Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

No living creature functions by magic,

Nobody thinks that...well, except maybe animists of some sort. Certainly not me.

This probably sounds dim of me, but I can't work out exactly what you are asking.

I'm just asking whether or not you think certain actions deserve our moral admiration, or whether you think we all hand out admiration irrationally, to things that we don't have any good reason to admire.

We usually admire things because we like them, which is a reason, although, I'm sure, not a good enough one for you. What is deserved is a harder question. I sometimes admire something I've cooked, but it very seldom deserves it.

Yeah, but you don't give it moral admiration: you don't admire it for it's moral goodness. That's quite different. No, the question is whether some particularly morally-meritorious action (such as giving to charity, or whatever turns your crank) deserves the admiration you give it, or only gets it because it won the lottery and you happen to admire it for no particular reason.

Subjective feelings are unavoidable in matters of morality.

That's true, but not telling of anything. Just because somebody "has a feeling" doesn't tell us a thing about the rightness or wrongness of that feeling.

It tells the person who is experiencing the feeling,

It might give them a feeling of self-satisfaction; but having a feeling of self-satisfaction is not the same thing as knowing that what you're doing is actually right.

I have very little patience with religion.

And yet, here we are...talking about it at length.

And you must have noticed my patience wearing thin from time to time during the course of it.

And yet, here we still are.

[Harbal]

It tells the person who is experiencing the feeling,

It might give them a feeling of self-satisfaction; but having a feeling of self-satisfaction is not the same thing as knowing that what you're doing is actually right.

It is knowing that what they are doing is right, to them. You believe in objective rights and wrongs, whereas I don't, so you are never going to convince me of the truth of any argument that depends on those things, just as I'm never going to convince you of any that doesn't.

And you must have noticed my patience wearing thin from time to time during the course of it.

And yet, here we still are.

Well it has occurred to me that I ought to be more tolerant, so what better practice than this?

Btw, thanks for not quoting my account of why morality has nothing to do with rationality. I was worrying that it might sound a bit silly, but its absence in your reply indicates that it must have made some sense.

[Immanuel Can]

It tells the person who is experiencing the feeling,

It might give them a feeling of self-satisfaction; but having a feeling of self-satisfaction is not the same thing as knowing that what you're doing is actually right.

It is knowing that what they are doing is right, to them.

Solipsism. Something is "right" if I think it is, and who cares what anybody else thinks?

And you must have noticed my patience wearing thin from time to time during the course of it.

And yet, here we still are.

Well it has occurred to me that I ought to be more tolerant, so what better practice than this?

I'm glad to be helpful...I think...

[Dontaskme]

I'm glad to be helpful...I think...

You rate yourself way too highly. Supposing God did exist for real, he certainly would not depend on your belief, nor give a toss what you think.

[Dontaskme]

Solipsism. Something is "right" if I think it is, and who cares what anybody else thinks?

No thinker ever thought. A thought is a thinker.

Where do thoughts come from? They don’t come from anywhere but here now, nowhere.

You never think, you is a thought. And a thought is you.

There is no division between a thought thought except the presence of empty space. Nothing there or here to divide.

[Dontaskme]

There’s no object without space and there’s no space without object.

The subject is the space in which the object via thought is known by association.

It is not the object that knows for the object is already known therefore the known can know nothing.

A fact is a fiction based on interpretation known as and through the senses.

When awareness ( empty space) subject…knows sensation….consciousness is born, the objective world, inseparable from the awareness aware of it. Subject and Object are ONE not two.

Knowledge or the claim to know reality is irrational, it’s an oxymoronic argument.

The only thing there is is everything…there’s only everything doing doing, nothing else.

When one thing is known everything is known because there’s only everything which is One.

[Will Bouwman]

I'm sorry...I'm always amused when people who've never met me tell me they know what my history and motives are.

It is, as with so many hypotheses, underdetermined. And while I have never met you in person, the 21128 posts you have created in a little over 10 years, ((4.19% of all posts / 5.65 posts per day), says your profile) are enough to form an opinion.

Only about what I choose to say on this forum. Nothing you've said so far makes me think you know anything about my biography or my spiritual search, and everything you suggested so far about that would strongly imply, given what my journey had actually been, that you were wildly guessing and missing the truth on that.

