Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

A person becomes "objective" when he understands his own position,

That's a mistake of combining the terms "objective view" and "objective fact." They're related, but only in that the latter is assumed to be the basis of the former.

When we call a person "objective," we just mean what you suggest -- that he is operating without relation to things like mere opinion, subjective feelings and preferences. He's working dispassionately, and with regard only to data, we might suppose. But when we call facts "objective," we mean something different -- we mean to refer to the things that exist totally independent of the person's viewpoint, and with reference to which we afterward adjudge his viewpoint as being sufficiently "objective."

That's an error of amphiboly, or "sliding terms," with two distinct concepts being accidentally blended into a single concept.

[Harbal]

That's just an assumption. Assumptions don't become true merely by being assumed...........

Morality as I understand it is subject to change, which is what seems to be your main criticism, but I see as a good thing, because it means it can change for the better. The morality you promote is less likely to do that, or at least is much slower to do it. As we see with some of your moral attitudes, religious morality tends to perpetuate moral injustice, rather than reform it.

Anyway, I think we are past the going round in circles point, don't you? We are just repeating ourselves now, and we both know we are never going to agree; in fact we knew that right from the beginning.

[Immanuel Can]

That's just an assumption. Assumptions don't become true merely by being assumed...........

Morality as I understand it is subject to change,

It's not, actually. Moral applications may change, but morality itself is objective. If it's not, it's nothing at all. So one can take one's pick of those assumptions, but subjectivism just doesn't work, even on its own terms.

...which is what seems to be your main criticism, but I see as a good thing, because it means it can change for the better.

"For the better" is an objectivist expression. It means that a thing changes from a worse to a "more moral" one. But subjectivism has no "more moral" or "less moral" positions in it. It has no moral criteria at all, actually.

Anyway, I think we are past the going round in circles point, don't you? We are just repeating ourselves now, and we both know we are never going to agree; in fact we knew that right from the beginning.

Did we?

Well, we might hope, at least, to have a meaningul encounter with somebody who believes something we don't, so as to challenge our own assumptions and arguments, and emerge wiser than before. And that's possible even when we don't end up changing our original convictions. Hopefully, they come out more refined and well-articulated for our having engaged with a formitable and honourable rival.

These conversations need not be mean and personal, or end in acrimony. They can be win-wins, when both people stay on track and deal with the issues instead of the personalities. So my expectations in talking with you were not that we would get nothing out of it, even if we stayed on the same position in which we began. We might both end up better off.

I think that's what philosophical discussion, at its best, achieves: both parties win, even if they don't agree. So I thank you for your time and energies, of which you invested a considerable amount, as I recognize; and I am perhaps less glum about the outcome than to think it makes no difference.

Best wishes.

[Veritas Aequitas]

As this book comes to an end, I worry that I have given the impression that I’m against Empathy.
Well, I am—but only in the Moral domain

"...but only in the moral domain."

Get it? Only when empathy is given rule over common sense, and then allowed to dictated "the moral"...which it too often is.

Have your empathy. Feel anything you want to feel. But don't turn it into the idiot dictator of your judgment. That's the thesis Bloom is promoting.

Bloom did not denounce empathy as a whole and think it is good for sex and other non-moral areas.

But his,
"we are indeed better off without it [empathy]"
in the context of his book, he would prefer ZERO elements of empathy within morality.
To Bloom, whatever pros there are from empathy within morality, it is so insignificant that "we are indeed better off without it [empathy]".

My point is, Bloom is very ignorant with empathy's role in morality; empathy [moral related] is a critical tool and fundamental for morality.
Why YOU and the majority do not go about torturing and killing babies for pleasure is because of empathy as one moral element inhibiting such an abhorrent act.

[Will Bouwman]

Right. So the "regular faith, the kind needed in ordinary relationships" is not enough to sustain your belief in God; the difference, it seems to me, being the extra dollop of hope included in every 'probabilistic calculation' you perform. You hope the Bible is the inspired word of God, unlike the thousands of beliefs and religions you insist are human creations. I won't labour the point, but you hope the various arguments presented in favour of God are sound, and you hope your feeling of a relationship with God is based on some interaction between you and him.

