Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

I think it is demonstrably the case.

Oh? Can you "demonstrate" it, then? What's the line of reasoning to substantiate that?

Yours:

It can't be. From the mere fact that people disagree, it doesn't follow logically that emotivism is correct. Emotivism needs its own proof of truth, or else it's just another failed and undemonstrable paradigm.

But the work to show that has already been done, as you'll shortly see.

On what grounds has Hume been criticised? Who has shown him to be wrong?

https://askaphilosopher.org/2016/02/29/ ... emotivism/.

They were all capable thinkers, so it isn't the quality of their thought that separates them.

Actually, it is.

Rousseau, by any account, was nowhere near the thinker that a guy like Kant was. And Hume, while good in some areas, went soft-in-the-head when it came to Emotivism, it seems. Bentham and Mill...mediocre theorizing there, at best: they can't justify their own "pleasure principle," and left far too many claims ungrounded. Socrates was quite clever and rigorous, but subscribed to a polytheistic worldview...although rather inconsistently. But Nietzsche? A rhetorician, when it came to ethics...he never proved or even tried to prove "the death of God" idea. He just floated it as if it were a done deal, and too many people were impressed by his bravado and too happy to accept his assertion, so he's gotten away without serious examination on his most fundamental assertion.

So it's an uneven bunch, to be sure.

...the primary distinction in ethics is between deontology and consequentialism, or was when I had my toes in the water.

It's changed.

Generally, there are now three major categories of secular ethics being proposed: deontologies, consequentialisms and virtue-based ethics of various kinds. But these only really include those that are taking for granted, and always without proof, the non-existence of any Supreme Being; so that's a fourth category, if we want to be comprehensive.

What do yo think makes one person believe in rules, and another in outcomes?

I think that it's mistaking a part of ethics for the whole.

Kant, for example, gives us the idea that rationality and universality are some part of ethics. But Bentham and Mill, that the outcomes matter, too. Then Aristotle-Aquinas-MacIntyre give us that character and habits are parts of the equation. Feminists alert us to the idea that men and women may do their reasoning differently. Emotivists remind us that there are feelings associated with ethics. Developmentalists point to the possibility of people improving their ethics as they grow...and so on.

But all these are just parts of a much larger story. What makes them attractive to the individual theorists is that each of them is, in some part, unavoidably right; but they're also hugely inadequate, all of them, to account for features of ethics that others do better at emphasizing. So, for example, you can never argue that pain and pleasure play NO role in ethical thinking; but you can simultaneously point out that Bentham and Mill fail to realize that ethical action isn't a one-time, one-situation thing, but rather a general pattern of life and a reflection of personal character, just as Aristotle pointed out. The same could be said for all the options there.

What they lack is a cohesive worldview behind them, so that they could be sorted as to their real relation to one another. But moral subjectivism offers no objective moral information; it has to assume none exists. So there's no possibility of ever gluing these fragmentary accounts of morality into a single, cohesive picture.

[iambiguous]

...in the case of morality, as you can see. It's the subjectivist who can't make sense, who can't fill out a basic moral syllogism, and who ends up making excuses for things like 'racial purity,' because he's afraid to say that something is objectively wrong.

Here I have myself acknowedged that I do come close at times to believing that "somehow" in a No God world morality can still be objective:

This comes closest to upending my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind. People tap me on the shoulder and ask "can you seriously believe that the Holocaust or abusing children or cold-blooded murder is not inherently, necessarily immoral?"

And, sure, the part of me that would never, could never imagine my own participation in things of this sort has a hard time accepting that, yes, in a No God world they are still behaviors able to be rationalized by others as either moral or, for the sociopaths, justified given their belief that everything revolves around their own "me, myself and I" self-gratification.

And what is the No God philosophical -- scientific? -- argument that establishes certain behaviors as in fact objectively right or objectively wrong? Isn't it true that philosophers down through the ages who did embrace one or another rendition of deontology always included one or another rendition of the transcending font -- God -- to back it all up?

For all I know, had my own life been different...for any number of reasons...I would myself be here defending the Holocaust. Or engaging in what most construe to be morally depraved behaviors.

After all, do not the pro-life folks insist that abortion itself is no less a Holocaust inflicted on the unborn? And do not the pro-choice folks rationalize this behavior with their own subjective sets of assumptions.

Though, okay, if someone here is convinced they have in fact discovered the optimal reason why we should behave one way and not any other, let's explore that in a No God world.

