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,
We cannot make the distinction in practice You only made it in principle.
Perhaps equivocate means something different in the US. I understand it as “use ambiguous language”. Lumping two categorically distinct hypothetical underlying causes of sensation into one general set of experiences is not equivocation.
If we refer to hearing and sight as ‘senses’, we are not equivocating. Likewise when we collectively refer to NML-sourced and non-NML-sourced right/wrong perceptions as ‘moral sensations’.
Allan Miller,
So you are unconcerned whether your method of convincing or coercing others into alignment with your preferences is itself moral.
As I have said before, I’m satisfied with the argument and the admissions of moral subjectivists, and am confident in the ability of open-minded observers to make their evaluations about the relative merits and problems of objective vs subjective morality.
What sense does it make to use immoral tactics to convince someone that your position is the moral one?
Your logic, such as it is, is illogical.
Allan Miller said:
Have you so soon forgot what my entire argument is about, what it is drawn from, and how it is being made?
It is when the entire argument is about the distinctions between the principles and their supposedly supporting worldviews.
Any entailments in sight for your worldview? No? Then it’s just navel-gazing.
OMagain said:
Are you saying, then, that under Allan’s morality, using rhetoric and emotional pleading to manipulate others to do as Allan prefers must be moral? If so, I would agree, but Allan seems to disagree. He seems to be saying that he didn’t say his method was moral, implying that it doesn’t matter to him if it was moral or not.
OMagain asks:
There are several logical entailments, some of which predict how we actually behave – as if we have actual moral obligations, as if our moral views applied universally, as if we have the unilateral right to intervene, as if our moral sensations were categorically different from any other entirely subjective, personal feeling or preference, etc.
WJM uses rhetoric and emotional pleading, in an attempt to persuade us that it is immoral to use rhetoric and emotional pleading.
Since morality is grounded in what people like and dislike, I fail to see William’s problem.
Try and find any reference to morality in any source, scriptural or otherwise, that isn’t grounded in health, well-being or happiness. Sometimes it god’s feelings involved, but we are presumably made in god’s image.
The god of abrahamic scripture seems to have likes and dislikes that are strikingly commensurate with the likes and dislikes of bronze age goat herders.
William J. Murray,
I don’t think it (using rhetoric or appeals to assumed commonly held standards) is causing harm to others – quite the contrary: it’s the 3rd party whose harm I am attempting to alleviate. So it is not immoral by my standards. And indeed such tactics are used by every religion, ever – moral teachings, WWJD etc etc etc – and even your good self on occasion, so spare me the hypocrisy.
Indeed. Any open-minded observer can clearly see that WJM, whose morality serves his OWN purposes, and who strives only to be ‘good enough’ to evade Necessary Consequences for himself, is clearly occupying the moral high ground in this debate over those damned Subjectivists, by exposing their self-interested concern for the wellbeing of others.
William J. Murray,
No, not “it is when …”. It just isn’t. I accept that there are potentially different causal categories, each of which we can name to avoid the equivocal ambiguity that would arise if we gave them the same name, but it is not equivocation to refer to a single set of sensory experiences, some of which may be NML-derived, others of which may not be. The latter is the point under discussion. In a world where some ‘right/wrong’ experiences are NML-derived, there may still be others which are not, unless you define ‘moral sense’ to only include that category, which is (you might say) question-begging. For example, do you think it wrong to drop litter? Smoke? Take the last biscuit? We apply right/wrong judgements all over the place, and I’m trying to understand where you would place this dichotomous line among them.
Allan Miller said:
Noted. Using rhetoric and appeals to emotion to manipulate others to get them to do what you prefer is not immoral by your standards. I’m content to let that stand for those that wish to consider the nature of subjective morality.
I have expressly admitted that I do not occupy any “high moral ground”, nor has my argument ever been based on such an occupancy. My argument is about the logic, and it derives much of its power by exposing the subjectivist position’s logical incoherence and innate reduction to principles I think most will immediately recognize as immoral.
