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.
I was asked the other day if I believed in moral absolutes. I responded that I didn’t, with the following argument.
Suppose there are moral absolutes. How would we know what they are? We would have to rely on reason, experience, or revelation. Revelation isn’t going to work as a stand-alone source of epistemic authority because we would still need to use reason and experience to determine if something is an act of genuine revelation or some weird cognitive or neurological failure (e.g. an epileptic seizure).
Reason, however, is not going to work, because there’s no way of grounding moral absolutes on pure reason without generating all the contradictions that have vexed Kantian approaches. Nor is experience going to work here; at any rate I don’t see how we experience moral absolutes.
That said, it does seem pretty clear that we do experience moral life as if we are subject to external constraint. The question is to figure out what that constraint is. Theists sometimes argue that if the constraint lies in shared norms, then the constraint is not itself constrained, or it’s not external enough. They think that there has to be something that determines if a community has the right norms at all. And I think that there is something basically right about that. What’s less clear to me is why they don’t think that the conditions of human flourishing can play that role.
KN said:
I’ve said that only sociopaths act as if morality is subjective (because I feel like it, because I can). No sane person does.
I’ve said that GCT is self-evidently immoral (meaning that if GCT could be considered a good thing, under any circumstances, then morality is rendered absurd (incomprehensible). IOW, why bother trying to figure out what is moral if GCT can be moral.
I’ve also said that under my hypothetical argument, if objective morality is true, looking for self-evidentlyt true and necessarily true moral statements would be the reasonable first step in fleshing out one’s moral system, because they would be the most resistant to misperception and misinterpretation IMO.
I don’t think I’ve ever asserted that GCT is objectively immoral outside of a context that framed it as part of the argument from a hypothetical premise – such as, what would be an example of an objectively true, self-evidently true moral statement if morality was objective in nature. I’ve also questioned others (Dr. Liddle, for example) if they considered GCT to be objectively wrong – meaning, wrong for all people at all times in all cultures, regardless of what they thought or what the culture thought or what anyone thought about it.
KN said:
(1) Because “the conditions of human flourishing” is pretty much the justification the Nazi’s used for exterminating Jews.
(2) Because anything done in the name of (insert principle here) doesn’t entail that the consequences of actions committed under that intent will have the desired effect at all. Life is far, far too chaotic in nature for any of us to have a grounded, rational faith that actions committed in good intent will necessarily lead to good consequences unless there is some sort of objective law that guarantees it, regardless of whatever appears to occur.
For those interested in how morality might have evolved, stay tuned for A Natural History of Human Morality by Tomasello.
I’m looking forward to reading this as seeing how his account is similar to and different from recent work by Mark Johnson, Kim Sterelny, and Owen Flanagan. It’s an exciting time to be a philosopher!
Show me a moral absolutist, and I will show you a moral relativist who absolutely wants to impose his relative morals on everybody else.
(That’s how I answer).
William J. Murray,
If you’re going to rule something out through ‘misapplication’, you’ve just killed objective morality many, many times.
Called Barry Arrington.
Well, I don’t know if you consider me a moral absolutist, but I certainly don’t wish to impose my moral values on anyone else. I don’t wish to impose any moral values on anyone else. If it means inserting myself in the affairs of others, I’ll do what’s morally obligatory, not what may be morally laudable.
That’s what worries me about moral absolutists.
William J. Murray,
Yup
PS the Yogurt turned out great.
Actually, no, I don’t. I consider you more of a posturer.
And this was caused by random mutations that just so happened to cause such skills, and accidentally made some people more prolific breeders?
I would take issue with that. The Nazis were interested in “improving” humanity, according to their narrow conception of who gets to count as human. In any event, a neo-Aristotelian like Dewey, Nussbaum, Flanagan, or myself can simply say that the Nazis were wrong about the conditions of human flourishing, because they failed to appreciate the importance of individual creativity in making communities better places for all concerned.
