moral relativism

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

To see the difference between the emotivist and the interpretativist views, consider the difference between a discussion with a friend about the merits of liquorice and another about the film you saw last night.

On the other hand, from my frame of mind, they are both interchangeable. Even given free will. It's not about the merits or lack thereof of eating licorice or the merits or lack thereof of the film you watched last night. It's the extent to which rational men and women either can or cannot arrive at the optimal assessment or either one.

In the former case, the discussion is likely to be a short one. You either agree or disagree that licorice is horrid, and nothing anyone can say can change your immediate and visceral feelings about the matter.

The part rooted in the particular experiences we have had in regard to licorice. And it's certainly not construed by many to be a moral issue. Though clearly "your immediate and visceral feelings about the matter" is always subject to change given new experiences. In other words, different people react differently to licorice. But it's not like philosopher-kings can take that into account and come up with the most rational reaction to it.

In the case of the film, however, things are very different, and you have much to discuss.

On the other hand, what particular film is it? After all, in many respects, licorice is licorice is licorice. But films can vary considerably. And while this or that film may have scenes involving the consumption of licorice that's not likely to stand out as an important element in the plot. Instead, films can revolve around any number of far more controversial conflicting goods. And while technically some movies are considerably more sophisticated than others, when it comes to the plots, they can land all up and down the ideological spectrum.

Perhaps you agree that it was terrible, and begin exploring the reasons you have for thinking it so. As you do so, almost certainly you’ll find areas of overlap between your thinking: you agree that the direction was a bit ham-fisted and that the lead actor was even more wooden than in the last film you saw him in. On the other hand there will be moments of disagreement. One of you might consider the cameo by the veteran actor with the limp to have been charming and a saving grace of the whole movie, while the other thinks that whole section of the film is manipulative and bolted on.

Exactly! After all, when we watch any particular movie, we are going to react to it subjectively. Which means we take out of it first and foremost what we put into it: ourselves. And while there are clearly movies that come at or near the top of many film critics list, there's still no way in which to pin down which reviews reflect the most reasonable assessments.

Later, it strikes you that you had misunderstood the nature of the film, such that you now conclude that it really was a satire on its topic, and that, in this new light, it was a triumph. Your friend initially disagrees, but is ultimately won over by your arguments.

Of course, my own contribution here revolves more around the assumption that arguments about films are no less rooted existentially in dasein.

[Iwannaplato]

Of course, my own contribution here revolves more around the assumption that arguments about films are no less rooted existentially in dasein.

Well, there’s also nature. And there's more evidence that taste in food is genetically influenced than taste in films - which makes sense for a number of reasons, but certainly the complexity of films and how they relate to our lives and experiences in vastly more complex ways would leads to differences in that ratio (nature to nurture)
https://bmcnutr.biomedcentral.com/artic ... 24-00828-y

But that said his point is that the preference for or against licorice is less flexible than that around films, certainly in the short term. Imagine trying to convince someone that licorice actually did taste good. Not a chance. But as in his example, if you didn’t get that a film was satire, this coming up in a discussion of a film might lead you to respect the film and on a second viewing ‘get it’ in a way that is not paralleled in the licorice situation. You may not agree with where he will take this argument, but there are differences related to how films are reacted to, given their complexity, that allow for much more change, even via discussion, than is possible even if an advocate is given a couple of days to argue for the fine tastes of licorice.

You just don’t get it. LIcorice is a particular mixture of tangy and sweet and bitter.

Ugh. Still sucks.

I’ve had very large changes over quite short periods of time in relation to films. Hope and Glory I totally missed the tone of. When I spoke about the film to someone who loved it, I realized that I took the film in the wrong spirit. I watched it again and also loved it.

Butterscotch ice cream…talk away, tell me anything about it, it will still make me gag. I suppose you could tell me it is an emetic and I might use it for that, but never, ever as a dessert.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

The point is that the truth about the film is not arrived at by simple perception, nor is it reached by logical deduction (there is no mathematics of film criticism), but remains something other than merely a matter of taste. Liking a film is not like liking liquorice, and the reasons we might give for doing so are clearly more than simple rationalisations of our tastes.

