In what seems like a proof of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence, the “is morality objective or subjective” debates are playing out yet again at UD.
Here, in 60 seconds or less, is why theistic objective morality doesn’t get off the ground:
[Results not guaranteed. May vary with individual reading speed.]
1. For objective morality to have an impact, we need to a) know that it exists, b) know what it requires, and c) know that we have reliable access to it. We don’t know any of those things.
2. Lacking access to objective morality, all we have left is subjective morality — what each person thinks is right or wrong. This is just as true for the objectivist as it is for the subjectivist.
3. Even if God existed and we knew exactly what he expected of us, there would be no reason to regard his will as morally binding. His morality would be just as subjective as ours.
KN:
Only the conscience constrains morality, as far as I can see. Any act can be rendered immoral if your conscience tells you it is, and vice-versa.
Since there is no independent means of validating the conscience, morality is inherently subjective.
OMagain,
So was it moral to deny rights to gays when the majority wanted it that way?
Its not moral in my world (because in my worldview, people already know inside what is morality-its not really subjective, its just prone to denial), but it is in the atheists as keiths has just shown.
I have not seen any atheist here so far show why it isn’t? There is nothing at all immoral about the killer of babies in keiths world, what would make it any different than square dancing? Allan wants to say there are different without saying why.
phoodoo,
Sure there is. I think it’s immoral to kill babies! Why is this so hard for you, phoodoo?
keiths,
See you make this statement, and yet you fail to make any rational argument about why it isn’t so under your stated philosophy. I guess its just another flameout by you.
Why is killing babies more wrong than square dancing?
phoodoo,
Because Jesus says so! You don’t think a mere human could figure that out, do you?
keiths,
So this is your only escape. You have no answer, so you fall back on your same tired whine…”But what about baby Jesus…I hate him, flameout, flameout…”
That’s right, phoodoo. I’m absolutely stumped by your question. Who could possibly answer it? Who could possibly give a reason why killing babies is worse than square dancing?
There is obviously only one answer: because Jesus says so.
keiths,
There are people who can give an answer however. They are called theists.
phoodoo,
Not just theists, phoodoo — Christians. No one could possibly answer this question without Jesus’s help:
At UD:
ENich,
There are five or more men in a room who all believe that sock hops are sacred rituals mandated by their God. There is one man (Marshall) in the room who thinks this is ridiculous. They bind Marshall to their morality and proceed to make Mr. Anti Sock-Hop extinct.
Your worldview rocks, ENich!
phoodoo,
Not quite how I recall the exchange. They are different for me, and the obvious reason is the harm caused. But some objectivists do indeed regard dancing as immoral. So clearly, to them, dancing and baby-killing come under the banner of immoral acts. Which is more immoral to them? You’d have to ask them.
Obviously, to spell it out, they aren’t both immoral to me. Why? Because one induces genuine feelings of disapproval – ‘people shouldn’t do that’ – and the other simply ‘not for me’.
1) Do you think people should dance? If so, why? If not, why not?
2) Do you think people should kill babies? If so, why? If not, why not?
Try and do it while at the same time not having any personal feelings on the matter, relying instead on ‘the objective’. Bet you can’t. Moral issues are by their nature emotional ones, which is why people get angry about transgressions. Including, if you’re a Presbyterian on certain Scottish islands in times gone by, dancing.
keiths,
One does wonder what these people plan to do with dissenters when their Day finally cometh.
Allan Miller,
Of course I can offer no rational reason why it should matter in any fundamental sense that harm is caused. Yet nor, I submit, can an objectivist. It offends God? Why should I care? He’ll torture me eternally? Fair enough, but that won’t make me care.
It does not take many ‘yes, but why?’ questions to get to an unanswerable, as with beauty, humour and so on. Morality as a sense, the conception that some things are ‘right’ and others are ‘wrong’, is simply fundamental to humanity. What those things are specifically depends upon both nature and experience. We can learn to disapprove.
My reading of history is that religion is evil in direct proportion to its worldly power and authority. Wherever religious people have authority over others, they abuse it.
I think the same thing about secular politics, too, but so far, there are places where political debate is allowed. There can be social costs associated with heresy and apostasy, but even in Russia and China, one is not shot or imprisoned for unbelief.