Your statements that the subjectivist principles “because I feel like it”, “because I can” and “manipulation through rhetoric and emotional pleading” are not immoral principles per se are, IMO, a cumulative deal-breaker for most open-minded, rational people. IOW, they are not willing to accept a category of morality where those things are not immoral per se.
Allan Miller,
Allan, do you agree people should do what is moral to them?
BTW, Neil and Alan, it’s only emotional pleading and rhetoric if you assume that what you are ultimately referring to is entirely subjective in nature. IOW, all Allan can be doing is using rhetoric or emotional pleading because he has no assumed objective resource to refer to or to refer others to.
When, under the premise of objective morality, I make the case and get materialists to admit to principles that I assume others will find immoral, then logically (extended from that premise) I am not using rhetoric or appeals to emotion; I am directing them to their capacity to sense the actual moral landscape to judge the moral quality of those principles for themselves.
It is rhetoric and emotion pleading, if you don’t present any actual persuasive evidence. And you don’t.
Neil Rickert said:
So, even if I refer to a ruler as the basis for one’s measurement, if I haven’t persuaded that person that the ruler exists and it is in fact an objective arbiter of measurement, I must be using rhetoric and emotional pleading?
Nonsense. I am categorically referring to what is premised to be an objective arbiter that the individual can recognize for himself; Allan is categorically applying what can only be rhetoric and emotional pleading to get the other person to behave the way Allan prefers.
One is clearly an immoral practice. I’m happy to leave that distinction to any open-minded, reasonable person.
I have written a lengthy reply to you when you raised this previously, where I explained why this was not the case, to me anyway. Which you did not respond to. Perhaps you missed it, would you like a link?
And yet here you are, asking me what I’m saying now. What a charmer.
Your “objective morality” sure makes you a piece of work William.
Here is where the pot comes in and says hi to the kettle. Any open minded reasonable person who happened to have read the entirety of our interactions here would hardly agree youve been playing fair.
Which is fine, you know, it’s just arguing on the internet, but you can’t feel good about they way you behave can you? Not really? Or did you miss what I said in response to your points to me? In which case I humbly apologize and will provide links as desired. Your call.
William J. Murray,
Astute readers will note the deliberately emotively-charged use of the term ‘manipulate’ in characterising my hypothetical appeals to people to stop causing harm to others, and chuckle at the unintended irony. WJM, meantime, would just stand by and let the harm occur. That’s objective, that is.
William J. Murray,
I can refer them to their assumed sense of distaste for causing harm to others. It is a common human characteristic. They may not possess it, but it’s worth a shot.
In which case, that is all I am doing also. The moral landscape does not have to reside externally to human heads in order to be pointed to.
William J. Murray,
Just to get this straight: it is immoral to persuade someone to stop causing harm to others? By what standard?
phoodoo,
That’s too vague to answer sensibly. People should (in my opinion) follow as far as possible principles of kindness, integrity and minimal harm to other sentient beings. Why? Because I say so! Am I alone in this viewpoint? How do you think they should operate? Try and say it without offering a personal opinion! 😉
William J. Murray,
And that’s not occupying the moral high ground, is it? Righto.
Allan Miller said:
Under your subjectivist premise, it’s still rhetoric and/or emotional pleading, and cannot be anything more.
More equivocation. If all you are “pointing at” (categorically) is the other person’s presumed subjective feelings, then you are by definition employing nothing but rhetoric and emotional pleading for no other categorical purpose other than to manipulate them into behaving as you would prefer. Applying the term “moral landscape” doesn’t magically change the nature of what you are doing (categorically under subjectivism) to the nature of what I am doing (categorically under objectivism).
Except, in reality, that’s a mere assumption.
So you don’t think people should act according to their moral principles, they should ignore their morals and be kind to others…because?
Because being kind to others, not causing harm, and having integrity are objectively moral ways to behave Allan!
But you want to suggest this isn’t necessarily a moral way to behave. And that is nonsense and even you know it. Instead you want us to believe that people should act that way, because you say so. Laws should be made that way because you say so.
Patently absurd.
Those who claim objective morals exist never seem to quite be able to write them all down, despite seemingly being able to point at them as the go by and say “that’s objective that is”.
Where is the list of objective morals from those who claim such exists?
