Is Morality Objective?

phyllo, you’re a gentleman and a scholar, and the fact is that if this group is wise, then they’ll justify their decision based on the objective facts they have at hand, and investigate the situation in the most objective way possible. It would really be a shame for these hungry people, if they justified their decision based on the subjective view that each of them had about whether the broccoli was pretty or not. But make no mistake, that any decision is made with limited knowledge, and entirely fallible, need not make it in the least bit subjective.

OK, let’s leave off P1 and split out C from P2. The new syllogism will read:

P1*. If A then C
P2*. C
C*. You should think A to be true.

This conclusion does not follow from the premises. It is the classical fallacy of affirming the consequent. A different syllogism, with additional or changed premises as I have offered previously, might work, but it would be a different syllogism. As this syllogism stands, it is invalid.

This is sort of tangential, but it’s important to discussions of philosophy generally for two possible reasons:

  1. If you are under the belief that the conclusion follows from the premises, it is important to explain why that isn’t the case because this is a pseudo-logical form that comes up often.
  2. If you are not under the belief that the conclusion follows from the premises, it is important that you concede the point, because without a concession on a rigorously demonstrable fact of formal logic, it is difficult to maintain a presumption of good faith.

Yep, I flubbed that one, let me try again using you example of finding a close parking space and not murdering.

Both seem to be clearly on a spectrum of things that you should do when you can. And the ranking can be in terms of how much it matters that you do one or the other. And there is an inuitive sense in which if you fail to not murder, it matters a whole lot, while if you fail to find a close parking space, it matters only a very little. We might ask some different questions when evaluating whether or not to murder versus whether or not to find a close parking space, but we will also ask different questions about murder and theft.

It’s a difficult comparison, because murder and parking are at completely different ends of the spectrum. But there is a cognizable spectrum. It’s also worth noting that the theory I’m espousing, that there is a generally objective ranking but not objective truth in any individual case, already explains a phenomenon of how our oughts work: choices at the lower end of the spectrum are less clearly ranked than those at the high end. If we’re ranking murder against theft, there’s a clear and seemingly objective order. But if we’re ranking parking versus wearing a blue tie, it becomes harder to rank them. But this is to be expected, because, mattering so little, context drowns out the ranking in virtually every case. If you think of the spectrum in units of oughtness, the lower will have so few oughtness units that every experience of the question will be surrounded by other questions that together swamp the oughtness. If I’m determining where to park, am I running late? am I out of shape or injured? Am I driving someone else who I want to convenience? Am I the owner or employee of the place I’m going such that I don’t want to block spots for customers? Similarly, in picking a tie, what other ties do I have? What color is my shirt/jacket/eyes? Am I testifying in court, or am I the lawyer, and if the latter, plaintiff or defense? These questions have so much more oughtness in them that the oughtness in the question itself are within the margin of error. Similar questions about the oughtness of murder or theft don’t tip the balance, because the oughtness of murder is enough to make the influence of most other ought questions insignificant.

Objectivity has to remain pure. As soon as you inject even a little bit of subjectivity, you taint objectivity and have to call all of it subjective.

The thing is … you can’t help applying subjectivity.

Let’s say the broccoli is tested for poison. Subjective judgements will still be used.
“I was there at the testing and the technicians seemed to be careless.”
“The lab was run down and the equipment looked old, I don’t think that it was calibrated properly.”
“That test does not detect the kind of poison which is in the broccoli.”
“We don’t know anything about that lab, can we really trust the results?”

The risk assessment has subjective elements even though the underlying reality is entirely objective.

Shift to the domain of morality. Here we are talking about not just physical atoms but also about human feelings and reactions. The assessments are even more subjective.

I repeat: This is not a fallacy, or the fallacy of affirming the consequent, because A really is the only sufficient condition for C. Formally, the argument is invalid. But informally, it’s valid—and that’s because A (morality being objective) is the only sufficient condition for A (talking as if morality were objective).

