WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

What???

 

Ignore everything hippoz says.

It is for the best.

 

Again, still a very hotly debated topic. Objective morality is precisely what the phrase implies: morality that is not subject to opinion - a moral law that exists independently of the human race.

And this is where we fundamentally disagree - I would say quite the opposite, in fact: subjective morality is a logical fallacy which culminates in meaninglessness.

I agree wholeheartedly that subjective morality can be functional (it very much is)... but does it stand up to the scrutiny of logic and reason? No. A person who subscribes to a subjective moral law can consider many things wrong (rape, murder, child abuse, racism etc.) but can they demonstrate that any one of these behaviours is intrinsically wrong? No. They can demonstrate that it causes harm or suffering; they can demonstrate that it may threaten the survival of the human race... but they cannot demonstrate with logical consistency why any of these behaviours should be considered wrong.

 

Problem with your argument:- morality is just a word, given to a set of feelings ( right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable ). Society makes it's own rules that individuals abide by- moral actions are good for society ( in an over-arching sense ), immoral actions are bad for society. For the individual though, in the absence of a society, in the instance that they control society ( hitler, starlin, marx etc etc ), they can impose their own twisted morality on society who, despite perhaps knowing better, have no choice but to conform to the new norm of face the consequences.

No need for cosmic jewish zombies waving their magic wand ( = 'god did it', again... ).

 

EXACTLY MY POINT, LOL! Morality is just a word if there is no underlying moral framework, so things that are called "wrong" are not intrinsically wrong... it's just a name, an illusory label. What's bad for society is deemed wrong, but why? Answer: it doesn't matter, because it's just a word and is therefore ultimately meaningless. Nietzsche attested to this a loooooooooong time ago.

No cosmic jewish zombies here; just going round in circles.

 

Lenny could you please include the member tag when you quote? Makes it very hard to follow your replies as I have to check where each quote came from!

Please

 

Moral framework? I'd call that the collective / assembled human conscience- everyone ( 99% ) knows the difference between right and wrong, harmful and harmless, helpful and hurtful etc as it is an innate inbuilt feeling ( ever felt good after doing a good deed, or felt bad after doing something you perhaps knew you shouldn't; there you go then (unless you suffer a genetic predisposition to hurting people) ) over which the veneer we call morality is laid. Even in the total absence of education and nurture, there are still rudimentary feelings of right and wrong, constructive and destructive behaviour, even if one does not grasp the implied meanings of the words.

Justifying immoral actions or feelings is another thing- just because we choose to do something we know is wrong, doesn't suddenly make it right or imply that morality is arbitrary, or that there is no right and wrong. When rules or law conflict with morality is yet another issue; the law says most species of seagull are protected, yet I still shot the bugger in the head; clean kill, no pain, effective pest control- was it immoral, or illegal, both, or neither?...

 

Objective morality is the joining together of two words that don't fit; like "obtuse rabbit," or "axonometric puffin." Morality is what works for a group inside a group, and is not necessarily compatible with the next group on the block.

Morality is most defiantly subjective - if we jump back to homosexuality for a minute (your welcome hippoz) to the catholic church, homosexuality is morally wrong, no exceptions. To the ancient Greeks, homosexuality was what it was, a choice, generally not looked down on. If morality is objective, which group is wrong? If morality is subjective, both groups are correct.

 

Well, I'm sure you can throw up some studies that might suggest this is so, but if you take education and nurture out then you're pretty much left with the instinct to survive alone. Then there is no right or wrong, just survive or die. Actions become justified by the urge to survive. If morality is innate then the logical extension is that some people are born bad/wrong.

It's my view that society imposes morality on the individual, not the other way round. If morality was hardwired (not a fan of that word, but gets used a lot here so...) then why is it that everyday the majority participates in acts that society would say are immoral? It happens because we're not moral creatures. We can understand the construct of morality, but we choose overwhelmingly to ignore it for our own, self-perceived, gain.

That stuff is drummed in to us at nursery/infant school. Society indoctrinates us with its values from the minute it gets its hands on us. Just go and observe in a primary school for day and count how many immoral acts you witness (e.g. assault, theft, bullying/harrassment) - ' were we not all coerced into being 'good little boys & girls' the world would be quite different. That's the power of the state and society, not some natural instinct.

 

This violates the law of noncontradiction: right and wrong are mutually exclusive, so something that is wrong can be wrong only if it is not right. If something is right, then the opposite applies... you can't have something being both right and wrong. Rape, for example, is always wrong; but if you hold to subjective morality, then you must accept that rape is also right. If morality is truly subjective, then there are no absolute rights and wrongs.

 

What SuicideNeil perhaps refers to is the wired-in social instinct that animals who live in complex groups have. We know that certain animals, e.g. The apes and even some that are quite different from us such as whales and dolphins, have a relatively large frontal lobe in comparison to the rest of their brain. A lot of that part of the brain has to do with social awareness: being able to guess what another may be thinking or feeling or going to do next, and being able to influence that. They also show altruism (and cheating). In animal social groups certain altruism is reinforced by reciprocity, while persistently selfish behaviour can lead to rejection. In humans, even two-year olds show social awareness and altruism. And it is also the age when we start teaching them that consideration of others and altruism is good, and lack of consideration, selfishness and cheating is bad. We start to impose and teach morality.

Because humans are pretty much the same all over, what benefits us and harms us is basically the same all over. There are no human circumstances in which rape, theft or murder is beneficial to the victim. They are pretty much bad for everyone. Some cultures may go off the rails and argue that some things are acceptable for some people but they are just dissembling. Almost every two-year old has a basic sense of right and wrong because almost every two-year old has social awareness: a keen appreciation of what feels good and what feels harmful and that other people feel more or less the same.