We don’t know if they exist because we clearly don’t have access to them. The issue is moot,but that wont stop Mindpowers.
William J. Murray,
And again no. I’m afraid your politician’s answer to justify your own attempts to manipulate does not ‘magically’ become of a different cloth because you add the word ‘categorical’, or misapply the concept of equivocation. Unless it is absolutely true that you are free of all personal preference in the matter of how other people ‘should’ behave? Is it? Are you just a tool of NML, with no actual moral opinions?
What’s your categorical purpose in ‘guiding’ someone to access the ‘moral landscape’, anyway?
phoodoo,
Because I said so. Can’t you read? OK, I jest. I don’t really know what ‘ignoring their morals and being kind to others’ would actually look like. One person’s Wrong is not necessarily another person’s Right. It may simply be ‘not-Wrong’ – ie, morally indifferent. Ever heard of the excluded middle? You seem to be saying that these hypothetical individuals are harming people because they consider it a moral good – one must either think it morally good to avoid harm (like me) or think it morally good to do harm, with no middle ground. And along I come and, bastard that I am, rhetorically interfere with their moral rights to do so which (apparently) is immoral, by some imaginary standard or other whipped up on the interwebs. Apart from the absurdity of the imaginary position you think I have to deal with, I have said this a thousand times: subjectivism is not relativism.
I’d like people to be kind to others. Is this some kind of a problem?
They are moral ways to behave according to commonly-accepted definitions of morality, which semantically carry those notions. That does not make them ‘objective’ (outside human heads). It merely means that most of us know what characteristics tend to attract the appellation ‘moral’. Something that seems conveniently forgotten when Objectivists conjure up such oxymorons as ‘morally good baby-torture’.
Did I say that? I think it’s a moral way to behave. That’s good enough for me. Oh, is this an other-person argument again? I need to have a different reason for the other person to avoid harm than the ones I have given? It’s not enough that I should wish it to be so? Who is this reason for? Them? Me? You?
Yes, your mischaracterisation of what I said is indeed patently absurd. You don’t ‘get’ light-hearted comments, due you? Regardless, everyone, objectivist and subjectivist, has a personal moral opinion, culturally informed. Whether they admit it or not, whether they are aware of it or not. Objectivists just seem to pretend they aren’t theirs at all. Helps them feel better about manipulating others, I guess.
William,
Each of you is consulting his subjective sense of morality. The difference is that Allan acknowledges the subjectivity while you don’t.
You can’t magically change your subjective sense of morality to an objective one simply by assuming its objectivity.
My main objection to the idea that “morality is subjective” is that I think there’s something basically right about the analogy between language and morality, and I don’t think that linguistic meaning is subjective.
In fact, I think the opposite: I think that Wittgenstein’s criticisms of “private language” — the so-called Private Language Argument in Philosophical Investigations — shows that the very idea of private language (a language that is known to only one person) is absurd, and so too is a private morality, for analogous reasons.
The take-home lesson is that norms are public and social, and what is public and social does not take place inside the head of any one person. Rather, social norms — and the cultural practices in which they are embedded — are precisely what take us out of the solipsistic domain of one’s own interior consciousness.
Dare I suggest this harks back to my point of how much equivocation happens with “objective”. Language is a social phenomenon. No need for language when you are alone on a desert island (OK talking to yourself might keep you sane) but language is in some sense arbitrary. The choice of word to represent an object or action matters only to the extent that it is common to the group, a consensus.
I’ve said before ethics only matter in a social context. The lone occupant on the desert island has no need of an ethical system. (He has enough to worry about.)
TL/DR Consensus! 🙂
I think the parallels with language are fair. I have tried to be clear that the version of ‘objective’ I am opposing is that outside human heads, not that embodied by collective genetic and cultural norms. I call that ‘subjective’ but recognise that term is loaded with connotations of relativism and personal whim, of which no amount of discussion appears to disabuse the opponent. If there’s a better convention, I’m all for it.
In fact, I think we may have a ‘moral engine’ in a similar way to a ‘language engine’ – a fundamental apparatus with some hard-wiring into which we store the local dialect. Which is why the reduction ‘because I feel like’ just isn’t an appropriate representation of whatever we should term the antithesis of humanity-external objective standards.
