Magnus Anderson wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:46 pm
I made this post in another thread, in response to something a member of this forum has said, but since it turned out to be pretty long, and far more than just a strict reply; and since the thread I posted it in is pretty noisy, I decided to give it its own topic.
So here we go.
In the ontological sense, the word "objective" means "existing independently of minds". To say that a thing exists independently of minds is to say that it would exist even if minds ceased to exist. The question of this thread, then, is "Would morality continue to exist if all minds ceased to exist?"
The first thing that needs to be done in order to answer that question is to understand what the word "morality" means.
The term "morality" means "the set of all laws that someone [ an individual, a group of people or everyone ] ought to obey in order to maximize their chances of attaining their highest goal".
If it actually meant something like "a set of beliefs about what is right and what is wrong held by someone", then morality would clearly be subjective, since beliefs exist within minds, and if something exists within a mind, removing all minds from existence would also remove that thing from existence. But is that what the word actually means?
Of course, you can use the word "morality" that way, and a lot of people already do, but in that case, you'd no longer have a word for what moral beliefs are attempting to represent. ( Every belief, if it is a proper belief, is attempting to represent a portion of reality. Moral beliefs are no exception. If there is no portion of reality that moral beliefs are describing, they are not beliefs, but something else. A belief is a proposition held to be true by someone, and every proposition, in order to be a proposition, must consist of two parts: the described and the description. Remove one of these parts and you no longer have a proposition. )
Morality isn't a set of beliefs. It is a set of laws. And it isn't a set of any kind of laws. Societal laws ( i.e. how societies behave, e.g. "When a resident of a modern day country kills someone, he goes to jail" ) and personal laws ( i.e. how individual people behave, e.g. "Peter never eats meat" ) are not moral laws. Moral laws are laws of the form "Under circusmtances C, the best decision for person P or group of people G is D."
Given that morality is a set of laws, we need to ask the following questions:
1) What is a law?
2) Do laws exist?
3) Are laws ontologically objective? Is their existence independent of minds? If minds ceased to exist, would laws continue to exist?
Let's answer these questions one by one.
WHAT IS A LAW?
A law is a limit on what is possible. It is that which forces a portion of reality to be certain way in some or all situations. If there are no laws, i.e. if no laws exist, it means that everything is possible in every situation. If there are laws, i.e. if some of them exist, it means that certain things aren't possible in certain situations.
The simplest example of a law is the law of identity, "A = A". That statement is saying that every thing is identical to itself in all situations. It's saying that there is a law that prohibits all things in all situations from not being identical to themselves.
Another example is the mathematical law captured by the statement "2 + 2 = 4". That statement is saying that every set consisting of two sets of two elements is a set consisting of four elements. It's saying that there is a law that prohibits all sets consisting of two sets of two elements from being sets of one element, sets of two elements, sets of three elements, sets of five elements, etc.
Another example of a law is the causal law that is "If you press the light switch at point in time
t, the light bulb will turn on in less than a second". That statement is saying that there is a law that prohibits the light bulb from not turning on when you press the light switch at point in time
t.
Finally, there are moral laws. Moral laws are laws of the form "Under circumstances C, the best decision for person P or group of people G is D". An example of a moral law is "The best decision for a man, every man, in every situation is to choose to do only what his mind unanimously agrees it's the best thing to do". ( I understand that most people don't define the term "morality" this broadly. Most use it narrowly, to refer to
social morality, i.e. to what's the right way to treat other living beings. Keep in mind that I define it a bit differently, to mean what's the right thing to do in general. )
DO LAWS EXIST?
Given that a law is a limit on what's possible, it follows that, if there are things that aren't possible in some or all situations, then there are laws. And if there are laws, then they exist.
To say that laws do not exist is to say that there are no laws, i.e. that there are no limits on what is possible. That, in turn, means that everything is possible in every situation.
I can assure you that literally everyone believes that we live in a world in which at least some of the things aren't possible. And if there are people who argue otherwise, which I'm sure there are, I can assure you that they are contradicting themselves.
