If it was universally accepted that morality was objective it is still possible there could be differences over value judgements :
There may not be universal agreement on the source of the morality [ some might say God - some might say philosophy ]
There may not be universal agreement on which aspects of life would be subject to objective morality
You could not have your entire life subject to it because that would be an impossible ideal to live up to
However even if there was a single universal source for objective morality that absolutely everyone agreed upon there would still be free will
For free will is the enemy of objective morality because it gives human beings the freedom to reject their moral code whenever they want to
A psychologically weak individual would fail in their moral obligations more than a psychologically strong one even if they both shared the same moral code
This demonstrates personal character is every bit as important as a moral code if not more so when it comes to living a good life based on certain principles
Free will is also the reason why there will always be differences of opinion between said human beings on every subject known to them [ not just morality ]
Which is why specific claims that morality is objective given any particular context, or universal regarding all contexts, must be situated in a particular context such that whatever font chosen – God, science, reason, nature etc. – is put to the test.
In other words, with regard to the conflicting goods that do in fact pop up regarding so many human interactions.
After all, if there are differences in regard to value judgments and those value judgements do “for all practical purposes” come into conflict out in the world of actual human interactions, what then?
Eventually, in our modern world, rules of behaviors accepted among a group of people [for whatever reason] need to be reconfigured into laws [in the larger society] such that abiding by them or breaking them bring about various rewards and punishments.
And here there are either demonstrable goods and evils applicable to everyone [re God, reason, science, nature, etc.] or [in my view] individual men and women derive a particular subjective/subjunctive narrative from within extant historical, cultural and/or interpersonal sets of experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge. Which, in turn, evolve over time given new experiences, relationships, ideas etc., in a world clearly awash in contingency, chance and change.
This, of course, becomes an entirely different context. No free will and morality is like everything else: enthrall to the laws of matter.
There is only the psychological illusion of being responsible for the behaviors we choose. There is only the psychological illusion of being able to hold others responsible for the behaviors that they choose.
Though even this is beyond my capacity to wholly demonstrate. Here we all make our own assumptions. In other words, in not being able to pin down beyond all doubt whether even those assumptions are not in turn compelled by nature.
This sort of thing [in my view] revolves less around being able to pin down behaviors demonstrated rationally and/or morally to be in sync with one or another objective font, and more around the part embedded in enforcement.
And here, yes, human psychology [in an autonomous world], does come into play. Some are just stronger, more assertive and more commanding than others. Similarly, there is the role played by social, political and economic power in any particular context. Being right is one thing, being able to enforce that right, another thing altogether.
Philosopher-kings, for example, the embodiment of right makes might in theory, may be woefully behind the eight-ball when it comes acquiring a police force, or an army or the political/economic wherewithal to command them.
As an absolute concept objective morality is flawed because no human being can live up to such an ideal
The road to self improvement comes through trial and error and making mistakes and learning from them
It is therefore more effective as a bottom up philosophy than a top down one which is how religion usually operates
Although ultimately what matters is not the specific methodology but the willingness to actually want to self improve
Experience makes us better moral beings but mistakes are inevitable so must be accepted while trying to avoid them as much as possible
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Jeanette Lang
What this confronts in my view is that [at times] considerably problematic juncture where “objectivity” understood technically by the serious philosopher meets its “ordinary language” counterpart out in a particular historical, culture and experiential context.
Or, perhaps, the serious philosophers can grapple with it in terms of human sensation and human perception and human conception intertwined in an assessment said to be in sync logically and epistemologically with rational thinking. And then, what, compare that to what actual flesh and blood folks out in a particular world justify as moral or immoral?
Is it in fact possible to transcend space and time existentially in order to establish, first, philosophically and then, secondly, to demonstrate that, for all practical purposes, human sacrifice is objectively immoral?
In other words, once modern men and women are able to be convinced that the Gods of nature [replaced by scientific knowledge] do not have to be appeased through human sacrifice, can they move on to, say, slaughtering the infidels that refuse to worship and adore their own one true denominational God?
Or are philosophers able to establish that at best God is just a name some give to the entirety of the universe itself. God as nature in sync with or not in sync with a teleology that gives meaning and purpose to existence?
Once, historically, it has been accepted by most that human sacrifice is not reasonable, is this the same as demonstrating that it is therefore immoral?
That, in other words, reasonable human beings are obligated to reject it?
A part of me is tugged in that directed, but a part of me is not.