KN,
The existence of norms (and languages) is an objective fact. The content of those norms can also be established objectively — for example, it’s an objective fact that Barry thinks blasphemy is immoral. What cannot be established is that blasphemy is — or isn’t — objectively immoral.
I think you’re misunderstanding the private language argument. For Wittgenstein’s purposes, a private language is one that is inherently and necessarily private, not merely one that happens to be known by only one person.
The choice to treat a set of public norms as morally binding is inherently a subjective one. Moral rebellion is possible. A person can reject the prevailing norms.
I have no doubt that meaning is subjective.
The arguments over whether meaning is subjective parallel the arguments over whether morality is subjective.
I don’t see that the “private language argument” is relevant. Language is still public, even if meaning is subjective.
Meaning is only weakly influenced by norms.
From this, it sounds to me as if you’re using “objective” to mean something like “accessible from a third-person perspective”. So a sociologist could look at a community and describe what the norms are, but she couldn’t — from her perspective as a scientific observer — say whether those norms are the correct ones. Is that close to what you’re getting at?
Yes, you are correct. I accept the correction.
And there couldn’t be moral rebellion if norms were objective? I’d be more comfortable with the discussion if I understood why you think that’s the case.
Neil Rickert,
Meaning is only weakly influenced by norms? *jaw drops*
I mean, the meaning of words is, I think, pretty strongly constrained by norms — it’s just meanings change over time, which is to say that linguistic norms change over time. In saying that linguistic meaning is normative, what I mean is that what a word means isn’t up to me. My usage of words is constrained by shared norms of what is correct and incorrect usage, and correctness (and incorrectness) are normative concepts. I can chose which words to use but I can’t chose what those words mean. Or, better put, I can’t do that and hope to be understood. (I’m not prevented by the laws of physics from speaking gibberish.)
I’m certainly not saying that any norms — linguistic, moral, or otherwise — are set in stone for all time. If what others here mean by ‘objective’ is ‘set in stone for all time,’ then of course norms aren’t objective — in that sense of objective. (However, our shared cognitive interests might impose pretty strong limits on how much our epistemic and logical norms can evolve. Not sure about that.)
As far as I can tell, saying that meaning is subjective is tantamount to adopting a “Humpty-Dumpty” view of language, where a word means whatever I want it to mean. That’s just a short step to the slippery slope of Cartesianism and related foolishness.
This is similar to the argument that I often see. It’s roughly the kind of reasoning that Putnam use in “The meaning of meaning.”
Putnam’s claim is that “meaning is not in the head”. That is, it is a community thing. But he never actually defends that, as far as I can tell. What he really argues, is that reference is a community thing. But meaning is not reference. The two are only weakly related.
Neil Rickert,
Ok, now I need to go back and read Putnam again!
On the Sellars/Brandom line I’m urging, meanings are social in the following sense: what a word means is determined by its inferential role. If I say, “that’s red!” I am committed to saying “that has a color!”. If I were to say “that’s red!” but deny that it has a color, you would be well within your rights to say that I don’t know what the word “red” (or the word “color”) means. But inferential role can’t be teased apart from the social practices in which those roles are embedded; there are norms of what counts as a correct and incorrect inference.
I can chose whether or not to conform my own linguistic behavior to those norms — I could speak gibberish, if I didn’t care about being understood, about successful communication — but I can’t chose what those norms are. Even an attempt at linguistic reform (or moral reform) has to be conducted within the prevailing norms to some degree or other. When Martin Luther King argued that segregation was unjust, he did so by appealing to one set of norms (moral norms) against another (legal norms).
I’d say that inferential role has to do with reference, rather than meaning. Isn’t that roughly the point that Quine is making? The publicly observable inferential role of “gavagai” is not sufficient to determine whether it means “rabbit” or “undetached rabbit parts.”
The disagreements between UD regulars and TSZ regulars are often disagreements over meaning.
