist is entirely irrelevant and nothing more than a rhetorical diversion from the logic necessitated by the existence of a single moral statement that is accepted as self-evidently true.
I do not think morality and ethics requiresformal reason, any more than speaking requires formal training in grammar and vocabulary.
We are moralling creatures, even as we are linguistic creatures. We learn morals and ethics the same way we learn to speak.
This is not changed just because it is possible to make formal rules. William is trying to make some kind of Esperanto, an artificial system that will be fully self-consistent and rational. He can do it, but it will have little effect on the world, because it ignores the ongoing commerce of ideas.
BruceS said:
Because it’s so hard to figure out whether “because I feel like it” or “because most other people think so” (consensuality) is a substantive basis for a logically-arguable morality?
Really?
Robin said:
Again, really?
You think the inane way that keiths has recharacterized “might makes right” – that I can physically beat someone into believing in my moral rules – is what has been meant, philosophically speaking, by the term “might makes right”?
Of course not, How bizarre and trivial – once again – to make such a characterization. “Might Makes Right” in moral philosophy the capacity of those in power to determine for society in general what is right and wrong, even if that power is derived from being in the majority view.
Might comes in many forms, not just physical. From Merriam-Webster:
That they cannot physically force you, in particular, to accept it would be irrelevant even if true. But is even that claim true?
Let’s take this to the trivial, personal level. Do you not think it is possible to put someone through enough physical torture and reconditioning processes to change their moral views? If so, you’d have to believe that there is something about the mind that is immune to physical causes. I doubt you believe that.
In such a case, might would in fact make right, because their new morality would be as intrinsically valid as their old morality, regardless of how they came to it.
But, let’s move down the scale from obviously physical coercion. Without an assumed objective arbiter from which can make logical inferences towards what is moral and what is not, what are we using as the basis of any debate to mediate between substantively different worldviews? If, as keiths says, all moral axioms are based on feelings, then all we can really be doing is attempting to appeal to subjective feelings. IOW, our arguments under such a premise cannot be anything other than rhetorical appeals to feeling.
As such, it is not reason that wins the day, but might, in the form of being able to rhetorically manipulate the feelings of others. One can be considered a mighty politician, or a mighty polemicist, because of their capacity to use rhetoric to sway public opinion.
In keiths argument, we admit that their morality is just as intrinsically valid as our own, with no logical basis for determining which one is “better” other than “feeling”. Keiths has explicitly admitted this.
I suggest that “better” is a nonsensical term here; “feeling” cannot determine which moral system is “better” at all, it only determines which one is personally preferable. There is no means to determine which moral framework is “better” than another; that requires an objective arbiter; there is only a means to determine which moral framework one prefers – their feelings.
So what is keiths really doing when he attempts to win converts? He cannot be making a rational argument that his moral system is better, because “better” only means “I feel like it” and keiths admits it cannot be intrinsically better at all. He’s using the term “better” to belie the truth – he just prefers it.
Keiths terminology – “I feel it is better”, when unpacked, is revealed as misleading (though I’m sure not deliberately so).
Having no objective basis for a rational debate on which one is “better”, keiths therefore can only be doing one thing – making an appeal to feeling or emotion, which is not a logical argument, in order to manipulate others to convert to his way of thinking. He cannot be thinking about what is best for others, because his entire reason for trying to convert others is not “what is better for them” because he has no means to validate his system as “better” in the first place, and explicitly admits it is not intrinsically better.
Keiths can only be trying to win converts because he would prefer they think like him to satisfy his own feelings.Keiths, therefore, can only be using others as a means to gratify his own feelings.
Which is self-evidently immoral.
I don’t think behaving morally or ethically requires “formal reason”, but logically reconciling your morality with your wordvlew premises certainly does.
The point I was agreeing with is that just because someone coerces or convinces or sets up arbitrary rules and norms to go by with the threat of shame or abuse to keep people in line does not, in and of itself, make those rules and norms “right” in any way. Might, in such a scenario, may ensure they are followed, by it does not “make them right”. That’s the very problem Hitler and the Nazis faced; they did have might to make their worldview the basis of the German norms and rules, but unfortunately they could not get most people to buy into those rules and norms being “right”.
