Is morality objective or subjective?

[Atla]

And yet, here we are. People are manifestly not what you want them to be, right?

But why doesn't that satisfy subjectivism? They are choosing their own way. Why let that offend you? They're subjectivists...there are no answers but the ones in their own heads...and objectively, they owe each other no respect, no duties, no consideration at all.

You really don't understand the potential of subjectivism at all,

It has no "potential." It's limited to the "subject" who experiences it. It can, by definition, go no futher.

What you're actually articulating is a wish for a nominally-subjective morality (yours, presumably) to be taken up and treated as if objective (that is, to be held by all people). And what you're lamenting is just that others don't agree with you.

But unless you refer to a moral standard higher than both them and yourself, you cannot really complain. They're not doing wrong, when they disagree with you. They're living out their "subjectivity." As a subjectivist, you have no basis for asking more.

This is sheer nonsense. You don't understand what "subjective" means.

[Immanuel Can]

You really don't understand the potential of subjectivism at all,

It has no "potential." It's limited to the "subject" who experiences it. It can, by definition, go no futher.

What you're actually articulating is a wish for a nominally-subjective morality (yours, presumably) to be taken up and treated as if objective (that is, to be held by all people). And what you're lamenting is just that others don't agree with you.

But unless you refer to a moral standard higher than both them and yourself, you cannot really complain. They're not doing wrong, when they disagree with you. They're living out their "subjectivity." As a subjectivist, you have no basis for asking more.

This is sheer nonsense. You don't understand what "subjective" means.

Actually, I do. But let's compare notes. What are you intending to convey, when you use that word?

[Atla]

It has no "potential." It's limited to the "subject" who experiences it. It can, by definition, go no futher.

What you're actually articulating is a wish for a nominally-subjective morality (yours, presumably) to be taken up and treated as if objective (that is, to be held by all people). And what you're lamenting is just that others don't agree with you.

But unless you refer to a moral standard higher than both them and yourself, you cannot really complain. They're not doing wrong, when they disagree with you. They're living out their "subjectivity." As a subjectivist, you have no basis for asking more.

This is sheer nonsense. You don't understand what "subjective" means.

Actually, I do. But let's compare notes. What are you intending to convey, when you use that word?

Not objective morality. Morality not being objective doesn't mean that we can't strive for a higher moral rightness, and expect others to strive for a higher moral rightness, that can go beyond the individual. That's pretty much the point of morality.

I don't have to respect those who don't meet this expectation. I can expect the majority to agree to punish such people.

[Veritas Aequitas]

No, it's not.

If "nature" had any such "ought" then humans would all keep breathing, and not die. As it is, both individuals and species of all kinds die all the time.

Nature is not a person. It has, and is capable of having, no opinion at all about what "ought" to be. Things live if they're fit to survive, and they die if they're not. Nature sheds no tears for them.

That's how the Darwinian story goes.

"It is an imperative ought of human nature that ALL humans must breathe, at least till the inevitable".

Not at all. There's no reason why a human being must continue to breathe. Plenty stop.

I think maybe you don't know what a "moral imperative" is. You seem to be mistaking it for some sort of mechanical entailment, as if the fact that people die if they don't breathe imposes some kind of duty or oughtness.

It doesn't. In the Darwinian story, there's no "oughtness." There's only what happens. And whatever happens is neither good nor bad; it's just what happens.

Your thinking re morality is too narrow, shallow, rigid and dogmatically confined to the typical. You need to apply higher reflective thinking on the subject of morality.

You want to reason with human nature?
Try not to breathe?

Obviously you will feel a compulsion to breathe as driven by some internal mechanism of biology.
Isn't this an 'oughtness' in you?
Isn't this oughtness represented by active physical neurons in the brain and whatever physical elements in the body?

You think it is neither good nor bad?
That you will breathe is definitely good and a relieve from the 'bad' of pains and sufferings of not breathing.

Those who resist or can resist the natural oughtness to breathe has a malfunctioned mechanism, thus suicide. But the existence of the objective natural oughtness to breathe is undeniable.

Note oughtness and ought-not-ness is related to human actions that facilitate survival or towards good or evil acts [morality].