Yes, it’s this emphasis on necessity that I don’t understand. I would say that life is both orderly (at some times, in some respects) and chaotic (at some times, in some respects), and that is orderly enough that we can have a reasonable, empirically grounded confidence or trust that good intentions will usually lead to good consequences. You seem to want a guarantee. I don’t. On the contrary, I think that a tragic sense of life is the healthiest one to have.
I obviously can’t speak for Tomasello, since I don’t know what his views are in evolutionary theory. But it seems pretty clear to me that something like the Extended Synthesis would be necessary for explaining the processes that generate the cognitive capacities that Tomasello describes and the transitions between them that he hypothesizes. Sterelny in his The Evolved Apprentice draws quite heavily on nice construction in theorizing how early hominids became skilled at cooperative foraging.
In any event, my own philosophy of nature — speaking neither for Tomasello nor Sterelny here — is much closer to the Romantic view of life that Stephen Talbott talks about in his work at Rediscovering Life: Notes and Commentaries Toward a Biology Worthy of Life. Talbott builds on (and to some extent popularizes) earlier work by Lenny Moss’s What Genes Can’t Do (review here) and Susan Oyama’s The Ontogeny of Information.
(Hovering in the background here is of course a whole lot of Kant, Hegel, Coleridge, Dewey, Bergson, Whitehead, Jonas, and indeed a whole tradition of naturalism that reaches back to Aristotle rather than to the chance-and-necessity naturalism of Epicurus.)
Kantian Naturalist,
Have you read Tomasello, KN?
KN said:
Their definition of “human flourishing”. Who gets to impose their definition of “human flourishing”, and why? You respond as if “human flourishing” first ought to be the moral standard, and then as if there is an objectively true version of “human flourishing” by which other versions can be said to be incorrect.
Surely you realize the circularity of this. Who gets to say what “better” means? Who gets to define what “human flourishing” means? Who gets to say what is important to any of those things? What are you ultimately appealing to? Authority? Rhetoric? A particular vision of the way humanity should be?
You can say the Nazis were wrong according to Dewey et al, but then the Nazis can say that those guys were wrong according to Nietzsche et al. In such a case, all “wrong” means is “I don’t like their views”. It just boils down to “because I feel like it, because I can”.
Whenever I get into this part of the debate with a non-objectivist, they’re always trying to figure out how their views are something other than, in principle, because I feel like it, because I can.
Why? Why not just admit it? That’s all it can possibly boil down to.
IMO, the reason subjectivists – for the most part – won’t admit it, is because they know it’s not true. The problem is that there’s no way for it to not be true under subjectivism, and they just can’t stomach the idea that morality refers to something objective in nature.
KN said:
I don’t think anything at all backs this up. Certainly my experience doesn’t. There’s a reason there’s the old saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”; likely as not, good intentions can go completely awry, and bad intentions can produce wonderful things.
What I want is not the issue; the issue is what is required for morality to be something worth caring about in the first place. If consequences are basically a crapshoot, and gratuitous child torture can be moral, why bother with it at all?
William:
keiths:
William:
Yes, you have — repeatedly. For example:
And:
And:
keiths,
*that’s the stuff*
Humble pie? Mindpowers?
William,
It’s good that you finally recognize your error.
But since you got that one completely wrong, and we were right, then why not consider the possibility that you’re wrong, and we’re right, about related issues?
For example:
Rich,
William cracks me up. He continually changes his mind (even to the point of disowning the three books he’s written), yet at any given moment he’s absolutely sure that he’s correct and that his opponents are being hopelessly irrational.
We should teach him Bayes’ theorem / Laplace’s rule of succession. There could be money in being reliably wrong – if you’re remotley self aware.
Daft.
There’s reason behind the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”? Sure, there is; just like most popular aphorisms, it has a grain of truth.
But you’d have to be daft to think it’s anything like the whole truth, or even a representative slice of reality.
