http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/02/maine-teenagers-deny-animal-cruelty-charges-alleging-put-kitten-in-running/
A few months ago we had a discussion of whether non-human animals can be the subject of morality.
Over on UD, Mung opined that animals are meat robots, incapable of suffering.
EDIT: Wrong UD poster. Mapou, not Mung. Apologies.
The Myth of the Continuum of Creatures: A Reply to John Jeremiah Sullivan (Part Two)
Apparently the Bible neglects to mention the possibility that animals can be the subject of morality, or that torturing animals can be a sin. But some IDists have declared that torturing babies is self-evidently wrong.
So is microwaving kittens self-evidently wrong? Or self-evidently okay, because it isn’t forbidden by scripture? What Would William Do? Or Mung? Apparently we have secular laws against this. Why?
I’d like to ask this at UD, but I can’t.
I’m not “technically” correct, Alan. I’m entirely and substantively correct. You are entirely and substantively wrong. The question was about whether or not atheists force their views on others. I stated that China is ruled by an atheist regime. I said nothing whatsoever about the views of the general population. That atheist regime forces its views on others. During Mao’s time, 45-70 million people were murdered because of their different views. If you didn’t line up an support the communist regime and principles, basically you were just executed.
Like many atheistic communists, Mao considered private ownership of land, capitalism and religion to be immoral and threats to a stable, utopian society based on equal distribution and state authority. Virtually everyone who resisted this view was killed. Today, those that resist aren’t killed as often, but rather put in slave labor camps. The communists today may be more tolerant, but that tolerance only extends to a very low point.
Also, would you like to make a similarly uninformed claim about Stalin and the atheistic/communist regime under him? Atheists and atheistic regimes are at least as responsible for as much genocide/democide and ideological oppression as any religion, despite having far less time and far fewer countries to work with.
As far as I can tell, I’m the only one here making the case that secular law has replaced morality in much the same sense that chemistry replaced alchemy and astronomy replaced astrology.
It is not my contention that secular law is perfect (or even that I’m happy with it), but that lawmaking through representatives is simply better than the alternatives, and a big improvement over religion based morality.
I have always distinguished between “legal” and “moral”.
I think most people do. But I think morality is an outmoded concept.
Not because I have no personal sense of right and wrong, but because I specifically deny that there can be universal rules that don’t need to be debated and subject to ordeal by legislature.
As a parent I tried to set an example of empathy and compassion. I see this as equivalent to “teaching” children to talk. Most kids will pick up the rules without formal codification, and I think positive morality taught this way is far superior to a long list of shall nots.
Look at what you get when you teach rules rather than compassion. You get people who look fo (and find) loopholes.
For example, you get people who argue that animals can’t feel pain, because they lack some brain part. The behavior of animals — the same behavior exhibited by humans experiencing pain — can be ignored.
In the same way, one can find loopholes by finding a way to deny humanity to enemies or to people of other races. This is not theoretical. It has been done and is still being done.
The problem isn’t my confusion, it’s yours. The basis for “my” moral system is that human suffering is thought to be bad by most people(not just me). So if I can find people who agree with me(and I can, almost all people everywhere at all times think to suffer is generally bad), we can sort of informally enter into a social contract and make some rules about “what we should generally do, to act morally”. The method, those rules, can be the two golden rules (with some caveats and modifications where we deem in appropriate).
This is not to say that I think everyone will at all times strictly adhere to this specific system. There will be failures and shortcomings as there has always been. I don’t presume to have a moral system that can magically alter human nature, I can only try to appeal to the general dislike for suffering which I think we all share, and emplore others to join me in entering into that social contract. Basically I can say it is my hope that everyone can see the benefit from this. There will be outliers, sociopaths, crazy religionists who think they hear the voice of god etc. who will not enter into the contract. I don’t know how to prevent those from occasionally cropping up, we can only try to deal with them when they arise in a manner that abides by the rules.
