What’s wrong with theistic objective morality–in 60 seconds

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.

377 thoughts on “What’s wrong with theistic objective morality–in 60 seconds

  1. William,

    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.

    It’s not the same, as I explained to you last year:

    keiths:

    No matter what X is, your “system” can’t tell you whether it is objectively moral!

    William:

    It can with many Xs. Self-evidently true moral statements to start with, and moral statements that are necessarily true when properly inferred from self-evidently true moral statements.

    If your conscience is fallible, and you have no other way of checking the objective truth of your moral intuitions, then you don’t know that the “self-evident moral truths” are objectively true. If they aren’t true, then any “truths” inferred from them are also unreliable.

    As much as I can know anything, I can know those statements are objectively true.

    No, there are many things you can know far better than that. For example, that the lines in the the Müller-Lyer illusion are the same length:

    Suppose I look at the Müller-Lyer illusion and decide that one line is longer than the other. I want to know if this is really true. The idea itself doesn’t seem inconsistent, so I look for observational corroboration. Everyone who sees the illusion thinks that one line looks longer than the other, so that is an argument in its favor. However, I find that if I cover up the ‘arrowhead’ and the ‘feathers’, the lines appear to be the same length. I also find that if I measure them against a ruler, the result is the same — the lines are the same length.

    A number of similar exercises give the same results. I conclude that the lines are the same length, and the rest of the (sane) world agrees. The perception was an illusion.

    Now consider a moral case. Suppose I’m a moral objectivist, like William, and that my conscience tells me that it’s morally wrong to egg my next-door neighbor’s house for fun. I want to know if my moral intuition is correct, so I test it.

    I check for logical inconsistencies, and find none. I look for missing moral axioms, and I don’t find any. I talk it over with lots of people, and no one can find inconsistencies or missing axioms.

    I also ask these people about their own moral intuitions, and they all agree that it’s wrong to egg my neighbor’s house for fun.

    All of that is evidence in favor of my intuition, but I want to be sure. After all, this might be a moral illusion, just like the Müller-Lyer illusion. Maybe I, and all the people I asked, have a moral blind spot that prevents us from seeing the truth: that egging my neighbor’s house is objectively moral.

    So I decide to double-check my intuition by… what? What can I do that I haven’t already done? This isn’t like the Müller-Lyer illusion, where I can get a ruler and actually measure the lines. I’m stuck.

    This is exactly why every sane person in the world can be persuaded that the Müller lines are the same length, while sane, intelligent, and sincere people can disagree on moral issues, such as whether abortion is permissible.

  2. keiths said:

    It’s not the same, as I explained to you last year:

    Nothing is quite as amusing as keiths’ telling others what their assumptions are and are not.

  3. William J. Murray:
    keiths said:

    Nothing is quite as amusing as keiths’ telling others what their assumptions are and are not.

    Poor dodge, Mindpowers. You’ll never know if objective morality is real, because you’ll never have access to it if it is. So for you (and me), functionally it doesn’t exist.

  4. William,

    I’m not telling you what your assumptions are. I’m explaining why they aren’t equally justified.

    There are good reasons to think that your sense of sight gives you access to an objective world out there. Not so with your conscience.

  5. William J. Murray: Nothing is quite as amusing as keiths’ telling others what their assumptions are and are not.

    What, you mean like you telling me what I really think?
    Yes, little is as amusing as that.

  6. “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.

    As a self-proclaimed atheist/agnostic, KN is misusing a theist for his own (baseless without sociology) ‘moral’ purposes.

    And Desmond Tutu’s religious faith had nothing to do with his stand against apartheid either, right? Cut it out entirely based on your superficial jaded worldview?

  7. What, you mean like you telling me what I really think?

    As far as I know, I’ve never told anyone what they really think.

  8. keiths said:

    I’m not telling you what your assumptions are. I’m explaining why they aren’t equally justified.

    I didn’t claim the assumptions were equally justified, I just said they were the same assumption.

    There are good reasons to think that your sense of sight gives you access to an objective world out there. Not so with your conscience.

    Sure there are. They’re just not exactly the same reasons justified by the same kind of process. I’ve detailed those reasons explicitly here and elsewhere.

  9. Neil Rickert: 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.”

    I’d put it a bit differently. The Gavagai thought-experiment is supposed to show us that we have no choice but to use our own conceptual framework when making sense of the utterances of people who don’t share it. The hypothetical aboriginal says “Gavagai!” when she sees rabbits, and when we say “Gavagai?” she assents. So we write in our translation manuals, “‘Gavagai’ = ‘rabbit'” rather than “‘Gavagai’ = ‘undetached rabbit parts'” because the former is more intuitive to us. It seems to us that “Gavagai” and “rabbit” have the same referent, or refer to the same thing.

