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.
William J. Murray,
So why bring intervention into the conversation at all – as in, “willingness to unilaterally intervene in the affairs of strangers […] only track with objectively existent commodities”? It only ‘tracks with’ objective morality, just that you don’t actually bother.
Whether or not I personally choose to intervene is entirely irrelevant to the argument of whether or not unilateral, coercive intervention is logically consistent with (supported by, justifiable from) a hypothetical premise.
Not sure what you’re trying to say I care about. I don’t “care deeply” about behaving morally – as I’ve said before, I only really care about being good enough. I’ll do what is morally obligatory, but will not bother with what is only morally laudatory. I’ve never claimed I’m a particularly moral person.
No, it’s not.
So, William, do you still think that at heart I believe or act as objective morality exists or, as I have detailed in several messages, that I truly don’t believe that nor do I believe I act in such a way?
Man, I wish William would learn to think logically.
He writes:
And then immediately contradicts himself:
If you don’t care what morality is in reality, you don’t care about being ‘good enough’.
Allan Miller said:
I don’t think it’s unique, but I’ve worked many years to develop a perspective that doesn’t require my mind to edit incoming information according to concepts of what is “real” and “not real”.
It’s hardly an “unreasonable bomb” given that I’ve reiterated my idiosyncratic views on these matters many times in this very forum.
I cannot imagine the cognitive dissonance it takes to, in the same paragraph, present such a self-contradiction. On the one hand, you say it doesn’t appear to be a constraint from an “external source” (meaning, external to our subjective feelings/views) other than the sense of social/cultural pressure, and then you go on to say that it appears to be a constraint generated by just such an objectively existent commodity – genetics.
Ignoring the self-contradiction, you view that it “appears to be generated by genetics”, at least in some part, can only be conforming what you sense to an a priori biase, because we have no sensation of our genes causing any part of our behavior at all. Our behaviors do not “appear to be”, in the “sensation” sense, genetic predispositions. Good grief. What does “genes predisposing us to feel a certain way” “feel” like?
William J. Murray,
Morality, and/or its ‘proper’ grounding. It would be slightly odd to care about its grounding but not the thing itself, but I guess you might not.
So the Germans killing Jews in WWII was moral, because that was what the community wanted, right? Slavery, mutilating genitals, making women submissive, outlawing gays, burning witches…these are all totally moral acts, right?
William J. Murray,
It is an ‘unreasonable bomb’ in that ‘The Subjectivist’ is arbitrarily held to be fettered by ideological blinders – one and all or just me, I can’t quite tell, but I bet the former. Yet you are arguing on behalf of Objectivism, which contains no small measure of ideological blinkering, so it is an ironic jibe to say the least – and rather pointless. See also: “I’ll say this, but I know you won’t get it ‘cos you’re stupid”.
William J. Murray,
Perhaps it’s just your ideological blinders at work. I have been clear in all I have written that the ‘Objectivism’ to which I regard ‘Subjectivism’ as in opposition is a morality sourced externally to humans. Armed with that restated information, you can read my statement with heightened understanding. I don’t think I have ever asserted that morality involves no element of cultural conditioning; quite the opposite.
Same as objective morality telling us what’s what, I guess. Genes build brains, and give us ‘predispositions’, such as males fancying girls, and mothers liking babies. No behaviour ‘appears to be’ a genetic predisposition, but many probably are. Oh, did I not say? It does not have to be true to suit my purposes. I got that off someone on the Internet.
phoodoo,
Things that objectivists have considered perfectly acceptable, Alex?
I only really care about being good enough [added qualifiers for keiths inability to keep himself from quote-mining:] in my experience, according to my pespective, which may or may not be representative of any factual reality “out there”.
And in your experience you don’t care about what is and isn’t moral in reality, which means that in your experience you don’t care about being ‘good enough’ in reality.
Very good, keiths. You actually paraphrased that accurately. I have no idea if I’m good enough in reality; I only know that in my experience, under my views, I’m good enough. For all I know about reality, I’m headed straight to hell, or perhaps I’ll die and that’s the end of it.
You’re overlooking a rather glaring contradiction. Think about it.
Allan Miller,
You don’t know if the people in their hearts felt wrong when they were performing these acts of evil. Did they nazi soldiers know they were doing wrong when they were burning the jews? I suspect they did. But the subjectivists say no. It was part of the ever bending morality.
So then Allan, was what the Nazis did immoral or not? How can the subjectivist call it immoral?
phoodoo:
You don’t understand this at all, do you?
Subjectivism does not imply that everything everybody does is automatically moral, nor does it imply that people never do something they consider to be wrong.
Think, phoodoo. This really isn’t that difficult.
Judged by some subjective moral standards it was immoral, but not when judged by others. It was immoral by my own subjective standards, and happily many people share that subjective assessment.
keiths,
Again keiths, you seem to struggle with giving a clear explanation which holds logical weight.
Does the majority make morality?