Well, unless none of those 21000+ posts represent the real you, there is a fair bit of information to extrapolate from. As I was saying to Gus, what opinion are we to form of a man who says things like these:

Refusal to believe God is refusal to believe the only One who can save a person from themselves, from a meaningless existence, from death, and from inheriting exactly whatever it is they're determined to sow. So one has been self-poisoned, and refused the antitode. The outcome is predictable and inevitable.

But human beings are only contingent, temporal, perishing beings themselves. They can't "bestow" meaning on an inherently meaningless universe. They can only delude themselves, if they prefer to, for a time, and then die without any objective meaning being involved at all.

But it makes a huge difference whether we think our suffering is possibly the wise overruling or even dispensation of a loving God, or merely the quirks of an indifferent fate, meaningless and tragic as that would be.

..."meaningless" life is the worst of all. Some people do think that's what it is, of course.

But life is not meaningless. That's what God is telling us. It has meaning, and it has purpose, and it has an outcome, too. This is not the end of the story.

... there's nothing worse than a meaningless life...

That says more about you than you think it does.

There are many possible motives for being an Atheist...just as there are for being religious.

I don't think many people are the ideologically motivated "Atheist" you describe. Frankly if

The ideology comes with your choice of premise.

is "ambiguous, you are going to struggle with this: far from having a reason to not believe in God, many people, like me, have made a judgement based on their own research that the evidence for a God is circumstantial. Certainly it isn't strong enough that we should use God as a weapon to impose our political will. The only evidence for that are religious texts, all of which have the hallmark of human authorship. I wrote a bit about that too, as it happens: https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Ph ... d_Branches

The only real question is, "Is there a good motive for being either." And I think there is...for at least one of those alternatives.

Well now, that use of "good" really is ambiguous. What can it possibly mean?

[Will Bouwman]

Pretty certain Will would prefer a pitcher of Ale.



woops I meant 'picture of Ale'..

Nah mate, you were right the first time. Had a couple in my alma mater last night:

[attofishpi]

Nah mate, you were right the first time. Had a couple in my alma mater last night:

Now that's my bruva!

..respect!

[Harbal]

It might give them a feeling of self-satisfaction; but having a feeling of self-satisfaction is not the same thing as knowing that what you're doing is actually right.

It is knowing that what they are doing is right, to them.

Solipsism. Something is "right" if I think it is, and who cares what anybody else thinks?

I don't think there are many solipsists about, and what would be the point of even thinking about morality for a solipsist?

Even among people of the same culture, who broadly share the same moral outlook, there are bound to be differences of opinion. Take an example like abortion, where there are two conflicting moral issues; the killing of a healthy human foetus, and the freedom of choice of the woman carrying it. You would say that killing the foetus is the greater wrong, and I would say that forcing a woman to go through a full term of pregnancy and bear a child against her will is is the greater. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't care what you or anyone else thinks, and I may well even have some sympathy with your view, but we would both be in the same position in that respect; you may or may not care what I think. What I wouldn't care about would be your insistence that you were expressing an objective moral truth when saying that abortion is wrong. I would regard our disagreement as a difference of personal opinion, regardless of what you might say about God and objective moral law. I don't believe there is such a thing as objective wright and wrong; things can only be right or wrong in relation to a given perspective.

[Dontaskme]

Immanuel Can wrote:
... there's nothing worse than a meaningless life...

That says more about you than you think it does.

Very true, people first need to have known their own direct experience of what they make claim to knowing.

One cannot know their own claim to know something from their own direct experience will be true for another though, as that would be projection.
The external world of apparent otherness is our mirror reflecting back at us what we have first claimed to know. Projection is the inside appearing on the outside of perception. The knowledge of the external world is a complete mirror image reflection of what is on the inside of the mind that projects it. Without the mind as our projection screen, nothing is known.

Our perception of reality is always subjective, projected to be objectively real and true, only on reflection, and it's always one unitary action.

Perception is subjective: Subjective perception is the way that we interpret and make sense of sensory information from the world around us based on our own experiences, beliefs, emotions, and biases. It is a personal perspective that can vary from person to person.

When there is a claim to be a person, that person can only know something on their own personal human level, from their own personal subjective point of view, and never from an impersonal point of view. Nothing but a person can have a point of view. An impersonal claimer of knowledge, or points of view existing beyond the personal cannot exist to be known.