Now we can pontificate about "objective" morality and just why it would be wrong if humanity came to harm and perished, but that is just idle musing that bears no relevance on the reality of human life. We only exist in relation to ourselves and each other. The inanimate universe doesn't care. Abstract ideas don't care. Whatever we do, think, feel or experience can only relate to us. And at heart we are all 99% the same.

 

Well put.

 

Totally disagree - objective morality is the only morality that stands up under the scrutiny of logic and reason, as I have demonstrated; it is the only morality which can succinctly answer the question "why is it wrong?" If something doesn't make sense logically, you can't simply brush the discrepancies under the carpet as "idle musing" - that doesn't address the issue. Your above statement is yet another instance of ipse dixit: I think it is idle musing, so that's what it is. Where is the substantiation?

No matter how you paint subjective morality, things that are perceived "wrong" are not really, actually wrong because wrong is "just a word," as SuicideNeil so eloquently put it. I'd much rather believe in a right and wrong that actually mean something than subscribe to two arbitrary concepts that have a function but ultimately no meaning.

 

It is still idle musing because whether internally logical or not, it has no relevance to human lives.

I don't like terms like "right" and "wrong" because they sound like abstract absolutes. I prefer "good" or "bad" because they are more experiential values relevant to real life situations. I don't know whether it is "right" or "wrong" to give homeless beggars a handout, but I certainly can make a relatively informed judgement whether, in that particular situation, it is a good thing to do or a bad thing. I define "bad" in the context of morality as "what harms human lives" (although you can include any living entity if you want). It is the only logical definition because it is the only one relevant to our existence.

Chasing absolute morality feels to me like just another version of chasing God or chasing Walle's universal spirit. It is not testable, therefore it is not all that relevant. Faith is relevant because it affects how people behave towards themselves and others, as is any philosophical or moral framework. But we don't have to regard it as something validated, defined or guided by something external to our experiential reality.

It is argued that religion put humans and the Earth at the centre of the universe, while science and the humanism placed us as just another meaningless speck floating somewhere in the void. I argue the opposite is true. In the religious view humans can only take centre stage subject to God. In the humanities, it is up to us to claim centre stage; it is our responsibility, but moreover it is what defines us.

 

How does it do that? And where exactly does this objective morality stem from if it's independent from the human race?

 

Lenny, I've violated nothing, as I was dealing on a per-group basis treating each group as a separate entity. Each entity had it's own morality, each moriality was exclusive of the other, each was correct.

In group a c=true. In group b c/=true. Transplant an individual from a to b and the individuals c state goes from being "right" to being "wrong"

I think Nexxo's deffenition is the right one.

appologies for spelling - phone doesn't check it for me - will tidy up later

tidied.

 

I think it's worthwhile noting that you can have things that are objectively better within what amounts to an arbitrary system of morality (which is what many of you are suggesting morality is).

For instance a system of morality that wants to maximise rights can say, objectively, that murder or forced circumcision are objectively immoral within the system.

Within a specific framework, morals can be objectively appraised. It's just you have to be within that framework first, and justifications for frameworks tend to stem ultimately from a first axiom which must be chosen without much reason to back it up.

 

I think people need to step back and actually think about what objective and subjective actually mean in any given context, for example:

subjective = what is good for you
objective = what is good for everyone

When I said morality was just a word, I wasn't trying to say it has no real meaning, I was trying to say it was just a name given to a set of feelings ( right and wrong ).

I would contest that morality can indeed be both objective and subjective, depending on the situation- what feels 'right' to the individual or a group can definitely actually be completely wrong in terms of how constructive or destructive that action is ( see: justifying anything whether it is right or wrong, depending on the need or desire of the person doing it ).

Just because society as a whole would say that the behaviour of a criminal was immoral, perhaps or perhaps not because it was illegal and harmful to another person or persons, the criminal can say his behaviour was morally justifiable as he was desperate to feed his family; allow hsi family to starve or commit a crime- who is to say whether objective or subjective morality is the correct molarity in that instance, for example.

 

It is not testable by science, but it can be scrutinized philosophically and it holds up well, which is more than can be said for subjective morality. To say that something is irrelevant because it is "not testable" is a strawman if ever there was one.

A non sequitur - relevant does not necessarily mean logical, and in this case it certainly doesn't. I have demonstrated the logical fallacy of subjective morality yet you still hold to it because it is functional, which is fair enough... as long as you are prepared to accept that it has no logical coherence.

Whereas a person gives an opinion on what they might consider right or wrong, a moral law equips us with foundational and objective moral values which are entirely independent from opinion. And what is the source of the moral law? Good question!

You're unaware of your own fallacy: it is illogical for something to be both moral and immoral. It doesn't matter what groups of people subscribe to what morals. Most people here are happy to define "harm" as "wrong," so under what circumstances might rape be considered harmless? If morality truly is subjective, then there must be a time and a place when harming people (eg. rape, murder, abuse) is morally upright and good. If these things are always wrong irrespective of time, place, culture etc, then you must acknowledge that they are objectively wrong. You can't have it both ways.

You can't redefine words to suit your cause - your definitions above allow subjectivity and objectivity to align with one another, which they cannot logically because they are mutually exclusive: something is subjective precisely because it is not objective, and vice versa.

Seriously, LOL!

 

Well it's good to know that if we are able to locate a source of an objective moral law then we know how we'll be able to use it. But without said source it's not really all that relevant to the actual real world is it? I mean it's a nice thought experiment and all but that's it.