moral relativism

[iambiguous]

I ain't wastin' time on you, flash...not again.

Age, Big Mike, biggy, prometh, veg: say hello to your new roomie in the penalty box.

Let's think about this. To the best of my knowledge, neither age, Big Mike, prometh, veg nor I are arguing that henry's soul will burn in Hell for all of eternity if he refuses to dump the Deist God and accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

That would be Immanuel Can.

But no penalty box for that?

Come on, how can it not be a "condition"?!!!

[Iwannaplato]

So you don't think slavery, infanticide, child abuse, premeditated murder and rape are objectively evil?

I have to ask: because it's a little hard to believe somebody would actually think that...or say it.

YOu find it hard to believe? I find it hard to believe that you would find it hard to believe that somebody would actually say that.[/quote]

Oh. So rape's okay in Pakistan, infanticide is fine in India, child abuse is fine in the Middle East, and slavery's still okay over most of the world? That's your position?

Nope, and more importantly 1) that's not a response to what you quoted from my post and 2) you go on to deny that someone would actually think or say that objective morals don't exist. Again, have you not seen, for example, Peter Holms threads or his discussions with, say, Veritas? That's a boatload of threads. I am still stunned that you can't admit you have seen people think this way or say it.

...there are people who don't believe in objective morals....

I have never met one. I hope I never do.

I don't know if you are being slippery here. Does this mean you have to meet them in person? And if you've never met one, well, then not much to worry about then. Except, I guess, objective morals who think you are immoral or evil. I am not why, if you think it is, that would be better.

I guess you might think moral antirealists, etc. are lying or confused about their own beliefs.

I'm sure they are.

Then there's no real problem then.

But it's not "bad" for me to be an objective moral realist, if you're an antirealist.

Obviously. That an antirealist could hate you and your moral positions (not because they are objective, but because of their effects on the world, is of course possible. They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

Some might blame the objectivists for the worlds problems or some of the worlds problems. But that's not a necessary part being a moral antirealist.

[Immanuel Can]

In a No God world the sociopaths among us are able to rationalize all of these behaviors. How? By merely assuming that in a No God world morality itself is derived from their own personal wants and needs.

Well, they don't even have to "root" it at all. Moral nihilism will be sufficient. They can just prefer to say, "There's nothing to any of it."

No, moral nihilism is sufficient only for those among us who embrace it as an objectivist. And to them I would ask the same thing: "how do you go about demonstrating that moral nihilism is in fact the One True Path that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace"?

They don't make that assertion. They're not objectivists. They're Nihilists. That means they don't think ANYTHING is objectively moral, including Nihilism. It's just what "works" for them. And they don't care if nobody embraces it. What they like is their own freedom from moral constraint.

They don't even have to use their own needs as a reason. They can, if they want, say, "All our needs and wants are equally irrelevant; however, at the moment, I have power over you, so my needs and wants are going to crush yours; live with it."

That's Nietzsche's world.

Yes, and that frame of mind is derived precisely from the assumption that "a God, the God" has never once been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist.

Neither has love. Do you doubt its existence? How about the Big Bang...did you see it personally? Or how about gravity? We know it only by its effects, but nobody's ever "seen" gravitation qua gravitation. Do you disbelieve in it?

There is nothing in the entire physical world, in fact, that can be "demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist," because skepticism can be employed very durably, even in the face of good evidence, and empirical proofs are only ever probabilistic, not absolute.

So you can't really complain about that.

But if you used a proper epistemic standard, like, say, reasoning mathematically or viewing the objective facts of the scientific world, you'd find sufficient reasons to believe in God.

...a wholly determined universe.

You don't believe the universe is wholly determined. I can see you don't. You still think arguing "works" for something. And you still make choices as if you have a choice. So you don't believe your own codswallop about that.

[Immanuel Can]

So you don't think slavery, infanticide, child abuse, premeditated murder and rape are objectively evil?

I have to ask: because it's a little hard to believe somebody would actually think that...or say it.

YOu find it hard to believe? I find it hard to believe that you would find it hard to believe that somebody would actually say that.

Oh. So rape's okay in Pakistan, infanticide is fine in India, child abuse is fine in the Middle East, and slavery's still okay over most of the world? That's your position?

Nope...

Well, then...you don't believe what you just said.

...have you not seen, for example, Peter Holms threads...

Peter Holmes is a magnificant demonstration that cynicism can be obdurately maintained against all arguments, evidence and proofs. And you can see it in the thread you mention.

..there are people who don't believe in objective morals....

I have never met one. I hope I never do.

I don't know if you are being slippery here.