No, it is time for you to recognize that when the antecedent is the only sufficient condition for the consequent, then what looks like hte fallacy of affirming the consequent is not a fallacy… BECAUSE THE ANTECEDENT IS THE ONLY SUFFICIENT CONDITION FOR THE CONSEQUENT. It’s time for you to recognize that some invalid forms are valid informally—i.e., by the meaning of the terms.

  1. If you are under the belief that the conclusion follows from the premises, it is important that you concede the point, because without a concession on a rigorously demonstrable fact of formal logic, it is difficult to maintain a presumption of good faith.

The argument is not fallacious. But whenever you do find a fallacious argument, and the fix is just inserting a biconditional in the first premise, rather than a conditional, you would do well—if you’re philosophizing in good faith—to insert the biconditional, and read charitably.

OK, Mo_, then we agree. As written, your syllogism is formally invalid, i.e. the conclusion does not follow from the stated premises.

Additional premises can certainly be added to make it work. Changed as you suggested, the argument is this:

P1: If and only if morality is objective, we can consistently have productive discussions with other people/cultures and speak meaningfully (without talking past each other). We can even criticize each other, legitimately. We can do things we should be able to do, like reflect on our past, claim to have grown, etc.
P2: In fact, we do these things anyways.
C: Morality is objective.

This strikes me as a weak argument. One can reject the idea that we can legimately criticize others’ conduct; moral relativists would disagree that such criticism is legitimate, as would anyone with any theory of a subjective morality. In addition, the initially unstated premise that being able to do these things entails that morality is objective (If C then A, the other half of the biconditional) also seems suspect. It’s quite possible that it’s best to treat morality as though it’s objective, even if it is in fact subjective, e.g. because it only really matters that everyone agrees on morality and treating it as objective encourages broad agreement.

Phyllo, I encourage you to read my exchange with Flannel Jesus in this thread, as I am challenging exactly this notion. Here is another example that I think makes a strong case for top-level objectivity with significant underlying subjectivity:

Language is at base subjective. If I decide to myself to call a rock a shporkle, that word will have subjective meaning for me, but when I ask someone to pass me a shporkle, no meaning will be exchanged. And yet, at the highest level, when the language is examined across all of its speakers, we can and do make objective statements about whether or not someone is using or pronouncing a word incorrectly. There is an objectively true meaning to words that emerges despite the subjectivity of any individual’s use of that lanuage. There’s fuzziness and error rates, but it would be hard to argue that the english language doesn’t exist objectively.

I think the argument as I wrote it is valid. When you formalize it, and ignore the meanings of the terms, it becomes formally invalid. That happens, often. But I’m not aware of a thing that needs to be changed from the argument, except to make it clearer.

Of course they can. Anyone can deny the truth of any premise… but they need good reasons for doing so, (*none provided), because when they reject my premise, they commit themselves to a host of wildly implausible things, namely, the denial of everything in that premise.

If you treat morality as objective, when you think that it is subjective, then you are behaving inconsistently. Your theory doesn’t match your practice, which begs the question of why your theory is the way it is, or why your practice is the way it is. Of course, most of what’s gone on in this debate is just someone denying some premise here or there, without feeling the need to bolster that denial with any kind of support. Yes, if this is what you’re asking, it’s possible that morality could be subjective----that’s possible, I’m just not sure what reason we have to think so, or what’s wrong with any of the reasons against thinking so. Really, I’m not aware of a single one having been provided.

Depending on where the burden of proof lies initially, and on how reasonable the premise is, the burden doesn’t have to shift. After all, the premise itself is not an argument for it, so if after simply stating the premise, someone who disagrees simply rejects it, the person who bore the burden initially probably still bears the burden of defending their position. If you make an argument that involves a truly outlandish premise, it would be strange if including that premise in a syllogism shifted the burden of disproving it to the person who quite reasonably rejected it, right?