Well, again, there's a debased version of "hope," just as there is a debased interpretation of "faith." In both cases, the debased version assumes that there's no evidence or warrant for either -- that one has "hope" in things that are improbable, and "faith" in things that are unrealistic. But neither word, in a full-blooded way implies either.

No, I am not assuming there is no evidence for faith or hope in your God, nor any other for that matter. If your hypothesis is that a supreme being created the world, then the fact that there is a world is evidence that supports your hypothesis. We have already established that to you underdetermination is just a whooshing sound as the concept flies over your head, but to anyone not crippled by an investment in a particular narrative, it is screamingly obvious that the existence of a less than supreme world could be attributed to other than a perfect God.

Just as "faith" is a probability calculation premised on estimating the evidence for the truth of something to be strong, hope is simply belief that what God has said He will do. It's a vote of confidence in the character of the One whom one has come to know.

So in your language faith is calculation and hope a belief. Perhaps that is what they mean "in a full-blooded way", but I doubt I'm the only one here so debased to understand both as some variation of wishful thinking. Nonetheless, this:

The empirical evidence is available to theists and atheists alike and different interpretations are available. The difference is that you hope it is true.

which you describe as

...not a "difference." It's a similarity.

might be clearer to you if I put it like this: The empirical evidence for God is available to theists and atheists alike and different interpretations are available. The difference is that you wish it is true.

The scientist ventures his hypotheses on faith.

Or in less than full blooded English: calculation.

Even when he's run a hundred tests, he knows he has never run the complete set of possible tests. If he's run 5, he knows he didn't run the 6th: and what if the anomaly appeared in the 6th? He's not absolutely sure it wouldn't. But it looks to him as if that's improbable, if he's run 5 really good tests, so he invests his hope and faith in the integrity of his hypothesis...and often, more evidence follows.

But here's the thing: if he had run 100 or a 1,000 tests, he still would know he hadn't run 101 or 1,001.

The difference is you can't perform even one test on God, because:

He does not come and perform tricks to satisfy cynics.

So what are you basing your calculation on that makes it similar to science?

Doing the complete set of tests for anything is simply impossible, because it's infinite.

Yes, that's the problem of induction that you can't tell from underdetermination.

So whenever we assert a scientific conclusion -- and even when we decide to dignify that phenomenon with the term "scientific law," we're still speaking only probabilistically. We don't know with absolute certainty that such a "law" can never be contravened; we only know that, so far as we know, it never has...and so we say, "It probably never will, and I can safely call it a 'law.'"

We safely call laws that even if they are contravened - Newton's law of universal gravitation, for example. The 'laws' of science we use are man made, and in almost every case there are different laws that explain and predict equally well - that is what makes them underdetermined. As I understand you, the reason we can invent any number of laws that describe some behaviour we are interested in, is that behind it all is a supreme being who created a set of laws that govern the behaviour we are describing. That is certainly one possibility, but it is not one that you can test - it is therefore unfalsifiable; hence very different to any piece of science we call a law.

That's not unreasonable. It's good science. And a faith or hope premised on good evidence is likewise eminently rational...and unavoidable, since we live in an empirical world, among empirical phenomena, and are ourselves finite, limited creatures. Upon what then can we operate but faith and hope? There is nothing else, for us.

You mean calculation and belief, in my debased language. I shan't quibble with that.

It gets nasty when you accuse people who don't share your conclusions of being cynical, which itself is cynical.

You'll have to show me where you think I did that. To my memory, I have only ever called something "cynical" when it was manifestly a case of being cynical rather than thoughtful.

But I'm sure you wouldn't allege that if you didn't think it was true, so feel free to supply the case and context.

I mean this kind of thing:

People choose themselves over God. And their various "gods" offer them something they're afraid the real God will take away...like cultural solidarity, pride, the opportunity to indulge, the freedom to do as they please, their resources...it can be a lot of things. It's easier to stay with the "gods" they have self-chosen, or which they are rewarded by their culture for hanging onto: especially when their chosen "god" is themselves. So they just refuse to investigate further. They're happy with what they've got.