This gets tricky however because there are aspects of film making that do involve learned skills such that some are clearly better at it than others. But even among these technical crafts, there are no doubt arguments regarding what is best for the film.

Similarly, a film screenplay might be well written or badly written. But is there anyone among us who can make this distinction every single time? Also, there are films like Birth of a Nation which many agree was technically well-made. At RT it garnered a 91% fresh score.

Richard Brody from The New Yorker

"Problematically, 'Birth of a Nation' wasn’t just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality."

And...

"The movie’s fabricated events shouldn’t lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn’t lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of 'Birth of a Nation,' even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda.

Instead, moral nihilists suggest that while moral objectivists might construe any particular film as depicting either moral or immoral actions, even here in a No God world that will always be derived from political prejudices largely rooted in dasein.

Unless, of course, someone here can pin this down for us...deontologically?

Thus...

A pertinent question is how similar are our moral views to our opinions about films? Clearly in both the film and morality cases, reasoning is important, and as in the film case, I might be able to persuade you to change your mind on some important moral issues. I might, for example, point out an inconsistency in your views about suffering that lead you to reevaluate your views on euthanasia or vegetarianism.

On the other hand, who here is able to persuade us that their own -- and only their own -- assessment of the film's moral stance is the correct one?

Same with euthanasia and vegetarianism, right?

As far as our Morality Machine program is concerned, however, that degree of persuasiveness and openness to discussion may not be nearly enough. What is required for the Morality Machine to function at all is that there be an ultimate point of resolution where the arguments stop. And for this to happen we need to be able to recognise that this or that set of principles really will do the job of correctly answering any and all moral questions.

Next up: my own amorality contraption?

[Iwannaplato]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

The point is that the truth about the film is not arrived at by simple perception, nor is it reached by logical deduction (there is no mathematics of film criticism), but remains something other than merely a matter of taste. Liking a film is not like liking liquorice, and the reasons we might give for doing so are clearly more than simple rationalisations of our tastes.

This gets tricky however because there are aspects of film making that do involve learned skills such that some are clearly better at it than others. But even among these technical crafts, there are no doubt arguments regarding what is best for the film.

Similarly, a film screenplay might be well written or badly written. But is there anyone among us who can make this distinction every single time?

So, what is 100% accuracy necessary for? Knowledge? it being in a different category from liking of disliking the taste of licorice? What is the lack of 100% accuracy entail that contradicts, for exmaple, something in the article?

Also, there are films like Birth of a Nation which many agree was technically well-made. At RT it garnered a 91% fresh score.

Richard Brody from The New Yorker

"Problematically, 'Birth of a Nation' wasn’t just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality."

And...

"The movie’s fabricated events shouldn’t lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn’t lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of 'Birth of a Nation,' even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda.

If a moral realist wrote this, it would likely mean that while that film is technically well done, it is morally reprehensible. I'm not sure what this means in the context of a moral nhilist bringing this up. What is it rebutting in the article? What was the point of mentioning this?

Instead, moral nihilists suggest that while moral objectivists might construe any particular film as depicting either moral or immoral actions, even here in a No God world that will always be derived from political prejudices largely rooted in dasein.

This would be true of any film. So, why was your example Birth of a Nation? Why did a moral nihilist choose that exmaple?

A pertinent question is how similar are our moral views to our opinions about films? Clearly in both the film and morality cases, reasoning is important, and as in the film case, I might be able to persuade you to change your mind on some important moral issues. I might, for example, point out an inconsistency in your views about suffering that lead you to reevaluate your views on euthanasia or vegetarianism.

On the other hand, who here is able to persuade us that their own -- and only their own -- assessment of the film's moral stance is the correct one?

But, then again, it's different from the licorice type issue, where discussion would probably never work to change someone's mind.

Do you disagree with the distinction between the taste of food and taste in films that the writer is making?

Yes, our tastes in foods can change over time, but rarely via discussion. it would be impossible for someone to reframe my experience of butterscotch ice cream and I realize, upon tasting it again, that I actually like it.