What would be argued when confronting the Adolph Hitlers and the Ted Bundys and the 9/11 religious fanatics and the sociopaths among us. Arguments such that they would be convinced that the behaviors they choose are indeed inherently, necessarily immoral.

As for race, I was once myself a virulent racist as a boy. I was raised in the belly of the white working class beast and the "N" word was everywhere. When we played games we'd start them with "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a n****r by the toe.." We used to go behind the Burkleigh Manor apartments to the literal shacks occupied by black families and "free" their dogs. We couldn't stand the thought of them being raised by n****rs. Then I discovered Christianity and later in the Army met soldiers who completely turned me around on race. And lots of other things.

As for the objective truth about race, if you Google the science of race, you get this: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... gle+Search

The overwhelming majority of the links debunk the idea that "racial purity" and "racial superiority" is an objective fact. But I'm sure there are some here and there -- https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora -- who can link you to others arguing that racism is entirely rational. But genes that can be reconfigured given particular aggregations of memes?

But, again, how to explain the fact that racism is still very much a reality around the globe? Is there perhaps a "biological imperative" such that we are programmed genetically to deem those who are different from us [in particular ways] as "one of them"?

Again, though, in the absence of God, how to pin it all down such that it actually disappears from the planet?

[Immanuel Can]

Again, though, in the absence of God, how to pin it all down such that it actually disappears from the planet?

The problem is worse.

It's not just that we don't know HOW to make racism (or other evil things) disappear from the planet; it's that under subjectivism, we don't even know THAT racism "should" disappear. After all, since morality is nothing more than a statement of my personal liking or disliking of a thing, who made me God, so that what I like or dislike should hold for others, far less for the whole world?

And that's why racist arguments can continue. Because in a purely materialist, evolutionary world, eugenics make perfect sense. Why not regard some "races" as "underevolved," and others as more "fit for survival"? Why not "selectively breed" humanity -- after all, it works for our pets, our dogs and our cats? Why not kill the weak, the underdeveloped, the unwanted, the elderly and the unborn? Do we not thereby improve the "breeding stock" of humankind, and promote evolution? In any case, if we decide to try, who will say us nay?

So the argument from subjectivism can be raised that we should allow these things...or at least, that there's no objective basis for us to stand against them, if they do. And what contrary argument is adequate to refute that?

But don't you and I know that racism is wrong, eugenics are a perversion and genocide is an unspeakable evil? Don't we both know that? So from where, and from what, are we getting this knowledge? Can it really be no more than my personal emotion? And if that's all it is, how can I really expect such things to "disappear from the world," since I can't even think of a reason they should?

Okay, subjectivists: you're on deck. What have you got?

[Harbal]

It's not just that we don't know HOW to make racism (or other evil things) disappear from the planet; it's that under subjectivism, we don't even know THAT racism "should" disappear.

We'll just have to make do with wanting racism (or other "evil" things) to disappear because we don't like them if we can't come up with a better reason. Although I must say, we normally think that not liking something is good enough reason for wanting it to disappear. I'm just saying.

We don't need to discuss it.

[Immanuel Can]

It's not just that we don't know HOW to make racism (or other evil things) disappear from the planet; it's that under subjectivism, we don't even know THAT racism "should" disappear.

We'll just have to make do with wanting racism (or other "evil" things) to disappear because we don't like them if we can't come up with a better reason. Although I must say, we normally think that not liking something is good enough reason for wanting it to disappear. I'm just saying.

We don't need to discuss it.

I can understand why. I don't think, "Well, IC wouldn't like it" would persuade anybody to hesitate or stop doing a thing they were set to do. I can't imagine that "Harbal wouldn't like it" is any more of an incentive...but you might be more popular than me.

[FlashDangerpants]

For my preference though, I just don't find this notion that moral claims express nothing at all except a certain form of approval or disapproval at all compelling...

Isn't that just an emotional response?

I'm not sure, neuroscience and experiemental psychology apparently tell us that we're ill equipped to distinguish between cognition and emotion when we interrogate why we hold our own beliefs, I remain loathe to take that infoirmation so far as to assert that therefore we actually hold no beliefs about certain things and just make judgments about them instead.

Off the top of my head, one other thing that I don't remember is any actual good arguments that were ever made for this non-cog thing.

That feels like the sort of complaint theists make about atheism. What is there for non-cognitivists to demonstrate?

It was just an aside, I just suddenly realised there's no big well known argument to tackle.