Perhaps you don't call that cynical. I do; misanthropic too. Either way - not nice.

[Immanuel Can]

"...but only in the moral domain."

Get it? Only when empathy is given rule over common sense, and then allowed to dictated "the moral"...which it too often is.

Have your empathy. Feel anything you want to feel. But don't turn it into the idiot dictator of your judgment. That's the thesis Bloom is promoting.

Bloom did not denounce empathy as a whole...

There it is. You've admitted my point.

Empathy is a lousy leader of moral decision-making, but not a bad quality to have.

[Immanuel Can]

Right. So the "regular faith, the kind needed in ordinary relationships" is not enough to sustain your belief in God; the difference, it seems to me, being the extra dollop of hope included in every 'probabilistic calculation' you perform. You hope the Bible is the inspired word of God, unlike the thousands of beliefs and religions you insist are human creations. I won't labour the point, but you hope the various arguments presented in favour of God are sound, and you hope your feeling of a relationship with God is based on some interaction between you and him.

Well, again, there's a debased version of "hope," just as there is a debased interpretation of "faith." In both cases, the debased version assumes that there's no evidence or warrant for either -- that one has "hope" in things that are improbable, and "faith" in things that are unrealistic. But neither word, in a full-blooded way implies either.

No, I am not assuming there is no evidence for faith or hope in your God, nor any other for that matter. If your hypothesis is that a supreme being created the world, then the fact that there is a world is evidence that supports your hypothesis.

Like all evidence, the evidence can be recognized as evidence, or dismissed as irrelevant. That's as true, whether we're talking about a hair or fibre at a crime scene, or an entire universe.

So recognizing evidence is always an act of faith and hope. But not groundless, evidenceless, faith or hope. That's all I was saying.

Just as "faith" is a probability calculation premised on estimating the evidence for the truth of something to be strong, hope is simply belief that what God has said He will do. It's a vote of confidence in the character of the One whom one has come to know.

So in your language faith is calculation and hope a belief. Perhaps that is what they mean "in a full-blooded way", but I doubt I'm the only one here so debased to understand both as some variation of wishful thinking.

I'm sorry...l didn't mean "debased" to be an adjective modifying the concept "people," far less "Will B." I used it as an adjective modifying the term"conception." A single person can simultaneously have a "full-blooded" conception of one thing and a "debased" view of another, especially if he has been misled or mistaken about the second in some way. That's not a personal insult. It's a note on the kind of conceptions people can hold.

But as you point out, you are far from being the only person who believes that faith and hope are about wishful thinking. Popular discourse, coming as it always does from the secular world, assumes that very thing. And it's convenient for them, because it means they need think no harder about either concept -- they can simply bundle them together and dismiss them as religious frippery.

However, the point I have been making is that faith and hope are actually intrinsic to human existence, at all times; and that science itself is a matter of both faith and hope. That secular talk fails to realize this is unfortunate; but it's not a situation that needs to be perpetuated by more thoughtful types like ourselves...hopefully.

Nonetheless, this:

The empirical evidence is available to theists and atheists alike and different interpretations are available. The difference is that you hope it is true.

which you describe as

...not a "difference." It's a similarity.

might be clearer to you if I put it like this: The empirical evidence for God is available to theists and atheists alike and different interpretations are available. The difference is that you wish it is true.[/quote]
Secular thought uses "hope" and "wish" as synonyms, it's true. But Christian hope isn't just a wish. It's a convinced investment of self. It's a rational decision to prefer the testimony of God over the verbal gestures of the cynics, based on one's evidence and experience of God.

The scientist ventures his hypotheses on faith.

Or in less than full blooded English: calculation.

Now you're closer to what faith actually is. It's a calculation. It's an estimate that one thing is far more likely to be the case than another.

Even when he's run a hundred tests, he knows he has never run the complete set of possible tests. If he's run 5, he knows he didn't run the 6th: and what if the anomaly appeared in the 6th? He's not absolutely sure it wouldn't. But it looks to him as if that's improbable, if he's run 5 really good tests, so he invests his hope and faith in the integrity of his hypothesis...and often, more evidence follows.

But here's the thing: if he had run 100 or a 1,000 tests, he still would know he hadn't run 101 or 1,001.