As I had argued, the above mechanism is also applicable to morality [as part of human nature].
All humans are not perceptible of the inherent moral mechanisms because they are subtle.
That you and most humans do not torture and kill babies for pleasure is due to the existence of a moral algorithm that inhibit and modulate any inclinations to torture and kill babies for pleasure.
These are the objective moral facts which are verifiable and justifiable, thus morality is objective.

Theoretically [obviously immoral in practice] and in principle the above moral mechanisms can be tested to failure via the brainwashing of a normal human to make him torture and kill babies for pleasure.
Those who had tortured and killed babies for pleasure have had damaged inhibitors in their brain.

[Immanuel Can]

This is sheer nonsense. You don't understand what "subjective" means.

Actually, I do. But let's compare notes. What are you intending to convey, when you use that word?

Not objective morality. Morality not being objective doesn't mean that we can't strive for a higher moral rightness, and expect others to strive for a higher moral rightness, that can go beyond the individual. That's pretty much the point of morality.

No: you said you thought I didn't understand what "subjective" means. I'm just asking what you think you mean by "subjective." Just give me your defintion, so we can be sure we're on the same page.

[Immanuel Can]

You want to reason with human nature? Try not to breathe?

I see you don't know the difference between "nature," meaning physiological necessity, and what we call "human nature." It is a natural fact that living things must breathe. But when they do, they're not doing anything "moral." They're just doing something practical. And "human nature" is an idiom referring not to physiological necessities, nor to the "natural world" generally, but to the essential characteristics of human beings, particularly the cognitive, innate ones.

I shouldn't have to explain that, but there you go. You're welcome.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You want to reason with human nature? Try not to breathe?

I see you don't know the difference between "nature," meaning physiological necessity, and what we call "human nature." It is a natural fact that living things must breathe. But when they do, they're not doing anything "moral." They're just doing something practical. And "human nature" is an idiom referring not to physiological necessities, nor to the "natural world" generally, but to the essential characteristics of human beings, particularly the cognitive, innate ones.

I shouldn't have to explain that, but there you go. You're welcome.

Obviously 'the oughtness to breathe' is not moral but rather biological i.e. within the human based science-biology Framework and System of Realization [FSK] and knowledge [FSK].
The "oughtness to breathe" is a biological fact as conditioned within the science-biology FSK.

The oughtness [to be moral] or ought-not-ness [to kill babies for pleasure] which are fundamentally biology and neurological when inputted into the human based moral FSR-FSK is thus an objective moral fact.

The typical approach to morality of right or wrong of an act is subjective and thus morality in this sense cannot be objective.

Note this which I had referred to > a '1000' times;

A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance.[1]
Standard reference works are often used to check facts.

Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means [within the human based scientific FSK].
For example,
"This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact [within a linguistic FSK[, and
"The sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact [within the astronomical FSK].
Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts [a specific historical FSK].

Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

Thus,
that 'all humans ought-not to kill babies for pleasure' accurately describes an objective moral fact within the human-based moral FSK.

All the above facts cannot stand alone but must be qualified to its specific human-based FSK.

[Peter Holmes]

If that's applicable to morality, then you're an objectivist.

Not so. Here's your fallacy:

Premise: Thinking or saying X is morally right/wrong doesn't make X morally right/wrong.
Conclusion: Therefore, (it's a fact that) X just is morally right/wrong.

That's not my argument.

My argument is simply that if a moral situation has a fixed state, a "so," to use your term, that pre-exists your "thinking," your judgment of the case, then you're talking like an objectivist.

Evasion. 'To say a moral situation has a fixed state is to talk like an objectivist'. Not so. To say 'X is morally right/wrong' is not to say 'it's a fact - a 'fixed state' that X is morally right/wrong'.

And that's the whole issue. Do you agree that saying something is so doesn't make it so? If not, please explain why - because I think this is self-evident. For example, thinking or saying the earth is/isn't flat has no bearing on the fact of the matter - even if the agent doing the thinking or saying were a god.

Now, apply this fact to moral assertions: thinking or saying something is morally right/wrong doesn't make it morally right/wrong. Or do you think it does? And if so, why this special pleading for moral assertions?

A subjectivist has to think that thinking DOES in fact "make" morality all it is, and all it can ever be. It can never be more than a "thinking," or a collection of "thinkings" in the heads of groups of individuals suffering similiar delusions.

There's the question-begging rub. Why must a moral opinion be the result of a delusion? Why must the belief that a thing is beautiful or ugly be a delusion? (Why do you almost always ignore the analogy with aesthetic opinions? Is it inconvenient?)