I don’t doubt that you meant it, for as long as it took for you to try to rebut KN, but you certainly don’t live your own life as if that were the truth. To use your own recent phrase: No sane person does.
No sane person lives as if good intentions are negligible. As parents, educators, and leaders we give praise and credit for the efforts towards goodness of our children, students, and fellow citizens, even when the results are less than satisfactory. It’s a matter of law in English-speaking nations: inmost cases you cannot be sued for a wrong outcome if your good intention was to save a person from imminent danger.
Of course, intentions are not the only things that matter. Here’s another aphorism for you:”Actions speak louder than words”. But good intentions do matter.
Daft again. Do you even listen to yourself? What you said is exactly equivalent to saying, “Might as well intend to hurt each other, because likely as not, you’ll actually wind up doing good when you meant to do bad”.
That’s a plainly stupid way to try making a point against KN.
Do better next time.
Oh get that on FSTDT, please.
“Likely as not”: = 50/50 chance. If he lived his life like that, he’d be dead now. Bonus giggles, he has posting privileges at UD. That is some sub-Gallien Tard right there.
That sort of irresponsible thinking is a theme with William. I had this exchange with him last year:
keiths:
William:
Yes, I have. I thought it was promising in many ways but also left a good deal to be desired, both conceptually and empirically. Right now I’m reading Sterelny’s The Evolved Apprentice, which is slightly more satisfying.
Maybe god just loves William so much more. Maybe William isn’t dead yet from what he thinks are 50/50 chances of bad outcome in spite of good intentions because god has always (secretly, of course) intervened to protect William from the real consequences. Maybe William is so favored that he can actually do what he claims to do: act irresponsibly, ignore reality, choose to travel in the desert without water for his children, and still survive because god stretches out its hand to him, and not us.
Never for us, because we’re not the favored ones. How could we be? We’re materialists. atheists, evolutionists!
I know William claims not to believe in any particular god nor follow any particular faith, but at least he’s not a goddamned subjective-morals materialist. So, it could be that’s enough for god to be on his side.
HIs kids might have a different reaction, though, when they’re dying of thirst after failing to plan ahead as a side-effect of living in the “I-don’t-care” Murray household.
I hope for all their sakes that god never withdraws its protection from the idiots.
Yes, after all who want’s
Jew’sinsane people around? Better to derive a test for them which we can use to divide them up intoJew/not-Jewsane and insane. Perhaps your idea about if they believe in objective morality or not? Would that work as a shibboleth?What color badge would you like the people who you have judged as insane to wear?
William J. Murray,
I doubt you care, but your tendency to repetitiously sloganize really grates after a while! It is not so much that people cannot stomach the idea of objective constraint and accounting (though it is rather a ludicrous one) but that the slogan itself is an inaccurate representation of the subjective experience. The sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ does not have to be objectively-grounded to be felt.
By that slogan, you arbitrarily transform the subjective experience into something different from that experienced by the objectivist. And it isn’t (at least as far as I can gather). Morality is something more than simply ‘moral = what I feel like doing’. I may feel like making a sandwich, but that is not a moral question. I may feel like stealing … that is. Any mature English speaker can recognize the basic difference. Morality, virtue, principles, integrity … we all know them, and their antithesis, when we see them, even if we don’t always take the high road. As far as our own behavior is concerned, we experience a sense of constraint, where other behaviours do not. Likewise, we often experience a desire to constrain others – sometimes by word, sometimes by action, sometimes by example.
None of this is ‘acting as if morality is objective’ in the sense you define it. One may choose to assert that we are tuning in to the moral fabric of the universe, but the alternative explanation – a shared genetic propensity, culturally informed – is certainly no less plausible. So subjectivism does not boil down to “what I feel like”
But it is curious how frequently the objectivist ‘tunes in’ to moralities that accord with those of his church, his political allegiances, his prejudices and those of his social group. Almost as if … no, it can’t be!
keiths,
I’ve addressed your quote-mining before. I’ve reiterated here ad nauseam throughout just about every debate that my arguments are about hypothetical premises, and that I do not ever make assertions about reality.