Kantian Naturalist,
Kn,
I think you are correct about comparing morals to language. In language there is a universal truth, and that is that the purpose of language is communication-so that the mind of one individual can interact with another-and both can achieve an understanding. One can quibble about the techniques, and details of that goal, but the universal goal of communication can’t be removed from the concept of language. It is inherent. It is necessary to the form. It is an objective fact.
Likewise, there is an objective necessity to the concept of morality in humans. There may well be a need for some cooperation in other animal species, as a way for obtaining food easily, or for appropriating mates, etc…but only in humans do we have a desire to do things, simply for the concept of being good. THAT is the universal truth that is objective morality. It is as essential to morality as communication is to language.
Now we can quibble about the details of the best way to do good, but the goal of being good is irremovable from morality. Thus, when the subjectivists claims that by their definition, one can believe that to kill one million Jews can be just as moral as someone else deciding to help feed the poor, or stop an old lady from being beaten up, they are violating the necessary definition of morality (to do good for others).
I propose that it is an objective fact that the extermination of the Jews was immoral-because it defies the very definition of morality. That is not to say that people could not have been manipulated and tricked into believing that the Jews were in possession of some evil, and that the purpose of killing the Jews was to stop them from causing evil to others, but that is simply a manipulation of facts, people were being lied to. Anyone who killed Jews, knowing that they were not preventing evil, but rather were causing harm, knows that what they did was immoral.
The universal principle of morality ( to do good rather than evil) can never be violated, by necessity.
That is why Allan’s illusion that he is simply following his own standard of morality by wanting to do good, is just that, an illusion. Doing good IS the necessity of morality. It is the essential quality of morality, every bit as much as the essential quality of language is communicating one mind to another.
And I would go one step further by adding that guilt, compassion, knowing right from wrong, contemplation, integrity…all of these concepts exist uniquely within the human mind (and no other living organisms) for purposes that go beyond the simplistic notion that by possessing these traits we accidentally make it easier to pass on our genes. That its just a convenience of survival, in the same way that a crab can feel cold and warm water and respond in the right direction. It is more than just a reflex.
KN,
Yes. I would add that once we subjectively select our fundamental norms – once we’ve decided, as an example, that human flourishing (suitably defined) is morally desirable – then we can objectively judge whether an action conforms to that subjectively chosen norm. However, the choice of those fundamental norms is ultimately and inevitably subjective.
keiths:
KN:
By “moral rebellion” I mean the adoption of a morality that is at odds with the prevailing norms. Think of an abolitionist in a society where slavery is morally acceptable. If morality were truly determined by societal norms, then the abolitionist’s objection to slavery would not be a moral position at all!
phoodoo:
Doing good for others is not part of the necessary definition of morality. For example, the overriding principle in Islamic morality is obedience to Allah — period. If Allah commands you to do good to others, you do good to others. If Allah commands you to stone someone to death, you stone them to death.
keiths,
You don’t know much about the Muslim faith.
phoodoo,
Do you dispute what I said about Islamic morality?
He hasn’t read the book but he’s seen a summary…
Funny, but many of phoodoo’s co-religionists would agree with keiths about Islam’s moral precept. They might hate to find themselves agreeing with an evil atheist, except that they hate worse their Abrahamic theist brothers who provide a “bad example” of God/Allah-given morality.
Stupid schisms. You’d think the god-botherers would have so much in common that they could all get together and agree on the main points, at least. And agree to peacefully co-exist instead of wasting their lives blowing each other up and burning each others’ holy texts.
Keiths said:
All of our sensory capacities are subjective. The question my argument addresses is: is it logically consistent to consider the moral sense to be of something entirely subjective, like internal feelings, or to be a sensory capacity that brings us data from a presumed objectively-existent landscape, like sight and hearing?
Then it’s a good thing I never said or implied I could. I’m not assuming my moral sense is objective; I’m assuming that the information it provides me comes from an objectively-existent commodity. I make the same assumption with my subjective senses of sight, hearing, etc.
What specific information does it “provide” you and how?
“When Martin Luther King argued that segregation was unjust, he did so by appealing to one set of norms (moral norms) against another (legal norms).” – KN
He did so by appeal to the divine Creator:
“A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” – MLK, Jr.