There just does not seem to be a way in which to establish this as an essential truth applicable to all of us.
There is still that part of me that anchors value judgments of this sort in dasein and conflicting goods. Subjective/subjunctive frames of mind ineffably intertwined in contingency, chance and change; and in the possibility of determinism intertwined in all that we do not know about existence itself.
In any particular context, all human behaviors seem able to be rationalized by a particular “I” seeing the world in a way that my own particular “I” does not.
We reach the point where that which we are able to establish as true for all of us [in the either/or world], tumbles over into the parts where we cannot.
Okay, but that still leaves us with establishing “for all practical purposes” those behaviors deemed to be the most ideal for establishing in turn an improved self.
And then through both “trial and error” and “thinking it through” different people arrive at different moral narratives and political agendas. The “concept of morality” meets the “real world” embedded in what I construe to be conflicting goods derived from “I” as dasein interacting with others in a particular world where some have the actual power to enforce that which they deem to be in their own self-interest. Their self here [like mine and yours] no less an existential contraption embedded in an extant world historically, culturally and experientially.
That’s when I tap the serious philosophers on the shoulder and ask, “what then?”
But “what then?” only to the extent they are willing to intertwine their intellectual contraptions here out in a particular context where conflicting goods stubbornly prevail.
Thus when you suggest that…
…my reraction is often, “what on earth do you mean by this?”
In other words, what particular bottom involving what particular behaviors in which there are conflicting renditions of what “self-improvement” actually entails.
Who gets to decide which behaviors are the “mistakes”?
The mistakes which you make have to be acknowledged by yourself because this is the only way you can actually learn
It is called self improvement because it is exclusively focused upon your own moral advancement and not anyone elses
You might seek guidance or support from others but the ultimate decision to want to improve is only one you can make
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Karl Wray
This, in my view, is an entirely different way in which to approach morality as objective. Sure, it is an objective fact that individuals raised in different historical and cutural contexts, come to embody the value judgments embedded in their time and place. It’s not like – poof! – out of the blue an individual just makes up his or her own only wholly subjective morality.
But these objectivists were no less embedded in an extant historical, cultural and experiential context. Right? They clearly did not themselves just construct a wholly subjective moral narrative out of thin air “in their head”.
Instead, what connects them all is that they rooted their moral and political agendas in one or another transcending font. Thus the individual was expected to follow the leader because the leader was the embodiment of God or one or another rational/scientific political ideology.
What makes morality objective for those like him is the fact that it is never entirely subjective. It is instead always an intersubjective exchange of value judgments in any given community. A consensus is reached regarding the “rules of behavior”. This consensus can then revolve around either right makes might or democracy and the rule of law. Or, in some sets of circumstances, might makes right prevails.
And, besides, wealth and power will always be a factor when it comes to both making and then enforcing the rules.
Mistakes? Okay, but deemed to be mistakes by whom in what context regarding what behaviors that come into conflict in regard to conflicting assessments of what is said to in fact constitute “self-improvement”.
This part in other words:
And then through both “trial and error” and “thinking it through” different people arrive at different moral narratives and political agendas. The “concept of morality” meets the “real world” embedded in what I construe to be conflicting goods derived from “I” as dasein interacting with others in a particular world where some have the actual power to enforce that which they deem to be in their own self-interest. Their self here [like mine and yours] no less an existential contraption embedded in an extant world historically, culturally and experientially.
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Allow me to rephrase this:
If we choose to live among others, we will need to establish rules of behavior. We will need to agree on what is right and what is wrong. We will need to enforce a set of rewards and punishments
Otherwise, either 1] the strong or 2] anarchy wil prevail.
Therefore morality is objective.
In a nutshell, right? If morality cannot be derived from God or from a rational consensus regarding the resolution of conflicting goods, then the fact that we all agree that something must be done when value judgments collide makes morality “for all practical purposes” objective.
But my own understanding of morality has never really focused the beam on knowing how one should behave in order to achieve a particular goal or objective. There are any number of actual facts that both sides can concur on regarding that. Instead, it revolves around what is deemed to be [and in fact are] the rational pursuits of goals and objectives that come into conflict.
What should I do if I am pregnant and don’t want to be?
What should I do if I believe that the unborn are human beings?
Well, there are in fact reasonable solutions available for those both sides. But the successful pursuit of one means curtailing the pursuits of the other.
What then is the stance of the moral objectivists here?