I certainly don’t qualify every post I make within such debates to make this position perfectly clear, just as moral subjectivists don’t qualify everything they say to make their subjectivist position clear.
However, after a subjectivist has made it clear that when they say “X is wrong”, what they mean is that they mean “X is wrong for them“, it would be intellectually dishonest of me to take something they wrote without such a disclaimer or qualification and present it as them meaning that X is wrong – because I would know that’s not what they meant.
In the course of a debate or a series of debates, a context is built. I have faithfully reiterated the basics of my views repeatedly in order to make sure that others know the disclaimers and qualifiers that properly contextualize what I say in such debates. One such qualifier I’ve repeated over and over is that I make no assertions about reality; that my arguments are entirely logical in nature derived either from assumed facts or propositions. This means that if I say something that appears to be an assertion about reality, that is not what I mean by it.
As your later quote from me clearly explains: I don’t care what reality is. Why would I make assertions about reality when I don’t care what reality is? I don’t care if morality is factually objective or subjective. I don’t care if a god factually exists. These things are utterly irrelevant to me.
If I am making a case logically defending the hypothetical premise of an objective morality and reasonable belief in such, and using the existence of self-evident truths as evidence in that defense, it requires that I explain what I mean by “self-evident truth”, and it requires I make the case that it refers to something that can be reasonably accepted as being as objectively existent as, say, a brick wall.
None of that, in context, means I am asserting that the immorality of GCT is factually as objective as a brick wall. It’s part of a logical argument I’m making to show how a moral truth can be considered as objectively existent as anything else.
Generally, I just ignore your bizarre debate tactics, but every once in a while, if there are any objective observers here, I like to point it out so they understand why I don’t respond to much of what you write. I’m not going to attempt to reconstruct the context your quote-mines utterly ignore. People are free to go back and exhaustively read until they understand the entire framework which has my disclaimers and qualifiers posted intermittently.
Nice excuse.
Eventually you’ll find yourself not responding to anyone at all for the same reasons. But it won’t be you that’ll have the problem, it’ll be everyone else! Right?
Out of interest, if we assume that society as a whole does not want or need “insane” people what do you suggest should happen to those people?
Now you’ve created the label, what do you intend to happen to the people who that label is applied to?
What should the sanes do to the insane so that the sane way of life can be preserved?
Allan Miller said:
I agree that the slogan is an inaccurate representation of the experience; it is, however, an in-principle, rationally accurate representation of what is meant by “morality” under moral subjectivism.
All experience is subjective – even that of smashing into a brick wall. The question is if the subjective experience of morality corresponds more closely to (1) the experience of entirely subjective preferences, feelings, desires, etc, (favorite flavors, aesthetic preferences, etc.) or to (2) subjective experiences of phenomena presumed to be objectively existent (brick walls, etc.)
How would you possibly know this? IF morality does factually refer to an objective commodity, then removing it might in fact remove all feelings of right and wrong. You don’t get to just assert that the sense of right and wrong can be felt without any objective grounding for it. You’re assuming your conclusion.
Not at all. I’m showing that what morality must in principle mean (because I feel like it, because I can) doesn’t correspond to what we actually experience. In fact, much of the impact of my argument depends on self-described materialists recognizing this and insisting otherwise, because it helps me make my case. You are now, in fact, agreeing with me, even insisting, that the principles I’ve stated (because I feel like it, because I can) are factually not qualitatively representative of the experience.
The task you face is not in arguing that the principles do not correspond to the experience because I agree with that assessment; no, the task you face is in showing logically how those principles are not indeed the logical foundation of moral subjectivism.
Unfortunately for you, logically speaking, there is nothing “more” available under moral subjectivism. Subjective morality cannot map to anything that is in principle any different from “feeling like making a sandwich”; it cannot be a difference in category/kind, but only in degree and flavor. IOW, it’s a difference in the coldness, flavor and texture of ice cream; it’s not something other than ice cream. It’s not something other than “feel like it”; it just a certain kind of “feel like it”.
