Does anyone have an argument against the following besides iambiguous… preferably one that is coherent.
Warning:
Don’t expect JSS to actually ever make his arguments applicable to existence. For instance, to the existence of flesh and blood human beings struggling to come to grips with moral conflicts they encounter in the course of living around and interacting with others.
In other words, this is for “serious” philosophers only.
Good is a case by case thing. It is not absolute. But it’s entirely natural. The natural world is the objective world.
Eating meat may be bad for one animal and good for another, for example.
This doesn’t mean all meat is universally good or bad. It depends entirely on the situation and who ever is involved.
Birds generally don’t abort their eggs. It’s natural for them to want to protect their eggs. Is an egg the same as a fetus? You bet.
Humans can over-ride one natural impulse with a less natural one : destruction of their children before birth.
That doesn’t make it very natural, though. Yes some creatures eat their babies, but not normally.
The natural thing to do is protect life that is agreeable with your self and interests.
Terrible moms would want abortions. They may not realize they are terrible.
Getting something for nothing is objectively advantageous for a person. Could be money, food, useful objects, etc.
Therefore : stealing, shoplifting, conning people … are all objectively moral.
A) Did you find flaw in the argument provided, not merely your presumption from the conclusion of it?
B) If stealing and conning people actually was “getting something for free”, then it would be moral, as you say. But it isn’t actually free. What one has comes very largely through society’s cooperative efforts and when one detracts from those efforts by not cooperating and subverting them, society begins to fail at providing the things that the individual could never have gotten for themselves. It would be a bit like stealing from your employer in that if it happens too much, the job is lost as the business is no longer profitable. And at what point is it “too much”? Presumption is the very seed of error in judgment and failure.
C) Because society knows that cooperation is required, the efforts to subvert cooperation are actively punished and thus the thief or con has increased the probability of losing far more than he gained. So even if he got something seemingly for free, he paid the price of increased risk. Continuance of a risk guarantees failure. Thus it wasn’t for free in the same way that winning at a gambling game isn’t free, merely a momentary decrease in losses.
Bias - A preference or an inclination
Morality is founded on bias. Good, beneficial, advantageous. These are all biased assessments.
Bias to?
One’s objective/value/goals.
There’s no unbiased justification for holding a particular objective/value/goal.
Morality is applicable as soon as you set a goal.
Your example is: Having a healthy body.
It’s a widely held goal, but bias. If someone doesn’t want a healthy body, then it isn’t helpful for them to consume foods which increase the health of their body.
My question is: Why do we need objective morality, anyway?
Well, I almost stated in the OP that I don’t think in terms of morality anyway, but I wanted to see if there is any logical fallacy involved in identifying what “objective morality” actually means. I personally don’t care if it exists but it seems if people are going to argue over it, like quantum weirdness, it might be a good idea to find out if it is really exists.
In my world, the fact of it either way doesn’t change anything.
So back to my question, “Is the argument a valid argument”, regardless of the conclusion?
iambiguous’s definition of objective says undistorted by emotion or personal bias.
In that sense, morality is never objective.
If we say objective = beyond individual perception/opinion, then I can yes, there is objective morality.
In your example of the physical health of one’s body, regardless of opinion, ingesting certain materials kills us, and ingesting other materials fuels us.
You can define anything you like and make an argument from those definitions. But when you look at the consequences and find something odd, it indicates that the definitions or the arguments are inadequate.
This is the problem… there are other consequences to theft than just getting the money. There are consequences to the thief, the victim and society(whoever or whatever that is). How can you evaluate what is objectively advantageous and therefore objectively moral, when there are two or more stakeholders? And each of those stakeholders has a slightly different idea of the advantages and disadvantages of an action.
What is the advantage of having an extra $100 in your pocket? Depends on how much the thief needs it.
What is the disadvantage of losing $100? Depends on how much the victim needs it.
What is the advantage of living in a society where personal property is protected? What value does it have compared to $100 gained or lost?
Your argument also has this uncomfortable consequence: If you can get stuff without the victim or society finding out then it is always moral to do so. 
Let’s say that cooperation is useful. How much cooperation is required to make society function and to satisfy individuals? How is that objectively evaluated?
If he steals once and gets away with it, then it is objectively moral. Is that what you are saying? 