Allan Miller,
Allan, those who say that morality exists as an outside, objective reality, claim so, for the simple reason that they know that their feelings about them are real and valid, and not simply an illusion of accidental consciousness. Its not about it simply pleasing a God, its that they realize that humans were given the ability to know right and wrong. And we are the only species that have the ability to know this. Other animals can not feel guilt or regret. If a chimpanzee rips off a ladies face in a fit of rage, or smashes a competitors baby and eats it, it can’t think, well, that wasn’t very nice was it.
That some can choose to do wrong anyway, despite knowing that it is wrong, is part of the fallible human condition. I don’t think any rational person can believe that baby killers don’t know their actions are wrong, even if they act on them anyway. And there is the fundamental difference.
According to the “subjective” school of thought, the murderer’s desires can’t be wrong. They are right for him. There exists no rationale for determining which beliefs are good and which are bad. They are all equal.
All the atheist is left with, when it comes down to it, is that their feelings, are just accidents. If it pleases Hitler to murder Jews, there is no yardstick for suggesting that his morals are worse or better than anyone else’s. They are all just accidents anyway. Why is it important to consider ones feelings?
But you answered the question yourself. Because as humans we know the difference between right and wrong, and we don’t really believe that those feelings are meaningless illusions.
keiths,
keiths,
No keiths you are completely wrong. It is not just theists or Christians who can know the difference between right and wrong. Its all humans with fully functioning brains. THIS is what separates us from EVERY other organism on Earth. We are born with the ability to feel compassion, guilt and regret.
This is why it is not the false “subjective” anything you feel like doing is equally valid, which is accurate.
You have no way to answer the question of why liking square dancing is not the same as enjoying killing babies. You have proved you have no rebuttal to this. You are only capable of feebly saying, what about baby Jesus, I hate him. You have had plenty of time to consider the difference, and that is the best reply you can give.
Your answer is there for all to see. You don’t have one.
My bad…not what I meant, but I can see the confusion.
To clarify, my reference to impunity was a comment on the workings and cultures of the societies that have such killings, and not meant as a reference to the lack of some justice or punishment.
Be that as it may, my overall point is that without some absolute and consistent consequences to engahing in “immoral” behavior, how can people objectively assess morality or immorality?
phoodoo,
Nobody argues that these sensations are a consequence of ‘accidental consciousness’. However …
I give blood every 3 months. We don’t get paid for it in the UK; it just makes me feel good to do it. People who choose not to, fine. But there are some objective moralists who believe it is objectively wrong to take a transfusion. Sometimes they let kids die as a consequence. I think they are wrong. They think they are not just right, but objectively right. Yet “those who say that morality exists as an outside, objective reality, claim so, for the simple reason that they know that their feelings about them are real and valid”.
They only think that we were ‘given’ the ability. They point to an acknowledged phenomenon and offer their explanation for it. “It exists, therefore it is objective” is not compelling. There must be a reason why it is to be considered objective. Humour exists – people everywhere have the ability to laugh at something. Is that objective? What’s the fundamenhtal difference?
I’m not so sure, but it doesn’t matter to the argument.
Your belief aside, there are well-recognised conditions under which people really don’t know right from wrong. There are also conditions where people know it, but don’t care.
You are confusing subjectivism with relativism. Like Every Theist Ever. Don’t.
They are worse than mine. That’s all I need.
If something makes you feel bad, you’d be a fool to do it. If it didn’t make Hitler feel bad, all the ‘objective’ labelling in the world is not going to make him.
The moral sense exists. That is not at issue. The point is whether what we feel is wrong, individually or collectively, is wrong according to some external standard (God? Natural Law? Ming the Merciless? Someone must know!) or not. There is a distinction between possession of the general thing ‘a moral sense’, and having a particular position on a particular moral issue. I’d only have to show you two arguing objectivists to illustrate that difference.
There are two key problems with your thesis that completely falsifies it Phoodoo:
1) You believe everyone is born not only knowing right from wrong, but that we all agree (in our hearts) on what is right and what is wrong. There is no evudence to support this however, but worse there is plenty of evidence from the AMA, APA, history, forensic science, and archeology that shows that your opinion cannot be valid.
2) Your assessment fails to tale into account disparities such as dancing, gay marriage, slavery, suicide, sacrifices, and a host of other behaviors on which people throughout history have had varying moral opinions. Is not honoring ones mother and father always, in all time, immoral? How do you know? More importantly, how do you know others agree with you? What about selling your daughter into slavery? That was considered a moral act for thousands of years. Who are you to say it isn’t? What about dancing? What about making satirical pictures of Mohammad?
