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.
WJM:
Bailing out so soon, William?
Let’s take a look at the argument that William is ‘satisfied’ with:
1. If I assume that objective morality exists, then I can conclude that objective morality exists.
2. If I then assume that God is innately and objectively good, then I can conclude that God’s morality is objective.
3. If I assume that my conscience is a reliable indicator of objective morality, then I can conclude that decisions based on conscience are objectively moral.
He assumes everything and demonstrates nothing.
Robin,
I take it further than that. Not only are consequences insufficient to demonstrate objectively morality; they are also unnecessary.
For example, suppose that William and phoodoo are correct and that our consciences are designed to give us access to God’s objective morality. In that case we don’t need consequences to tell us what is and isn’t objectively moral — we can simply rely on our consciences.
Of course, William and phoodoo still have the insurmountable task of showing that our consciences are reliable indicators of objective morality, but my point is that consequences aren’t a necessary part of that.
William J. Murray,
‘The case’, just to note, was that ‘subjective moralists cannot sanely act as if subjective morality is true’. So despite the fact that we have real live subjectivists here who can solemnly attest that they are definitely NOT acting ‘as if’ there is an external objective standard outside human minds … WJM knows best. They are ‘cos he says they are. They just don’t know it. Wilful denial of ‘the obvious’, that sort of thing.
I do wonder why morality’s objectivity would give anyone a more rational basis for interference than subjectivity? If the second party is transgressing some Law or God, why not let that sort it out?
The interfering objectivist believes not only that there is an objective answer, and that he has successfully distinguished this answer from any personal feelings he may have on the matter, but that this process of divination has given him some rationale to interfere which the subjectivist supposedly does not possess. I don’t see why.
Yep, the question of “rationale to interfere” is orthogonal to the question of “objective or subjective”
Some of us subjectivists are just interfering arses. I have an opinion on everything, and since my opinion is always right ‘), I feel perfectly justified in imposing my opinion on any ignorant disagreeing people. Well, not imposing by force – I don’t command an army or police with which to bend others to act in ways I approve of. But I’m certainly loud enough to count – from William’s pov – as “coerce[ing] strangers into adopting [my] personal preferences.” Or from my pov – leading them to see the light.
Even though William would no doubt swear that my only basis for doing so is my long-denied sense of having “objective” truth on my side … no, just no. I don’t know anyone who is more convinced than I am that all my knowledge is subjective and provisional. As far as I can tell, there is nothing objective in the universe: it’s all inter-subjective. It’s all maya.
As you imply, the “objectivist” may feel a strong rationale to interfere, and also a moral duty to set things right, but conversely may NOT feel that. Perhaps they already “know” that the objectively correct thing is to leave people alone to make their own mistakes.
It just depends on which people feel like being do-gooders (or interfering busybodies, to put it less politely) and which of us don’t. And that has nothing to do with which of us believe ourselves to be backed up by “objective” truth, and which don’t.
Ok. I disagree with that and here’s why:
Suppose William and Phoodoo are correct and conscience is a reliable method for accessing objective morality. How would said reliability be determined?
Addendum: put another way, where’s the objective part, to say nothing of the reliability part, of independent consciences?
Allan Miller,
Geez Allan, I wrote an entire four paragraphs that explains exactly why. I don’t see how you could miss it. BECAUSE, the person knows it is wrong to not try to do the right thing! So when my conscience tells me that stopping a man from beating up an old lady is the morally best thing to do, if I am too lazy, or selfish or distracted by chatting up some hot girl on the subway instead, then in my mind I will know that I am failing at living the best moral life I can.
So once again, the onus is on the individual to live up to what they know is right, or suffer the personal consequences of knowing they are not a very moral individual. Its not about helping someones else’s morals, its about striving to fulfill your own. So in the case where there is a schmuck who does nothing, even when he knows he probably should and could, two people have failed themselves, the perpetrator and the bystander who does nothing.
Robin,
Its doesn’t need to be determined Robin. The results speak for themselves.