It would be correct to say that I don’t think everyone (as in literally everyone without exception) agrees to the exact same moral standard as me. This problem has existed for all of time and affects all attempts to erect an objective moral standard for all peoples everywhere. There are divergent opinions on what the rules should be, though the same basis(the desire to avoid suffering and achieve happiness) is true everywhere afaik. Even in theistic moral systems, the ultimate goal is still to avoid hellish suffering and achieve happiness in paradise. It’s just that the religious people have different rules. Unfortunately, just like with secular moral systems, there are wildly divergent opinions within theism on what the rules should be too.
Again, all we can do here is to appeal to people’s reason, logic and empathy to get them to enter into the social contract and follow the rules. This will be true for ANY moral system. Theism has no better or different answer here, the underlying argument will be the same: You should be able to see that it is in your own best self-interest to enter into the social contract and follow the rules, so that you may avoid hellish suffering and gain heavenly reward. In my secular moral system, the supernatural element is left out, but the basis is still the same. The empirical evidence is that the theistic moral systems don’t result in more moral behavior or less suffering, so I don’t think there’s any reason to invent supernatural incentives to get people to behave morally – it simply doesn’t work any better. I would even argue it works worse, more theistic religious societies generally have higher crime rates, poverty, income inequality etc. etc.
What is a “substantive value difference” ?
There is no IS from which we can derive OUGHTS, whether theistic or atheistic. There is not and there cannot be an “objective morality”, theistic or otherwise.
It does not follow logically from the proposition that “god wants/commands/declares that it is moral to do X, Y or Z” that “therefore we SHOULD do X, Y or Z”. We will be faced with the same fundamental problem on all moral systems: How do we get people to enter into the social contract that we put forward? We can only try to appeal to their logic, reason and/or emotions.
You are wasting a lot of time trying to portray my moral system as having some kind of glaring central flaw, but you have apparently missed that no moral system is without the flaw you accuse mine of. The existence and commands of a god are no more ought-binding than the appeals of mere human beings.
Empirically, the threat of supernatural eternal punishment and promise of eternal happiness does no better at inspiring moral behavior than similarly suffering-based secular moral systems.
Sure. And it will be just the same on a theistic moral system. People can take or leave the theistic principles, develop their own and behaving in accordance with whatever their own principles will be, will be the definition of moral behavior for them.
Your theism doesn’t solve this “problem”. God wants/commands/declares does no better than when man does it. The OUGHT can still not be derived from the IS.
There ARE no objective standards. Neither theistic or atheistic. Please prove otherwise.
The superiority does not lie in the “preference”, but in the rules. The underlying standard is the same: we want to avoid suffering and achieve happiness. How we go about that(what rules we set up and how we presume to hold ourselves to them) is what matters. There are clearly better and worse ways to achieve that. I think mine is empirically demonstrated to be superior to many(all?) theistic moral systems I have ever encountered.
You have failed to carry this point, because you’re suffering under a fundamental misunderstanding about how my moral system works.
I agree that there cannot be universal rules.
But isn’t that the point? We distinguish between “moral” and “legal”, precisely because morality is not based on rules and cannot be based on rules.
It’s not just secular moral systems that have this problem. “Majority” is simply replaced with “god’s rules” on theism. I don’t see how that is any better. I don’t see how a god’s opinion on the matter is any more “right” than a social contract entered into by the majority of human beings.
In fact, I would argue it is worse. I’d rather have humans decide what is human moral behavior, than some inscrutible supernatural entity who’s interests or thoughts I cannnot understand or which is immune to rational argumentation or basic human desires.
I prefer the earthly human collective over celestial North-Korea. I prefer that we agree to hold each other accountable to standards we can agree on, to the model where people with powerful delusions give themselves divine permission to be enforcers of doctrine and therefore allow themselves all manner of unspeakable atrocities in the name of god. Holy warriors? Religious police? No thank you!
People do not learn to talk by following rules, but people have found rules embedded in language and have attempted to formalize them and declare that some constructions are grammatical and some aren’t. Same thing.
Morality is a word we have given to denote a society’s embedded expectations of manners and behavior. When a person talks we might say he is fluent or understandable. That is equivalent to a person being moral. We might also say he is literate or grammatical. That would be equivalent to being legal.