The difference is you can't perform even one test on God,

One cannot demand tests. But God has provided many evidences.

The key thing is where the initiative is coming from. God does not dance to cynic's tunes; but in his graciousness, he provides many evidences of His existence, His purposes, His intentions and His will...IF the observer will accept them as evidence.

But as I said earlier, nothing is evidence to somebody if he/she decides to refuse it as evidence. So we have to choose whether or not we will include the data He has so abundantly supplied as any part of our consideration, or set our minds to the effect that no such evidence can count, and refuse to see it.

Doing the complete set of tests for anything is simply impossible, because it's infinite.

Yes, that's the problem of induction that you can't tell from underdetermination.

So whenever we assert a scientific conclusion -- and even when we decide to dignify that phenomenon with the term "scientific law," we're still speaking only probabilistically. We don't know with absolute certainty that such a "law" can never be contravened; we only know that, so far as we know, it never has...and so we say, "It probably never will, and I can safely call it a 'law.'"

We safely call laws that even if they are contravened - Newton's law of universal gravitation, for example.

Yes, but if that happens we also immediately revise them and look for new "laws" to incorporate the phenomena that show our old "law" inadequate.

The 'laws' of science we use are man made,

Not "man-made," but rather "discovered by man." What we call "scientific laws" is nothing but the organizing in our human minds of regularities that we find in nature. When such regularities are regular enough, we dub them "laws." But we didn't actually make them; we found them. The regularities pre-existed our discovery.

As I understand you, the reason we can invent any number of laws that describe some behaviour we are interested in, is that behind it all is a supreme being who created a set of laws that govern the behaviour we are describing. That is certainly one possibility, but it is not one that you can test - it is therefore unfalsifiable; hence very different to any piece of science we call a law.

It's interesting you take recourse to "unfalsifiablity." A belief would only be "unfalsifiable" if there were no evidence or tests. In the case of God, the very presence of such evidence and tests refutes the allegation of "unfalsifiability." And were there no such evidences, in fact, Theism would be falsified at least to this extent -- that if it were even possible God existed, it would no longer matter. For having no impact on the world at all, His existence would be functionally irrelevant to us, and it would make no difference whether or not we believed in the existence of God.

This is something problematic in Deism. Deism holds that God has created the Earth, but then gone absent. There is no intervention, no divine speaking, no further engagement of the deity with the material world, it holds. And other than the evidence of the existence of Creation itself, the Deist would have no evidence to his hypothesis at all. But it is not so with Christianity. For Christianity holds that God is not only evidenced abundantly in Creation, but also in divine self-revelation, in divine interventions, in answers to prayer, in the nature and consciousness of human beings, in the functioning of reason,m in the existence of morality, existentially in our experience, and pre-eminently, in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

That's not unreasonable. It's good science. And a faith or hope premised on good evidence is likewise eminently rational...and unavoidable, since we live in an empirical world, among empirical phenomena, and are ourselves finite, limited creatures. Upon what then can we operate but faith and hope? There is nothing else, for us.

You mean calculation and belief, in my debased language. I shan't quibble with that.

Choose your synonyms; and I shall not quibble either.

It gets nasty when you accuse people who don't share your conclusions of being cynical, which itself is cynical.

You'll have to show me where you think I did that. To my memory, I have only ever called something "cynical" when it was manifestly a case of being cynical rather than thoughtful.

But I'm sure you wouldn't allege that if you didn't think it was true, so feel free to supply the case and context.

I mean this kind of thing:

People choose themselves over God. And their various "gods" offer them something they're afraid the real God will take away...like cultural solidarity, pride, the opportunity to indulge, the freedom to do as they please, their resources...it can be a lot of things. It's easier to stay with the "gods" they have self-chosen, or which they are rewarded by their culture for hanging onto: especially when their chosen "god" is themselves. So they just refuse to investigate further. They're happy with what they've got.

Perhaps you don't call that cynical. I do; misanthropic too. Either way - not nice.

I would characterize it as rightly descriptive of the facts, actually. Not all facts are pretty. For something to be genuinely "cynical," it ought to be unduly negative, and perhaps so negative as to be unfair or untrue -- but what I have described is observable. Cases are not few and far-between.