Not a bit. I've never met a total moral Nihilist, because no such people actually exist. There are charlatans who say, in one moment, that they disbelieve in all moral objective principles, but then they turn around immediately and act just as if they do. For example, if they claim, as you do, that you are misrepresented, then they want us to believe that misrepresenting people is "bad." If somebody robbed them, they wouldn't say, "Well, there's no morality anyway"; they'd call the cops. What you find is that their morals jump right back into play whenever it's in their personal interest to reinject them.

So they're not actually antirealists....not when it hurts them. They're just garden-variety hypocrites.

They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

If it's just "dislike," nobody needs to care, or to agree with them. They're on their own for that.

[popeye1945]

YOu find it hard to believe? I find it hard to believe that you would find it hard to believe that somebody would actually say that.

Oh. So rape's okay in Pakistan, infanticide is fine in India, child abuse is fine in the Middle East, and slavery's still okay over most of the world? That's your position?

Nope...

Well, then...you don't believe what you just said.

...have you not seen, for example, Peter Holms threads...

Peter Holmes is a magnificant demonstration that cynicism can be obdurately maintained against all arguments, evidence and proofs. And you can see it in the thread you mention.

I have never met one. I hope I never do.

I don't know if you are being slippery here.

Not a bit. I've never met a total moral Nihilist, because no such people actually exist. There are charlatans who say, in one moment, that they disbelieve in all moral objective principles, but then they turn around immediately and act just as if they do. For example, if they claim, as you do, that you are misrepresented, then they want us to believe that misrepresenting people is "bad." If somebody robbed them, they wouldn't say, "Well, there's no morality anyway"; they'd call the cops. What you find is that their morals jump right back into play whenever it's in their personal interest to reinject them.

So they're not actually antirealists....not when it hurts them. They're just garden-variety hypocrites.

They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

If it's just "dislike," nobody needs to care, or to agree with them. They're on their own for that.

One definition of a Nihilist is that of someone that does not find the world meaningful outside of the meaning one creates for one's self. If this definition is accepted, then we are all Nihilists whether or not we know/recognize it. The physical world is utterly meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, only becoming meaningful through the meaning bestowed upon it by the said conscious subject. So, the Nihilist to now be discussed must be one that does not accept their society's morality/meanings and refuses to bestow morality/meanings himself upon the world. Debatable as to whether such a person exists, our innate emotions tend to place values upon the things we find good or bad.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-nihilism-5271083

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes is a magnificent demonstration that cynicism can be obdurately maintained against all arguments, evidence and proofs. And you can see it in the thread you mention.

Obdurate cynic? Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

Maybe I missed the arguments, evidence and proofs that either moral facts or any gods exist.

But even if true, non-moral premises can't entail a moral conclusion, such as: abortion is morally wrong. So moral realism and objectivism, theistic or secular, don't even make it to the starting post.

Mind you, faith can move mountains. I do I do I do I do I do believe in fairies.

[Iwannaplato]

YOu find it hard to believe? I find it hard to believe that you would find it hard to believe that somebody would actually say that.

Oh. So rape's okay in Pakistan, infanticide is fine in India, child abuse is fine in the Middle East, and slavery's still okay over most of the world? That's your position?

Nope...

Well, then...you don't believe what you just said.

No, I didn't contradict anything I said. Feel free to lay out the argument.

...have you not seen, for example, Peter Holms threads...

Peter Holmes is a magnificant demonstration that cynicism can be obdurately maintained against all arguments, evidence and proofs. And you can see it in the thread you mention.

IOW he is a counterexample to you saying

So you don't think slavery, infanticide, child abuse, premeditated murder and rape are objectively evil?

I have to ask: because it's a little hard to believe somebody would actually think that...or say it.

It cannot possibly be hard for you to believe somebody would say it. As you make clear here, you know he has said it repeatedly. Perhaps you think he actually doesn't believe, deep down or whatever, what he is saying, but he has said it over and over and over You were aware of this before you made the statement. That's what contradicting oneself looks like.

I have never met one. I hope I never do.

I don't know if you are being slippery here.

Not a bit. I've never met a total moral Nihilist, because no such people actually exist. There are charlatans who say, in one moment, that they disbelieve in all moral objective principles, but then they turn around immediately and act just as if they do.

Or, do they act like they hate some behavior. You do understand that moral nihilism does not preclude empathy for other people. I does not preclude wanting policie, laws and norms that the specific moral nihilist prefers. It does not preclude fighting for this or that policy, rule, law or norm because they want it. Because they care. Of course neither moral realists nor moral anti-realists must care about people to hold their beliefs, but you clearly assume that people who do not believe in objective morals don't care about what happens or must be indifferent to behavior. And you are simply incorrect here.

For example, if they claim, as you do, that you are misrepresented,

Could you point out where I said I was misprepresented.

then they want us to believe that misrepresenting people is "bad."