I agree that that morality is objective (although I think I mean that differently than you do), but I think the burden of proof is on us to prove that. A premise is not a reason, so if a premise necessary to reach a conclusion is denied, even without any supporting argument, it could well be the case that the person who presented the premise still bears the burden of proving it. In this case, where the premise in question is almost equivalent to the conclusion (the ability to legitimately criticize on moral grounds is nearly the same as morality being objective), putting the premise out there does little to shift the burden. If the person you’re trying to convince would be willing to accept that, they’re not likely to disagree with you in the first place.

In general, this is right. A few points:

  1. You can’t reasonably reject something without giving reasons. You can withold judgment if the burden’s not in your court.
  2. What’s most plausible is to think that if you’re going to discuss morality with some other culture then there would have to be some objective domain with which to appeal. If taste is subjective, (for example), then we look ridiculous to have a debate about whether apples taste better than oranges. And if we do discuss it, then we’re doing nothing more than voicing opinions, without any reason for the other to care or consider anything. Imagine that if the truth of what I’m saying (about morality, or any topic) is relative to me, then why should I care about whatever objections you have to what I’m saying—because what I’m saying is already true!
  3. I think this is what I took myself to be saying when I made the section on the list of reasons why claiming objectivity is a good thing.

I don’t think you believe that. When you hear of an Iranian girl who is stoned to death because she ran away from a forced marriage at the age of 13… do you immediately say, “Well, different strokes for different folks”? Because if not, then intuitively you think morality is objective. You might have some explanation about it being illusory, but you’d at least recognize that some explanation is required. None has ever been provided in this thread. And yes, I have made some burden shifting arguments. Usually what happens now is that someone will scoff and then bring up a legitimate cultural difference revolving around an incredibly complex issue for which we couldn’t know the answer. If I say here that it might be that we disagree and neither of us is wrong, that’s no threat to objectivity, either.

Agreed. I think I did a fair bit in my original post. There was a list of 5 points toward the end of the post. And of course I argued from extreme cases to shift the burden as well—you know, forks in eyes and stuff like that.

I skimmed it. Are you referring to a specific post(s)?

English exists objectively as does morality. But not all English words or sentences have objective meaning. Words which refer to physical objects can generally be thought of as having objective meaning. Word which refer to abstract concepts are not objective. The meaning of these words exists only in human minds and does not exist as an archetype in any one accessible location. The word ‘dog’ is very different from the word ‘value’. People will agree to what a dog is and will be able to say, when shown a picture, whether it is a dog or not. Now show them another picture and ask if the object is valuable and there will be a much greater variety of responses. And then ask about the value of another abstract concept -love,pain,pleasure,honor - and you will have still greater variety. Introduce another abstract word ‘equal’ and ask them to balance love and honor and pain and suffering. There will be huge range of opinions. Morality deals largely with these kinds of abstractions. There is a physical act and an evaluation of the act. Iambiguous often posts about that - Mary had an abortion versus the morality of Mary’s abortion.

Mo,
in a sense I am thinking that when presenting your idea of objective morality, first put the ideas in a grid with other objective moralities, compare and contrast. I think your position will get can’t see the forest for the trees resistance when you begin with supporting your position.

What?

Hi Carleas, I think the parallel with language is a very good one. No-one’s going to argue that English doesn’t exist, and no-one will argue that people don’t behave morally. But similarly, there is a gap that needs crossing between the social conventions of a language and the world to which it refers. I can be correct that a sentence in English should start with a capital letter. That has nothing to do with meaning, or anything about the way the world is, it’s a convention. If everyone decided to drop the convention, the language would be no less meaningful or relevant or usable.

Similarly, Paris is the capital of France - very few people would say this is a subjective fact. Yet if everyone decided tomorrow that Lyons were the capital of France, Lyons would be the capital of France. People who thought Paris were the capital would be flat out wrong; books that stated it as such would be considered outdated. “Paris is the capital of France” is true by virtue of it being held to be true by people - no redefinition of terms is necessary. Compare that to “Everest is the highest peak in the world” - public consensus can’t alter that, except by redefining the words as commonly understood.

