Is morality objective or subjective?

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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promethean75
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by promethean75 »

"Do you sense that I am vulnerable, prom?"

No, but at the same time, if i observe two fellows who continue to debate even tho each one isn't budging, i feel like one or the other may be on the brink of changin his mind.

I just don't wanna lose ya, Harb. I've seen what christian philosophers are capable of and I'm terrified of seeing it happen again.
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Harbal
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Harbal »

promethean75 wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:48 pm "Do you sense that I am vulnerable, prom?"

No, but at the same time, if i observe two fellows who continue to debate even tho each one isn't budging, i feel like one or the other may be on the brink of changin his mind.

I just don't wanna lose ya, Harb. I've seen what christian philosophers are capable of and I'm terrified of seeing it happen again.
Worry not, prom. Whatever it is about people that makes them susceptible to religious beliefs, it is totally absent in me. I think I might have a gene missing, or something. 🙂
promethean75
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by promethean75 »

The ol' vesicular monoamine transporter 2 gene. That one's a real doosy.
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Sculptor
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Sculptor »

Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:58 pm
promethean75 wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:48 pm "Do you sense that I am vulnerable, prom?"

No, but at the same time, if i observe two fellows who continue to debate even tho each one isn't budging, i feel like one or the other may be on the brink of changin his mind.

I just don't wanna lose ya, Harb. I've seen what christian philosophers are capable of and I'm terrified of seeing it happen again.
Worry not, prom. Whatever it is about people that makes them susceptible to religious beliefs, it is totally absent in me. I think I might have a gene missing, or something. 🙂
Many even fully accept the problems of religion then say "what shall we replace it with?"
"EH?", says I, "nuffink!!"

- obviously
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Harbal
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Harbal »

Sculptor wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:01 pm
Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:58 pm
promethean75 wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:48 pm "Do you sense that I am vulnerable, prom?"

No, but at the same time, if i observe two fellows who continue to debate even tho each one isn't budging, i feel like one or the other may be on the brink of changin his mind.

I just don't wanna lose ya, Harb. I've seen what christian philosophers are capable of and I'm terrified of seeing it happen again.
Worry not, prom. Whatever it is about people that makes them susceptible to religious beliefs, it is totally absent in me. I think I might have a gene missing, or something. 🙂
Many even fully accept the problems of religion then say "what shall we replace it with?"
"EH?", says I, "nuffink!!"

- obviously
Some people seem to think that viewing existence as pointless must come with some sort of feeling of desolation, but I find quite the opposite. I think it's wonderful.
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Sculptor
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Sculptor »

Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:07 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:01 pm
Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:58 pm

Worry not, prom. Whatever it is about people that makes them susceptible to religious beliefs, it is totally absent in me. I think I might have a gene missing, or something. 🙂
Many even fully accept the problems of religion then say "what shall we replace it with?"
"EH?", says I, "nuffink!!"

- obviously
Some people seem to think that viewing existence as pointless must come with some sort of feeling of desolation, but I find quite the opposite. I think it's wonderful.
Liberating!!!
Knowing that every one you know is going to be dead in a 100 years, and basically everything you have done won't matter means that you can basically live more freely without fake guilt.
Dubious
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Dubious »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:45 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:11 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 3:16 pmAnd you can't even frame a question that's grammatically correct, let alone one premised on any facts, it would seem.
As someone who has never deviated from correct grammar, please point out the errors in mine.
No, thank you. Go back to your own earlier question, and you'll figure it out.
No sir! You tell me where I've been grammatically incorrect. You made the assertion, so you must know where I went wrong; so tell me!

Here it is again; it's very short and would hardly take any time to point out the error....

If your brain tells you to believe in the bible, why do you believe that without any encountered skepticism?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 9:19 pm There's no way they could have seen Darwin coming.
Actually, Darwin was not highly original, nor was he the first person to want to find a way of arguing that existence came about without Creation. See Lamarck, Lyell, Buffon, Wallace, Hutton...etc. He was just the first person to present such a theory in a way that it might be believed at all...provided, of course, one was eager enough to believe it already.
Far from it: without that primary "leap of faith" that expects (prior to any evidence, of course) that the universe will turn out to rational, mathematical, logical and interpretable by our reasoning powers, there's no likelihood science would ever have existed at all.
Intense curiosity is a basic human characteristic, and science is merely an inevitable consequence of that.
Except it's not. The Chinese were curious. The Indians were curious. The Africans were curious. The Aboriginals were curious. All people are curious. None of them discovered science. So again, I have to ask you why they didn't. What's the alternate theory?
And that assumption only comes from two beliefs key to Christianity and Judaism: namely, the belief in a single Creator who operates according to rational principles, and the belief that He intends us to know and understand our world.
I would simply put it down to our inability to stop asking the question, "why"?.
If that were it, science would have lept out of China or India long before it appeared in a little island in the Atlantic.
Neither of those two assumptions underwrites any form of paganism or polytheism or gnosticism, and it certainly doesn't underwrite Atheism,
Actually, atheists probably make better scientists than Christians,
Atheists now can do science. Left to their own devices, Atheists would probably have never made science at all, anymore than polytheists did. They had no reason to suppose it would even be possible, and according to many of them, no faith with which to believe in that which they had not already seen.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:00 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:45 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:11 am As someone who has never deviated from correct grammar, please point out the errors in mine.
No, thank you. Go back to your own earlier question, and you'll figure it out.
No sir! You tell me where I've been grammatically incorrect.
Go and read your question. You'll figure it out.
Dubious
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Dubious »