You are conflating the declaration of good with the definition of objective. It might be that morality should be defined by personal opinion. I am not arguing that point. The word “objective” directly implies something that is independent of opinion, emotion, or bias (such as a bank account sum). The question is whether there is any act whatsoever in the entire universe that would be beneficial regardless of anyone’s bias concerning the act. It only takes one example. The example that I provided was that of actual physical health even if no one wanted that health. An act can cause health even if no one thought of it as a good thing. Thus the body benefited. There can be very many similar examples.
That is true. Or it might be that your purview of the conclusion or consequences is what wasn’t quite right. Thus one should look back at the logic (and premises/definitions) that brought about the conclusion. It is irrelevant as to whether the conclusion is desirable. Logic is objective even if nothing else is.
And perhaps the definitions should have been different. That is another story. But given the definitions, perhaps to be changed later, is the logic valid.?
All of that is beyond the point. The first question is whether given the definitions, the logic is valid. If we don’t like the conclusion or the definitions are useless in reality, perhaps they should be changed. That would all be a matter of opinion and taste - subjective. But until they are changed, is the logic valid?
That expresses Bigus’s issue with it all being “up there” rather than his preference of it being direct simple dogmatic declaration of good and evil for every detail.
As you might say, file this somewhere between a straw man and a lie.
On this thread, I will only interpolate in order to set the record straight when my name comes up.
I don’t have any “dogmatic declarations” regarding good and evil. Instead, I am of the subjective opinion that both are rooted largely in dasein and in conflicting goods.
And that in order to discuss this more fully philosophers need be willing to illustrate the text.
To the point about conflicting goals, it seems like we should search for goals we all share, if we are honestly searching for something in the ballpark of “objective morality”, whatever that might precisely mean. So to start… we all want to achieve our goals. But do we want to achieve them for their own sake? No, we want to achieve them for the sake of something " higher". The goal of going out to dinner isn’t to eat. It’s not even to eat tasty food. Knowing this, one’s evening doesn’t have to be ruined if good food wasn’t in fact eaten. It could be claimed that the goal of happiness which is shared by all sentient beings is either true by definition (abstract) or too vague to be meaningful (generic), but happiness is as concrete a state as, say, neck pain. Such a state is achievable; the steps leading to the state we all desire (whether we are aware of this simple desire or not) consists of virtues of body, speech, and mind (whether we are aware of this or not).
I understand that, but when you are given abstract answers requiring that you fit them into a situation as they might fit, you declare that it is all “up there” and must be brought “down here”. And by “down here”, I finally realized that you mean that every moral issue must have an immutable yes or no answer regardless of the situation. Some things just aren’t that way and that is what was being expressed. When you try to declare what is good or bad disregarding the situation, you will be incorrect except in the abstract sense. But you want to ignore the abstract so that you can declare that the situation cannot be resolved period.
I think the point is your all or nothing thinking - that without objectively correct answers, all is lost.
How in the world can one espouse dasein and conflicting goods and then reduce human morality down to “all or nothing”?
All is not “lost” – it is instead situated [existentially] in particular contexts understood subjectively in particular ways.
It is as though you are suggesting here that I am suggesting here that moral conflicts can only be understood as “all or nothing”. That unless we know for certain that abortion either IS moral or IS immoral we are, what, doomed?
How is it even possible to misconstrue my point of view more? Unless, perhaps, I am misconstruing yours.
That IS what you have been suggesting for months with your “John and Mary” exasperation. “Because conflicting goods cannot be resolved, conflict must exist.” That is your claim.
My claim is that they CAN be resolved, but not without looking into the abstract concerns involved and working from there. But you don’t WANT that. You WANT your conclusion that it cannot be resolved.
Iambiguous, I agree with James. You may not think we’re doomed, but you seem to think our lives are so particular as to be completely atomistic. Your version of “situatedness” is just a form of alienation.
I hope this doesn’t get lost in the mix. It was a response to phyllo/James.
You don’t read many of my posts, do you?
Because if you had you would know that, over and over and over again, I situate dasein in historical, cultural and experiential contexts. Which is to say there will always be considerable [organic] overlap within any given human community. Children that share the same historical and cultural roots will often share the same set of values. And their personal experiences will often overlap as well.
What intrigues me then is the extent to which individuals who become aware of this are then able to make distinctions between those things that transcend dasein – things that are in fact true for all of us – and things that are more indicative [subjectively/subjunctively] of the actual existential lives we live.
All of this situated [politically] in the contest of wealth and power.
And then I bring this all down to earth and explore it within the context of actual human conflicts. Except James won’t do that.