Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 7:36 am
Dachsund
If you disagree, please focus on one moral claim - one example of what you think is a moral fact - and show why it describes a feature of reality correctly, independent of judgement, belief or opinion, without begging the question, and without appealing to intuition - which also begs the question. (To say 'X is wrong because we intuitively know it's wrong' gets us nowhere.)
OK. Here is a moral claim that is true - that is a fact:
"Objective moral values and duties do actually exist as components of reality (of our universe)."
I say that this claim is true. You are saying it is false. Right?
To begin with, let me be very clear about what I am saying in my claim. I am claiming that our universe (our reality) contains moral categories of values (good and bad) and duties (right and wrong) that exist independently of the
OPINION of anyone, and that apply to the actions and motivations of all persons. So, we are talking ONTOLOGY; got it? That is the subject matter at hand - and the question is whether these categories actually exist "for real". We are NOT discussing epistemology, - i.e;
how we come to know these categories. How we come to knowledge of morality is not relevant to the question at hand. To use a simple analogy, whether or not you
know the speed-limit on the streets of my city has no effect on the
existence of that speed-limit. In my city, you will still get a speeding ticket from a traffic cop if you get caught exceeding the speed-limit, even if the road you were caught on was not posted with any speeding signs. (And) even if you plead with the cop that you just arrived in my city from interstate and had no idea that the speed-limit was 10 mph lower than it is in your home town, you will still get a speeding citation.
Also, my moral claim:
"Objective moral values and duties do actually exist as components of reality (our universe)," is not interested in whether you or anyone else happens to believe in objective morality or not.For the purposes of this post, I don't give a fuck if you do not believe in objective morality. Belief in, or a lack of belief in, a truth claim, does not make the claim true or false. Again, by simple analogy, you may not believe that the speed-limit in my home town is 35 mph, but you will still be given a speeding citation if a traffic cop catches you driving at 45 mph in spite of your belief to the contrary. Right ?
What my claim addresses is whether or not these moral categories exist in reality, not in someone's belief system.
To continue, So, we have two different types of reality on the table, don't we ? We have my reality, which is a
MORAL UNIVERSE in which objective moral categories exist, and then we have your
AMORAL UNIVERSE that contains only individuals' moral
OPINIONS - subjective, moral categories (where each person's standard of: right; wrong; good and bad is defined by themselves and applies only to themselves).
So, let's take a look at what each of these two competing realities would look like and then decide which one best describes the features of our own universe.
In your AMORAL universe, objective, moral (ontological) categories do not exist. No action a person takes can be called objectively bad/evil; while one might DISLIKE another's action/behaviour, no external, absolute standard exists by which any action/behaviour can be called good or bad/evil. In the overall scheme of things, a mother breast-feeding and tenderly nurturing her new-born baby is behaving in no better or worse way that a mother who cuts her new-born child's throat with a meat knife. (And) any feelings one has to the contrary is simply OPINION. In your universe, such moral opinions have no basis in reality; that is, nothing objective exists on which to base such a concept.
In my universe, objective, moral categories DO exist and any action can fall into one of three categories:
(1): MORAL ACTIONS - actions that conform to the objective moral standard.
(2): IMMORAL ACTIONS - actions that violate the objective moral standard.
(3): AMORAL ACTIONS - actions which are not addressed by the objective moral standard.
As an objective feature of the universe, and not of an individual human beings, these categories apply to all humans. In the same way the law of gravity applies to all humankind. (And) just like there is no way of escaping the laws of physics for physical creatures, the laws of morality are just as binding on human
persons. The sole difference being that the laws of morality are prescriptive (i.e; describing how thing OUGHT be) and not descriptive ( i.e; describing how things ARE).
OK. Now that I've described our two competing universes: YOURS: the AMORAL UNIVERSE, and MINE the MORAL UNIVERSE. Let's see which of the two descriptions best describes what we actually see in our own universe. What follows are two reasons: (A) and (B), why my universe - the MORAL UNIVERSE - is the more accurate description of how things truly are in reality.
REASON (A):
Your concept of an AMORAL UNIVERSE - ( and please remember how I have defined the term "amoral universe" above, in accordance, BTW, with your posted views on morality on this thread) - although it is not logically self - refuting,
IS existentially self-refuting. There is, granted, no logical incoherence in the statement: " No objective moral values and duties exist in reality." The problem arises, however, when one attempts to describe how one should LIVE in such a universe...because the instant one makes such an attempt, they have INVALIDATED the concept. In an amoral universe, "how one SHOULD live" is MEANINGLESS...no standard exists to describe how one SHOULD live in your universe.
The problem is sloppy thinking. That is, you have not thought through your position on the issue/s with sufficient critical rigour. It's all too easy for you to sit back and spout the loose and woolly claim:
"Objective moral truths do not exist; hooray (!) I therefore have the right to do as I please!" But what you fail to understand is that this claim ( and make no mistake, this is precisely what you are, in effect, saying) makes a moral claim to a "right" while at the same time denying moral reality. If you believe others ought to allow you to live according to the dictates of your own will and your own conscience, then you are , paradoxically, appealing to OBJECTIVE MORALITY to justify what others "OUGHT" to do. Tsk, Tsk,Tsk, Peter.