Harbal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 3:18 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:58 pm
Will Bouwman wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 9:26 pm ...your assertion that it took Christianity to come up with one is demonstrably untrue.
It's Alfred North Whitehead's assertion, as it happens; I only agree with it. But it's actually true. And if you think it's not, then explain why all the billions of people in non-Christian lands never developed the scientific method. I'll be happy to hear your account of how you think it came about.
I've lost the thread a bit. What's the relevance of who invented science, and when?
A scientific method, as it's called, has always been practiced from the most ancient times forward. Without a methodology, meaning a valid approach to gaining knowledge, no science, or anything which depends on it, could ever have occurred or been constructed. When we speak of an actual scientific method, what is referred to is its formalization starting with the likes of Bacon. The method, as such, determines the probability of something being true without any assumptions of it actually being so. In that sense, science becomes a discovery vehicle, not a truth vehicle. A method does not ask for truth but for a solution, however temporary it may be until a more advanced, updated one comes along. Expressed differently, a scientific method based on accepted rules is how the chaos of discovery is managed.

Don't know whether Will Bouwman would agree with that or not.
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iambiguous
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by iambiguous »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 8:58 pm
iambiguous wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 7:09 pm Here we go again...

ME:
iambiguous wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 11:18 pm

Again, as I noted above to VA:


My point is that when we bring incest or abortion or gun control or gender roles etc., down out of the theoretical clouds, things can get very, very cloudy indeed.

At least until the moral objectivists among us can provide us with something analogous to a deontological resolution?

Now, let's commence new discussions regarding moral conflagrations that are of particular interest to you.
SKEPDICK:
Skepdick wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 6:45 am
Does anyone have a duty to furnish you with a deontological resolution?

The irony of pretending to be something more than a theoretical navel-gazing philosopher and then dragging the debate right back into theoretical navelgazing.
He -- she? -- completely avoids the points I raised regarding incest above. And refuses to explore other moral conflagrations in turn.

Instead, in my view, as with "minds" of his or her ilk that thrive here, it's snip, snip, snip...wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. And then the Stooge Stuff.

Though, again, I flat out admit my reaction here is just another manifestation of my own existential prejudices. If others here can defend Skepdick's point above more substantively, by all means, educate me.
👆 Prime example of a dumb philosopher. An armchair theoretician far removed from real-world consequentialism-based decision making.

Thank fuck idiots like this don't run the world.
Again, I ask dick to come down out of the theoretical clouds in regard to the points I raised above regarding incest. Nothing. I ask dick to examine other conflicting goods that are important to him/her pertaining to objective morality. Nothing.

Look, I can't stop others here from making fools of themselves. I can only suggest when they are. Giving them an opportunity to sustain a civil and substantive exchange instead.
Dubious
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Dubious »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:36 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:00 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:45 pm
No, thank you. Go back to your own earlier question, and you'll figure it out.
No sir! You tell me where I've been grammatically incorrect.
Go and read your question. You'll figure it out.
I can't find a single error! You made the statement it's grammatically incorrect, now prove it or is this just another one of your many hot air assertions to accuse somebody of something because you can't argue against anything else they said!
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:44 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:36 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:00 pm
No sir! You tell me where I've been grammatically incorrect.
Go and read your question. You'll figure it out.
I can't find a single error!
Then you deserve to remain oblivious. Shame on your grammar teacher.
promethean75
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by promethean75 »

Like I said, since the dawn of civilization, long before the crazy jews and Christians thought they heard a voice from the sky.

"The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest written records of identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia from around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes, while further advancements, including the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, were made during the Golden Age of India."

There is the scientific method itself, which has been practiced forfuckingever, and then there are established and formalized fields of science that are cataloged and developed over time. The former does not depend on the latter, but the latter depends on the former, the method. Don't mistake the two.

I've seen some audacious shit in my forum days, but this one that 'science owes christianity' is dumber'na jar of four bean salad.
Last edited by promethean75 on Sat Feb 03, 2024 12:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
Dubious
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Dubious »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:50 pm
Dubious wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:44 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:36 pm
Go and read your question. You'll figure it out.
I can't find a single error!
Then you deserve to remain oblivious. Shame on your grammar teacher.
Shame on you for being a miserable liar and coward, which by now, most here know you are. How much more proof does one need!
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