ETA: You may argue that that is trivially true, but I do hold that across large groups (societies, cultures, states, math clubs…) it makes a huge difference over time.
You haven’t convinced me.
I have morals in the same sense and for the same reason I have language.
My speaking English or my being able to discuss the reasons for correct grammar do not imply the existence of a correct language or a correct grammar. I do not need to reconcile my language with my worldview.
You have a need to reconcile your morality with your worldview. I have no such need.
Let’s say termites have evolved to the technological level where we are now. Such colony based lifeforms would no doubt have a different idea about “personal property”.
Therefore it is not the case that is is objectively immoral to destroy the property of another out of nothing more than malice or envy, if the concept of property does not exist in the first place.
William J. Murray,
Who’s ‘we’? I don’t, and nor does any other ‘subjective-moralist’ who has offered an opinion in this thread. I act as if my sensations on the matter – that killing is wrong, that it’s ‘nice to be nice’ – are genetic and cultural in origin – ie subjective. It suits me not to kill, and to be kind.
And at this juncture, if you yet again talk of Nazis and people who ‘feel like’ raping children, I will just have to repeat, for the millionth time, that I am not them. The existence of such people does not inform my moral system: my reason for choosing my own behavioural preferences and any desire I may have to influence that of others. It is not necessary to add ‘objective’ to the equation. It serves no purpose other than to magic away a difficulty that does not arise.
William J. Murray,
No it doesn’t. This is a fundamental error. It only permits those things you feel like doing. That is not a trite statement. Since we are constrained, by reactions such as guilt, remorse, approval, to prefer certain courses over others, those are the things we ‘feel like’ doing or avoiding as appropriate. It is the essence of a moral premise, provided one is capable of separating out the things that one terms ‘moral’ from the generality of behaviour. Morality is not a synonym for ‘things people do’.
Language is not irrational just because it has no absolute grounding.
Neither is morality.
A Miller said:
I’ve already addressed in full this trivial mischaracterization of what is meant by “everything is permissible”.
William, to Robin:
William,
You’re grasping at straws. You know perfectly well that my argument applies to “might” in all its forms, not merely physical force. Are you going to start complaining that my argument applies only to kids, and only to city blocks, because I used the phrase “the mightiest kid on the block”?
Language would certainly be irrational if it had no absolute grounding. To wit: What is the chinese word for “dog”?
Without an absolute grounding – without repeatedly making the same grunting noise while pointing at or referring to an objectively existent commodity, there would be no such thing as language.
keiths said:
Then your argument is obviously false. Might does make right under subjectivism, whether or not it convinces or coerces or cajoles or emotionaly sways or establishes the social norm by simple majority. And, I might add, the might of one’s feelings establishes one’s personal moral code – not reason.
As you have said before, the things you feel morally convicted about are really strong feelings, so for each individual, yes, might makes right – the out of competing feelings, the mightiest feeling wins and becomes “what is right”- for you.
Bruce,
I brought up Hindu morality as a counterexample to this statement:
Symmetry is not a prerequisite for a rational moral system, though you and I might choose to include it in ours.
petrushka said:
So? In the first place, I’m not trying to. In the second place, the validity of the argument doesn’t depend on your agreement with it.
Uh. .. of course it does. It makes those rules and norms “right” in the only way that matters under moral subjectivism: the people adopt the moral code. You want to have your cake and eat it, too, by saying that “the people don’t buy into it”, but you’re drawing a line where there is no conceptual room for a line. If people consider a thing moral, they have “bought into it”. If you can convince them or beat and recondition them or coerce them or emotionally manipulate them or mass media market them into adopting X morality (that does not mean “give lip service to”), that in fact has made those moral rules RIGHT.
People who do not “buy into it” have not adopted that moral code. What is their rationale for “not buying into” the prevalent social moral code? Under keiths’ subjecitve morality, their personal feelings are mightier than the conventions used by those in power to change their moral code. Once again- might makes right.
Whether it is the might of the individual’s strongest “feelings” about a matter, or the might of society to use various tools to inculcate, convince, sway or recondition, subjective morality boils down to might makes right. There is no logic. It’s all feeling, emotion, and manipulation.