When you live a moral life you feel better about yourself. You can be proud of the person in the mirror each day. You can know you are on a worthwhile path. And when you live against a moral life, you also know that. You know when you are cheating people, when you are being much more concerned about your own well being at the expense of others. You know when you can be better at fulfilling your own chapter in the history of the planet. The Donald Sterlings and Dick Cheneys and Chris Kyles of the world know they are assholes. They don’t have joy in their life, no matter how much money and power they obtain. Do you think Dick Cheney is ever happy? Do you think he ever has a truly joyous smile? I am pretty sure he hates himself-right along with everyone else. I am sure when he looks at himself every morning, he says, “Fuck you, you ugly prick, I am going to figure out how to make someone as miserable as me today. Where is my goddam scotch? Get the fuck out of the way dog, before I kick your head again”
But the little old lady in Japan, who takes care of her rose garden, and brings some extra vegetables to her neighbor every week is perfectly at peace with herself-even in a world which isn’t always fair.
Robin,
They can’t do it because they lack a trustworthy, independent indicator of objective morality to calibrate their consciences against. That’s what makes the conscience different from, say, vision.
Consequences don’t qualify as an independent indicator, so I disagree with your earlier statement:
Consequences, even absolute and consistent ones, don’t help. They aren’t a trustworthy indicator of objective morality. That’s the point of my Jesus/lightning thought experiment:
Allan,
Indeed, if an omniGod exists, then the world is already optimal exactly as it is.
William has it exactly backwards. It’s the moral subjectivist who has a rationale for intervening. The omnitheist does not, because the world at any moment is already optimal, child torture and all — and the omnipotent God will see to it that it remains so.
phoodoo,
Nothing you wrote in your last two comments has anything to do with whether morality is objective or subjective.
For example:
And that remains true even if her morality is subjective.
Theists’ inability to meaningfully conceptualize omnipotence always astounds me. Why would such a God do *anything*.?There can be no surprises, no delight, no disappointment – there is no divide between imagining, knowing, doing and experiencing for such an entity.
Yep.
keiths,
It doesn’t remain true if Dick Cheney’s morality is subjective!
If that were true not only would he be perfectly content with his own level of evil, but so would everyone else, because they would have no rationale for disagreeing with his bloodlust.
phoodoo,
Geez phoodoo, none of that provides the greater rational justification for intervention under supposed objectivity I sought.
And indeed, as I have bolded, it seems a particularly self-oriented philosophy the way you have expressed it. YOUR moral development? Who cares? You, of course! Who makes the assessments? You!
I would help the old lady because it would make me feel good to do so, and bad to not. I like the idea of a world in which people help each other. It’s far less elaborate a justification. And entirely rational.
keiths:
phoodoo:
You packed a lot of confusion into those two sentences.
1. You seem to think that under subjective morality, everything a person does is automatically moral. It isn’t. People can behave in ways that fall short of their own moral standards.
2. The fact that morality is subjective does not mean that it is lightly held, and it does not prevent us from disagreeing vehemently with Dick Cheney or anyone else. You’re confusing subjectivism with relativism.
Allan Miller,
Yes, precisely as I said, I believe we are given the knowledge of what is moral and what isn’t. Thus we can make a decision based on the knowledge we are given.
What you are saying on the other hand is that you just do what feels good, but if you feel like doing harm to others, its fine, because we are just chemical robots that can whatever we feel, and we can even ignore the illusion of life as meaning. In fact, if we got good at ignoring the feelings of compassion for others, life would be even better. We could feel good, without wasting precious time worrying about the consequences to others. Utopia.
No doubt Allan Miller will answer for himself that your misrepresentation is far from what he has been saying. It’s a tiresome though oft-repeated strawman. You are in the same boat as us. We subjectivists act just as ethically as the self-righteous. We just don’t need religious stories to justify our ethical code.
GIven by who or what? DId god personally speak to you the same way that he spoke to me in a voice like thunder from the heavens?
phoodoo,
And how does that justify intervention where ‘that seems wrong to me’ does not?