The overlap is pretty wide and deep.
I would say that morality is tied to feelings and law is tied to formal rules. I think the attempt to formalize morality outside the law is futile. Those who are fluent in morality can teach it by example. Those who have no inner compass have to follow the law.
I have read that there are people having a specific mutation that prevents them from learning the rule governing regular verbs. They have to learn all verbs the way most of us learn irregular verbs.
I suspect that people who lack empathy have to learn the rules of behavior by \learning the rules rather than by feeling the regularities. They also learn to fake empathy.
Of course, there is a distinct difference between a moral system held to be derived from an objective/absolute commodity, and one held to be entirely subjective in nature. I’m not attempting to point out any “flaw” in the atheistic morality (a perfectly coherent consistency between atheist morality and behavior is certainly possible), but I am, rather, pointing out the irrational nature of how (most) atheists act and argue in relation to their conviction that morality is subjective in nature.
You have agreed that if I hold it to be moral to torture others, then it is in fact (inasmuch as any moral facts exist) moral for me to torture others, and that this is the only, ultimate measure of “what is factually moral”… how the individual assesses their own behavior. That one group or another can enforce their views on others is just might of some sort prevailing.
Where we get into the sticky wicket for atheists is when they attempt to justify forcing their moral values on others. For example, if I consider it moral to stone a woman to death if she has been raped, how do you justify stopping me from doing what you have already admitted is factually moral for me to do?
You may consider it immoral to stone a women to death for being raped, but I’m not asking you to stone her death. Perhaps in your moral view it is immoral for you to stand idly by while I stone a raped woman, but what gives you the right or authority to force your admittedly subjective moral views over my subjective moral views? How do you justify the intervention?
What you’re missing is the difference in source material. Any moral standard that necessarily derives from your admittedly made-up theology is just as necessarily made-up itself. You’ve pretty much admitted that your morality is arbitrary and capricious, only applies to you, and cannot be objective or universal. What you feel your victory claim is, is that according to you atheists can’t claim any superior source for their own moral standards. But you’re wrong there. Because there IS a universal at work, one that underlies and unifies all the various arbitrary and idiosyncratic developments of all the myriad religions and societies ever developed — the universal truth that humanity is all one species. All people have the same need (and worthiness) to be fed, healthy, loved, included, and relevant. Societies and religions don’t develop with that sense of universal humanity, and their attempts to fulfill those needs are based on local conditions, traditions, and often simply random decisions.
What an informed person can do, atheist or theist (but it seems to be easier for an atheist who is not already embedded in some idiosyncratic religious tradition) is to filter out the local and temporal oddities of particular social or religious traditions and get right at the meat of the matter — what it means to be human, rather than what it means to be Lutheran, or Iranian, or Hindu, or Mormon, or Pashtun, or William J. Murray, etc. etc. etc.
The necessary and natural moral system then, derives from the identity with humanity itself, and is thus far more inclusive and universal — and closer to being objective — than any system that must be defined by religious, tribal and ethnic loyalties.
Moralities are all going to be like languages. they will all have implied rules that fit into natural human needs, but the specific rules are going to differ from one culture or subculture and another.
WJM said:
Rumraket said:
Rumraket said:
WJM responded:
Rumraket responds:
(Well, it’s not my job to disprove claims Rumraket asserts. It’s his job to support his own claims. I’ll leave it to him to support his claim that there are no objective standards.)
Rumraket goes on:
What underlying standard is Rumraket referring to? What “we” is he/she referring to? The superiority of his moral view indeed lies in personal preference – his/her preference of a subjectively-chosen standard (since there is no objective commodity to compare standards against). Unless Rumraket asserts that the “anti-suffering” principle is an objectively true (absolute) moral standard, all it can be is a preferential standard – something he/she already admitted to with the answer to the first quote “Sure.”