If you want to make an objective statement about pronunciation or grammar, you have to limit your pronouncement to a particular language/dialect at a particular time. We no longer pronounce “nothing” as “no-thing”, as English-speakers did in the past. And we don’t pronounce “dog” as “Hund”, as they do in Germany - and I don’t think anyone would hold that “dog” is objectively the right word for it and that the Germans are wrong to use the word “Hund”, nor that they are objectively wrong to capitalise their nouns.

So how mind-independent are linguistic facts? Why should mind-independence be a prerequisite of holding something to be right or wrong, having established a context? Why should a “cultural relativist” who sees language as a series of social conventions be committed to disallowing criticisms of poor grammar by an English speaker - or for that matter, why should they not criticise other languages’ conventions on the grounds of unclarity, inefficiency, over-/undercomplexity or misleading conceptual structures? We can learn from other languages, talk meaningfully about differences and confusions and assess the effects of changes on our own language with time.

It would be clearer to show examples of choices where there is a potential conflict between prudence and morality. Hiding a Jewish neighbour from the Gestapo would be considered by many to be hands-down the moral choice, but the consequences of his being discovered on you and your family, as against any personal benefit, would arguably make it highly imprudent. A soldier taking a stand against overwhelming odds may be driven by morality, but certainly not prudence. They’re clearly not equivalent, although they are very often associated.

A bit between Mo & myself on prudence and morality from another thread here:

I like my example of the difference between prudence and morality because prudence here isn’t about something unrelated to the question of how one ought to act. A bit later, I also offered this…

…which I stand by. I think this is the end result of Mo’s packaging of prudence with morality.

Mo_, the burden question is interesting, I think I took a position on it too quickly. I do think the burden is on the person arguing for objective morality, because I think the empirical evidence makes a universal morality counterintuitive, and only possibly by a counterintuitive explanation (thus my subjective-on-the-bottom-objective-on-top approach). But prior to seeing that evidence, there is a strong intuition that morality is objective.

But even if we grant for that reason that the burden is initially on the person arguing against an objective morality, the existence of things like the stoning you mention should be enough to shift the burden. I might find it repulsive, but I know that to be a culturally-based stance. I know that the people doing the stoning do not think themselves immoral. How is that possible? Are they just wrong? How do we know we aren’t wrong? The vehemency of our belief that one shouldn’t stone a 13 year old for any reason does not suffice to prove that that belief is objective. While I agree that the stoners are wrong, I think the burden is shifted by that very example.

But this does get to why I agree with you on the prudence-morality connection: I think the answer to why stoning a child is wrong is that it is totally imprudent. It relies on an empirically empty metaphyics, a poor understanding of how the world works that puts a lot of big and unfounded assumptions out there that justify actions that are objectively wrong without them.

To both Anon and O_H, I don’t see why a conflict between prudence and morality is a problem. It’s just as easy to construct a conflict between morality and morality (If I have one dose of cure and two deathly sick children), or between prudence and prudence (if I can park close to the entrance or close to the exit, and not both). What does a conflict between the two do to show that they aren’t different sides of the same spectrum?

I think Only_Humean did a better job of fleshing out my claim than I did, but I would like to address this directly. As I said, there is fuzziness and errors. For all your examples, there is a well defined core about which people who speak the language will agree. People might have a variety of understandings of love or pain, but they will be nearly unanimous that a picture of war does not depict love and a picture of a blowjob does not depict pain. But the margins are very fuzzy and much more poorly established. Similarly, there’s a well established core of immoral killing, but the margins are much fuzzier. But the objectivity of the core isn’t questions, and even the degree to which a certain question is fuzzy is objective, in the sense that we can observe and predict the range of feelings and act based on that observation or prediction.

This again mirrors language: I know that a potential mate will understand certain basic facts when I tell them “I love you,” and I won’t be too let down if they don’t mean exactly the same thing when they say it to me. And we may disagree how big a promotion we’d be willing to pass up to keep our love, but neither of use will expect that the other would be willing to pay to escape love.