Even in a single day, can I reappraise a film (or novel, piece of music) or someone else can I have a very different experience of it. No amount of badgering me is going to change how I feel about butterscotch ice cream. No reading of food criticism is going to either.

[Belinda]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

The point is that the truth about the film is not arrived at by simple perception, nor is it reached by logical deduction (there is no mathematics of film criticism), but remains something other than merely a matter of taste. Liking a film is not like liking liquorice, and the reasons we might give for doing so are clearly more than simple rationalisations of our tastes.

This gets tricky however because there are aspects of film making that do involve learned skills such that some are clearly better at it than others. But even among these technical crafts, there are no doubt arguments regarding what is best for the film.

Similarly, a film screenplay might be well written or badly written. But is there anyone among us who can make this distinction every single time?

So, what is 100% accuracy necessary for? Knowledge? it being in a different category from liking of disliking the taste of licorice? What is the lack of 100% accuracy entail that contradicts, for exmaple, something in the article?

Also, there are films like Birth of a Nation which many agree was technically well-made. At RT it garnered a 91% fresh score.

Richard Brody from The New Yorker

"Problematically, 'Birth of a Nation' wasn’t just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality."

And...

"The movie’s fabricated events shouldn’t lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn’t lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of 'Birth of a Nation,' even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda.

If a moral realist wrote this, it would likely mean that while that film is technically well done, it is morally reprehensible. I'm not sure what this means in the context of a moral nhilist bringing this up. What is it rebutting in the article? What was the point of mentioning this?

Instead, moral nihilists suggest that while moral objectivists might construe any particular film as depicting either moral or immoral actions, even here in a No God world that will always be derived from political prejudices largely rooted in dasein.

This would be true of any film. So, why was your example Birth of a Nation? Why did a moral nihilist choose that exmaple?

A pertinent question is how similar are our moral views to our opinions about films? Clearly in both the film and morality cases, reasoning is important, and as in the film case, I might be able to persuade you to change your mind on some important moral issues. I might, for example, point out an inconsistency in your views about suffering that lead you to reevaluate your views on euthanasia or vegetarianism.

On the other hand, who here is able to persuade us that their own -- and only their own -- assessment of the film's moral stance is the correct one?

But, then again, it's different from the licorice type issue, where discussion would probably never work to change someone's mind.

Do you disagree with the distinction between the taste of food and taste in films that the writer is making?

Yes, our tastes in foods can change over time, but rarely via discussion. it would be impossible for someone to reframe my experience of butterscotch ice cream and I realize, upon tasting it again, that I actually like it.

Even in a single day, can I reappraise a film (or novel, piece of music) or someone else can I have a very different experience of it. No amount of badgering me is going to change how I feel about butterscotch ice cream. No reading of food criticism is going to either.

My experience is not like yours. Other opinions have influenced my like and dislikes,even where food and drink are concerned. Moreover, I like works of art better , and I like engineering better after the formal structures are explained to me. True when I was ill with a stroke I was a very slow learner if at all, but in normal health when I pay attention to the ingredients, or the formal structures, my likes and dislikes change accordingly.
The exception , for me, is crime dramas, and arithmetic.There is so little pleasure in those that I find it not worth the work involved in understanding them.I guess something like that applies to your attitude to butterscotch ice cream.
I am afraid of spiders getting inside my dressing gown but if I tried to appreciate them in a learning curve I would no doubt at least tolerate their occasional appearances in the house at this time of year.
What stops me learning to love Nazism or Zionism is I choose to believe that these cause suffering and death. And so to ordinary human sympathy which is at the bottom of my moral choices. Some cultures of belief are evil on the basis they lack ordinary human sympathy. And any culture may be blighted by evil intentions.

[Iwannaplato]

My experience is not like yours. Other opinions have influenced my like and dislikes,even where food and drink are concerned. Moreover, I like works of art better , and I like engineering better after the formal structures are explained to me.