Again, all you have offered is your subjective opinion that everyone holds that killing children is wrong, but aside from your gut feeling you’ve got no way of knowing this. And further, your gut feeling doesn’t explain why a number of people feeling that dancing is morally wrong or why millions upon millions of people throughout thousands of years all held that slavery was not only moral, it was a show of respect and honor to society’s gods. How do you explain that?
Allan Miller,
Well, here is my take on that. I believe in some external guiding force in the world. As such I believe that we are given knowledge about what is right and wrong in our particular situation in life. The struggle in man is then to see if we can do our best to live up to that which we know is right, or if we choose to ignore it, because it is either too hard to do, or because we aren’t willing to listen to that voice.
As such we don’t all have to share the same morality, we simply have “our” morality, which is given to us in the form of our knowledge. That morality is about goodness. It is about being fair and just to others. We can’t know what others struggles are and why they do as they do, we can only know our own burden. People who are doing evil things, they know they are doing evil, but they can’t control themselves. Its a constant struggle to achieve a better form of ourselves. Some are succeeding more than others. But we all know in ourselves how well we are doing.
Now, you can choose not to believe this if you wish, BUT it is a reason. As opposed to the atheist predicament which logically can only say, I am a biological robot, anything I feel about morality is simply the result of a biological happenstance of unplanned protein interactions which are meaningless. You can ignore that this is the ultimate conclusion all you want, but that is all you got.
And yet, inside, you actually know that it is more than that. But you are unable to rationalize that sense, with the idea that life is just an accident. That there is no meaning to any of this. That you are not anything other than weird electric currents.
So you are the ones who are stuck with the problem of explaining why anything is moral, not me. No one really lives their life as if they are really just meaningless currents of electricity. But that is the claim.
How’s it feel to be a puppet?
phoodoo,
LOL. Phoodoo is a relativist.
That is incredibly naive. Phoodoo, do you actually think that the crusaders — to take just one example — knew that it was wrong to slaughter the Cathars and Saracens, but did it anyway because they just couldn’t control themselves?
Or do you think that your “external guiding force” led them to do it, and that they should be admired for their obedience?
Argument by knowing what I think inside better than I do myself?
Absurd. Lame. Laughable.
Typical arrogant fundy, they always know better then you what you are thinking!
And the use of “inside” to imply “soul” no doubt, but not quite ready to say the S word are we phoodoo?
You’ve explained nothing! unless you count speculation and belief as explanation.
For example, have you actually searched for, say, “evolution of altruism”?
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1654/13
http://www.pnas.org/content/75/1/385.full.pdf
And you said
Seems like the easy way out. That last quote is from a paper almost as old as me by the way.
And, for petes sake, robots evolve aultristic behavior unprompted
http://www.wired.com/2011/05/robot-altruism/
And yet some mysterious external source of oh-so-fuzzy guidance seems like a better solution than morals are ultimately materialistic.
keiths said:
Talk about some fuzzy conditions!
For objective morality to have an impact on what?
What do you mean by “reliable access”? How reliable? What kind of access?
What does keiths mean by “know”? Be absolutely certain of? Have reasonable belief in the truth or validity of an observation or proposition?
All we have so far is some very fuzzy conditions that cannot, as they are, lead to this conclusion at all.
Certainly not under all versions of theistic, objective morality. If the goodness of god is an essential, unchangeable, innate quality of god, and if god is the necessary grounding being and existence, then such morality would be as non-subjective as non-subjective gets, and as absolute as absolute gets.
Why don’t you answer that question? I presume you’re asking because you think it is.
Robin,
Even with absolute and consistent consequences, we still don’t know whether something is objectively immoral.
Suppose God strikes me with lightning every time I utter the expletive “Jesus!” That’s a pretty good sign that God disapproves, but it doesn’t tell me that it’s objectively immoral to take Jesus’s name in vain.
phoodoo:
Rumraket:
Given that phoodoo wrote this…
…he will presumably say he knows that killing babies is wrong because his conscience tells him that it is. What he won’t be able to justify is the claim that his conscience is a reliable indicator of objective morality.
Hi, William. I thought we’d eventually hear from you.
From the OP:
William:
Why? Because I haven’t specified that our access must be 91.7% reliable?
Our moral decisions, of course.
Reliable enough to justify whatever level of certainty you ascribe to your moral beliefs.