So, what atheist morality boils down to is subjective, personal, preferential feelings. The entire “social mores” concept is a diversion because atheists will disobey and work to undermine any socially-accepted morality they personally disagree with strongly enough. If they disagree with the consensus or the majority, they will disobey the moral rules and work to change them. Majority, consensus, and society are only diversionary tactics in any argument about atheistic morality.
IOW, atheistic, subjective morality necessarily boils down to “because I feel like it” and admittedly, in principle, nothing more. If they hold a principle like “anti-suffering” up, it is because they prefer that moral principle over others. They feel like adhering to that principle. Others may prefer Bible morality or survival of the fittest morality.
Atheists do what they do because they feel like it. They force their morality on others because they feel like it and because they can.
Ah, but you’ve moved the goalposts. You use the present tense. I am talking about China today. Mao’s been dead forty years.
Neither did I. I pointed out there is some limited religious tolerance.
You want to discuss Chinese history?
Apparently you do!
So, life has hardly changed for ordinary people since Mao’s death?
Perhaps you want to talk about the history of the World? Pol Pot? Hitler? Ghengis Khan? Attilla the Hun? Vlad the Impaler? Ivan the Terrible? Let’s hope one day to learn the lessons of history and not repeat them.
Totalitarian regimes and dictatorships are and have been a bad thing for the many unfortunate innocent people that do fall and have fallen foul of them. Athieism is no more responsible than Satan for that. Swap Ivan the Terrible driven by religious zeal and Stalin’s megalomania (give me some evidence that atheism was a driving force in his strategy) and you would still have a couple of megalomaniacs.
There are several atheists here that keep telling you you are wrong on this point. Persisting in refusing to acknowledge this is not allowing that fellow commenters are posting in good faith. At least have the decency to produce some evidence for the assertion that “atheists do what they do because they feel like it”.
Incorrect. My morality is not derived from my theology. My theology – at least the part that is connected to morality – is derived from morality – my empirical experience of experimenting with behavior and the rational implications thereof.
Good lord no. No. I’ve in fact asserted and explained exactly the opposite. Where you get any of the above is beyond me. I hold that morality (sets of statements about what humans should and should not do) is derived by the interaction of our moral sensory capacity (conscience) interacting with an objectively existent mental moral landscape.
If you’re claiming your humanist morality to be rooted in an objectively true commodity, this argument doesn’t apply to you. I’m making a case about moralities that are admittedly subjective in nature.
I’ve already told you, the desire not to suffer and to achieve happiness.
All peoples everywhere, ever.
No, the rules by which we achieve the standard. I told you, you ignored it. You really ignored a lot of my post it seems.
Objectively true is not the same thing as absolute. Please explain to me what you mean by objectively true and absolute and then give me an example of an objectively true and absolute moral standard. Your entire case depends on this.
And I contend there can be no exception (theistic or otherwise) and explained why. You have not argued against this except through implication. But no actual definition or example of an “objectively true” moral standard has been given by you. Please do, explain what you mean by “objectively true” and then give an example of a moral standard that is “objectively true”. How could it be?
It is the EXACT same thing on theism. Here the morality STILL boils down to a subjective, personal preference not to suffer in hell but to achieve happiness in heaven. Same thing.
The proposition that a deity supposedly came up with the standard is no more binding than if human beings do it. You can STILL NOT DERIVE AN OUGHT FROM AN IS.
The EXACT same thing happens on theism. People will assert god’s moral commandments to be what various individuals personally prefer them to be. They will even selectively apply them as they see fit, either because they simply don’t care about them or because they think they have a divine warrant to do so.
Again, EXACTLY the same on theism. A subjective preference not to be tortured in hell, but instead to be rewarded in heaven, is the fundamental emotional basis of moral “oughts” on theistic moral systems.
Nevertheless, despite this purportedly “absolute” moral standard, this can and will be used by theists to give themselves permission to do what they please. As they invariably reason to themselves, god is with them, loves and hates all the same things and the same people they do, so they have permission to enforce god’s(actually really, their own emotionally derived) moral tastes.