You are offering, repetitiously, fundamental fallacies about subjectivism. Like every theist ever.
1) Morality = ‘doing what feels good’. No, it’s about doing what feels right. Pretty much what you do. It often feels good to do what feels right.
2) A subjectivist has no reason not to suppress their moral sense. Why? The reasons are never clearly specified, just vague suppositions about what we might want out of life which somehow can only be achieved by increased callousness. I think I get a lot more out of being nice, personally.
3) The doings of some mythical other subjectivist have a bearing upon the coherence of the individual subjectivist position. They don’t. Do you find it persuasive when someone says “what about the objectivist who kills prostitutes because he heard God tell him?” No? Then why in hell should we give a shit about some mythical subjectivist who may feel that doing harm to others is a subjective moral good?
4) Subjectivism entails relativism. It does not. My moral code is superior to everyone else’s.
For each question here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tracyclayton/moral-dilemmas-that-will-break-your-brain
what’s your answer?
Alan Fox,
But you are entirely missing the point. The claim is not that objectivist lives more or less morally. It is that if one really held the belief that there is no reason for acting moral other than because it feels good, then they are being hypocritical if they suggest that anyone else is immoral-because there is no such thing as moral and immoral.
None of the subjectivists can answer why beating up an old lady is worse than square dancing. You will never be able to make a logical case for one being different from another. You will never be able to make a logical case for why its not ok to deny gay people their rights, if enough people in the society say they don’t like gay people to have rights. You really have no examples of people living their lives as if they believe what you claim. or if there are people who are living as you claim is logical, then certainly you condemn them. I mean don’t you condemn people who say, hey, I do whatever I want, why should I care who it hurts? It pleases me.
phoodoo,
We’ve all been spoon feeding this to you, but you’re still not getting it. Try harder.
That isn’t my belief. Like Allan’s, my reason for acting morally is because it feels right.
No. Whenever any of us — including you — says that someone is acting immorally, we mean that the person is acting immorally with respect to our own moral standards. It’s just that you go one step further and claim, with no justification, that your particular standard of morality is somehow objective.
Sure there is. It’s just that it depends on the subjective standard being employed. Stoning adulterers is moral in the eyes of the Taliban; to me it’s evil.
I suspect that we all can — easily. Here’s my answer: I can square dance without harming anyone, but to beat up an old lady is to do grave harm to her, and my conscience tells me that it’s wrong.
What’s your answer? What if you find out that your God hates square dancing more than anything, including the suffering of old ladies? Will you start persecuting square dancers, or will you — like the subjectivists — rely on your conscience instead?
Where do you come up with this crap? Not one of us has said that the majority is automatically moral.
Each of us is an example.
Of course I do, because those people are acting immorally — by my standards.
Allan Miller said:
There is a difference between someone that calls themselves an moral subjectivist, and someone who actually live the life of a logically-consistent moral subjectivist. You might believe you are acting like a moral subjectivist but have no real idea what that even means.
Allan Miller asks:
It will sort itself out, which is why I always advocate respecting the right of others to make immoral choices as much as possible. The only time one should intervene, IMO, is when not intervening presents a personal moral danger. IOW, if you do not intervene, you will reap the negative consequences for not intervening
Robin asks:
I don’t know that I’ve ever made the claim that the conscience is a reliable method for accessing objective reality. The only thing I’ve said (I think) is that under objective morality, conscience is considered a sensory capacity that can sense the moral landscape. Whether or not it is reliable is a moot point, really, if it is all we have to work from.
If you are asking how the conscience’s fidelity to the objective good can be objectively tested, it can’t be.
The objective part is not proven. It’s assumed.
William:
Yet when we ask you to identify some way in which our behavior isn’t consistent with moral subjectivism, you invariably fail.
Want to try again?
William, to Robin:
Yet you’ve stated that gratuitous child torture is objectively immoral. On what basis?