Some way of telling whether something is, or isn’t, objectively moral.
Let’s use the standard philosophical definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”.
No. Absolute certainty is a mythic state.
No, let’s go with “knowledge is justified true belief.”
From the OP:
William:
Sure they can. But if you disagree, explain why you think they can’t.
From the OP:
William:
The problem is that you don’t know that God, if he exists at all, is innately good.
phoodoo,
“…humans were given the ability to know right and wrong. And we are the only species that have the ability to know this. Other animals can not feel guilt or regret.”
That is one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
“If a chimpanzee rips off a ladies face in a fit of rage, or smashes a competitors baby and eats it, it can’t think, well, that wasn’t very nice was it.”
What an incredibly stupid example. Your ignorance of animals and their behavior is profound.
“That some can choose to do wrong anyway, despite knowing that it is wrong, is part of the fallible human condition.”
Because of ‘the fall’? LOL
“I don’t think any rational person can believe that baby killers don’t know their actions are wrong, even if they act on them anyway. And there is the fundamental difference.”
Ah, so all baby killers know that killing babies is wrong, including all of the baby killers that your chosen, imaginary, so-called ‘God’ told to kill babies by dashing them against rocks, etc., but they chose (and choose) to kill babies anyway because ‘God’ told/tells them to. And of course your chosen ‘God’ the baby killer knows it’s wrong too but chooses to do it anyway. What a ‘rational’ so-called ‘God’ you worship, NOT. By worshiping and promoting that so-called ‘God’ you condone the killing of people of all ages, for the most irrational reasons imaginable.
phoodoo,
Sure. That tends to cover the kinds of morality espoused by most people, objectivist or subjectivist. Humanists (for example) follow such moralities because it ‘seems right’ – without any requirement that those moral senses be given, or form part of any aspirational program of self-improvement, appeasement or whatever. Even people with no religion whatsoever tend to conform to a common human pattern of wishing to do ‘the right thing’ with respect to other humans (with caveats – it is more rarely the case that ALL humanity is embraced by this sense of goodwill).
Not so. Whatever the ultimate source of morality, I can place value upon it. I enjoy a good meal. “Huh. That’s just meaningless unplanned protein interactions underlying your biological need for food”. I adore beautiful women. “Huh. That’s just meaningless unplanned protein interactions underlying your biological drive to procreate”. It is always possible to over-emphasise the reductionist state and say “that’s all you have”, then smirk because everything YOU do is in service of something Greater. But that, to me, adds no value. If God values something and I don’t, why should I care? Ultimately, God’s values tend to bear a suspicious similarity to one’s own.
I can rationalise the moral sense perfectly well, as an adaptation in a monogamous social species with a lengthy period of intensive parental investment. I don’t find any real sense in the suggestion that, because I am a soul preprogrammed with a sense of right and wrong, it has suddenly acquired meaning.
No-one drives a car as if it is just atoms.
If my auntie had bollocks, she’d be my uncle.
keiths said:
I don’t have to know it in order to present a premise that contradicts your assertion that is apparently about any possible god from whence so-called objective morality comes. IF a god, the good, being and existence are as I have described them, THEN morality is objective in the most absolute manner possible.
As far as “justifiable true belief”, then it depends on what criteria one uses to fill the “justified” order. Does logical necessity, or reasonable logical conclusion, fit the bill? Does one require scientific evidence? Is personal experience and testimony enough?
Again, this isn’t very well worded. If we assume that objective morality exists, and that our conscience is a sensory capacity that can sense it, then objective morality makes an impact every time we feel the pangs of conscience and let it guide our behavior.
Perhaps what keiths means here is: “For objective morality to have an impact that would be distinguishable from a subjective-based morality, we need to …” etc. However, I’ve already made this argument several times; no sane person acts as if morality is subjective in nature. We act as if many of our moral sensations are objectively binding on everyone else; we act as if we have an obligation/responsibility to only do that which is moral; we are often williing to risk our own lives and safety in defense of moral sensations; we are willing to defy any institution or group in service of some of our moral sensibilities.
IMO, the impact an objective morality would have is the very thing we actually experience when it comes to our moral sense; it makes us behave in a way that is inconsistent with any other feeling considered to be entirely subjective in nature, and entirely consistent with how we feel and behave when it comes to that which we consider to be objective in nature.