A subjectivist has to say that all "morality' is, is "thinking," that it's all valuation, in the total absence of objective criteria.

Not so. We usually provide - or can provide - factual reasons ('objective criteria) for our moral opinions. Those reasons are, as always, open to rational appraisal.

And all I've been asking is for you to make those "objective criteria" fit into a single prohibitive (or endorsing) syllogism. Just one. It seems not much to ask of a view that claims to speak about "morality."

To repeat: non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions. So there's no such thing as a non-moral (factual) premise/criterion from which a moral conclusion can be deduced. But by all means produce an example that falsifies my claim.

You assume that a moral opinion must make a factual (objective) claim

No, actually, I'm not. That's again not the argument here.

Rather, the point is simply that if the so-called "subjectivist" claims to get his criteria from outside of himself, then his legitimizing of his moral judgment is not proceeding subjectively, from himself, but rather from the objective world. But as you have pointed out, the Humean argument is that there is no "ought" inside any "is", meaning that the objective world does not offer us any value-criteria. It offers us only cold, valueless facts, upon which we emotively impose our own sense of values, delusory as they are.

Your use of 'legitimizing [a] moral judgement' says it all. It can also be called 'justifying'. And this involves offering reasons. And those reasons are, necessarily, moral or non-moral. And a moral reason (premise) for a moral conclusion obviously doesn't establish moral objectivity.

And a non-moral reason (premise), such as a factual one, obviously can't entail a moral conclusion. For example, your argument from 'God says X is morally right/wrong' to 'therefore X is morally right/wrong' is clearly invalid.

So your criticism of what could be called 'moral non-objectivism' - its inability to provide objective criteria from which to deduce moral opinions - is trivially correct - but also demolishes moral objectivity of any kind.

And, while we're at it, please set out which 'objective criteria' justify the assertion 'homosexuality is morally wrong'?

That human beings were not made for that. And that they were not is establishable two ways. One is that it is non-reproductive, and a species that practiced it would not last a generation unless some behaved heterosexually. But that's not as determinative as that God indicts homosexuality as an abomination. That closes the book on that question, really...the rest is pointless objection, because that's how it's going to be assessed at the Great Judgment.

And there your argument collapses into absurdity. Quite apart from its unsoundness, it's deductively invalid. As a deluded believer of absurdities, you can't afford to notice or care about validity and soundness. But I and many others do, which is why we dismiss your case summarily. (I also condemn you and your team's invented god as grotesquely immoral.)

Not so. We usually provide - or can provide - factual reasons ('objective criteria) for our moral opinions. Those reasons are, as always, open to rational appraisal. And, at the bottom of any moral argument, there has to be a moral opinion, because non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

Why must a valuation be 'in the total absence of objective criteria'?

To "have reasons" is not enough. A psychopath or rapist "has reasons" for selecting his victims; that goes not one step in the direction of proving he's moral.

You need more than reasons (or motives) for doing things; you need justification by way of moral criteria...if morality exists as a property of reality, which a subjectivist must necessarily deny.

But again, Pete, you can prove me wrong: just do your own version of a syllogism prohibiting (or endorsing) some value, but not employing any objectivist suppositions or terms, like "wrong" or "evil" or "bad" or whatever.

Please notice the question-begging here. Surely you can see it!

There isn't any "begging of questions" here, actually. There's merely an asking for evidence of what you've already affirmed you have.

It seems perfectly reasonable to think that a person who claims to "have reasons" for a moral judgment should be able to make those "reasons" explicit in a very simple syllogism. And if he can't, it would seem obvious he doesn't "have reasons" after all.

I've explained your confusion and problem above.

[FlashDangerpants]

The typical approach to morality of right or wrong of an act is subjective and thus morality in this sense cannot be objective.

This was your admission of failure.

Morality (the aspect of human life that is about rightness and wrongness and how to manage those phenomena) isn't objective. So you cooked up a fake alternative and called it "morality-proper". But that isn't morality. Which is not objective.

[Harbal]

And, while we're at it, please set out which 'objective criteria' justify the assertion 'homosexuality is morally wrong'?