And so do theists. They just stick a different label on it. The extreme diversity of theistic beliefs on moral questions is evidence thereof. There is no great consensus. The number of views on “absolute” moral standards is directly proportional to the number of individual believers.
Let me re-word this explicitly and with all qualifications necessary for those incapable of following along with the nature of the argument:
IF atheists accepted the necessary rational conclusions of their purported “subjective morality”, they’d have to agree (as, I believe, Robin and Keiths have already agreed), that morality boils down to doing what one subjectively feels like doing, because they hold that morality boils down to feelings – perhaps very strong and compelling feelings, perhaps feelings that conflict with other feelings, but nonetheless, ultimately nothing more than subjective feelings.
As I said, the CPC leadership – all atheists – still to this day force their moral views on the populace of China by having them embedded in the law and by killing or imprisoning dissent. Atheists seek to force their views on others – as do we all – every time we vote for or against certain propositions (such as legalizing marijuana, legalizing gambling, legalizing same-sex marriage) or for or against political candidates that represent those views.
I disagree with the characterization. I disagree that this mischaracterization is any less appropriate for alleged theists. I still question how you have managed to establish how atheists, collectively, think. I question whether atheism is any kind of collective group of tenets. It is simply a rejection of the various made-up stories about gods that humankind has come up with over time.
I’d be interested to hear from Keiths and Robin as to whether they agree that atheists collectively “do what one subjectively feels like doing”.
William J. Murray,
Well, I admit I am not much more informed than you on Chinese politics. You’ll have to do a lot more work to show that intellectual atheism – rejection of the various human inventions of various gods and their attributes- has had any large part to play in Chinese politics in recent years.
rumraket said:
Can you support this? I wonder how you accommodate North Korea’s deliberate starvation of millions of people (and countless other historical atrocities around the world by various cultures, including atheist ones) if “anti-suffering” is a universal moral principle?
Do sociopaths also adhere to this moral principle?
BTW, I know you are factually wrong. “anti-suffering” is not a core tenet of my moral system.
Except I never agreed to your standard, nor do I. Apparently, neither do you, considering what follows.
I mean that X is wrong regardless of personal opinion, culture, beliefs, views, or subjective feelings or preferences. You’ve already admitted that there is no such commodity – that whether or not something is moral is entirely a matter of the individuial’s personal moral perspective. Although you seem to be contradicting yourself now with the claim that everyone’s morality is about anti-suffering.
Very confusing. Is stoning a woman because she was raped wrong regardless of what I personally think about it? Is causing the suffering of others wrong regardless of my personal views? It seems to me that you’re attempting to have your cake and eat it too once again. Whereas before you agreed that the factual morality of an act is determined by the individual’s views, you seem to be saying now that if those views do not include your anti-suffering principle, then it’s not a valid moral system.
No, it doesn’t. I’m not arguing here that such a standard exists. I’ve never argued that. My argument is about the logical ramifications of subjectivist morality.
Alan Fox, please note that this is Rumraket admitting that subjective, atheist morality boils down to just doing whatever you feel like doing, including forcing those subjective preferences on others. Whether or not theistic morality suffers the same logical conclusion doesn’t change this admission.
IOW, if I prefer and feel like causing the suffering of others, it is moral (at least for me), and I have the same moral right anyone has (under subjectivism) to force my morality on others if I can.
Thank you for your explicit admissions, Rumraket.
Alan Fox said:
No, my work is done.
I asked you:
You responded:
Unless you are going to argue that nobody in Mao’s revolution or the CPC that has been ruling China ever since “wants” to force their anti-capitalist, equal distribution, anti-porn, anti-free speech, anti-religious morality on the billion or so people living under that regime, I’ve clearly demonstrated you wrong.
Whether or not their atheism has anything to do with it is entirely irrelevant to the fact that they are atheists, and they have done and are doing exactly what you said no atheist does.
In this case I happen to agree with you. But Darwinian ‘species egalitarism’ does not require this where ‘degree’ is preferred to ‘kind.’ The neo-Darwinian attack on “humanity is all one species” is not something to take lightly.