________

I get by with a little help from my friends. Someone else said the following...

''Our perception of reality can be substantially different from objective reality. Perception occurs entirely in the mind, and mental gymnastics can turn any belief into reality. Reality exists completely outside of the mind and can’t be easily manipulated. However, our brains unconsciously bend our perception of reality to meet our desires or expectations, and they fill in gaps using our past experiences, which can bias us. Many philosophers believe objective reality exists, if “objective” means “existing as it is independently of any perception of it''

________

Conclusion: All we can know is our own self bias from our own unique perception as and through our own direct experience, that's the only truth available to us people, those who claim to be a person. And a person once known can never be impersonal. While reality arises as both the personal and the impersonal. They are both the same reality, albeit different.

[Immanuel Can]

It is, as with so many hypotheses, underdetermined. And while I have never met you in person, the 21128 posts you have created in a little over 10 years, ((4.19% of all posts / 5.65 posts per day), says your profile) are enough to form an opinion.

Only about what I choose to say on this forum. Nothing you've said so far makes me think you know anything about my biography or my spiritual search, and everything you suggested so far about that would strongly imply, given what my journey had actually been, that you were wildly guessing and missing the truth on that.

Well, unless none of those 21000+ posts represent the real you, there is a fair bit of information to extrapolate from.

And you want me to suppose you've read all those, too?

As I was saying to Gus, what opinion are we to form of a man who says things like these:

I would hope it was a good opinion: and I certainly stand behind what I've said. But you might take a great deal more than that from my previous comments, too. I suppose it would depend on what you, yourself were determined to take from them.

One of the problems is that of context: a remark needs to be understood in the flow of the discussion in which it took place. Another is that of tone, which is extremely hard to discern in a mere written format, being devoid of things like vocal inflection and body language that we use, in ordinary life, to interpret the disposition of the speakers. A further problem is understanding motive, the question of why a particular person says a particular thing at a particular time...I think the big point is that you're still not in a solid position to judge, either way. I wish you were.

However, if you have a question about anything I've said, I'm happy to explain the justification, intended tone and my motive; and provided you're prepared to believe I'm telling the truth about myself, I'll put your mind to rest. If not...well, there's no cure for that that I can think of.

[Immanuel Can]

It is knowing that what they are doing is right, to them.

Solipsism. Something is "right" if I think it is, and who cares what anybody else thinks?

I don't think there are many solipsists about, and what would be the point of even thinking about morality for a solipsist?

Well, to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they're a "good" person. Lots of people retain the concept of morality for no purpose more sophisticated than that: that it bolsters their self-image to have it.

And you can see that's the case. Because a Materialist-Atheist type has no other way of retaining the concept at all, as any kind of explicable and justifiable concept. So the most natural and rational thing would be for such a person to abandon it completely (as a concept, not necessarily to go all evil), and adopt a completely pragmatic view, namely, doing things that "work" for him solipsistically, and not bothering with whether or not those things come up to conformity with a code (morality) he believes does not even actually exist.

But they don't do that. They continue to want to be called, or think of themselves as "good." That's absurd, rationally speaking. It's as daft as if I wanted you to call me a "unicorn," or preferred to think of myself as one. If the concept is merely subjective and solipsistic, then it has no inherent content at all.

What I wouldn't care about would be your insistence that you were expressing an objective moral truth when saying that abortion is wrong.

That would be true, no doubt. But it would change nothing. For abortion is an objective action. That action either has the status you wish to assign to it, or it has another status. Either it is the killing of a human being, or it is not. And "opinion" makes no dent on that objective status...and, I suggest, not on its moral status either.

We think it's so important that we "agree" with a moral precept. And it is, in one sense: it's important if we are going to be on the right side of the situation. But it has no effect whatsoever on the action in question. It will still be a moral action if it's moral, and an immoral action if it's immoral, regardless of our willingness to agree.

And you'll see this clearly in cases like slavery, which has been both historically and culturally approved throughout human history. But would you say that if my opinion were to become that I like having slaves, that for me, enslaving you therefore becomes moral?

[Harbal]

Solipsism. Something is "right" if I think it is, and who cares what anybody else thinks?