That human beings were not made for that. And that they were not is establishable two ways. One is that it is non-reproductive, and a species that practiced it would not last a generation unless some behaved heterosexually. But that's not as determinative as that God indicts homosexuality as an abomination. That closes the book on that question, really...the rest is pointless objection, because that's how it's going to be assessed at the Great Judgment.

Righteous is he who conveniently finds that God's prejudices match his own.

[Will Bouwman]

In empirical matters, absolute certainty is just not available. But that's not really a problem for science.

All of that's not even controversial anymore among philosophers of science. Again, you can check that.

As it happens, I spent a year at UCL amongst philosophers of science doing precisely that and have written on the subject for Philosophy Now. I know this stuff better than you.

Since you don't know me, I'm amused by the claim.

I don't need to know you, all I need to know is what you write about the philosophy of science. And right on cue you make the case for me by again demonstrating that you cannot distinguish between the problem of induction and underdetermination:

But if you know anything about the philosophy of science, you know that empirical knowing is both inductive and probabilistic. The old "black swans" problem is an example, and you surely know about that.

For anyone who doesn't know, the "old "black swans" problem" is a problem related to the data you have already collected. The story goes that until the 18th century, europeans had only ever seen white swans - thousands of years, millions of data points; you might agree with Immanuel Can's version of "empirical knowing" and think that europeans were justified in concluding that all swans are 'probabilistically' white. Then they pitch up in Australia and find out that some swans are black. The point being that no amount of data can prove a theory.
By contrast underdetermination relates to data you don't yet have, or is impossible to get. Prior to the 18th century, at least as europeans were concerned, the theory that all swans are white was underdetermined because the data was also consistent with the theory that all swans are black or white. Well, some swans are black so we can discard one of those theories, leaving just the theory that all swans are black or white. Eureka, the correct theory of swans! Except, the more alert of you will notice, the data is also consistent with a whole load of other theories. There might be some unexplored corner of the rainforest where there exists a population of swans that are any colour or pattern you choose to imagine. So the theory that all swans are black or white is underdetermined because the current data is consistent with the theory that all swans are black, white and any colour at all.
So you are confused when you say:

But this is also an example of it.

If playing violent video games causes children to be more aggressive in their playground behavior, then we should (barring complications) expect to find a correlation between time spent playing such video games and aggressive behavior on the playground. But that is also what we would expect to find if children who are prone to aggressive behavior tend to enjoy and seek out violent video games more than other children, or if propensities for playing violent video games and for aggressive playground behavior are both caused by some third factor (like being bullied or general parental neglect). So a high correlation between time spent playing violent video games and aggressive playground behavior (by itself) simply underdetermines what we should believe about the causal relationship between the two. But it turns out that this simple and familiar predicament only scratches the surface of the various ways in which problems of underdetermination can arise in the course of scientific investigation.

It explains why the deduction from video games to aggression isn't deductive and certain, but inductive and only probable.

No it doesn't. It shows that, short of further research, a number of different theories explain the same data equally well.

In this case, however, the presence of the third factor also makes the guess wrong.

No. It doesn't show that any of the theories is wrong. Instead it shows that more research is needed.

If value is intrinsic, it makes no difference what God thinks.

Actually, it would. For the thing you're forgetting is that the origin of all things is in God.

The thing you are forgetting is that God is an underdetermined hypothesis.

Imagine a contingent, moribund, limited creature trying to "tell the universe" what meanings, morals and purposes it should have... The prospect is ridiculous.

The thing I find ridiculous is the idea that the universe should have meanings, morals and purposes.

Nevertheless, that's where Atheism has to go, if it wants to retain any values, morals or purpose in the universe itself. It has to make that preposterous claim to be able to pull them out of its own perishable, unnecessary and temporary existence. However, obviously, any such things are mere delusions.

Which is why people should, in my view, restrict their imposition of moral judgement to other people.

[Dontaskme]

When did your conscience alert you? Look around, and see what it's making you concerned about. Then check the moral status of that situation.

As I said earlier, your conscience won't be perfect, because we aren't. Sometimes, it will alert you when it shouldn't. Sometimes, it will not be as sensitive as it should be. But most of the time, it will point you to the need for some moral clarity in a given situation.

But there's a missing piece. That is, a person has to involve his/her relationship with God, or moral clarity just won't come. The objective truth is that whatever fits with that relationship is objectively moral. Whatever fails to do so is objectively not moral.