Or they hate it. Or dislike it. Or simply counter it.
And yes, some moral anti-realists are hypocrites, but we know that moral realists can be hypocrites can also be hypocrites.

If somebody robbed them, they wouldn't say, "Well, there's no morality anyway"; they'd call the cops.

You are confused about what moral antirealism entails.

What you find is that their morals jump right back into play whenever it's in their personal interest to reinject them.

Personal interests and interests in other doesn't go away with moral antirealism.

They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

If it's just "dislike," nobody needs to care, or to agree with them.

Nobody needs to agree with you or other objectivists.

They're on their own for that.

Nope, they can have all sorts of allies who are objectivists or moral anti-realists. Exactly like you can.

[iambiguous]

Well, they don't even have to "root" it at all. Moral nihilism will be sufficient. They can just prefer to say, "There's nothing to any of it."

No, moral nihilism is sufficient only for those among us who embrace it as an objectivist. And to them I would ask the same thing: "how do you go about demonstrating that moral nihilism is in fact the One True Path that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace"?

I am certainly not arguing that it is. I am simply pointing out that existentially my life has unfolded such that "here and now" moral nihilism seems to be a reasonable way in which to broach and to explain moral and political value judgments in a No God world.

Look, I'm not the one making a fool out of himself by insisting objective morality is derived from a Christian God residing in Heaven able to be demonstrated to in fact exist given videos he provides said to be on par with videos others can provide to demonstrate that the Pope resides in the Vatican. And thus clearly does exist.

I'm not the one "proving" that the Christian God exists by quoting Scripture from the Christian Bible.

They don't make that assertion. They're not objectivists. They're Nihilists. That means they don't think ANYTHING is objectively moral, including Nihilism. It's just what "works" for them. And they don't care if nobody embraces it. What they like is their own freedom from moral constraint.

What assertion, IC? In fact, I'm flat out noting that those nihilists who do make those claims are no more able to demonstrate them than you can demonstrate the existence of the Christian God. And the freedom your God provides us is to either worship and adore Him and burn in Hell for all eternity.

The part you completely ignore, of course.

They don't even have to use their own needs as a reason. They can, if they want, say, "All our needs and wants are equally irrelevant; however, at the moment, I have power over you, so my needs and wants are going to crush yours; live with it."

That's Nietzsche's world.

Yes, and that frame of mind is derived precisely from the assumption that "a God, the God" has never once been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist.

Neither has love. Do you doubt its existence? How about the Big Bang...did you see it personally? Or how about gravity? We know it only by its effects, but nobody's ever "seen" gravitation qua gravitation. Do you disbelieve in it?

Again, back to my point that in regard to things like love and astrophysics and God, how we think about them is rooted existentially in dasein. And that what counts in the end is only what we and the scientists and philosophers and theologians can demonstrate to others is in fact true.

After all, because you and henry both love guns, you're best buddies here. But because henry doesn't love Jesus Christ, most Christians will condemn him to eternal damnation on Judgment Day.

There is nothing in the entire physical world, in fact, that can be "demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist," because skepticism can be employed very durably, even in the face of good evidence, and empirical proofs are only ever probabilistic, not absolute.

Right, so use this to lump together the Christian God in Heaven and the Pope in the Vatican.

Only why on earth is your omnipotent God unable to provide us mere mortals with absolute proof of His existence. Again, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave?!!!

Then this whopper!!!

But if you used a proper epistemic standard, like, say, reasoning mathematically or viewing the objective facts of the scientific world, you'd find sufficient reasons to believe in God.

A goddamned "condition", right?!!

Or will you be quoting Scripture from the Christian Bible to "prove" it? Genesis, right?

...a wholly determined universe.

You don't believe the universe is wholly determined. I can see you don't. You still think arguing "works" for something. And you still make choices as if you have a choice. So you don't believe your own codswallop about that.

Again, here, I come back to this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

Either in the only possible reality in the only possible world or of their own volition.

Now, explain to me again why you don't?

[Immanuel Can]

One definition of a Nihilist is that of someone that does not find the world meaningful outside of the meaning one creates for one's self.

That's an Egoist or a Solipsist.

A Nihilist doesn't believe anything has meaning at all...literally, he is a "nothing-ist". For a Nihilist, all proposed "meanings" are fakes, frauds and scams.

[Immanuel Can]

Obdurate cynic? Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

Perhaps not.

[Immanuel Can]

...to them I would ask the same thing: "how do you go about demonstrating that moral nihilism is in fact the One True Path that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace"?[/b]

They don't make that assertion. They're not objectivists. They're Nihilists. That means they don't think ANYTHING is objectively moral, including Nihilism. It's just what "works" for them. And they don't care if nobody embraces it. What they like is their own freedom from moral constraint.