So, theoretically, we don’t have to know morality is objective in order for its objective nature to impact our moral choices. Even if one is erroneous in his/her belief that morality is subjective in nature, the objective nature of it would still be impacting their decisions through their conscience and by making them feel and act in a manner inconsistent with moral subjectivism.
William J. Murray,
And yet those actually living lives other than yours report the matter differently. I act precisely as if morality is subjective in nature – as if everyone has a subjective moral sense to which, should I encounter them doing something I personally abhor, appeal can be made. They can do the same with me. We may or may not reach agreement.
How is that living as if morality is anything other than ‘subjective’ (subjective in this sense being in opposition to the view that it exists outside human heads)?
Alan Miller said:
As I said, I’ve already made this argument here and elsewhere many times.
To sum up: if we are sane, we aren’t willing to unilaterally coerce any other entirely subjective, personal preference, no matter how deeply felt, on strangers; nor are we willing to risk personal safety and liberty in defiance of social views in favor of other such “personal preferences”. So, in certain situations, we do not, and cannot, act like morality is subjective.
If we see someone gratuitously torturing a child, we simply stop them – unilaterally. Even if it puts us at risk. There is no rationally consistent justification for this under moral subjectivism other than invoking the same principle that necessarily justifies what the other guy is doing in the first place: because I feel like it, because I can.
In fact, we would most likely consider it immoral to do attempt to coerce strangers into adopting our personal preferences. Also, the sense of moral obligation and responsibility is not consistent with moral subjectivism. If they are truly subjective preferences/feelings with no necessary consequences, why on earth would I feel obligated or responsible?
Why are you attempting to talk someone else out of their moral perspective in the first place if you hold it to be and entirely subjective feeling/preference? Wouldn’t that be like trying to talk someone out of their love of football? Or their preference for ravioli from a certain restaurant?
I think that then raises the question of what you mean by “objective morality”. Further, it strikes me as a rather moot point. I mean, if everyone experienced some consistent and absolute consequence for shouting “Jesus!” in some emotional moment, what are the odds that the tendency to utter that name would decrease (if not cease altogether). Would it really matter at that point if you couldn’t be sure there was some objective moral ruleset “out there” somewhere underlying the effect? I personally think the condition and subsequent behavioral change would be key issue, regardless of whether anyone believed some arbitrary label could appropriately be applied
Your assessment and explanation suffers from the same issue I noted in Phoodoo’s opinion: underlying your perspective is an assumption that all people must ultimately feel the same things. As shown, this is clearly not yhe case.
As an example, I persalonally find anyone who acts in any capacity against gay marriage to be evil, delusional, or both. I’ve fought against such folks politically, economically, and physically. If I were in charge, I’d have any such person shot without trial. They are vile subcreatures to me. Interestingly, many of them feel just as strongly repulsed by the idea of gay marriage.
So which of us is operating off of the objective morality playbook? Clearly it can’t be both of us, and given the fact that at least one of us is operating on just strong subjective feelings, there’s every reason to accept that all such behavior is governed by subjective feelings.
A cockatoo does.
William J. Murray,
I’m not interested in wading through your many writings on the topic. The case remains unmade and the fact remains: I do not behave as if morality is objective (exists outside human heads). If I have an aversion to a certain political viewpoint, I argue against it, without even a scintilla of a sense that there is some absolute answer on the matter. Likewise with morality. The willingness of people to die for a belief is no guide to its objective reality.
Robin said:
No such assumption is required for my explanation.
Objective morality simply produces the sense that a thing is wrong or right; comparative emotional reactions to the specific wrong or right thing are entirely subjective. That’s one of the problems with subjective morality; there’s no principled way to distinguish between a personal emotional reaction and the moral rightness or wrongness of a thing.
For instance, the idea of male homosexuality disgusts me. I can’t even watch a couple of guys kiss on TV without turning away. However, I don’t confuse personal, subjective, emotional or visceral reactions to a thing for the moral rightness or wrongness of that thing. My conscience, informed by reason, cannot sense or rationalize anything being morally wrong with two consenting adults mutually expressing their love for each other physically.
Just because morality is objectively existent doesn’t mean everyone will perceive the good correctly, interpret it correctly, or that they will not confuse their emotional reaction to the thing for whether or not that thing is actually moral or immoral.
So presumably you can given “a thing” determine the moral rightness or wrongness of it? Is that correct? Do I understand you correctly?