The second sentence fits with what I said. In this we are similar. The first sentence we are different. I mean, people have introduced me to food. Some I might have avoided due to smell or look say. My tastes have changed, though generally over long periods of time. I can't imagine what someone could do to make me like butterscotch. I can't imaging that conversation.

How did someone convince that a taste you disliked actually tasted good, to you?
How long did this change take to take hold?

True when I was ill with a stroke I was a very slow learner if at all, but in normal health when I pay attention to the ingredients, or the formal structures, my likes and dislikes change accordingly.
The exception , for me, is crime dramas, and arithmetic.There is so little pleasure in those that I find it not worth the work involved in understanding them.I guess something like that applies to your attitude to butterscotch ice cream.

I can see that. For me genres and subjects are somewhere in between taste in the mouth and taste in art or study/exploration. There seem to be more built in preferences. And it would be hard fro someone to talk me into reading romance novels. I suppose if they could show me how laughing at them was fun, but that's not quite the same thing.

[Belinda]

How did someone convince that a taste you disliked actually tasted good, to you?
How long did this change take to take hold?

I enjoyed only sweet wine until friends and relations kept on preferring dry wine, and then I persevered until I preferred dry wine. This took about a week or so as I recall.

Likewise with sugar in my tea, media persuaded me sugar was bad for health so I formed the habit of sugarless tea. I think I preferred sugarless tea within days.
Maybe you would like butterscotch ice cream if it were made with a sugar free recipe, or completely unsweetened.
I should add I'm generally gullible; I used to like the Royal Family until last week when I learned about the duchies owned by the Prince and the King.
But on reviewing previous posts it's obvious that minor preferences such as food flavours, spider free bathrooms, and absence of Romantic novels, are low in the evaluation hierarchy which ranges between e.g. food preferences , up through popular or elite cultures in the expressive arts, up through moral and political levels such as conservative or progressive, through the moral levels such as freedom or equality, to the level of optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, and finally to the top evaluation of love or fear.

(I wish I could make diagrams to post on the forum but I cannot.)

[Iwannaplato]

I enjoyed only sweet wine until friends and relations kept on preferring dry wine, and then I persevered until I preferred dry wine. This took about a week or so as I recall.

OK, so that's kind of in between, I would say. You had to get through the unpleasance and find a new way of tasted it. And get used to less sugar so you were sensitive to the subtler tastes. You might also have been primed. At 16 this might not have stood a chance, since it is also a mature taste that might actually depend on physiological changes to be possilbe.

Likewise with sugar in my tea, media persuaded me sugar was bad for health so I formed the habit of sugarless tea. I think I preferred sugarless tea within days.
Maybe you would like butterscotch ice cream if it were made with a sugar free recipe, or completely unsweetened.

That's be worse.

I should add I'm generally gullible; I used to like the Royal Family until last week when I learned about the duchies owned by the Prince and the King.
But on reviewing previous posts it's obvious that minor preferences such as food flavours, spider free bathrooms, and absence of Romantic novels, are low in the evaluation hierarchy which ranges between e.g. food preferences , up through popular or elite cultures in the expressive arts, up through moral and political levels such as conservative or progressive, through the moral levels such as freedom or equality, to the level of optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, and finally to the top evaluation of love or fear.

It's a blunt experience. There's less interpretation with flavors. A movie can be taken in a number of ways, even by one person. One's mood, expectations, could affect how it is received with big difference between times. Of course some movies are probably not redeemable over a short time. But I think there's more flexibility because it is a very complicated phenomenon.

I've gone to movies after having read the book and thought it was stupid, while people who had not read the book or had not read the book at all recently loved the same movie. As an extreme example of how the frame in which I recieve something can change it. I can't really see a situation that would affect my reaction to butterscotch ice cream or salt candy.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

Years ago I created an ‘ethics game’ in order to facilitate rational moral thinking in my students. Participants had to imagine themselves as having two responsibilities. Firstly, they had to draw up a constitution (in effect, the program of the Morality Machine) by ordering a series of moral priorities. Secondly, they had to apply the constitution they had created to a series of difficult cases.