When you say, “It was immoral by my own subjective standards,…” then this must imply that it was moral by others standards right?
So the gassing of entire jewish families was moral in some sense, by your own admission?
phoodoo:
The problem is clearly on your end.
No. How many times do I have to repeat that?
No, although I think it was.
It was subjectively moral to anyone who considered the gassing of entire Jewish families to be a moral act. It was subjectively immoral to those who didn’t.
I’m afraid I can’t dumb it down much more than this, phoodoo. You’ll have to make an effort.
keiths,
Ok, so if it is moral to gas entire races of people to death, or to beat up old ladies if someone doesn’t mind, how should we make morality laws? By going with what the majority thinks?
in 2 consecutive comments:
Phoodoo: “Does the majority make morality?”
Keiths: “No. How many times do I have to repeat that?”
Phoodoo: “… how should we make morality laws? By going with what the majority thinks?”
Phoodoo, this venue is too advanced for you, sweetheart.
Poor phoodoo. Flaming out again (on two threads!).
Now watch him get stuck following the links back and forth.
William J. Murray,
No questions were begged during the making of that scenario. You asked how I might intervene on a hypothetical, and I told you. Clearly, such appeals work. Do you have kids? Most people don’t steal, murder or grab the last biscuit, and people do learn morality, over and above that which seems deeply ingrained. One could ask such ‘yebbut why’ questions of the objectivist too. Why is harming others wrong under objectivity? Because of the NML? Why should I care? It will bring ‘necessary consequences’. But why should I care? As opposed to just having a self-interested need to comply.
Which is actually rather amusing. Justification of intervention was one of your ‘3 pillars of Objectivism’. The others being obligation/responsibility, a ‘reason to care’ (and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Four! There are 4 …). Turns out there is no particular obligation either, unless one has more obligation and responsibility to a code that does not even have to exist than to oneself and extended family.
William J. Murray,
No, generalising, since we cannot make the distinction. ‘Moral sensations’ covers all that we may determine to fall under the heading ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. That’s what we perceive, regardless of the source. I may be lumping 2 categorically different things under the heading, but I am not equivocating by referring to them both as ‘moral sensations’ (MS). The set MS contains all sensations detected as ‘moral’ (shoulds, oughts, right/wrong) by someone, somewhere. Among those may be sensations resulting from detection of the external NML/God (EM) and those not (IM). I’m obviously of the opinion that there are no EM sensations; I’m not sure whether or not you would argue that there are no IM sensations. You maybe don’t care, but it is a relevant consideration when we try to discuss the moral experience. If there are no IM sensations, then it cannot be immoral to act upon principles of ‘feeling’, because one is always ‘feeling’ the input of the NML. If there are IM sensations, as a subset of MS, it is neither ‘moral’ nor ‘immoral’ to act upon them, since they are outside the jurisdiction of EM. If there is a mixture, of course, we could easily confuse the one for the other. How to decide, how to decide …?
phoodoo,
Yes, it was immoral. By whose standards? Mine.
Allan Miller,
But obviously your standards don’t mean anything right? So it was totally moral what they did-since they are the ones deciding the morality.
Allan Miller said
I agree that question-begging rhetoric and appeals to emotion work as far as manipulating others to do as you would prefer. What I disagree with is that this is a moral process.
I just made the distinction. It’s a categorical, conceptual distinction between the premised nature of those sensations. We do not know which category the sensations actually fall under, so we examine the consequences if “sensations” refers to one or the other category. Your “generalization” equivocates the difference between the two categories.
Under NLM, there are no entirely internal sensations that actually represent morality; those are feelings mistaken for moral perceptions. One such emotional set often mistaken for a moral sensation is empathy. Empathy, like logic, can help inform and arbit moral choices, but they are not moral sensations per se. Empathy can very easily lead one to immoral activities.
How do you know there are only two categories?
Perhaps there is a chosen race in the universe that has direct, obvious access to objective morality. So there it exists, but we don’t actually have access to it.
Allan’s standards are no doubt closely related to the standards of the community he comes from and the part of the world that community is located. So his standards are, in the main part, shared by people around him (see any similarities to anything else yet) and furthermore those standards were refined over many generations during which process it’s likely individuals whose personal standards diverged greatly from the group were less likely to be successful.
That all of that equates to “means nothing” to you phoodoo is unsurprising. You think, no doubt, that humans were placed on earth directly and had no precursors. So whatever morality is it is all on it’s own, it has nothing to do with community or history – it came from god, just as humans themselves did, entire and complete.
In short, you are not even wrong.
OMagain,
But the nazis were still moral in their own right, correct?
http://www.historywiz.com/didyouknow/spartanfamily.htm
OMagain,
Ok. So the nazis were moral, right?
From my perspective, no.
From theirs, probably some or even many of them thought so. Especially in the higher ranks.
Now, the next time I ask you a direct question I expect a direct answer.
OMagain,
They thought it was moral, so by definition it was moral, correct?