However, the fact is that really good, really cold and thick, rich and creamy ice cream that you really, really love is still just ice cream. It’s not something else or something more. Under subjective morality, it is logically necessary that you do what you do because you feel like it, because you can, regardless of what the experience actually feels like.
Logically, you must resign yourself (as a logically-consistent moral subjectivist) that the reason you make any moral decision is just because you feel like it. It might be a really high-quality “because you feel like it”, but, under subjectivism, it is factually because you feel like it.
You are pointing at the insufficiency of the “slogan” in describing the experience; I agree, it is utterly insufficient. The question is whether or not the “slogan” (because I feel like it, because I can) is a logically faithful representation of the category of experience which moral subjectivists claim moral experience falls under.
As far as I know, “because I feel like it, because I can” accurately describes all other subjective personal preference, views and feelings and actions based on those things, even though those things have a wide variety of flavors and sensations, from food preferences to a love of a certain kind of music, to tattoos as expressions of some part of your identity to style of clothes, favorite football teams and such.
Some of these may be whims; some very deeply and profoundly felt; but what they all share in common is that it we would consider it immoral to unilaterally coerce our personal preferences on strangers no matter how strongly we personally preferred them. We do not feel compelled or obligated to coercively intervene in matters we consciously recognize to be of personal feeling and preference nature.
IMO, any reasonable person recognizes there is a categorical difference; ;it is what you are attempting to insist can exist entirely within subjectivism. The problem is, there are only two categories to choose from. Either one is dealing with entirely subjective feelings and preferences, or they are dealing with an experience that is caused by an objectively existent commodity. Your boiled-down principle is either “because I subjectively feel like it” (subjective feeling) or “because I observe/recognize that the behavior is factually/objectively wrong”.
Morally speaking, we behave and experience as if the latter is true; the “grating” you experience attests that you consider the former categorically insufficient. The problem from my perspective is that you want to have your cake (subjective morality) and eat it too (insist it has some quality that renders it, in principle, like an objectively existent commodity, while not actually being such).
It most certainly is, because it maps more accurately to our experience of objective commodities and not subjective ones. We do not feel obligated to eat our favorite flavor of ice cream nor do we feel responsible to get others to love our favorite band.
Logically, it necessarily does. One will certainly defy society, in moral situations (under subjectivism), because they feel like it. If genetics is causing us to have moral views and actions, then that certainly is an objective source of morality.
However, not all objective moralities are equal. If genetic expression results in a person thinking X is moral and acting accordingly, then by that objective cause of what is moral, what anyone does and thinks is moral is moral by definition. Our moral maxim wold be, “because my genes compel me to”, which justifies anything, including utterly irrational behavior where I act as if X is moral one minute and as if it is immoral the next.
Odd then how there is a correlation….
It may be surprising to you, but real scientists are doing real work on these issues.
https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/biology-and-blame
But give you are making an argument that is disconnected from reality, as you say, reality cannot impinge on your argument.
It seems to me that the terms being used to describe different viewpoints don’t really describe them.
The people who believe morals derive from God should be called moral transcendentists- they believe morals are grounded in a transcendent reality ie. God. Moral objectivism doesn’t imply that you think that morals are a fundamental property of the universe, it only means you think they are determined at a level higher than the individual. People get their morals from their culture, community, religion and the cumulative influence is modified by a persons personal history and personality. The end result is somehow programmed into us much like language, and we perceive it as objective but that doesn’t mean we need to fool ourselves into thinking the universe ‘cares’ one way or another.
The quotes seem quite complete and contextualized to me.
You type a lot of words on the subject for someone who doesn’t care.
Also, we must all laugh at you for this:
“I think a discussion about CSI, probabiity and other means of discerning ID artifacts from the natural would be much better advanced here and would be much more interesting than wading through post after post after post of the nonsense you get at TSZ.” – William J Murray at UD.