William,
The majority can establish a social norm, but that doesn’t thereby change the morality of the minority. I made this point to KN earlier:
William:
We follow our consciences in both my system and yours.
William, you tend to make silly mistakes like these when you get flustered. Slow down and think things through before clicking on ‘Post Comment’.
keiths said
Very clever use of terminology, keiths, but you know that in our two systems of thought, “conscience” means two very different things.
Also, characterizing me negatively as “grasping at straws”, “silly”, and “flustered” isn’t really much of an argument, but at least I understand now why you apparently think it is morally acceptable to do so; I’m just a means to and end for you – a means to satisfy your personal feelings.
You’re just doing what you feel like doing, right? So, it’s moral by definition.
Ahh…but that’s my point. As with Germany under Nazism, many of the people (most it turned out) did not consider the rules moral. They in fact rejected the rules in spite of the threats and propaganda and hid, fed, and helped many Jewish people. Many also helped the Allies against Germany in the hopes of getting rid of the Nazis. Many army officers even plotted to assassinate Hitler (though many of those plots we dropped after the first attempt failed).
Take speeding limits as another example. I certainly don’t think that it’s moral to obey the speed limit regardless of whatever penalties the State has in place to dissuade me from going over it. How then has their might made the speed limit right?
Now I think you’re just tossing crap at the wall in hopes that something will stick. Basically all you’re doing is saying, “anything that supports a given moral perspective in your system I define as “might”. Therefore, under your system, “might makes right” by definition.” So, if that’s what you mean by might makes right, fine…I’ll gladly embrace it as it just strikes me as a non-statement at that point.
But the catch of course that you keep ignoring, is that my will to ignore the State’s speed limits and their punishment for said transgression DOES NOT make my view of speed limits right. Nor did the will of those Germans who defied Hitler and the Nazi’s rules make their beliefs “right”. In fact, their mighty will had zero to do with their being right. Their will just gave them the ability to act on what they felt was right.
While I do not argue against the lack of logic, the “might” of their feelings did not make those feelings “right”.
William,
In both of our systems, conscience is something we consult in deciding whether an action is moral or immoral. The only difference is that you assume that your conscience somehow gives you access to “objective” morality.
My conscience “wins” in my moral decisions, and your conscience “wins” in yours. By your logic, “might makes right” in both of our moral systems.
You are hoist by your own petard.
William,
It’s an observation, not an argument. I’m not asking anyone to infer “William is wrong” from “William is flustered”. However, I am pointing out that you tend to make bad arguments when you’re flustered.
There’s nothing in my moral system that prohibits me from expressing negative opinions when they are warranted.
No, because under subjective morality I don’t do whatever I “feel like doing”. My conscience constrains me.
If you want to claim that following one’s conscience amounts to “doing whatever you feel like doing”, then the same criticism applies to your moral system.
keiths:
BruceS:
It’s definitely not the only thing one needs! That’s why I went on to list other factors in my comment.
I think I have shown that his ideas are inconsistent. Off the top of my head, I’ve identified at least three inconsistencies:
1. He practices subjective morality while claiming to reject it.
2. He claims to care whether his actions are objectively moral, but he doesn’t care whether his model is true or even approximates the truth.
3. His “system”, even when applied correctly, gives inconsistent results. It even validates a psychopath’s morality as objective(!), as I pointed out earlier:
Well, I never said it was easy. Take care, William.
Bruce,
It is fun, and that’s my number one reason, but there are other reasons too.
Here’s a comment that sums up why I participate in these debates.
Bruce,
They definitely can. The existence of contradictory moral systems does not oblige a moral subjectivist to accept all of them as equals.
To argue otherwise is like saying that we can’t judge beauty since people have different subjective standards of what qualifies as beautiful. Morality is subjective, and so is beauty, but that doesn’t force us to regard all standards of morality and beauty as equal or equally valuable.
Many of William’s complaints boil down to “but if it’s subjective, then it’s not objective!” To which my response is, “No shit, Sherlock.”
To William’s complaint:
Keith responds:
.
I have some sympathy with William, here. The description “flustered” suggests Keith knows WJM’s state of mind. It would be less presumptive to say, WJM appears flustered and a whole lot simpler not to make the observation about a fellow commenter at all.