I don't think there are many solipsists about, and what would be the point of even thinking about morality for a solipsist?

Well, to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they're a "good" person. Lots of people retain the concept of morality for no purpose more sophisticated than that: that it bolsters their self-image to have it.

I don't doubt that there are lots of people like that, but I don't think solipsism is the right word to describe their behaviour. And do you imagine there are no religious people like that, even among the ones who share your beliefs about God's moral authority?

And you can see that's the case. Because a Materialist-Atheist type has no other way of retaining the concept at all, as any kind of explicable and justifiable concept.

But he might be able to explain it to himself. The fact that you would not accept any explanation he could conceivably come up with would hardly prove your point that he is unable to justify himself.

So the most natural and rational thing would be for such a person to abandon it completely (as a concept, not necessarily to go all evil), and adopt a completely pragmatic view, namely, doing things that "work" for him solipsistically, and not bothering with whether or not those things come up to conformity with a code (morality) he believes does not even actually exist.

It would only be rational if it suited his purposes, otherwise it would be irrational to do as you suggest. Not only do you seem to think that anyone who does not occupy the same moral position as you is simply wrong, but also that everyone should adhere to your particular system of judging what is or isn't rational.

But they don't do that. They continue to want to be called, or think of themselves as "good." That's absurd, rationally speaking.

But if they actually do some good, even for the wrong reasons, shouldn't we just be pleased about that, and turn a blind eye to their character flaw? Or is the thought of there being people out there doing good merely in order to feel good about themselves simply too unbearable for you?

It's as daft as if I wanted you to call me a "unicorn," or preferred to think of myself as one.

Yes, that would be daft, but although I would think it was a shame, it wouldn't really worry me, or seem like a cause for criticism. But then in your world there is so much more opportunity to be deserving of criticism than there is in mine.

What I wouldn't care about would be your insistence that you were expressing an objective moral truth when saying that abortion is wrong.

That would be true, no doubt. But it would change nothing.

Exactly; I would continue to deny the existence of objective right and wrong, and you would continue to insist otherwise.

For abortion is an objective action. That action either has the status you wish to assign to it, or it has another status. Either it is the killing of a human being, or it is not. And "opinion" makes no dent on that objective status

Yes, it is the killing of a human being, but that act doesn't just fall under one "status". Human beings are killed in various circumstances, and the circumstance determines the status of the act. And then there is the nature of the human being to be taken into account. Does a tiny bundle of human cells that bears no resemblance to a human being have the same status as a fully developed human being?

The act of abortion may well have a status, but then so does the act of prohibiting it. Either it is coercion of an individual or it isn't, and forcing someone to give birth to a child against their wishes would, I'm sure, feel very much like coercion. You don't seem to want to acknowledge the moral implications of that, or should I say God doesn't want to acknowledge them, as we know you are only speaking on his behalf.

We think it's so important that we "agree" with a moral precept. And it is, in one sense: it's important if we are going to be on the right side of the situation. But it has no effect whatsoever on the action in question. It will still be a moral action if it's moral, and an immoral action if it's immoral, regardless of our willingness to agree.

The subtext of that being, of course, that it is important that we agree with your moral precepts if we are to be on the right side of the situation.

And you'll see this clearly in cases like slavery, which has been both historically and culturally approved throughout human history. But would you say that if my opinion were to become that I like having slaves, that for me, enslaving you therefore becomes moral?

You might well consider it morally okay to put me into slavery, although I doubt that my productivity would justify your going to the trouble. I would not think it was morally okay, of course, but my perspective would be totally different to yours, and this is the point; morality is a matter of perspective, not objective truth.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't think there are many solipsists about, and what would be the point of even thinking about morality for a solipsist?

Well, to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they're a "good" person. Lots of people retain the concept of morality for no purpose more sophisticated than that: that it bolsters their self-image to have it.

I don't doubt that there are lots of people like that, but I don't think solipsism is the right word to describe their behaviour. And do you imagine there are no religious people like that, even among the ones who share your beliefs about God's moral authority?

Oh, sure...it's human nature. We're all liable to be egocentric and smug, especially if we're left to our own devices.