It was all a marriage of convenience that sidestepped a couple of doodoos that Ayer and Carnap didn't want to tread in, but they really never made a compelling argument in favour of it.

Well if it's just a logical positivist thang, I'm happy to drop it ad hominem, but what were the particular doodoos?

If you look at the way Ayer and the Vienna Circle attacked metaphysics, you might wonder why they didn't do exactly the same with moral language and simply dismiss it as meaningless. Perhaps they just didn't want to be disowned by their mothers, but I assume they had an eye on the causality issue. Any viable account we might make of morality must explain how/why it motivates us to take certain actions. The strength og non-cognitivism lies there I think in that they are reducing the whole thing to include only the motivational element (be that emotion or judgment or whatever).

For comparison, consider a modern day placcid pseudo philosopher like Vestigial Aqualung. He has a whole morality-proper thing he's flogging that he will tell you is only a clue and a guide and a map to some guided evolution thing. But did you ever look at a map and find out that there's a place called Colchester and find yourself compelled to drive around Essex in search of this wonderland? No, because maps aren't motivating.

By further contrast Immanuel Can has this whole divine command moral metaphysics. If you believe that, then you must believe that in return for your sins you will be boiled in a keg of cat piss for ten thousand years. Not getting boiled in cat piss can be highly motivating. So VA's entire theory is epiphenomenal whereas IC's has at least this one advantage. IC believes in a morality that is driven by the motivating power of terror, not the nonsense bullshit of 'clues'.

So non-cognitivism performs that naturalisation of moral universals such as Good by reduction directly to the motivating properties which affect the subject. No translation layers, no supervenience, no doomed attempt at ineliminative reduction - anything that gets lost along the way can just fuck off. And the end result can't accidentally end up being epiphenomenal, because all that was kept was the causal part of the common sense notion of morality. In my telling, that is how they got round the naturalistic fallacy in a way that neither naturalism nor non naturalism did.

My real take is that we try to make a working logical singular system of morality out of disparate parts that aren't really compatible to form a singular harmonious system out of.

Yeah. Bit like science.

I'm not really qualified to speak as to phil of science, but I do note that there is a debate within the brain science end of that sort of thing that looks somewhat similar, to do with the naturalisation of semantic content (normally I wouldn't know this, but I was reading Fodor the other day so, kismet I guess).

So they are trying to account for how concepts convey meanings without losing any of the essentials like compositionality... but also without relying on inexplicable middleware entities that filthy up the neuroscience. And I cannot lie, the Fodor approach looks a bit non-cog to me, it just does away with this idea of concepts having a "meaning" and simply points them to referents only. But because that implies that the semantic content of two non-identical concepts can be identical referent, and because this is standing in for the role of meaning... they get a Frege problem.

Fodor's been dead for a few years now, and I cannot attest that my reading of that book was entirely adequate because it's full of stuff I'm not great at, so I can't really provide any updates on how that controversy has turned out.

[Veritas Aequitas]

What do human beings do that makes them seem to practice a thing they call "morality" beyond expressing an emotional response to events?

Your sort of thinking is too shallow, narrow and perhaps dogmatically stuck to one fixed paradigm.

So tell me, what do human beings do that makes them seem to practice a thing they call "morality" beyond expressing an emotional response to events?

Morality is evidently part of human nature.

How is this evident morality demonstrated?

It is instinctual for any normal human being in not torturing and killing babies for pleasure without any emotional responses at all. It is just instinctual, natural and spontaneous. This is morality-proper.

So morality doesn't involve any intellectual nor emotional input from the actor. As long as they behave, zombie like, according to their instinctively activated inherent moral potential, they are sure to perform in a morally appropriate way. If however, they assume agency by employing reason or emotion to behaviour, they risk doing things that are not instinctive and are possibly immoral. I congratulate you on your morality.

Zombie??
That is why I stated, "Your sort of thinking is too shallow, narrow and perhaps dogmatically stuck to one fixed paradigm."

Have you heard of "action without action”, "Action in Inaction"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei

"detachment'
"The Law of Detachment is also known as the principle of Freedom. It is very freeing to know that you don't have to be rigidly attached to how you are supposed to be. There is so much power in allowing people around you to be natural as they are and to find what is most natural for you."

Flow [psychology];
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
"Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration; however, it should be effortless." [no immediate emotional or intellectual input]

The above are the characteristic of peak performers not 'zombies'.