William J. Murray,
I really do live the life of a logically consistent moral subjectivist. That is, I live as if there is no absolute ‘right’ morality accessible from within human heads. I submit that it is you who does not know what that means.
I think that William may be arguing with his younger self – the only logically consistent way to behave as a moral subjectivist is the way he used to behave when he was a moral subjectivist, and that proved unsatisfactory. Nonetheless it does not lead inevitably to the conclusion that all logically consistent subjective moralities are unsatisfactory, or not ‘really’ how people live.
I’m still waiting for the logical inconsistency to be pointed out – if you can’t frame it in terms of formal logic, perhaps ‘logical’ is just window dressing?
Why don’t all those who claim there is an objective morality simply provide their answers to a few moral puzzles, e.g. these: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tracyclayton/moral-dilemmas-that-will-break-your-brain
And we can see for ourselves what objective morality says about each situation?
William? Phoodoo? Presumably if your claims have merit you will both determine the same answers in the same situation?
It’s lucky you are here then, no? To set people straight about what they do and don’t know. It must be those mindpowers of yours.
Also, I’d like to point out that I’ve never claimed or asserted that objective morality actually exists. Nor have I ever concluded that it actually exists. I don’t know if it does or not, and I have no way of actually knowing whether it does or not.
However, by the same token, I have no way of knowing whether or not morality refers to an entirely subjective commodity. It certainly doesn’t feel like it refers to a subjective commodity, but I could be mistaken about that.
My argument has only ever been that between objective and subjective morality, only objective morality can (1) offer a logically consistent moral framework that doesn’t necessarily boil down to “because I feel like it, because I can” principles, and (2) actually corresponds to how sane people must behave.
If moral subjectivists agree that their morality boils down to “because I feel like it, because I can” principles, I have no argument with them. They are logically consistent moral subjectivists.
William, western society long ago gave up the notion that it could be ruled by absolute imperatives. That’s why we evolved governments and laws to replace priesthoods.
The results are not universally pleasant for everyone, but laws and regulations continue to evolve.
Certainly, we do not have any trouble with divinely sanctioned institutions like slavery. The abolition of slavery follows seamlessly from the proposition that all humans have the same political rights.
William J. Murray,
It has more force than ‘because I feel like it’, which portrays it as a whim. Be that as it may, Objectivism cannot avoid the ‘because I feel like it’ issue other than by codifying in some way, and pointing to some rule. Then that codification becomes ‘pseudo-objective’, in that an individual or committee has succeeded in persuading someone else that their subjective sense is binding. If objectivism relies only upon individuals ‘sensing’ objective truths through their conscience, then it is simply thinly-disguised subjectivity.
Thinly, as in wrapped in the emperor’s clothes.
That’s exactly what the objective premise avoids by categorizing the conscience as a sensory capacity (not an internal feeling) and by categorizing what it refers to as objective existent in nature.
Unless you are claiming that our concept of “what we sense” as referring an “objectively real commodity” is “thinly-disguised subjectivity” for all our other senses, the two are categorically distinct, even dichotomous.
We can categorize what morality refers to as subjective; if so, then morality is based on internal feelings, and reduces down, ultimately, to “because I feel like it”. If we categorize morality as referring to an objective commodity, then morality is based on our sensory capacity to recognize it, and reduces down to “because I observe what it is through a sensory capacity”.
That may or may not be what is factually occurring, but again, I’m not making a claim about what is factually occurring, but rather what the logical ramifications are from the premises.
This makes the two categorically and entirely different premises.
Sorry William, but thousands and millions of people collectively doing what they feel like have created moral and ethical rules, and eventually laws.
It’s Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
petrushka,
I’m not making an argument about what actually occurred.
That was sufficient.
Sure you do! Simply collect lots of people that claim it exists and that they have access to it and ask them moral questions!
If everyone gives a different set of answers either there is
A) No objective morality
B) No access to objective morality.
Why are you so afraid to attempt to find out the truth of the matter?
It would require Big Boy Pants.
And of course, “Objective” morality is simply a more powerful entities “Subjective” morality.