But there's an important difference: for while Theists can check themselves against something above themselves that authorizes morally what they may choose to do, and can bow to that authority and humble themselves to it, Atheists cannot. They deny that such a thing can even exist. So "I'm a good person," for the Atheist, cannot mean more than "I approve of myself." And since "myself" is a contingent, corruptible, temporary and flawed being, that's an awfully low moral bar.

And you can see that's the case. Because a Materialist-Atheist type has no other way of retaining the concept at all, as any kind of explicable and justifiable concept.

But he might be able to explain it to himself.

Self-authorization is a very low bar...in fact, according to Atheism, there isn't even a bar. The standard can be as low as one will be satisfied with oneself.

But of course, moral language is shared language. When we say to somebody, "I think I'm a good person," what we are trying to say is, "and I think you should think so, too." We're trying to say that a person who thought we were not good would be using a defective standard, or ignorant of the facts, or in some way objectively wrong about us. So it seems that need to be justified, not just in our own eyes, and not even in the eyes of a particular group of people, but objectively justified, is very strong in us. Interesting.

So the most natural and rational thing would be for such a person to abandon it completely (as a concept, not necessarily to go all evil), and adopt a completely pragmatic view, namely, doing things that "work" for him solipsistically, and not bothering with whether or not those things come up to conformity with a code (morality) he believes does not even actually exist.

It would only be rational if it suited his purposes, otherwise it would be irrational to do as you suggest. Not only do you seem to think that anyone who does not occupy the same moral position as you is simply wrong, but also that everyone should adhere to your particular system of judging what is or isn't rational.

Rationality isn't actually a matter of opinion. One is rational when one's basic beliefs rationalize with each other...that is, they make sense with each other and do not introduce logical-absurdities and self-contradictions into the whole.

But they don't do that. They continue to want to be called, or think of themselves as "good." That's absurd, rationally speaking.

But if they actually do some good,...

You forget: there's no such thing as "good."

...in your world there is so much more opportunity to be deserving of criticism than there is in mine.

There it is!

You're exactly right. The attraction of moral skepticism is that it makes moral condemnation impossible, or at least totally irrational and indefensible. The downside, though, is that it also makes moral approval just as absurd.

So yes, there is both more opportunity for both praise and blame in the Theistic view: after all, since there's none at all in the Atheist view, how could there not be more in any alternative?

What I wouldn't care about would be your insistence that you were expressing an objective moral truth when saying that abortion is wrong.

That would be true, no doubt. But it would change nothing.

Exactly; I would continue to deny the existence of objective right and wrong, and you would continue to insist otherwise.

I obviously don't mean it would change our own personal opinions: I mean it wouldn't change the truth.

For abortion is an objective action. That action either has the status you wish to assign to it, or it has another status. Either it is the killing of a human being, or it is not. And "opinion" makes no dent on that objective status

Yes, it is the killing of a human being,

Wow. That's quite an admission. So you're fine with the killing of an innocent human being for the mere convenience of another?

Human beings are killed in various circumstances, and the circumstance determines the status of the act.

Indeed they are. But abortion is the deliberate creating and then murdering of one such human being. You really can't get a better definition of "premeditated" when you have nine months to make the decision. And since you've already admitted you know that's a "human being..."

The act of abortion may well have a status, but then so does the act of prohibiting it.

Sure. It has status as saving a human being. You've just said so.

We think it's so important that we "agree" with a moral precept. And it is, in one sense: it's important if we are going to be on the right side of the situation. But it has no effect whatsoever on the action in question. It will still be a moral action if it's moral, and an immoral action if it's immoral, regardless of our willingness to agree.

The subtext of that being, of course, that it is important that we agree with your moral precepts if we are to be on the right side of the situation.

It's not a "subtext." It's the text...assuming I'm right about what an abortion is.

And you'll see this clearly in cases like slavery, which has been both historically and culturally approved throughout human history. But would you say that if my opinion were to become that I like having slaves, that for me, enslaving you therefore becomes moral?

You might well consider it morally okay to put me into slavery, although I doubt that my productivity would justify your going to the trouble. I would not think it was morally okay, of course, but my perspective would be totally different to yours, and this is the point; morality is a matter of perspective, not objective truth.

Then my enslaving of you is perfectly moral. If I feel it's just, then it's just. And we have absolutely no grounds for even lamenting, let alone resisting or banning slavery.