Let's take Marxism. It's goal is collective solidarity of the workers, or nowadays, the "oppressed," which has been substituted for them. Marx said that the critique of religion was "the first critique" he needed to mount (his words). And why? Because his program could never go forward until people were stripped of hope in God. Marx's rationale, then was not that he had some clever disproof of the existence of God, but that he WANTED not to believe in God, and NEEDED others to disbelieve in God, because without that, his chosen program could not go forward.

His hatred of God was pragmatic and programmatic, not rational and evidentiary. And as Marx's biographers report, there was no god -- or person, for that matter -- that Marx loved so much as he loved himself. He drained his own family of its resources, and then disowned his own son. Even Engels, who fueled his mania so diligently, was just a cow for Marx to milk. (These historical facts are found in pratically every scholarly biography of Marx: I'm not making this stuff up.)

So Marx's god was...Marx.

Was Marx further interested in the God question, once he had settled on his program? We have no evidence he spent any more thought on the question except to pour vituperation upon "religion" as "the opium of the masses." Did he ever take it seriously again? We have no evidence he did.

Other examples are not hard to produce. So, "cynical"? No. But sad? Yes.

[Veritas Aequitas]

"...but only in the moral domain."

Get it? Only when empathy is given rule over common sense, and then allowed to dictated "the moral"...which it too often is.

Have your empathy. Feel anything you want to feel. But don't turn it into the idiot dictator of your judgment. That's the thesis Bloom is promoting.

Bloom did not denounce empathy as a whole...

There it is. You've admitted my point.

Empathy is a lousy leader of moral decision-making, but not a bad quality to have.

Strawman; you're a deceiver.. Hey! that is a sin you have to face on judgment day.

Note my full sentence.
"Bloom did not denounce empathy as a whole and think it is good for sex and other non-moral areas."

Bloom insisted humans are better off without empathy [i.e. ZERO] in morality and moral decisions.

[Immanuel Can]

...you're a deceiver.. Bloom insisted humans are better off without empathy [i.e. ZERO] in morality and moral decisions.

You're not a very good reader.

Here's his thesis, as he states it:

"The idea I'll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling --whatever one chooses to call this--is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we're better off without it." (4)

So Bloom is not against elements that people ordinarily associate with empathy, like kindness and compassion. He's against the uses of so-called "empathy," by which people delude themselves that when they feel something it's the same as what others are feeling. This is the classic case of the person who says to you, "I know exactly how you feel..." and you know darn well they don't know anything of the kind. Bloom's against that kind of sentimental self-projection onto others, not against kindness or mercy or compassion or humanity or charity or whatever.

Bloom's especially against this kind of deluded empathy when people use it to guide "a moral standpoint." There, it's particularly misguided and dangerous, as his book goes on to show. So he's saying it's no good for guiding ethics and morals: and if people are determined to use it for that, we'd be better off without that sentimental and deluded faculty altogether, and just to stick with ordinary kindness, mercy, charity, humanity, and so forth. And he's right.

Thus, your earlier allegations that if we get rid of empathy we will become less compassionate and less moral and less kind, and just kill each other more often, simply miss his point completely. He's not talking about every kind of virtuous feeling as being the same as "empathy." He's using the term precisely, to mean that mistake where we confuse our own feelings with other people's.

[Veritas Aequitas]

...you're a deceiver.. Bloom insisted humans are better off without empathy [i.e. ZERO] in morality and moral decisions.

You're not a very good reader.

Here's his thesis, as he states it:

"The idea I'll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling --whatever one chooses to call this--is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we're better off without it." (4)

So Bloom is not against elements that people ordinarily associate with empathy, like kindness and compassion. He's against the uses of so-called "empathy," by which people delude themselves that when they feel something it's the same as what others are feeling. This is the classic case of the person who says to you, "I know exactly how you feel..." and you know darn well they don't know anything of the kind. Bloom's against that kind of sentimental self-projection onto others, not against kindness or mercy or compassion or humanity or charity or whatever.