It is the same with morality proper where one need to train seriously and develop one's moral competence and then allow moral acts to be expressed naturally, spontaneously [instinctively] in effective alignment with the moral purpose.

I had written elsewhere, it is too late for our present generation [or even the next 2] with our current psychological states to be highly competent morally in an instant.
There is a need for complex rewiring of the neural correlates of morality in the brain to achieve a reasonable state of moral competence.

To achieve the above humanity must start now to recognize the objectivity of morality based on its physical neural correlates in the brain with hope to achieve its fruits in the later 3 or 4 generations or later.

[popeye1945]

I don't know which is the bigger mistake: To imagine he exists or to imagine he is your friend.

EXCELLENT!

The biggest mistake of all time is imagining that pretending God doesn't exist gets you off being accountable to Him, actually.

You are still with the existence of little fairies playing in the garden. Faith is lobotomy!

[Skepdick]

Lets suppose that moral claims do describe emotional responses. OK.

And somebody whom I respect answered. Don't make your problems mine.

So moral claims are objectively true, because they describe subjective emotional states. Thanks for clearing that up.

Uh. No. Moral claims describe objective features of the world. Non-cognitivists (and yourself apparently) are simply not satisfied with the feature being described when we talk about moral claims. So what feature of the world would you prefer moral claims to describe instead?

If you want more "clarity" on the matter perhaps you should state the problem more clearly.

[Dontaskme]

It's not just that we don't know HOW to make racism (or other evil things) disappear from the planet; it's that under subjectivism, we don't even know THAT racism "should" disappear. After all, since morality is nothing more than a statement of my personal liking or disliking of a thing, who made me God, so that what I like or dislike should hold for others, far less for the whole world?

The thought ''Who made me God'' wouldn't even arise for every person. It's only arising in you, as you are making the statement intended for others to read...only you are making that statement, as if it was reality, but it can only be a reality for you, and not others..

Nor would this thought ''I must be God so that what I like or dislike should hold for others''

People always act as and through what their free-will allows them to do. That's if you already believe in ''free will'' which you have claimed is what 'Your God' the one you believe in, not others... gives to every human being on the planet. And I'm only talking about the God you believe exists IC... a belief that is just nothing more than your own self-made 'whimsical belief' that can never be proven to exist by anyone else but yourself as you created that God with your thoughts..
You then go on to talk about how your belief in God, then created YOU to be the God you believe in...Here> ''Who made me God''

So if you believe that humans have been given this 'free will'' to act by some God you just happen to believe exists, not others..all because YOU JUST HAPPEN TO SAY God exists, and that you just happen to believe others say God exists also, and then believe those other believers in God ....Then who are you, or these others who also believe in God, just because they too happen to say so... Who are you believers just because you happen to say so...to then say what you believe is a moral or immoral act for other people?

Do you see the hypocritical dilemma here?


.

[Will Bouwman]

From the mere fact that people disagree, it doesn't follow logically that emotivism is correct. Emotivism needs its own proof of truth, or else it's just another failed and undemonstrable paradigm.

I think you slip on the sort of self referential cowpat that did for logical positivism - you can't prove you need "proof of truth" to operate a workable paradigm. An emotivist, surely, would say it is only your emotional response to hypotheses that make you think so. Further to that, it is demonstrably so that people operate according to paradigms that are very different to yours or mine, the vast majority of whom are not as dysfunctional as they would be were their paradigms failures. Given that there are any number of viable paradigms, something other than ignorance or stupidity must account for at least some of the divergence. Emotion, I suggest, at the very least is an influence.

But the work to show that has already been done, as you'll shortly see.

On what grounds has Hume been criticised? Who has shown him to be wrong?

https://askaphilosopher.org/2016/02/29/ ... emotivism/.

I read the piece a couple of times. I don't think the logical positivists were quite the natural heirs to Hume some thought they were, so any refutation of Ayer doesn't sink Hume. The fact that the author refers to David Hume as John doesn't inspire confidence. All that notwithstanding, the objections to emotivism that I discerned amount to an emotional rejection of the notion that there can be no agreement about morals on logical grounds, and the distaste you express here:

...there's no possibility of ever gluing these fragmentary accounts of morality into a single, cohesive picture.

'Boo emotivism' in other words.

[Skepdick]

An emotivist, surely, would say it is only your emotional response to hypotheses that make you think so.

You say emotivist. I say diminutivist.

A non-diminutivist would say the same thing but without using the word "only".

A cause is a cause.