WJM yet again is embarrassing himself in this thread and certainly not speaking on behalf of any coherent theology – his eclecticism makes it seem impossible.
The universality of religion (of whatever kind) is already postulated (by an atheist, D. Brown): http://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm
? You still seem to be mixing the past and the present. Whilst I’m not defending the current Chinese government, I still see no evidence from you that atheism plays any significant part in the present-day politics of China. It’s a technocracy. It’s not a democracy. They’re concerned to keep the lid on dissent because all people in power want to hang on to power.
{I asked you:
You responded:
Unless you are going to argue that nobody in Mao’s revolution or the CPC that has been ruling China ever since “wants” to force their anti-capitalist, equal distribution, anti-porn, anti-free speech, anti-religious morality on the billion or so people living under that regime, I’ve clearly demonstrated you wrong.
Whether or not their atheism has anything to do with it is entirely irrelevant to the fact that they are atheists, and they have done and are doing exactly what you said no atheist does.}
ETA Oops Copied text in brackets was reproduced in error
I would most certainly not like to be raped and I am reasonably sure that the woman who is the subject of this little parable would feel the same. She was the victim of an assault and almost certainly suffered terribly. She deserves our sympathy and whatever we can do support her not the death penalty. Punishments, up to and including the death penalty, should be reserved for those who have caused harm to their fellows without good cause. We have no reason to think the victim of rape has caused harm to anyone, even if she had it is not for someone else to rape her as punishment without due process. The rapist, however, most certainly has caused pain and suffering to the victim. He deserves punishment not the victim
In my view, the best morality is ultimately based on empathy. I cannot prove that to the psychopath or sociopath who has no understanding of or concern for .the feelings and, more specifically the sufferings of others. i could argue some sort of utilitarian justification – purely as an example – but it would be no more than a post hoc rationalization. If I saw a chlld or animal being abused, I would not wait to intervene until I had made some sort of careful utilitarian calculation of the pros and cons of such an act, I would step in immediately because a fellow creature was suffering unnecessarily, as far as I could tell.
I entirely agree that members and supporters of the Nazi regime in Germany or the various Communist regimes in Russia, China and Cambodia believed they were acting morally according to their lights when they committed what were, to much of the rest of the world, appalling atrocities. How can I condemn them if there is no objective moral standard against which to measure human behavior? Quite simply, because I think my view is as good as – or in some cases better – than those others and because my views would not lead to the suffering and death of innocent people. Why should my view prevail over those others? It shouldn’t, not by itself. But if enough people share my view then the majority could and should.
Going back to the stoning, how do we decide between my view, that it is a terrible injustice, and the view of an Iranian Muslim who thinks it is a righteous act? If possible, we would ask all Iranian women whether they think it is right and proper that victims of rape should be stoned to death. I wonder what the result might be?
In my view, any morality which regulates the way human beings behave towards one another or their fellow creatures should be something we can agree on as human beings that is in the best interests of us all. It should not be the diktat of some deity or advanced alien intelligence who may have the power to impose its will on us but whose knowledge, motives and purpose we have no way of verifying.
William:
Alan:
That’s why William’s “ice cream” argument is a dishonest rhetorical device.
Any question of the form “Why did you do X?”, where X is a voluntary action, can be truthfully answered by saying “I subjectively felt like doing X”. This is true of theists, atheists, moral subjectivists, and moral objectivists alike.
Why did you choose chocolate ice cream? Whether theist or atheist, “because I felt like choosing chocolate” is a truthful response. Why did you help the drowning child? Whether theist, or atheist, “because I felt like doing it” is a truthful response, but hardly an adequate one.
For theist and atheist alike, the feeling is based on principles deeper than mere preference. William acknowledges that in his own case but dishonestly minimizes it in the case of moral subjectivists.
Gregory,
I’m certainly no fan of William’s views, but I notice that you criticize them without supplying an actual argument.
Why, specifically, do you think that William’s theology is incoherent? How does your own theology evade the problems you see in William’s?
Ah, to return to the golden age of witch-hunts and inquisitions, eh William?