The logically correct view in an amoral universe like yours is that everyone will do as they do with no moral implications at all. Yet the motley crew of ratbag, atheist feminists (sorry, I've got a serious personal problem with feminists, I absolutely loathe them, for a number of reasons) in the "pro-choice" (i.e; pro-abortion) lobby, for example, frequently make moral demands for theists (Christians, usually) in the pro-life movement to "stop imposing their morality." This demand certainly assumes that theists "ought" to act in a particular way. Yet without objective morality, no such ought can exist. Can it, Peter ?
Or, if you like, you can think of it this way; we are beings who can conceive and consider many different courses of action. Does any course of action exist that should always happen, if possible? Does any course of action exist that ought never to happen ? If one single course of action ought never to happen, then objective morality must exist. I propose that the recent bill signed into law in the state of New York permitting abortion at any stage of a 9-month pregnancy effectively without the need for any sound, compelling reason/s to be given in justifying the "procedure" ought never have taken place.
REASON (B):
In an amoral universe, I find I am hard-pressed, indeed, to determine how the idea of moral categories would come to be (?) While in such a universe, any moral standard is necessarily subjective, such a subjective morality could have no place in reality. Consider... while we can certainly conceive of idea that are fictional, most if not all of these fictional concepts have their roots in reality; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Monster was sewn together using the limbs and organs, etc; of human corpses and looked like a large, albeit grotesque adult man; a unicorn is an extension of a horse; the "Triffids" from the fictional horror movie ("The Day of the Triffids") were tall, mobile, poisonous plants whose upper features stucturally resembled "pitcher plants", they had a stem, green leaves and a mass of roots near their bases, etc; Zombies are fictional "undead", reanimated corpses that are popular with horror genre (film, book) fans; they basically resemble adult men and women (though they have morbidly discoloured skin and usually look a bit the "worse for wear" in terms of bad dentition, decayed flesh and body wounds, etc; and walk with an unsteady, staggering gait; Anubis, the Egyptian god of trhe dead was represented with the head of a jackal and the body of a man, and so on. I'm sure you get the idea; these fictional entities any most others are derived from reality, they are not created
ex nihilo, so to speak.
Yet for the concept of subjective morality to appear in an amoral universe would indeed be like something coming "out of nothing". It would be, to give a brief illustration, like the idea of blue or green appearing in a completely colourless universe. It is impossible to convey the experience of visually perceiving (in one's consciousness) colour, to a man who has been blind since birth; because such a man has no basis upon which to relate such a description. While you might say that blue is a certain wavelength of visible light, that doesn't convey to the blind man what light is, nor the experience of actually seeing blue. For the blind man, the visual perceptions of colour and light do not exist in his experience (in his phenomenal domain/consciousness)
But in an amoral universe, moral categories have no basis of existence in reality. In a world where colour had no basis in existence in reality, everyone would be like the blind man above, completely incapable of understanding the concept of colour. Even if one conceived of such a thing as green or red in their imagination, they could never communicate this idea to others without a shared reference point. For purely subjective concepts, such shared reference points cannot exist.
There is an argument that the fact different cultures and religions have differing concepts of morality is evidence against objective morality. But this is not the case. My sister (who is an interior designer) and I frequently disagree on colours. I'll say something is red, while she insists it's purple. When the object is taken out into the light, we find that she is usually right. Though while we disagree on the colours of objects,
neither of us is claiming that the objects have no colour at all. In order for us to have a meaningful conversation about an object's colour, both of us must assume that colour exists, and that the object in question does have a colour. If colour does not exist, then our conversation is meaningless, inexplicable and, frankly, delusional.
So the fact that almost every single person who has reached the age of two seems to have conversations about what men should and should not do seems to be strong evidence that they actually perceive something in the universe that actually exists. Whether politician, clergyman, lawyer, police officer, parent or protester, all make the claim that men
should behave in a certain way. It seems incredibly myopic to argue all who hold such views to be sharing the same delusion. What do you think, Peter ?
For example, Christianity teaches us that we should love our enemies, and, as much as possible, we should live in peace. Some branches of Islam believe that one should behead one's enemies, and anyone with a good knowledge of the Koran with tell you that Islam is absolutely NOT a religion of peace - it is quite the opposite. Again, for the point I'm trying to make, which view is correct is irrelevant; but in order for anyone to have a meaningful conversation about which view (if either) is correct, one must assume that a correct view
DOES, IN FACT, EXIST. This require an objective moral stance.
Finally, the implications of (A) and (B) are inescapable...unless objective moral categories of good, bad, right, wrong actually exist in reality, our tendency to think in these terms is impossible to explain. Unless, that is, you can explain it for me, Peter, using the principles of your ethical subjectivism.
Regards
Dachshund