Bloom's especially against this kind of deluded empathy when people use it to guide "a moral standpoint." There, it's particularly misguided and dangerous, as his book goes on to show. So he's saying it's no good for guiding ethics and morals: and if people are determined to use it for that, we'd be better off without that sentimental and deluded faculty altogether, and just to stick with ordinary kindness, mercy, charity, humanity, and so forth. And he's right.

Thus, your earlier allegations that if we get rid of empathy we will become less compassionate and less moral and less kind, and just kill each other more often, simply miss his point completely. He's not talking about every kind of virtuous feeling as being the same as "empathy." He's using the term precisely, to mean that mistake where we confuse our own feelings with other people's.

Nah, you are the one who is not reading the book properly if you ever read it.

IC:So Bloom is not against elements that people ordinarily associate with empathy, like kindness and compassion.

Your above is a strawman and off tangent to Bloom's view.
To Bloom, empathy has no direct association with kindness and compassion because they are activated in different neural pathways.

• I’ll argue that what really matters for kindness in our everyday interactions is not Empathy but capacities such as self-control and intelligence and a more diffuse compassion.
  Chapter 1

• This distinction between Empathy and compassion is critical for the argument I’ve been making throughout this book. Chapter 4
  
  There is a neural difference: Empathy training led to increased activation in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (both of which we discussed in relation to the neuroscience-of-Empathy studies in an earlier chapter).
  Compassion training led to activation in other parts of the brain, such as the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum.
  Chapter 4

Bloom focus is on compassion and empathy has no significance for his thesis re morality. Thus for Bloom, it is better off if we can do away with empathy for the purpose of morality.

[Immanuel Can]

Your above is a strawman and off tangent to Bloom's view.

It's his thesis, quoted from his book, page 4, in his own words. It literally cannot be a "strawman." Bloom's not made of "straw."

And you don't know what "strawman fallacy" is, apparently. But that's not to the present point.

Thus for Bloom, it is better off if we can do away with empathy for the purpose of morality.

"For purposes of morality." Yes. Bloom's only worried about when we let the phony feeling we know what others are feeling (i.e. empathy) guide moral decision making. In other contexts, he's not worried about it. And he's right to point out that it's wrong-headed to let that happen.

If empathy is treacherous and inauthentic, as Bloom shows it so often is, then empathy CANNOT be the captain we use to steer the ship of moral decision making. It's neither reliable nor accurate when it comes to showing us what is genuinely moral in a given situation.

The original point we were arguing, several pages ago now, is whether empathy can be what morality is about. Now, it's apparent what Bloom is saying: no, empathy is not that. It's not the steering virtue of morality. We don't get off the moral hook if we just claim, "Well, I was being empathetic."

That's it. Empathy's not a moral faculty. Nor is it a reliable or truthful one. It's just an emotional experience, had by the emoter but not shared by the person he thinks he's being "empathetic" with.

[Harbal]

Empathy is just one element that goes into forming a moral judgement, and the fact that it can be unreliable is neither here nor there, as morality is just a facet of human behaviour that enables us to function socially, not a system for determining ultimate truth. That is only my opinion, and I have arrived at it through my own experience. Even so, my view of what morality is seems to conform to most dictionary definitions:

a particular system of values and principles of conduct.

the belief that some behaviour is right and acceptable and that other behaviour is wrong

the moral beliefs and practices of a culture, community, or religion or a code or system of moral rules, principles, or values.

Morality is a code of behavior usually based on religious tenets, which often inform our ethical decisions.

the urge or predisposition to judge human actions as either right or wrong in terms of their consequences for other human beings.

If God did exist, and he decreed what is right and wrong, and we were all expected to abide by his word, I suggest that would be something other than morality.

[Immanuel Can]

Empathy is just one element that goes into forming a moral judgement, and the fact that it can be unreliable is neither here nor there, as morality is just a facet of human behaviour that enables us to function socially, not a system for determining ultimate truth. That is only my opinion, and I have arrived at it through my own experience. Even so, my view of what morality is seems to conform to most dictionary definitions:

a particular system of values and principles of conduct.

the belief that some behaviour is right and acceptable and that other behaviour is wrong

the moral beliefs and practices of a culture, community, or religion or a code or system of moral rules, principles, or values.