Thanks for that, Keith. I’d have to take issue with the “dishonestly”. Cognitive dissonance knows no bounds.
Alan,
You’re right. He may very well believe what he says. I’m suspicious, though, because his double standard has been pointed out to him before, many times.
It’s not dishonest at all. What atheists don’t like about it is that it is revealing something about their philosophy they don’t wish to admit – even, for the most part, to themselves.
For the subjectivist, there can be no moral principle that is “deeper” than personal, subjective preference, because personal, subjective preference is the only thing the moral subjectivist has available to choose their principles by.
I would really like to know where WJM gets his information about what atheists “don’t like”.
Maybe not but you’ve apparently just sat there and made it up! 😉
William J. Murray,
Why the bolding? Is this the killer argument? But you are in the same boat as everyone else. It’s just your beliefs. If they make you happy, then fine – bully for you.
SeverskyP35 said:
In other words, you condemn them and consider your morality better in terms of your own admittedly subjective moral principle of not causing the suffering and death of innocent people. Even though, I’m sure you realize, that the raped woman is not considered “innocent” by the muslim morality – nor is anyone who refuses to accept Islam, which would also justify them harming any and all infidels.
This is where you are attempting to have your cake and eat it too, and failing, If morality is subjective – truly subjective – then you must accept that your moral views are nothing more than your personal predilections and preferences, the exactly equal, in principle, to those that stone women to death for having been raped. That you would enforce your views on them and save the woman, if you could, what what you must accept is that your act of saving the woman is no different in nature than their act of stoning her; you are both enforcing your own personal, preferential morality on others.
No matter how many lengthy rationalizations you offer, no matter how much western-friendly rhetoric and emotional pleading you offer, if moral subjectivism is true, you intervening in the stoning is morally speaking, no different than the stoning itself. It’s just your personal views being forced on others
So you’re saying that you would try to save the woman, but you should fail? Are you saying that majority makes an act moral? If enough people agree that stoning the woman is moral, then it is moral? Of course not.
Here’s what I think is going on: some atheists know that one morality is objectively superior over the other. You can see it in their moral outrage and dismissive disdain and revulsion at some moral views. They know it is wrong in any culture, no matter who believes what, for a person to stone a woman to death because she was raped or order a tribal genocide. However, they cannot rationally explain that knowledge as being objective in nature because they have an a priori commitment that morality must be subjective.
Answer me this series of questions:
1. If you had the power to unilaterally stop all women from being stoned as punishment for being raped by simply snapping your fingers, would you do it?
2. Is it moral to force others to behave the way you subjectively prefer they behave just because you have the power to force compliance?
Where is it written?
Omniscient William again! How do you know this?
Please note, Alan, that by stating we are all in the same boat I have described, you are agreeing that you, at least, are in the boat I have described – a morality entirely based on personal preference and subjective feeling, and no deeper than that, because that is how any moral principle is selected. The boat you are admitting you are in is the moral boat where there is nothing “deeper” than personal preference and subjective feeling when it comes to “what is moral”.
And to think, you objected to this characterization earlier when you thought I was making it about atheist here; now, here you are admitting that not only are you in that boat, but “everyone else” is, too.
I say what I say to indicate that you have no superior claim on morality. Whatever your moral framework is (you have never really made that clear other than torturing babies for amusement is a bad thing) you are patently unable to demonstrate any other than a subjective basis for it. And that’s not to say it might (were you ever to make it clear what it is in detail) or it might not be a reasonably acceptable framework for someone to adopt. But that would require discussing real moral issues on their practical merits.
William.
because personal, subjective preference is the only thing the moral subjectivist has available to choose their principles by.
How is your personal, subjective assumption of a particular Deity as a basis for your non subjective morality any more than a personal,subjective preference?
It seems you are using an assumed Deity,one which apparently you don’t actually believes exists,to ” money launder ” your personal ,subjective,self serving beliefs to create a supposedly non subjective basis for those beliefs.