What assertion, IC? [/quote]
They don't assert that moral Nihilism is the one truth path that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace. They assert there is no such path. They assert that all belief in such things is nonsense...

Or so they believe.

They don't even have to use their own needs as a reason. They can, if they want, say, "All our needs and wants are equally irrelevant; however, at the moment, I have power over you, so my needs and wants are going to crush yours; live with it."

That's Nietzsche's world.

Yes, and that frame of mind is derived precisely from the assumption that "a God, the God" has never once been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist.

Yes, it is. That is what Nietzsche's delusion results in. I could have said it better.

And that what counts in the end is only what we and the scientists and philosophers and theologians can demonstrate to others is in fact true.

I'm sorry, but that's just epistemologically naive. There is nothing empirical that can be "demonstrated" to that degree, including the existence of the entire external world. You don't know "demonstrably" and beyond possibility of doubt that it is in fact true that you will wake up tomorrow.

But you expect you will. And you probably will.

...the Christian God in Heaven and the Pope in the Vatican.

Let's think about this.

Biggie has never been to the Vatican (he says).
How then does Biggie know the Pope is in the Vatican? What convinced him of it, so that he now makes it his exemplar of things we know for sure?
Newspapers? The internet? Rumour? A Catholic upbringing?
He even hears that the Pope is sometimes not in the Vatican...as when one dies or retires, and another takes over.
But Biggie is still sure that the one fact he knows is that the Pope is in the Vatican?
So what is Biggie actually using to make that determination? How has it been "demonstrated" to his satsifaction, that it "is in fact true."

I'll wait to hear what you think makes that a certain fact for you.

But if you used a proper epistemic standard, like, say, reasoning mathematically or viewing the objective facts of the scientific world, you'd find sufficient reasons to believe in God.

A goddamned "condition", right?!!

Sorry...I don't even understand your response. I can't say anything in response to it, because it seems entirely off point, and unrelated to anything. I have no idea what your "condition" is, nor why it is "goddamned."

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Wow. You are a real man of faith. You have faith that somehow the brain was "able to acquire" autonomy from "non-living matter" and "became living" the same way, and became "conscious" the same way...

Sorry...I don't have the great faith you do. I like to see some rational explanation for the things people ask me to accept. "Somehow" just doesn't fill the bill for me.

Now, explain to me again why you don't?

"Explain" what?

Nothing you said made any sense, so far as I can tell. I have no idea what you want me to explain.

[Peter Holmes]

Obdurate cynic? Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

Perhaps not.

To repeat:

Even if true, non-moral premises can't entail a moral conclusion, such as: abortion is morally wrong.

And this is because a deductive conclusion can't contain information (claims) not present in the premise or premises of an argument. So a moral assertion, such as abortion is morally wrong stands alone, or follows from another moral assertion, which also stands alone - and so on. So here's a non sequitur:

This god, who created everything (including humans) for a purpose, says X is morally wrong; therefore, X is morally wrong.

And appealing to induction or abduction, rather than deduction, is obviously hopeless. Non-moral premises can't produce moral conclusions.

[Skepdick]

Obdurate cynic? Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

Perhaps not.

To repeat:

Even if true, non-moral premises can't entail a moral conclusion, such as: abortion is morally wrong.

And this is because a deductive conclusion can't contain information (claims) not present in the premise or premises of an argument. So a moral assertion, such as abortion is morally wrong stands alone, or follows from another moral assertion, which also stands alone - and so on. So here's a non sequitur:

This god, who created everything (including humans) for a purpose, says X is morally wrong; therefore, X is morally wrong.

(Appealing to induction or abduction is obviously hopeless. Non-moral premises can't produce moral conclusions.)

By all means, obdurately and cynically ignore this refutation of the case for moral objectivism of any kind.

Non sequitur.

What does objectivity have to do with premises and conclusions? That's just inferential reasoning.

??? therefore this color is objectively red..
??? therefore murder is objectively wrong.

You can just skip the "??? therefore" - no inferences are being made here. The redness of this color; or the wrongness of murder are neither premises nor conclusions. Your contextualisation is all fucked up.

Even if I can't produce a sound and valid argument which can persuade you, this color is still red.
Even if I can't produce a sound and valid argument which can persuade you, murder is still wrong.

[Peter Holmes]

Abortion is morally wrong.

Abortion is not morally wrong.

If there are moral facts, then one of these assertions must be false. Which is it, and how can we know?

[Skepdick]

Abortion is morally wrong.

Abortion is not morally wrong.

If there are moral facts, then one of these assertions must be false. Which is it, and how can we know?

This color is red.

This color is not red.

If there are facts, then one of these assertions must be false. Which is it, and how can we know?

Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

So "rational" you can't even tell us how you know which of the above assertions is false.