Morality is a code of behavior usually based on religious tenets, which often inform our ethical decisions.

the urge or predisposition to judge human actions as either right or wrong in terms of their consequences for other human beings.

If God did exist, and he decreed what is right and wrong, and we were all expected to abide by his word, I suggest that would be something other than morality.

Your definitions don't agree, H.

Take a look.

• The first one just says morality is "a system," without saying what creates or authorizes the system at all.

• The second says it's just a "belief," and doesn't ask whether it's a true or false "belief" (but would anybody say that morality is a "false belief system"? ).

• The third says that morality is what a "culture, community or religion" invents to be a "code, etc.", so it tries to back morality with the authority of the collective.

• The next one says that so long as there are "religious tenets" that "inform ethical decisions," then that's a moral tenet. But what about "community," or "belief" or personal "predispositions to judge"? That seems to give "religions" an awful lot of moral authority, without concern for the rightness or wrongness of the religion itself, or for those who, like yourself, claim to have no "religion."

• The last one turns it into a verb, an action word equivalent to "to judge," or even just the "predisposition" of one person to do so -- no mention of culture, community, system, or code.

So which of the above definitions, in your view, gets it right? Or do any of them? Because they're all fundamentally at odds with each other. If morality is just a "predispositon to judge," for example, then it's personal and individual; but if it's what a "culture, community or religion" invents as a "code," then it's no longer merely an individual matter, but requires the consensus of the community, culture or religion. Or if a morality is a "set of practices," then in what sense is it merely a "belief" or a "code"?

[Skepdick]

Morality as I understand it is subject to change, which is what seems to be your main criticism, but I see as a good thing, because it means it can change for the better.

If you can rank any two moral systems as "better" or "worse" then you can rank them all to assert the "best" and "worst" morality.

So morality is objective.

[Harbal]

Empathy is just one element that goes into forming a moral judgement, and the fact that it can be unreliable is neither here nor there, as morality is just a facet of human behaviour that enables us to function socially, not a system for determining ultimate truth. That is only my opinion, and I have arrived at it through my own experience. Even so, my view of what morality is seems to conform to most dictionary definitions:

a particular system of values and principles of conduct.

the belief that some behaviour is right and acceptable and that other behaviour is wrong

the moral beliefs and practices of a culture, community, or religion or a code or system of moral rules, principles, or values.

Morality is a code of behavior usually based on religious tenets, which often inform our ethical decisions.

the urge or predisposition to judge human actions as either right or wrong in terms of their consequences for other human beings.

If God did exist, and he decreed what is right and wrong, and we were all expected to abide by his word, I suggest that would be something other than morality.

Your definitions don't agree, H.

Take a look.

• The first one just says morality is "a system," without saying what creates or authorizes the system at all.

• The second says it's just a "belief," and doesn't ask whether it's a true or false "belief" (but would anybody say that morality is a "false belief system"? ).

• The third says that morality is what a "culture, community or religion" invents to be a "code, etc.", so it tries to back morality with the authority of the collective.

• The next one says that so long as there are "religious tenets" that "inform ethical decisions," then that's a moral tenet. But what about "community," or "belief" or personal "predispositions to judge"? That seems to give "religions" an awful lot of moral authority, without concern for the rightness or wrongness of the religion itself, or for those who, like yourself, claim to have no "religion."

• The last one turns it into a verb, an action word equivalent to "to judge," or even just the "predisposition" of one person to do so -- no mention of culture, community, system, or code.

So which of the above definitions, in your view, gets it right? Or do any of them? Because they're all fundamentally at odds with each other. If morality is just a "predispositon to judge," for example, then it's personal and individual; but if it's what a "culture, community or religion" invents as a "code," then it's no longer merely an individual matter, but requires the consensus of the community, culture or religion. Or if a morality is a "set of practices," then in what sense is it merely a "belief" or a "code"?

I am only describing what morality is in my opinion, and what it means to me. Our discussion on the subject has convinced me that we each must be left to ourselves to determine what morality is, because there seems to be no prospect of agreement between the differing views.