To abort or not to abort. If there is ever a morality machine able to reconcile the arguments of those on both sides of this particularly ferocious moral conflagration, please, by all means, bring it to my attention.

Effectively, this meant that they became the Morality Machine and ran its program. You may be familiar with the kinds of cases I threw at them: my students had to deal with all the popular moral issues philosophers like to think about. One of the beauties of the game was that I could add more and more cases as time went on, and the game has grown accordingly.

From my frame of mind, however, I'm looking for a case in which anyone's particular morality machine is able to convince me there actually are arguments [philosophical or otherwise] that establish either the optimal moral narrative here or [perhaps] even establish the only truly rational narrative there ever can be.

The result was mayhem. The most common demand from frustrated players was that they be allowed to rewrite their constitutions (programs) in accordance with how they felt about each case in turn. In other words, they wanted a license to be inconsistent (they wanted to be ‘situation ethicists’).

And, until a particular morality machine is able to demonstrate why one set of behaviors pertaining to the ethics of abortion is, in fact, the best of all possible worlds given any situation, why wouldn't situational ethics become the best of all possible worlds.

This was something I absolutely disallowed. I conceded that they might re-order principles in the light of the insights they gained from applying them to the cases; but the ultimate goal remained that of coming to a settled list of principles in a settled order of priority which could be applied to any and all cases. I demanded, in short, that interpretation should come to an end.

Imagine me in the class.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

This thought experiment concerning what he called the ‘Original Position’ for moral deliberation, Rawls asked his students to imagine that they were disembodied beings residing behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, waiting to be born into a body with unknown characteristics and an unknown life. By these means, Rawls wanted to distance his participants from any biases which might lead them to unjustifiably favour particular kinds of people when drawing up their ‘principles of justice’.

Thought experiments are one thing, intertwining them into our day to day human interactions another thing altogether.

And the bottom line is that we are not "disembodied beings residing behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, waiting to be born into a body with unknown characteristics and an unknown life." Instead, many are here to assure us that they are themselves the very embodiment of one or another One True Path. They are here in fact to save the souls of some or to convince others that while we have no souls we do have access to the best of all possible secular worlds.

Then the part where some of them insist it's not enough for you to think like them if they don't have the right skin color or the right gender or the right sexual orientation or the right ethnicity.

Some then feel obligated -- to their God? to the Party -- to anchor it all in this: or else.

Rawls took much philosophical flack from many directions for his way of thinking about morality. Communitarians claimed the whole thing to be psychologically implausible, and, through abstraction from everything that defines a person, to hollow out the personal, leaving us not with an unbiased arbiter as Rawls imagined, but with no individual at all.

Anyone here convinced the Communitarians themselves reflect just one of many, many other sets of assumptions regarding human morality. For example, that morality revolves more around "we" than "me", more around memes than genes, more around the collective than the individual, more around cooperation than competition.

Others, such as Jürgen Habermas, have argued that thought experiments cannot replace the ‘communicative rationality’ of actual people, although for Rawls – as for Kant – the universality of rationality meant that any and all individuals would arrive at the same principle, independent of actual debate. It was partly to avoid all such objections that I asked real people to decide on an ethical constitution.

And [philosophically or otherwise] how is this not predicated largely on dasein, on ever evolving and changing social, political and economic narratives out in particular worlds understood in particular ways.

As for the "same principles", that'll be the day right?

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

So far so good; and things arguably got better when I managed to convince the vast majority of players that the following constituted the ideal constitution:

1. Respect the autonomy of autonomous beings in respect of their ‘large-scale concepts of the good’. (Autonomy is someone’s capacity to direct their own life.) This is a ‘negative’ principle, or principle of self-restraint, which demands that we don’t interfere with or coerce people in respect of their deepest commitments, values and beliefs;

Assuming of course we have any autonomy at all. As for our "deepest commitments, values and beliefs", that's all well and good until you bump into someone who insists that, on the contrary, only their own "deepest commitments, values and beliefs" cut it.

With God, among others.

As for the rest, it may well be an integral part of the "best of all possible worlds" for some, but sooner or later they will bump into others who insist that, on the contrary, that is actually the worst of all possible worlds.