[Immanuel Can]

From the mere fact that people disagree, it doesn't follow logically that emotivism is correct. Emotivism needs its own proof of truth, or else it's just another failed and undemonstrable paradigm.

...you can't prove you need "proof of truth" to operate a workable paradigm.

You can "operate" it as a delusion or as a guess, maybe...you can't "operate" it with any sense that what you are "operating" reflects reality, though. If you have no evidence for Emotivism, or none that's persuasive, then on what basis do you advise people to believe in Emotivism over all the other possible paradigms?

Furthermore, how do you justify the "operation" for which you are advising Emotivism? You say it can "operate": so could Josef Mengele. It's not enough for a thing to have an "operation." It's obvious, then, that the proposed "operation" needs its own moral justification. If invoking emotion made me a successful propagandist and dictator, would that then prove that Emotivism was morally right? No. It would only prove that I could bamboozle foolish followers with emotional bribery. And that, itself, might well be immoral...as indeed, I think we both think it is.

Moreover, your argument is simply circular. It reads, "You should believe in Emotivism, not because I know it's true, but because it 'operates' in a way that I, myself, emotionally feel that I like."

Let's say that's how it is. If that's all the Emotivist has going for his case, nobody has any particular reason to believe him, nor any duty to share in any of his moral feelings.

An emotivist, surely, would say it is only your emotional response to hypotheses that make you think so.

Sure. But that's merely circular, too. Why should I believe it's my "emotional response to hypotheses" that makes me "think" something? Because you're an Emotivist? Again, not much of an argument. And if my "emotions" are different from yours, what then? How did your "emotions" get to trump everybody else's? You'll need a reason for us to believe that, too.

Emotion, I suggest, at the very least is an influence.

As I said in my last message, I think emotion is a piece of a larger puzzle. It is not the whole puzzle. What about motives? What about habits? What about duties? What about pleasure and pain? What about women's values? What about moral development? Etc.? Are you prepared to dismiss all these as having anything decisive to do with how people happen to moralize, so that Emotivism can become the exclusively correct answer?

Maybe you are. As an Emotivist, maybe you have to be. But there's still no evidence or proof of any kind that suggests anybody but you needs to believe it, then. So again, you owe some "demonstration," since you claim that Emotivism is "demonstrable."

...there's no possibility of ever gluing these fragmentary accounts of morality into a single, cohesive picture.

'Boo emotivism' in other words.

Well, as an Emotivist, that's all you'll be able to see in that statement. Kant would say that its problem is its lack of rationality. Bentham and Mill would say it lacks any reference to pain or pleasure. And a Pragmatist like James or Rorty would doubtless say that it doesn't "work" as well as you think, or for the desirable ends. But you've dismissed all of them, so you could remain committed to Emotivism? I suppose you'll say they all mistook what they were doing: that Mill, or Rorty or Kant was too emotional, and didn't realize it.

But yes, for you, as a committed Emotivist, "boo" is all you're left with. And "boo" doesn't do any moral work. Put it in any endorsement or prohibition, and it fails either to endorse or to prohibit. So, in the following cases:

1. Boo to murder.
2. Yay to charity.
3. Boo to genocide.
3. Yay to saving the planet.

The "boos" and "yays" fail on two scores: one, they are unbelievably weak and wimpy -- they don't give the hearer any sort of reason or duty to care, but only express one man's momentary and transient emotional position relative to the thing in question, in each case; and two, "yay" and "boo" don't give anybody any duty to agree or reason to either join the endorsement-in-view of the "yay" or to agree to the prohibition of "boo."

Therefore, Emotivism doesn't "work." It doesn' t actually achieve any of the most basic tasks we associate with morality. And we might well suspect, as indeed is obviously the case, that emotion is no more than a reaction-after-the-fact to certain events, rather than some sort of steady and reliable guide to lead us through real-world moral quandaries.

[Immanuel Can]

You are still with the existence of little fairies playing in the garden. Faith is lobotomy!

So....no insight of your own, I see? Nothing to offer the question in hand?

Okay.

[popeye1945]

You are still with the existence of little fairies playing in the garden. Faith is lobotomy!

So....no insight of your own, I see? Nothing to offer the question in hand?

Okay.

This tread just goes on and on, there is but one answer. Out of our subjective knowing we manifest into the physical world the meanings we biologically experience, and those take the forms of systems, institutions, rules, laws etc. In other words, our subjective knowledge is made manifest as biological extensions, or expressions of our humanity. Faith is lobotomy!!!