Leaving aside the question of sanity, there is a perfectly rational justification, from a subjectivist perspective, for coercing another individual to change their behavior, which does not assume an objective morality.
Let’s go back to the little tableau, discussed in an earlier thread on UD, of Barney watching Fred beat his wife Wilma. The debate revolved around the question of the grounds that would justify Barney acting to prevent Fred beating his wife, in other words imposing his views on Fred, that did not involve Barney acting as if his moral views were objective and, hence binding on everyone.
The answer, as I pointed out before, was to bring in the third actor in that little scenario, Wilma. If Wilma appeals to Barney, saying that Fred is hurting her and could even kill her and Fred can offer no good reason to justify causing suffering to another, then Barney is justified in intervening based on nothing more than the Golden Rule.
As a further illustration, let’s change the scenario slightly. Barney inadvertently comes across Fred beating Wilma but in this case Wilma makes no appeal for help to Barney. Somewhat embarrassed, the couple explain that they were indulging in a little extreme role-playing as a form of foreplay prior to having sex. In that case, Barney would be justified in not interfering and would make his excuses and leave.
Whether you like it or not, yes, these questions do reduce to a question of personal preferences or feelings but , like any form of reduction that is also a form of abstraction, which, by definition, leaves things out.
As above, there is a perfectly rational subjectivist justification for preventing torture if you take into account the feelings of the victim and assume the Golden Rule as a principle.
Again the perils of reductionism. And poor analogies.
If I tried to prevent a soccer fan form attending his beloved club’s matches, just because I hated soccer, that would be immoral. My dislike of soccer is not a sufficient reason to stop him doing something he likes. The same with his favorite ravioli. It is no justification for me stopping him eating it just because I can’t stand it.
On the other hand, suppose he tried to force me to go along to a football game ir eat ravioli that I couldn’t stand, then I would have rational grounds for frustrating his intentions.
Since the observed function of moral codes are to regulate our behavior, it seems to me that our feelings on the matter should be taken into account. In fact, it’s hard to see what else they could be based on. In answer to the objection that subjectivism opens the way to nihilism my answer would be that the best way to avoid it is the third way of what others have referred to as “inter-subjective agreement” and I call collective morality. We can and do reach agreement on these matters amongst ourselves. It may be very messy and painful along the way but it’s better than some autocratic deity imposing a set of rules without any justification other than “might is right”. The same applies to religions or political ideologies.
As for the notion that morality is somehow embedded in the warp and weft of the fabric of the Universe I find it both absurd on its face and circular.
keiths:
WJM:
You don’t have to know anything in order to present it as a premise. As OMagain said:
I’m not interested in whether you can assume the existence of objective morality. That’s easy. The question I’m asking is whether objective morality actually exists, and if so, what it entails.
Logical necessity certainly does. “Reasonable logical conclusion” fits the bill as long as the premises are justified.
No.
Of the kind you usually present? No.
keiths:
William:
You can assume anything. The question is, can you know the things I listed above?
No, I meant what I wrote.
This isn’t that hard, William. Here’s a thought experiment:
Suppose that objective morality exists, and that whistling is objectively immoral. Further suppose that our consciences have no access to objective morality.
Under those circumstances, most people will continue to believe that whistling is morally permissible. Why wouldn’t they? They have no idea that whistling is immoral. The objective immorality of whistling has no impact on their moral decisions.
Now suppose that members of a certain Mennonite sect believe that whistling is immoral. Isn’t their behavior affected by the objective immorality of whistling? Again, no. They happen to believe that whistling is immoral, and they happen to be correct, but their belief is arbitrary — it’s not causally related to the fact that whistling is objectively immoral.
Reread my statement with that in mind:
William:
That’s goofy, William.
I prefer not to be tortured to death. If you try to torture me to death, I won’t hesitate to impose my subjective but deeply felt personal preference on you.
Robin:
Remember, I was responding to your comment:
The Jesus/lightning thought experiment shows that “absolute and consistent consequences” are insufficient to establish something as objectively immoral.
Alan Miller said:
Well, I made it to my satisfaction. That it wasn’t to the satisfaction of self-styled moral subjectivists is hardly surprising 🙂
William J. Murray,
By your own admission, ‘your satisfaction’ does not necessitate any intersection with reality.
Ahhh! Now I understand what you mean. And yes, I agree. I was simply noting that without consequence (along with your conditions) one could not sufficiently conclude an objective morality.
So-called “objective” moralities suffer from the same problem.