Is Morality Objective?

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.

Carleas & Mo,

For the record, I don’t think prudent means self-interested. There’s a wiki entry for “prudence” – it’s pretty straightforward. Prudence is related to good judgment – i.e. is a particular action daring or reckless? It’s moral to save others first when the airplane is in trouble; it’s prudent to put on your own gas mask first. It’s just plain self-interested if you put it on first for your own sake at the expense of others.

Prudence and morality may indeed exist on a spectrum, such that you could subsume prudence under morality, or morality under prudence. But it’s like saying that there is nothing that is artificial – everything is natural. Natural and artificial exist along a spectrum as well, but they are opposites. They don’t mean the same thing, and to treat them as if they do is to abuse language and generally screw things up. It doesn’t help to call perfectly moral behavior immoral, because it strikes a person as imprudent.

You didn’t give a reason for thinking there’s a distinction, you just said in so many words that there was a distinction. I, on the other hand, did a fair bit about this in my OP.

And clearly, there is no essential distinction between pragmatic and principalled oughts. For a Consequentialist, any time you have a rule or a principle, the rule or principle itself is justified on pragmatic grounds (i.e., whether it tends toward the better consequences). Even if you are a deontologist, (though this is a source of embarassment for deontologists), your principled oughts are ultimately justified on pragmatic grounds. You know why Kant doesn’t think that acting on many universalizable maxims is what you ought to do? —Because they have bad consequences. He says so himself. Ultimately, I still just don’t think you know what you mean by the terms you’re drawing a distinction between. It’d be helpful if you tried defining both ‘prudence’ and then ‘morality’… and then tried to justify and make sense of that distinction. As I did at the start of my OP.

I’ve already addressed this in the debate, and elsewhere to you specifically. If you need to get where you’re going, then your GPS is dispensing morally relevant facts. And if you don’t need to get where you’re going, then your GPS isn’t even dispensing prudential facts, let alone moral ones. And that I have a difference of degree, and that we use language in that way, and apply terms by degree where there’s no essential difference, accounts for this. Honestly, how much of the debate did you read? There was a whole part about the difference between adult and child, and degrees, and no essential… anyways, whatever.

Mo_, I meant objective when I say universal. I think a context dependent morality is still universal, in the sense that any two people in the same context are bound by the same morality. If that’s not the case, I don’t know how it can be objective either.

This statement is much too strong. Why can’t someone who would stone their daughter recognize that he thinks I’m wrong, and then put the burden right back on me? We can’t both bear the burden, and it’s not useful to talk about a burden if who bears it depends on who you ask, so either we can shift the burden back and forth by mere internal recognition of our own beliefs, or that recognition is not sufficient to determine who bears the burden in the first place.

What about the classic case of stealing the cure for your dying wife or child? This seems to be a clear case of a conflict of morality and immorality in the same way that hiding jews during the holocaust was a conflict between morality and imprudence.

I’m not saying that there’s no difference between prudence and morality, and I don’t think Mo_ is either. We’ve both argued that they are at different places along the same spectrum, which is to say that they’re different in the same way that children and adults are different, or hot and cold are different, or natural and artficial are different. But the ways in which they are the same is significant in all these cases. Moreover, for my position anyway, it’s significant that the line between prudence and morality is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, even though to a great degree the spectrum itself is objective.

To this last point, perhaps looking for borderline cases is the best way to make this argument. Is the existence of a “right to choose” in respect to abortion a moral or a prudent question? I think people will come down on either side. Similarly, look at libertarian arguments for minimizing government and taxation. For some, the question is about what’s prudent: government just makes people worse off, etc. etc… For others, it’s moral: government has no right to restrict our freedom, etc. etc. Here too, it’s not clear cut whether the question is a moral one or a prudential one. It will depend where you draw the line.

He could, I guess. (I was counting on FJ not doing that). In that case, I guess the burden is in no one’s court. And everybody has some explaining to do.

MO_ your first post was tooooooooo long, it could easily be halfed.

Per se it seems that there are no major objective morals, but there are a few, that not to lie, steal, randomly kill, etc, such basic kind of behaviours that will make a society stable.

Core morals = yes!
Elevated morals = no.

I beg your wHaT?

This!
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