    The big lesson that Quine wants to teach us is about happens when we conjoin representational semantics with empiricist epistemology. On the empiricist epistemology Quine commends, our knowledge of what people mean cannot be determined by anything more fine-grained than what people do, since only what they do is observable.

  10. KN, to Neil:

    The Gavagai thought-experiment is supposed to show us that we have no choice but to use our own conceptual framework when making sense of the utterances of people who don’t share it. The hypothetical aboriginal says “Gavagai!” when she sees rabbits, and when we say “Gavagai?” she assents. So we write in our translation manuals, “‘Gavagai’ = ‘rabbit’” rather than “‘Gavagai’ = ‘undetached rabbit parts’” because the former is more intuitive to us.

    Borges demonstrates the importance of shared intuitive schemes in his famous excerpt from a fictional Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. It classifies animals thus:

    Those that belong to the emperor
    Embalmed ones
    Those that are trained
    Suckling pigs
    Mermaids (or Sirens)
    Fabulous ones
    Stray dogs
    Those that are included in this classification
    Those that tremble as if they were mad
    Innumerable ones
    Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
    Et cetera
    Those that have just broken the flower vase
    Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

    Imagine the difficulties that would be faced by Quine’s anthropologist if the language in question used non-intuitive categories like those!

  11. keiths:

    There are good reasons to think that your sense of sight gives you access to an objective world out there. Not so with your conscience.

    William:

    Sure there are. They’re just not exactly the same reasons justified by the same kind of process. I’ve detailed those reasons explicitly here and elsewhere.

    I argued above that — assuming objective morality exists — we have no reliable means of detecting and correcting for “moral illusions”. If you think my argument is mistaken, then where exactly does it go wrong?

  12. I argued above that — assuming objective morality exists — we have no reliable means of detecting and correcting for “moral illusions”. If you think my argument is mistaken, then where exactly does it go wrong?

    Whether or not we have any “reliable” means of detecting and/or correcting for “moral illusions” is irrelevant to whether or not we have sound justification, indeed a logical necessity for the assumption that morality refers to an objective commodity.

  13. William,

    Whether or not we have any “reliable” means of detecting and/or correcting for “moral illusions” is irrelevant to whether or not we have sound justification, indeed a logical necessity for the assumption that morality refers to an objective commodity.

    Then you’re just making an (unsound) argument from consequences: that although we have no reason to think that our consciences give us reliable access to an objective morality, we must assume that they do in order to avoid undesirable consequences.

    Some big problems with that argument:

    1. It conflicts with your repeated assertion that certain things (the so-called “self-evident moral truths”) actually are objectively immoral.

    2. You haven’t shown that moral subjectivism leads to the claimed consequences.

    3. You’ve neglected the serious negative consequences of moral objectivism.

  14. keiths:
    William,

    Then you’re just making an (unsound) argument from consequences: that although we have no reason to think that our consciences give us reliable access to an objective morality, we must assume that they do in order to avoid undesirable consequences.

    Some big problems with that argument:

    1. It conflicts with your repeated assertion that certain things (the so-called “self-evident moral truths”) actually are objectively immoral.

    2. You haven’t shown that moral subjectivism leads to the claimed consequences.

    3. You’ve neglected the serious negative consequences of moral objectivism.

    Yep. All of the above.

  15. Then you’re just making an (unsound) argument from consequences: that although we have no reason to think that our consciences give us reliable access to an objective morality, we must assume that they do in order to avoid undesirable consequences.

    First, I didn’t agree that “we have no reason to think that our consciences give us reliable access to an objective morality”. I said that even if so, we still have sound logical justifications for assuming that conscience refers to an objective moral commodity.

    Second, an appeal to consequences means that the truth or falseness of the premise is determined by the desirability of the consequence. I have never once asserted that moral objectivism is factually true. My argument has never been that if these consequences are true, then moral subjectivism must be false. Never. Not once.

    All I have done is follow the logic from each premise (objective or subjective) and point out the consequences, and then watch as self-described moral subjectivists desperately scramble away from those consequences. As I have said repeatedly, I’m not trying to prove or demonstrate that objective morality is true; I’m only arguing that these are the consequences of moral subjectivism.

    When the moral subjectivist admits it, as I’ve said repeatedly, my argument is done, and I have never concluded that argument by saying or implying: “So, moral objectivism is true.” As I have often said, it doesn’t matter if moral objectivism is true or not because we act and must act as if it is true anyway.