I think universal moral principles are generally impossible to support, or else useless—because there always seems to be counter-examples to them. But I’m not arguing for universal morality, or universal moral principles, or universal anything—and I never have. Morality is context-dependent—facts pertinent to each new context can make a moral difference. —Objectivity, not universality. I think everyone’s intuition is for the objectivity of morality—and that explains why language and feeling and action presume it.

Yes, they’re wrong. We don’t need to prove they’re wrong just yet—you just need to recognize that you think they’re wrong, and thus any burden is not in your court. So you can wait, wait, wait for some kind of burden shift backwards, or some argument (none ever provided).
Ok, so you’ve waited and waited and now you want to figure out who’s right or wong for yourself… because the other side isn’t saying anything. Fine. Go the Euthyphro route, because clearly they think they’re following God’s command. Ask yourself on their behalf whether something is good because God says so, or whether God says it’s good because it’s good. Long story short: it’s the latter. And we can be confident about that. So now we need good reasons for thinking something is right or wrong apart from God’s command—because the fact that God commanded it isn’t itself a reason, (it just implies that God has one). This is all part of growing up—you stop listening to commands of your parents and think for yourself. My hypothesis, friend, is that there will be better reasons against stoning to death a 13 year old girl than reasons for it. Seem reasonable? —And that’s good, right?

The burden is shifted onto the other side—not mine. And nobody is arguing that the vehemency of a belief makes morality objective.

And I’d add that it caused pain. Unnecessary and terrible pain.

If you are rude to everyone, the proper moral decision is to “learn to be nice”—not to refrain from ever speaking with someone again. Please tell me I’ve misunderstood your point somehow. And please don’t say something like, “yea, but I might slip up and be rude”—because clearly that happens to everyone and the benefits of communication with human beings far outweigh the occassional rudeness.

For the record, I agree with everything I said in the passage that you quoted me as saying (which, btw, I also said in my debate).

A picture of war can show self-sacrifice, love of family, love of country, cowardice, honor, friendship, mercy, fear, pain.
A picture of a blowjob can show hate, exploitation, inequality, moral degeneration, love.
Depends on the picture. It depends on the context.

About 99% of DNA in humans and chimps is the same. The small details seem to be important.

Part of the problem with this debate is that requirements of objective and subjective morality are never established. Mo often claims that universality is not objectivity. However, without something that can be used as a reference, we are forced to fall back on agreement to demonstrate objective morality. How much agreement is sufficient? If agreement is not the measure then what is?

Those aren’t conflicts (except insofar as you might feel conflicted having to make the choice) - you can be moral in one way or another, prudent in one way or another. The choice is between morality and imprudence vs. prudence and i[/i]morality: they don’t match up. It’s not a conflict to choose between prudence and imprudence - ought I park my car near the exit, or in the central reservation of the highway? Similarly for morality: “ought I steal a pensioner’s life savings or raise money for a children’s charity?” is not really a conflict, for any normal values of “ought”.

You could argue that prudence is one of several moral goods, in that case - moral dilemmas can force us to prioritise, to choose and reject goods over each other. But you can’t say that prudence is just the same thing as morality.

Can, and did, and gave reasons for it. Frankly, I don’t think you have an intelligible distinction between them. I don’t think you know what you mean by either prudence or morality when you draw an essential distinction. Clearly, thinking prudence is self-interest, and morality is other-interest doesn’t work. You have entire moral theories arguing that you ought to pursue your self-interest. You know, ethical egoism. And clearly it’s prudent to flat out risk destroying yourself for a cause sometimes. You simply don’t know what you mean by the terms. Well, anyways, this was all said in my OP.

Since you don’t address the reasons I gave, and only address the ones you gave yourself, I’ll take this as rhetoric.

I’m not at all drawing a self/other distinction, I’m drawing a distinction between pragmatic and principalled oughts. That the same word happens to be used does not make them the same, and where your in-car navigation tells you which route you ought to take, it is not dispensing moral facts. You might insist that’s the case, but you’ll stand pretty much alone in that.