No. It was moral to them, not to me. Is this a difficult concept for you to grasp?
Moral is whatever people think is moral. Nor more, no less. When there are no more people, morality will not exist in the universe.
It’s like color. We all look at the same color, but some peopel can see colors that others cannot. So, what color is a given specific thing? Depends on the observer.
Two people will look at at the same action and call it moral or immoral. All things being equal how do you decide? You claim that you can decide, by referring to objective morality but so far that’s all that is – a mere claim. You seem afraid to attempt to demonstrate.
William,
Did you spot the contradiction?
And this is exactly what I said your position is.
The killing of the Jews was moral, as long as they felt it was.
I find it very interesting that there are people who can call this a moral act. For you to call their actions immoral, would be the same as someone calling your lifestyle immoral. And as you said, no one should have a right to judge others. So if you feel your lifestyle is moral (when many others wouldn’t call it moral) , then also you have to call the Nazi gassing of Jews moral, even if it is not your preference.
No. You are taking “moral” to be objective, but with a subjective standard. Or, in more detail, you are saying that if one person see an action as moral, therefore it is moral for all. That’s seems absurd, and is not what anybody here is arguing.
That the Nazis saw it as moral doesn’t make it moral. It is still immoral to me. But I acknowledge that people don’t all agree with me.
Is there a point to that? I don’t doubt that there are people who call my lifestyle immoral. It wouldn’t be hard to find religious folk who say that my support for evolution is immoral.
One last go round with you then.
Slow hand clap.
Why don’t the Jew’s get to define what is moral? Don’t they have a say?
The Nazi’s thought the Jews were immoral.
The Jew’s thought the Nazi’s were immoral.
One tribe sees one color.
Another tribe sees two colors.
Not a student of history are we?
We each stand on the other side of the fence, seeing darker grass on the other side.
Please provide a citation. What I may have said is that however we judge the actions of others we are not judging them against a objective universal moral code. That does not mean you don’t get judged.
So, when you start a sentence with “as you said” then quote me or don’t say anything all.
It was moral, to the Nazi’s. Not to me. So I don’t have to do anything of the sort.
I have come to the conclusion you are suffering from a mental illness or developmental difficulties. As such I think it’s better for you that your inability to take another’s position and represent it with integrity is not encouraged, as obviously you desire what follows such misrepresentation.
OMagain,
Do you feel that people should do what is moral?
Neil Rickert,
Should people do what is moral Neil? Should we make laws that are moral?
Yes. But what they see as moral might not be the same as what I see as moral.
That is better than making laws that are immoral. But we cannot handle all moral questions with laws. So I prefer a minimalistic view. We should have laws where those will maintain a somewhat orderly society. But we should allow most moral decisions to be made by the people involved, without imposing laws.
Did you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Did you read about how guilty Huck felt for rescuing Jim from slavery? How he felt he was a totally immoral person and would go strait to hell?
This was the consequence of an objective morality. When people are taught that evil is a good thing, they will feel wrong in their hearts when they are opposing evil.
Granted, Huck was a fictional character, but the dilemma was a common one in reality during the days of American slavery.
If you will recall, most of the world disagreed with them about their take on morality, and they were wiped from the face of the Earth.
Going back to what KN exposited on a couple of days ago, do we see a meaningful difference here between what is “moral” and what is “justice”? Can morality be subjective, but justice be objective?
If we can get this distinction clarified, I would then argue that laws should be more involved with justice than morality.
It should not be surprising that Twain held back a good part of his writing for publication after his death, or possibly never. Twain devoted his life to making sausage out of people like Barry and William.
It is very sad that in this country, Twain has emerged on the opposite side of political correctness and is again a pariah.
William J. Murray,
By what standard? I am assuming you mean empathising with a wrongdoer. If so, I think you misunderstand the role of empathy in moral decision-making.
phoodoo,
My standards mean a lot to me. The fact that there are others (it’s that frikkin’ other-person argument again! Will you and WJM lay off it? It’s been dealt with repeatedly) who have different moral standards is a fact of life.
Some of them are subjectivists, some are objectivists, some may be Right in the Eyes of God/NML, some may be Wrong, others God/NML might not give a stuff about, or being in full possession of all the circumstantial facts (including His own role in their decision-making process) He may in His Infinite Wisdom decide to let ’em off.
What is it about other-people that forces me to accept that the only rational basis for my morality is an absolute (humanity-external) standard? X Really Is Wrong? So? None of us has any privileged access to ascertaining that Wrong, therefore we use our judgement, possibly but not necessarily with reference to cultural standards.
That is Subjective Morality, gentlemen. Whether we are aware of it or not, as a certain Objectivist likes to say in reverse.
William J. Murray,
Did I say it was? You asked how I might intervene, and I told you. My morality inclines me towards minimising harm to others. Therefore I will attempt to minimise that harm caused by other agents. The fact that some of those agents may be ‘moral agents’ like me, with a potentially shared sense of right and wrong, provides one way to achieve that.