They’re only about 20 years behind current ID thinking, William.
Yes, you do. What is the current temperature of the room you are sitting in? I bet I can make a good guess as to it’s lower and upper bound. Hence, you care about reality. You also likely look before crossing the road, instead of just believing the traffic away.
Omagain,
You, like keiths, just don’t get it. I care what my experience is. I use what appear to be reliable models of my experience to help navigate future experience. What reality is, is entirely irrelevant to me. I don’t care if there is an objective world “out there”, or if I am a Boltzmann Brain having an internal delusion.
Richardthughes said:
I didn’t say I don’t care about anything. I don’t make arguments about reality; I don’t make assertions about reality; I don’t care about reality. When I type a lot of words, it’s not for such purposes.
By “reality”, I mean any supposed external world that exists as it exists outside of my experience.
You live in your own reality, William. One where you think outcomes are orthogonal to actions. Plus you’ve got a wonderful track record of being reliably wrong.
No, I get it. I am just, like you do to others, telling you what you really think.
What part of those models include telling people what they really think? You may find your future “experience” is improved somewhat if you drop that particular aspect of your argument. I.E. you might obtain some r/l friends.
Hence your interest in ID I suppose.
So you are just like everybody else then. For you, as me, things that cannot be known are not known.
Your perspective is not unusual, interesting or particularly fruitful. One wonders why your persist in typing so many words when you can just imagine yourself getting the adulation you believe you really deserve.
I think William has no empathy/insight with anyone else. If he did he would realize that all people try to learn from past experience to improve future experience. His situation is not unique or original. It’s normal.
Most people do not care about the “reality” that is ultimately out there. Perhaps we are a 2d hologram projected onto the edge of the universe. At heart we are all collections of atoms interacting in unimaginable ways at unimaginable frequency. Perhaps reality something even stranger then the holographic universe. Most people will never encounter these ideas, and if they do they will not ponder them for long. Yet some will.
Yet William appears to be have turned “being human” into something only he and his ilk can claim, and he even has a test for it – if you believe like he does you are “sane” and if not, well, better put the lotion on….
Thanks for that.
In future, I shall take your posts as creative fiction (which is a euphemism for “bullshit”).
How many Angels *can* dance on a pinhead, William?
Well, doesn’t that make you a special snowflake! Errm, no it doesn’t. NO ONE “cares” about whether they are a Boltzman brain.
Or at least, to use your recent favorite phrase: No one sane does. Why drive ourselves crazy trying to access proof that our intersubjectlively-apparent reality is just a delusion or hologram?
Congratulations, you’re sane.
Time to move on to something better, I think. You need to find yourself a better identity than He Who Is The Only Sane One Battling The Rabid Immoral Materialists.
Trust me, you’ll have a lot more fun once you do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKVYcPJbyAM
Hee hee. Good catch.
I’ve used the language metaphor, and I like it. Most humans have a built in propensity to learn morality. As with language, they learn it without being explicitly taught. Also, the grammar of morality can be explicitly taught.
There are lots of parallels.
I agree. Dewey has a nice exploration of the parallels between language and morality in Human Nature and Conduct, though the parallel is not original with him, either.
In particular, the ways in which the norms of syntax and semantics can be experienced as constraining individual word use and sentence structure is, I think, a satisfactory model for how we can account for the phenomenon of constraint as ‘external’.
Thus we can avoid dichotomy of having to chose between a subjectivism so extreme it collapses into mere emotivism or an objectivism so extreme it collapses into Platonism about values.
petrushka,
Linguists prefer the term “acquisition” for the kind of spontaneous first-language learning all children are capable of. Actually, the first language is both acquired and explicitly taught; many important aspects of adult linguistic competence are developed in the post-acquisition period (that is, learnt in the same way as a foreign language could be) and strongly influenced by education. Ditto for morality.