Rules of behaviour are encoded in law which applies to everyone equally while morality is entirely personal
The state can therefore make and impose law but not morality because that is a matter for each individual
“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in the latest issue of Philosophy Now magazine
This would seem to situate us at a rather mind-boggling intersection. One in which morality meets determinism. In other words, ethics concocted in the human brain is exposed to be no less autonomic than the heart pumping blood throughout the body or the kidneys passing waste out of the body through urine.
Or, to put it another way, it may not be so much whether AI can ever be the equivalent of human conscioiusness, but whether in creating it, it exposes to us just how much human consciousness itself is nature’s own equvalent of AI. Natural intelligence being no less mechanical.
How do “unconscious atoms” reconfigure into matter able to create a consciousness able to reconfigure into an “I” able to reveal to itself that consciousness itself is derived from unconscious atoms?
With God of course that becomes one possible explanation. If we are willing to set aside [for now] grasping how or why God Himself came into existence. And, in turn, the extent to which His existence is necessarily in sync with the laws of matter. Does God exists as a result of the laws of matter or did God first create the laws of matter in order to provide us with a context in which to interact?
Again, it seems possible that, the more sophisticated we become in creating an AI closer and closer to our own intelligence capabilities, the greater the possibility becomes that they really not distinguishable at all.
First of all, that is what I posted above in full.
But: my point in noting this is to suggest it is actually folks like John Talley who seem to approach objective morality in this manner. It is not something that I am suggesting.
It’s the secular rendition of those who insist that God must exist because without Him, there can be no font for an objective morality.
The last thing the preponderance of moral objectivists [sacred or secular] want to accept is the possibility there is no font – God, Reason, Nature etc. – from which the “real me” can derive “the right thing to do”.
This is a distinction without much of a difference for some. Whether rules of behaviors actually become laws depends on the extent to which behaviors derived from a personal morality begin to impinge on the behaviors that others wish to pursue instead.
And it is hardly a coincidence that personal moralities and societal laws tend to be in sync with particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts. That then evolve over time given a particular confluence of contingency, chance and change.
Nor that, in the end, what counts is having the actual power to enforce a particular set of behaviors through a particular set of rewards and punishments. Whether within a specific family or [through political economy] the community at large.
“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in Philosophy Now magazine
Pain and suffering.
How does one wrap their head around mindless matter evolving over billions of years into self-conscious mind-matter able to experience pain and suffering?
We can imagine how excruciating our own pain and suffering would be in any number of contexts that revolve around, say, “natural disasters”. But the mindless matter embedded in the tumultuous fury of the tornado or volcanic eruption or a raging fire itself presumably feel nothing at all.
And yet pain and suffering is often a critical factor when we approach that distinction between ethical and unethical behavior. The more of it we inflict on another the more likely it is to be seen as unethical.
But can we then create an artificial consciousness able to both feel pain and suffering and to approach the behaviors of other AI beings as either moral or immoral?
Again, assuming that in creating an AI “I”, we have some measure of autonomy and are in turn able to “manufacture” autonomy in this articial intelligence “I”.
Really, how close are we to dealing with these things in reality? A reality such as this for example:
How, in an autonomous universe, would the question of morality be the same or different for biological individuals and those individuals created by biological individuals to feel pain and suffering and to react to it as either justified or not justified?
“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in Philosophy Now magazine
Morality exploding in ever more mindboggling directions as new technologies beget brand new contexts in which to argue distinctions between right and wrong behaviors. Only now a flesh and blood “I” has to contend with an AI “I” that may or may not be in sync with any particular moral narrative and political agenda.
And then the equivalent of me down the road arguing the extent to which dasein, conflicting goods and political economy are in turn applicable to this AI “I”.
That ever expanding gap between the extraordinary acceleration of things that we know are true objectively for all of us in the either/or world, and the fact that going all the way back to the pre-Socratics, the is/ought world is still bursting at seams with subjective renditions of conflicting goods. Only now the technological bound has ushered in any number of brave new worlds to contend with.
In other words, one thing never changes: political economy. You can bet that those who own and operate the global economy [be they flesh and blood or homo deus] will make certain that whatever is deemed “theoretically” to be right and wrong in places like this, always comes down to the behaviors that they are empowered to enforce in order to sustain their own perceived best interests.
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Ronald W. Pies
The part that I keep coming around to. You can believe that morality is objective. You can claim to know that it’s objective. But how do you actually go about demonstrating that in fact it is given human interactions that come into conflict over behaviors said to be either right or wrong?