The idea that laws exist is difficult to accept by some people. These tend to be people who think in terms of "If you can't touch something, it does not exist". They affirm the existence of nothing but physical objects. They have a tendency to bastardize highly abstract concepts by reducing them to the most similar concept they are familiar with. Pragmatists, for example, have done that with the concept of truth by reducing it to the concept of useful belief ( or to the concept of the limit of inquiry, as C. S. Peirce did. ) A number of physicists have done the same with the concept of past by reducing it to memories in the present. Others have done it by reducing the concept of time to "what clocks show". And so on. There are many examples. If you ask these people, laws either do not really exist, since they aren't physical objects, or they do, but they are not want we think they are, they are merely concepts inside our minds ( e.g. mental tools that we use to predict what's going to happen in the future. )
The fact of the matter is that the universe is not merely the sum of everything that was, everything that is and everything that will be. The universe does not merely refer to what is actual. It also refers to what is possible. And what is possible is determined by laws.
ARE LAWS ONTOLOGICALLY OBJECTIVE?
If minds ceased to exist, would laws continue to exist?
To answer that question, it's important to understand the difference between mutable and immutable things.
A mutable thing is a thing that can change. A thing that can change is a thing that can go through multiple stages of existence. The number of stages a mutable thing goes through is called its lifespan. A mutable thing, if it has a beginning, starts existing at one point in time, and if it has an end, it stops existing at another. Typically, a mutable thing occupies a portion of space at a single point in time at every stage of its existence. However, this is not a definitional requirement -- a mutable thing can occupy any number of moments at any stage of its existence. A mutable thing can exist in the same exact state at every stage of its existence, meaning, it does not have to change at all. But it has the capacity to do so. The state of a mutable thing at any stage of its existence, as well as its lifespan, can be determined, partially or completely, by other things. Physical objects, for example, are mutable things.
An immutable thing, on the other hand, is a thing that has no capacity for change at all. An immutable thing can exist at one or more points in time but it cannot go through more than one stage of its existence. The set of everything that was, that is and that will be is an example. That's the state of the universe at every single point in time. It's a thing that exists at more than one moment -- actually, at every single moment of existence -- but that goes through no more than one stage of its existence. The state of a physical object at a single point in time is another example. It's a thing that exists at a single point in time and a thing that goes through exactly one stage of its existence. The truth value of a proposition is yet another example. If a proposition is true on one day, it is true on all days. None of these things can change. As such, nothing can change them. If they exist, nothing can make them disappear from existence. They are, in a sense, permanent.
That said, if a law is an immutable law, it cannot cease to exist.
Are all laws immutable?
Absolutely not. There are mutable and immutable laws. Let me illustrate that with a very simple example.
Consider a universe that consists of exactly 3 points in time. At each point in time, nothing exists except for a light switch and a light bulb. At each point in time, the light switch can only be in one of the following two states: it can be "up" or it can be "down". Similarly, at each point in time, the light bulb can only be in one of the following two states: it can be "on" or it can be "off".
Let us say that the following laws apply:
1) Whenever the light switch is "up" at point in time 1, the light bulb is "on" at point in time 2.
2) Whenever the light switch is "down" at point in time 1, the light bulb is "off" at point in time 2.
3) Whenever the light switch is "up" at point in time 2, the light bulb is "off" at point in time 3,
4) Whenever the light switch is "down" at point in time 2, the light bulb is "on" at point in time 3.
The 4 laws that I just mentioned are immutable laws. They go through exactly one stage of their existence. They have no capacity to change. They are what they are.
However, if we said that 1) and 3) are two different stages of one and the same law, that law would be a mutable law. And in this particular case, it would be a law that changed ( since it went from "If up, then on" to "If up, then off". )
Are moral laws immutable laws?
A morality is a set of
immutable laws, i.e. laws that cannot change. They either exist or they do not. If they exist, nothing can make them disappear from existence. Thus, if minds ceased to exist, moral laws would continue to exist.