Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 10:06 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 4:18 pm
Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 4:42 pm
I'm not trying to say anything; I actually am saying that your claims of objective moral truths are nothing of the sort.
What's your evidence that leads you to that conclusion? Or are you only stating what you prefer to believe, regardless of any evidence?
You are making a claim that I find rationally impossible, so I am obviously not going to accept it as true without very compelling evidence from you to support it.
Well, you don't find it "rationally impossible." That would require some sort of evidence, or some sort of rational argument. And for sure, you've offered no reasons or evidence for anybody to believe that morality (assuming such exists at all) is "subjective."
So it's certainly
rationally possible that morality is objective. There's no rational reason it couldn't be...unless you have something I've never seen on that. And it's not at all more plausible to jump to the conclusion that it's subjective -- especially when, downstream rationally of that position, you'd have to conclude that morality
does not exist at all. For that is exactly what "subjective morality" amounts to: that all morality is a mere figment of a personal imagination. It's
subjective unicorns.
And that's just redundant.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:No, I am wanting to strangle you out of sheer frustration.
Would you be evil if you did?
On the contrary: I suspect I would be considered a hero.
In which case, you'd be an objectivist again.
"promoting" a view for which there is no evidence is not really possible; one cannot "promote" something without something by which to "promote" it.
In order to promote your latest book or movie, all you need is a book or a movie.
No, that's not all you need; you also need a
method of promotion. And that means you need to offer the people to whom you are "promoting" a thing a reason to accept it.
Which...you haven't.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:At which point they might well roll their eyes.
That will seem to serve their purposes for now. But it won't serve their purposes long.
If their purpose is to resist being infected with superstitious beliefs, lifetime immunity is probably as long as can be reasonably hoped for.
That's assuming a lifetime is all that is to be hoped for.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:I'm sure many of us do feel we want to kill our neighbour, and yet we don't, so it seems that most of us can restrain ourselves without God wagging his finger at us.
But the question is, "Why should we?"
I don't know why we should, I just know that most of us do, and that, I think, is what matters.
Look at what Hamas just did. Would you call that "restraining ourselves?" And do we imagine that we are a different kind of human being than the Palestinian terrorists? Do we suppose that we have such a pure human nature ourselves that, if we were raised in Gaza, we would simply remain incapable of that kind of wickedness?
Or do we suspect that maybe, given enough inducements, we might ourselves be no better than Hamas? And if that's the case, while we have every reason to condemn such rank evil...we also have to admit that we find that sort of rank evil also latently potential within ourselves.
I guess the answer depends on how much self-knowledge, and how much sincere humility, and how little racism, we have.
I think the fact that there is a vast variation in what different people -and groups of people- consider morally acceptable supports my case much more than yours.
Not at all, actually. That's a non-sequitur. Once again, you're capitulating to the fallacy called "bandwagon fallacy," namely that if enough people believe a thing, it must be more likely to be true. But that can be demonstrated false very easily.
And you should certainly hope that it's false. For if it is true, then I have to point out that the vast majority of human beings, both in history and now (over 92% of the world's population) believe in some kind of God or gods. So if bandwagon fallacy were supportive of your view, it would be far more supportive of mine.
Happy with that?
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:We are both here with the purpose of establishing the correctness of our argument, and a lack of honesty makes a nonsense of that, so it is bad in relation to my objectives, if not yours.
Your objective, you must assume, are objectively good ones, then.
If the outcome of a situation is the one I hoped for, then I will look upon that as being good for me. Would it be an objective fact that it is good for me? I don't know, what do you think?
If it's not objectively good for you, then you ought not to do it.
A drug addict may believe heroin is "good for him." It won't make it so. It's objectively poison.
So you assume your "establishing of correctness" is an objectively good thing to aim at, and premise an allegation against me based on that assumption. You're again being an objectivist.
It would be an objective truth to say that the "establishing of correctness" is what I desire, so if that makes my pursuit of it an objectively good aim...
No, it wouldn't. The fact of pursuing a thing, and of choosing means conducive to getting it, does not tell us anything about the objective status of the thing pursued.
In fact, it could mean that your desire is no better than the desire of the addict for heroin. The fact of wanting a thing doesn't make it objectively good. We often want things that are (objectively) very bad indeed.
Like what Hamas wants so badly, right now.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:Well when we post our responses, we usually do it in the hope of reaching a wider audience than just the person we are responding to, so it is not just your opinion of my complaint that I am interested in influencing. I suspect, and hope, that rather a lot of people are of the subjective opinion that dishonesty is wrong.
Why would you wish a thing upon people if you think it's bad or neutral? But you don't. You think you're an influence upon them to the morally good, and I might then be an influence upon them to the morally bad: and again, you're an objectivist.
I thought there was more to being an "objectivist" that simply having a preference for a particular outcome.
It's not about merely the objectivism; it's about the morality. If "being honest" or "not deceiving" is not an objectively good thing, then your adjuring of people to choose it is totally arbitrary. One is not better or worse for ignoring it completely.
But if that's the case, it's very hard to see how you hoped to shame me by choosing those accusations. Why should my purely subjective morality be duty bound to allign with yours, or to please you? But if those accusations were that I was doing something objectively wrong, then your accusation would make sense.
But then, your accusation would also be manifestly false.
So what do you want your (allegedly subjective) accusation to be: empty, or plain false? I'll take either one.
I don't know that it is impossible for anybody to live as a moral subjectivist,but I certainly think it would be very difficult to do it completely and constantly. Our moral opinions, especially our strongly held ones, do feel like objective truths to us, and I have never denied that,
That's a big admission, on your part. Thank you for your honesty.
But it's quite true: most people do resort to moral objectivism, at least intermittently, in their lives. And perhaps this should alert us to a problem with subective morality. Really, it's the third such problem. To reiterate, we've already seen that...
1. Nobody lives as a consistent moral subjectivist...which is strange, if moral subjectivism were true. Why should 100% of the people in the world be unable to live out a belief that was true?
and
2. Moral subjectivism is merely an unforthcoming version of moral skepticism or moral nihilism. Ultimately, it means nobody has to take any morality seriously at all.
But now there's a third problem, and it's that...
3. Moral subjectivism is all too tempting. It's exactly what every wretch, ne'er-do-well, sneak or guilty person would most want to believe. It's definitely most alligned with what Freud called "wish fulfillment fantasy," or the desire to believe something because it serves one's own turn, rather than because it's true.
...but we are arguing about whether there actually are such things as objective moral values, and I still maintain that such things are logically impossible.
I'm sorry...I just don't see that you have any warrant for such a conclusion. If you had shown some "logical" reason why we must not believe morality is objective, I might find that even a little tempting to think. But you haven't...and you insist you don't need to.
But if "logical possibility" is something that must be shown before a belief is taken, then I think you haven't met your own burden of proof. You haven't done anything to show that a neutral party has good reasons to believe in moral subjectivism. So I can't concede you that suggestion.