2. Minimise suffering where possible. This is a ‘positive’ principle, or principle of action, which demands that we don’t just refrain from hurting others, but actively intervene to reduce the suffering of other beings;

Same thing? At least it would seem to be when minimizing your own pain results in pain for others. Just note the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or human sexuality.

Then the part where it all revolves around God and religion. That part regarding the ultimate punishment of all...Hell. So, the religious fanatics in Gaza and the religious fanatics in Israel are hell-bent instead on maximizing the pain of all infidels.

3. Aim to promote the autonomy of potentially autonomous beings. This is another positive principle. It suggests, amongst other things, that we should educate children, or make sure that disabled people have the opportunity to participate fully in society, etc.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that disabled people should actually be gotten rid of. Or, if it's spotted in the womb, aborted.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

There are many good reasons for choosing precisely these principles [above] and ordering them in precisely this way (if we reverse the order of the first two principles, for example, we end up with a justification of involuntary euthanasia – overdosing a terminally ill patient without consulting him because we know that this will lessen his suffering); but the point right now is to concentrate on those moments where this constitution/program comes under critical stress.

Like here in America, our own Constitution is open to interpretations that generally revolve around particular moral and political prejudices. Or if you are a Supreme Court justice, around God Almighty Himself.

Philippa Foot’s ‘trolley problem’ is a famous thought experiment in ethics. We are faced with the moral dilemma of diverting or not diverting a runaway railway carriage. We can pull a lever that will cause the carriage to switch tracks, saving the lives of five innocent track workers, but killing a different individual; or we can leave things as they are and allow the five to die, and the other to live.

I noted my own reaction to that on other threads:

"I'd want to know who these people are. Are the five stuck on the tracks total strangers? Is the person on the other set of tracks my own beloved wife or son or daughter? Do I know the five stuck on the tracks but despise them? Or do I despise the person on the other set of tracks even more?

Or what if the five on one set of tracks were young children and the person on the other set was a very old man. Or a middle-aged pregnant woman?"

Thought experiments of this sort are just that, thoughts about things that may or may not be applicable to the actual complexities embedded in human interactions. As though ethicists actually can think up -- deontologically -- not just the best of all possible worlds regarding the trolly quandary, but, perhaps, the one and the only rational resolution?

I’ve argued in previous articles that, because the people involved cannot be consulted about their ‘large-scale concepts of the good’, we should rule such concepts as irrelevant to the issue (they may or may not be inclined to be heroic, but we have no way of knowing which). In this context I’m prepared to be a consequentialist (i.e., to minimise suffering) and pull the lever.

On the other hand, there are going to be those in our lives we would actually prefer to suffer...maximally? There are just too many potential combinations of variables precipitating any number of actual existential permutations we only have so much of an understanding and control over.

In my view, that's why moral objectivists still abound among us. In other words, to make that ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty go away. Anchored to their very own One True Path that, it covers many of them both before and after the grave.

However, some of my students took the ‘Kantian’ line that it is wrong to try to ‘add up’ suffering in this way rather than valuing each individual person as an ‘end in themselves’. They further argued that there was a distinct difference between ‘allowing’ the deaths of five people and actively intervening to ‘cause’ the death of another.

None of this make my own points go away. If it comes down to a situation in which some will live and some will die, it's got to be calculated to the advantage of some rather than others. And if there really comes a time when philosophers/ethicists actually can calculate the best of all possible worlds here -- or the one truly rational choice? -- by all means link me to it.

[iambiguous]

An Argument On The Moral Argument
Luke Pollard and Rebecca Massey-Chase dialogue about the existence of a God.

Luke Pollard:

Spanning history, ‘the argument from morality’ has been supported by people such as Kant, C.S. Lewis, and more recently, William Lane Craig. It has enjoyed much change over the centuries, but now philosophers have managed to cut it down to one simple syllogism:

1) Objective moral values exist
2) Objective moral values necessitate the existence of a God
3) Therefore, a God exists

I once believed something pretty close to this, myself. Only now I have come to believe that in a No God world, morality is likely to be largely subjective, rooted historically and culturally in dasein and ever confronting a world of contingency, chance and change.