There is no missing piece. The relationship you are talking about is not external to you, it is you as you become aware of your own awareness, when you instantly know and feel the senses that are arising in you, as and when they come in you only.

These senses are not sent to you from some external God for you to act upon or ignore. No sentient creature ignores the sensation of pain. These senses are always being acted upon in the instantaneous moment there is aware recognition they are happening, where the bodies reactive mechanism comes into force, it (jerks off) ( becomes reactory ) it becomes aware it is aware.

Only reactions are known in the immediacy of knowing..in other words, for example, I hit myself with a hammer really hard for the first time in my life, in doing so, I instantly feel pain, the pain feels terrible, I instantly know in that reactory moment not to do that to myself again, if I do not want to experience the pain. That's how morality is born in the aware sentient language speaking human that understands concepts via their capacity to understand language.

There is a very common sense innately present in all sentient human beings, there is quite naturally present a strong and superior capacity to be self-aware, there is self evidently, an awareness that self-inflicted intentional pain is bad and wrong, and that there is absolutely no force in nature that deliberately inflicts pain on itself, except to this sense of self, this sense of separation that there is a 'me' here and a 'you' there.

And in that knowing of self-awareness, there is an instant recognition, a knowing that if I am capable of harming myself, I must be capable of harming others as well.

The golden rule of thumb is...Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A child grows to know this as it develops the sense of separation when it becomes aware of itself as and through the capacity to identify itself as it is named as being that name. Through this identification, the separation is apparently born in the child. The child becomes aware of the knowledge that inflicting pain on others is bad and wrong, already having experienced what pain feels like through it's own direct experience of what is pain, all by itself.

Morality is more to do with that ''Gloden Rule'' of cause and effect that is just what's happening in LIFE, and has nothing to do with some silly human belief system that our actions, whether they be good or bad, come from that belief system. The reaction of any 'Action' is an instantaneous re-cognition...coming from one's direct experience as it's happening in the here and now....and not from someone else's silly BELIEF in some God who created you.




.

[Iwannaplato]

And, while we're at it, please set out which 'objective criteria' justify the assertion 'homosexuality is morally wrong'?

That human beings were not made for that. And that they were not is establishable two ways. One is that it is non-reproductive, and a species that practiced it would not last a generation unless some behaved heterosexually. But that's not as determinative as that God indicts homosexuality as an abomination. That closes the book on that question, really...the rest is pointless objection, because that's how it's going to be assessed at the Great Judgment.

Righteous is he who conveniently finds that God's prejudices match his own.

If you're not willing to go against a deity, if you truly feel that diety is terribly wrong about something, how righteous are you? I always thought Abraham should have refused to kill his son. And perhaps...that he even failed the test.

In the Bible A decides to not follow the certainty of his love for his son, and instead to follow the certainty he has that he is listening to God and that God is loving.

The God that didn't back away from Abraham, shaking his horrified glorious head in disappointment, is a problematic deity.
'You were actually going to do it, oh how I have failed.'

[Dontaskme]

[Peter Holmes]

And, while we're at it, please set out which 'objective criteria' justify the assertion 'homosexuality is morally wrong'?

That human beings were not made for that. And that they were not is establishable two ways. One is that it is non-reproductive, and a species that practiced it would not last a generation unless some behaved heterosexually. But that's not as determinative as that God indicts homosexuality as an abomination. That closes the book on that question, really...the rest is pointless objection, because that's how it's going to be assessed at the Great Judgment.

Righteous is he who conveniently finds that God's prejudices match his own.

If you're not willing to go against a deity, if you truly feel that diety is terribly wrong about something, how righteous are you? I always thought Abraham should have refused to kill his son. And perhaps...that he even failed the test.

In the Bible A decides to not follow the certainty of his love for his son, and instead to follow the certainty he has that he is listening to God and that God is loving.

The God that didn't back away from Abraham, shaking his horrified glorious head in disappointment, is a problematic deity.
'You were actually going to do it, oh how I have failed.'

Spot on. And I think the most terrible thing about Christianity is that the supposedly demanded/needed/required sacrifice of a son actually occurred. That primitive, barbaric human sacrifice - an atavistic legacy - to appease a monstrous demon-god - was the founding myth of this disgusting religion. And once you buy the grotesque belief that this was/is a god of love - any moral obscenity becomes conscionable.

IC's moral corruption bears witness.