However, it’s basically unpersuasive to merely assert that one’s conscience is a reliable or semi-reliable quasi-sensory capacity that tracks external constraints. To be entitled to that assertion, one needs to have a theory of what conscience is, a theory of one knows that it is more or less reliable, and a theory of what exactly it is that is being more or less reliably tracked.
The details are going to be vastly different if one thinks that conscience is more or less innate (due to divine creation, the ‘image of God’), or if one thinks that conscience is acquired over normal human maturation as the norms of the community are internalized. Likewise the details will be very different if the external constraint is theorized as the mutual constraints and correctives that members of a community exercise against one another or if the external constraint is somehow independent of, or external to, all social norms.
And even if the constraint is external to all social norms, there will still be a big difference if the norms are assessed in terms of the conditions of human flourishing or if the norms are assessed in terms of some Moral Law that is as fundamental to the nature of reality as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(If not, indeed, more so — since the Second Law of Thermodynamics only holds in a small class of possible worlds, whereas some defenders of the Moral Law seem to think that the Moral Law holds in all possible worlds.)
KN said:
It’s not an assertion at all. It’s a hypothetical premise, as I’ve said repeatedly. I’m entitled to make any set of hypothetical premises I wish in order to examine the logic that extends from those premises. Whether or not any individual finds the logic that extends from those premises persuasive to the point of changing their minds about the nature of morality is not my concern.
It’s not my job to figure out a means by which objective morality can be shown to exist or that conscience can be shown to sense it, or be reliable in how it senses it, because I’m not making any assertions that those things exist or can be shown to exist.
My argument isn’t grounded in nor requires such explanations of “how it works” or “how it can be verified to be accurate”, because my argument begins with the premise that it exists, and that conscience is a sensory capacity and not an internal, subjective feeling. Or, for subjective morality, the other way around.
Questions about whether or not the existence of an objective moral landscape can be verified, and whether or not there is any means by which to verify the fidelity of the conscience to that moral landscape, are entirely irrelevant to any point I’ve argued about morality; i.e., that it is only if morality is objective in nature (specifically, my general natural moral law formulation), and it is only if we have sensory access to it, that morality can (1) offer a logically consistent moral framework that doesn’t necessarily boil down to “because I feel like it, because I can” principles, and (2) actually corresponds to how sane people do and must behave.
So it is my point that regardless of whether or not one’s conscience is actually sensing some objective commodity, and whether or not we have a means of verifying the fidelity of that sense to what it is sensing, we already behave as if it is a sensory capacity and as if it is sensing an objective commodity and as if there are necessary consequences – and that sane people cannot act any other way.
Further, it is my point that regardless of any objective capacity to verify, such an arrangement is the only arrangement that doesn’t ultimately reduce morality to “because I feel like it, because I can” principles.
I think that one reason why we have trouble understanding your view is that it seems like a presuppositional argument.
It’s something like, “If p, then q, except that only sociopaths don’t believe q, and q is only justified in light of p.”
[Here “p” is something like “the function of conscience is to reliably track the natural moral law”, and “q” is something like “morality is an external constraint on choice and action”. But please feel free to correct me there if I haven’t gotten your view right.]
But in other contexts, you’ve claimed that only sociopaths don’t experience some sort of external normative constraint on their actions (is that right?). The non-sociopaths are those who accept q, and you seem to think that q must be grounded in p. That looks like an argument for p, and not just an exploration of the conditional “if p then q“.
Yes, I know. Your lack of curiosity is one of your more charming qualities.
What color badge would you like the insane people to wear?
BBP philosophising:
1. There may be a cake in the box.
2. No one knows nor may examine the box.
3. Therefore masterbaker.
Sane people should act if something actually exists whilst knowing that it may or may not exist and that there is no way of actually determining if it exists and furthermore if it exists or not does not even actually matter.
Sane people you say?
William,
Don’t be ridiculous.
You’ve told us again and again that gratuitous child torture is objectively and self-evidently immoral.