To consider the value of this argument, first, it is important to know what we mean by ‘objective moral values’.

There are two views in ethics: morality is either ‘objective’ or ‘relative’.

Or, perhaps, morality is actually a never-ending intersubjective grasp of a particular world by particular individuals living lives that both overlap and diverge. And then, as well, noting the historical context. Especially one in which great changes are unfolding.

Objectivism in morality is the theory that there are at least some moral statements that are right or wrong, whether we believe them to be or not. These truths are not dependent upon us or upon any changeable thing. For instance, “Torturing babies just for fun is wrong” is objectively true whether we believe it to be or not.

And it often stays theoretical here because as soon as an actual issue is broached given particular sets of circumstances, the sheer complexity of human interactions tends to readily deconstruct all One True Paths here.

At least given my own set of assumptions, of course. In other words, No God, The Gap, Rummy's Rule, the Benjamin Button Syndrome, dasein.

Just imagine living in a world, however, where torturing babies for entertainment was not embraced as universally wrong? I certainly don't rule out the possibility that this is the case. But in the absence of God how, philosophically, scientifically etc., can this be established?

Even if everyone was brainwashed into thinking that it is morally acceptable, torturing babies just for fun would still be wrong.

And "here and now", rooted existentially in dasein, "I" would certainly prefer to live in a world where sans God mere mortals can establish the deontological parameters of such behaviors.

Give it a shot, yourself.

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an evil foe. Simplistic though it is, Hollywood cinema seduces us all with these Manichean conflicts that persuade us to side with the good guys.

Simplistic isn't all that far removed from much of what comes out of Hollywood. And, more to the point, the box office there commands it.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood marked a rare exception to this rule, giving audiences an unconventional protagonist – one seemingly beyond good and evil.

And isn't that basically how one would describe much of the capitalist political economy? Just ask the theocrats -- or the me-o-crats? -- who own and operate the oil industry, well, everywhere, right?

In other words...

There Will Be Oil

And chances are you use it. And because millions upon millions upon millions of others use it as well, it's important to keep in mind that those able to provide us with it may well be construed as, say, necessary evils in what still may well still be the best of all possible worlds.

The narrative, a cinematic adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil, centres on the epic rise, and ultimate decline, of oil magnate Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis).

Not to worry. Individual oil magnates may rise and fall but "the system" itself always grows more to take their place.

But this is no typical tale of poor boy made good, for Plainview is far from good in any moral sense, despite his admirable characteristics. Instead Plainview is a thoroughly Nietzschean figure, and if one is seeking ways to vivify Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy – especially his attitude towards Christian morality – one can do no better than through this film.

Vivify or vilify, what's the difference in a zero-sum world? Just so [one way or another] we get all the oil and all the gas that we need. At least until the oil and gas industries themselves are able to gain control over all the other sources of power?

At least providing that the climate doomsayers are wrong about our future being one or another rendition of Waterworld?

While Plainview embodies many aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy and personality, I will limit my focus to how the film illuminates Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. The parallels go far beyond Plainview’s bushy moustache.

Of course, Christianity itself had long been refitted to accommodate capitalism. What is Protestantism after all but an attempt to align Jesus Christ himself with...Prosperity Gospel? What is the Donald Trump phenomenon if not more of the same on steroids? Never -- and I mean never -- underestimate the ignorance of enormous chunks of the electorate even to this day.

[Belinda]

Iambiguous wrote:

Christianity itself had long been refitted to accommodate capitalism. What is Protestantism after all but an attempt to align Jesus Christ himself with...Prosperity Gospel? What is the Donald Trump phenomenon if not more of the same on steroids? Never -- and I mean never -- underestimate the ignorance of enormous chunks of the electorate even to this day.

All good ideas may be and usually are traduced.I agree with your pessimism concerning large chunks of the electorate. Pessimism will be justified when we see what right wing extremists like Mr Trump do about educating the masses of the electorate.