First, Alan, asserting that I have no superior claim on morality while at the same time admitting that you don’t know what my morality even is demonstrates your a priori bias.
Second – and again, a point that you are apparently immune to understanding – my argument has never been about what I can prove to be “real”. My arguments about morality are always about the logical consequences of assumed axiomatic positions. It may indeed be a fact that all morality is nothing more than personal, subjective preferences and feelings; even so, that would be entirely irrelevant to my argument that atheists do not act as if that premise true – something Omagain has even admitted in this very thread.
Virtually everyone (outside of sociopaths) act as if certain moral claims are objectively true for everyone. That’s why we’re willing to force certain views on others and why we will intervene, even to our own discomfort and even putting ourselves in dire peril in certain moral situations. That’s why we will defy consensus and social mores. That’s why we debate and argue to try to persuade others to our moral views. Not because we believe them to be subjectively better, but because we hold them to be objectively better.
Because if we admit that we do so, ultimately, for no reason other than “because we prefer it”, we would not snap our fingers and make stoning of rape victims disappear any more than we would snap our fingers and make everyone enjoy vanilla ice cream. We know such coercion for admittedly subjective preference is immoral.
Unless there is an objectively valid reason for doing so, is forcing anyone to do anything because you personally prefer it moral? Of course not. Which is the inherent flaw in the behavior of those positioning themselves as moral subjectivists.
Rubbish.
There is no basis for a moral system other than what a consensual group (morality for a lone individual on a desert island is entirely his own affair) agrees to adopt. So no moral system is objective. The most perfect and universally agreed moral system is still subjective.
So I don’t need to know what your moral system is to say it is subjective. And calling it subjective does not dismiss it. I’m open to considering your moral system on its merits. If you ever feel motivated to lay out your moral stall I’ll be interested to see what you have on offer.
Based on your last posts, then can we say:
1) If I (as a moral subjectivist) chose to instantaneously end stoning of women who had been raped, that would be immoral.
2) If you chose to instantaneously end stoning of women who had been raped, that would be moral, because you assume that morality is objective. (And whether or not morality is in fact truly objective is irrelevant).
I honestly don’t mean to strawman your argument, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
First, as I have already said in this thread, I do not derive morality form my concept of god; my concept of god (at least the characteristics that have to do with morality) is derived from my empirical experience of morality and through experimentation with various moral and immoral behaviors and logical inferences thereof.
Second, the moral rules I live by are not the ones I would prefer. This is why I only try to be “good enough”.
Third, it’s different because of a premise subjective moralities cannot posit; that what my conscience experiences is the sensory information that comes from an objectively-existent moral landscape. Whether or not the premise is true or can be shown to be true is irrelevant; holding/assuming that it is true (or that some objectively-valid basis for morality is true) is the only way that morality can avoid the logically necessary consequence of being nothing more, ultimately, than a “because I feel like it” and “because I can” system.
Alan Fox said:
Can you support that assertion?
If you don’t wish to straw man a point I haven’t even made yet, answer the questions honestly.
1. If you had the power to unilaterally stop all women from being stoned as punishment for being raped by simply snapping your fingers, would you do it?
If the concept of stoning women to death simply disappeared and there were no unintended consequences, then yes, I would do it.
2. Is it moral to force others to behave the way you subjectively prefer they behave just because you have the power to force compliance?
Not always.
Socle said:
What distinguishes between when it is moral and when it is not?
There’s some validity to the language analogy, but I think it’s limited. The amount of variation in language is limited only by the capacity of the human vocal apparatus, and I think you’re right that moral systems have historically been similarly diverse. But I’m arguing for an informed morality that recognizes the universality of humanity, not one that, like language to a certain extent, is designed to meld tribal identity and exclude “outsiders”. I do think there is a difference between a humanistic morality and one that’s derived from local tribal traditions. A humanistic morality would not be arbitrary in many of its forms, because it would have the basic requirement of ensuring fair and just treatment to all people. A Lingua Franca, on the other hand, can be any arbitrarily chosen language. One language really is as good as another. But not all moral systems are equally, you know, moral.