    You are constantly confusing an argument about the logical consequences of a premise with an argument about whether or not the premise is factually true, even though I’ve repeatedly told you I am not making an argument about which premise is in reality true or false. That you and other self-described moral subjectivists find those consequences undesirable and choose to argue against them is your problem and theirs, not mine.

  16. keiths said:

    1. It conflicts with your repeated assertion that certain things (the so-called “self-evident moral truths”) actually are objectively immoral.

    Context, keiths. I propose finding self-evidently true moral statements as the basis, going forward under assumed natural law morality, of developing a fuller moral system. When asked for an example of a self-evidently true moral statement, or when I have offered or utilized an example of one under my NLM system, I have offered the GCT statement.

    2. You haven’t shown that moral subjectivism leads to the claimed consequences.

    I have shown that moral subjectivism leads to the claimed logical consequences to my satisfaction. Some have admitted those consequences even if they do not like how I word them.

    3. You’ve neglected the serious negative consequences of moral objectivism.

    I’ve responded to criticisms of moral objectivism via my theory of natural law morality and how it (1) avoids the problems in other forms of moral objectivism and (2) serves as a logically consistent foundation for how we actually behave anyway.

  17. William J. Murray: and (2) serves as a logically consistent foundation for how we actually behave anyway.

    Why is it impossible for you to understand that it’s possible your claims only apply to you?

    After explaining how I do not act as if objective morality actually exists you continue to use “we” instead of “I”. Why?

    I ask again, do you claim that I act as if objective morality exists despite me saying that I do not?

  18. William,

    When you speak of “self-evident truths” (as you have done many, many times) you are speaking of things that are a) self-evident, and b) true. Something that is true cannot be false.

    Therefore when you claim that “gratuitous child torture is immoral” is a self-evident moral truth, yet go on to say this…

    What morality in reality actually is, is of no concern to me.

    …you are contradicting yourself.

  19. William,

    As I have often said, it doesn’t matter if moral objectivism is true or not because we act and must act as if it is true anyway.

    Your logic skills are failing you again.

    Someone who acts as if moral objectivism is true will say that moral objectivism is true. Speech is an act.

  20. Ah, one can deny until one is blue in the face that one acts as if OM is true, but certain people know better! You don’t know your own minds, you blinkered materialists.

  21. William J. Murray,

    I have shown that moral subjectivism leads to the claimed logical consequences to my satisfaction. Some have admitted those consequences even if they do not like how I word them.

    Uh, no. The way you word them is incorrect. What I will ‘admit’ is not following any standard adjudicated externally to human heads.

  22. At UD, OldArmy94 writes:

    If I were an atheist, I would suck the marrow out of every bit of life that I could. Giving to the needy? NAH. Exploiting anyone for any purpose that suits me? YEAH. If showing “concern” for someone else benefited me, then maybe I would think about it. However, I would just as soon squash a baby like a bug, if it inconvenienced me.

    OA94 either a) exhibits a severe empathy deficit or b) has no idea where his/her morality actually comes from.

  23. keiths:
    At UD, OldArmy94 writes:

    OA94 either a) exhibits a severe empathy deficit or b) has no idea where his/her morality actually comes from.

    He’s telling us that no christian can be trusted to live in a free society when they believe that they are immoral monsters who would squash babies if not for the fear of the Lord having been beaten into them.

    What happens when they wake up one morning with a bad hangover or a bad case of the flu and a crying baby and suddenly they no longer think god is listening? (Which would be totally reasonable, because if their god exists and is good, then there should be 1)no hangovers 2) no flu and 3) no crying babies.) What happens next is that they make the local or national news — depending on how many victims — when they actually do demonstrate their baby-squashing along with their wife-stabbing and neighbor’s-dog-shooting prowess.

    I think we should take them at their word. We should believe them when they state that they require being restrained by external force since they’ve never ever wanted to restrain themselves. What I don’t know is why that kind of christian wants to convince us that they need to be in preemptive detention to keep the rest of us safe from them.

    I hear there are FEMA camps already outfitted for hundreds of thousands of detainees, in some godforsaken states like Oklahoma or Colorado. C’mon, folks, lets get those camps put to use! 🙂

  24. Yes, I always encourage such Christians to stick with it. Freedom from religious restraint is not for everybody. It’s a wonder my kids survived to adulthood.

  25. The testimony of ‘ex-atheists’ is particularly amusing (and gobbled up by the faithful – “see? that’s what atheists are like, by their own account!”).

    ‘I tried cheating, lying, stealing and murdering, just to further my own ends, and it just made me miserable …’. I tried poking myself in the eye with a stick, and didn’t like it.

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