I think consistency is overrated.
I don’t know of anyone or any institution that espouses a perfectly self-consistent morality, or one that is grounded in anything absolute.
And yet the world moves on.
We may seek or desire consistency, but I think it will elude us.
Alan,
Feel free to substitute “appears flustered” for “is flustered” if you like. I’m not terribly concerned about it, considering that William makes “observations” such as the following:
I don’t complain when William says things like that. I just refute them.
This is rubbish, WJM. You keep repeating this like a mantra but that will not make it any less wrong. Subjectivity does not equal relativism. Apparently relativism is a philosophical point of view. I have no idea who possibly, in all conscience, could hold to it.
Morality derives from rules for social living that have evolved over a longer period than human have existed. That there are no absolute standards does not prevent any group or culture from developing and improving these rules by consensus and trial and error.
I’ve picked up on William’s habit of assuming what others might be thinking more than once.
This is so bizarre, and self-refuting, I can hardly believe my eyes reading it. IF point-and-grunt were the absolute grounding of language, you’d never be able to say a sentence. You could point to your own chest and say “Tarzan” and you could point to the woman and say “Jane”, but you couldn’t even say “Me Tarzan, you Jane” because the very concepts of “me” and “you” are not objectively existent commodities, they’re subjective relationships. Or more accurately I should say they’re intersubjective.
We don’t have a firm consensus theory of language evolution from the constrained social calls of our primate ancestors to human flexible and symbolic speech, nor a solid understanding of how children acquire their native languages today. But we do know that one of the important things, perhaps the single most important thing, is the language user’s ability to refer to things or states of being that are not in the immediate realm of the speaker. And language acquisition requires a Theory of Mind – that is, one’s concept that there is an Other, not self but like oneself, having a subjectivity, wants and needs – from the very earliest babbling Ma/Da (insert local equivalent). Yes, “Ma” or”Da” as phonemes point to an objectively existent “commodity”, the existent parent, but the meaning of the word “Ma” or “Da” is in the intersubjective relationship, which can never be pointed to nor referred to objectively.
It’s the complete opposite of WJM’s claimed absolute grounding. It’s totally subjective.
But, as petrushka already said, it’s not irrational. Not absolute is not equivalent to irrational.
William J. Murray,
If you say a very simple phrase like “everything is permissible”, then people are perfectly entitled to interpret it literally. You may have posted interminably on the matter elsewhere in justification of a different or more subtle interpretation, but I’m not going in search of it, nor arguing with the Collected Works of WJM.
Perhaps you’d be better not talking in slogans.
“Might makes right” is another. So determined are you to bludgeon your opponents into admitting they represent positions they do not that you type such as:
or
Anything that involves resdponding to the stronger of multiple influences is ‘might makes right’ in your book, which seems rather unavoidable in any system with differential inputs. And of course, that would include the Mighty Almighty! (yeah, I know, you’re a ‘Natural Law’ kind of guy, but it doesn’t rhyme).
I made my remark to see if William was interested in exploring what I thought was a limitation of his system, namely by arguing all non-relativist atheists were irrational, he was precluded from discussing moral challenges by rational discussion if the other party was a non-relativist atheist.
I read his last post to me (and others) as returning to arguing about why atheists had to be relativists. This is a path that you and KN and others have taken with him and I have no interest in taking it too. So I called it a day for that conversation.
Now returning to the post you quote, I was trying to outline what I thought would be a precondition for a rational conversation with another moral agent. It’s the ground rules for such a conversation, not any particular system, that I was trying to characterize.
I think any rational agent would have to agree that ethics is about finding norms for moral agents to live together. And that laying down a STARTING condition that some moral agents deserved greater consideration than others could not be rational. For example, how could it be rational to accept that you might be disadvantaged from the start?
Assuming a racist accepted that, then the conversation would get into what a moral agent was, what science said about who fit that definition, the usual stuff.
Of course, the conversation could end at any time, for example, if the other person claimed mystical access to revealed truths about moral agents that trumped science. All I claimed was that the conversation could get started with rational ground rules about what ethics was.