The “notional idea” of objective morality is one thing, but it’s not the thing that most interest me.
Exactly.
Instead, let’s focus in on human interactions in which any number of conflicting moral and political assessments crop up.
How about the role of government in our lives? Some value a considerably larger role than other. Depending on the issue.
Now, in regard to the “two central features of objectivity” above, everyone will agree that objectively the government does in fact exist.
But, using these two features, how is it determined objectively what the role of government ought to be in regard to, say, the legalization of marijuana use?
In a word: context. Construed subjectively from a point of view rooted in dasein.
Sure, if you insist that a consensus reached in any particular aggregation of human beings subsisting in any particular historical and culture and community context, need be as far as one goes in order to claim that morality is objective, then, for you, that makes it so.
You merely assert it to be true.
But then there’s the part that revolves around who gets to decide what this consensus shall be. The role that economic wealth and political power play.
And then the part where communities come into contact with other communities and the consensuses themselves come into conflict.
Thus the “notional idea” of objective morality falls apart at the seams when “for all practical purposes” there is no philosophical or scientific method for pinning them all down once and for all.
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Kristine Kerr
This in my view is clearly a frame of mind that only has to be believed to make it true. Someone thinks that it’s true. In part because, subjunctively, they feel that it’s true as we’ll. But to then call the fact that you believe and feel something is true all the proof we need to establish it as in fact true objectively?
Should we then make it illegal to call anyone ugly and grossly overweight? Should we enact a punishment for doing so?
And it clearly intertwines human emotions into the mix. If someone hurts your feelings, that in turn ought to become an important factor in establishing the objectivety of behaviors deemed to be either right or wrong?
These hurt feelings – a genetic component of human biology – said to be universal or virtually universal?
But then:
Okay, let’s choose a hundred people at random, put them in a room and ask them to pin down that which ought to be construed as universally offensive. What hurts their feelings? And if, say, the liberals and the conservatives compile a very different list? Or, instead, is the whole point here that, in being able to note that feelings can be hurt in all of us, this becomes the basis in and of itself for claiming objective morality?
On the other hand…
This in my opinion is the classic example of the “general description” argument. You make a blanket statement about human interactions: We all feel offended by certain behaviors.
So, let’s use this as the basis for establishing that morality is objective. That we cannot intertwine our general rule into a frame of mind that actually differentiates right from behavior when conflicting goods are confronted in any particular context, shouldn’t stop us from pointing out that it’s still there to suggest that a resolution must be within our reach because objective morality has been proven to exist.
And I’m not arguing that this is an irrational point of view. I’m only looking for someone who embraces it to bring their assumptions down to earth and explore them…existentially.
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Martin Butler
In other words, in discussing morality, where does science and mathematics and philosophy and theology and all the other disciplines end…so that we can then discern and discuss where the others begin?
Instead, they seem to be all entangled in a “human condition” embedded in a universe where, by far, the overwhelming preponderance of interactions have absolutely nothing to do with morality at all.
And, in turn, the overwhelming preponderance of human interactions that can be “observed” also consist of relationships that are clearly able to be demonstrated as true for all of us.
And yet, as well, the overwhelming preponderance of turmoil, of upheaval, of pain and suffering, deeply embedded in the history of the human race, revolves precisely around those things that we do not seem able to pin down: value judgments.
Doing the right thing.
And, in my view, most folks seem far more intent on convincing themselves that whatever the right thing might possibly be, it does in fact exist.
And that is so because they have, In fact, already discovered what that is. Then it is merely a matter of dealing with those who, while sharing their conviction that morality is objective, disagree [more or less insistently] regarding what that entails out in the world of actual human interactions.
The part that revolves around rewards and punishments.
This in my view becomes hopelessly entangled in human psychology. And, given a particular individual’s psychological parameters, “I” is going to evolve over time given an enormously complex intertwining of a particular set of genes and a particular confluence of memes.
Then it comes down to those who are actually convinced that they and they alone are able to untangle all of these countless variables. In order to come up with a sum of all parts such that, thinking it all through, they discovered or invented a moral narrative and political agenda such that they can know when any particular abortion is or is not morally acceptable. Some even going so far as to convince themselves that morality can be understood here universally. Abortion itself as a bundle of behaviors can be pinned down objectively. Deontologically as it were. Or [of course] behaviors construed to be sins.
I can agree with this. Well, up to a point. I would never argue that objective morality is out of reach. And, surely, given a belief in an omniscient and omnipotent God, how could it not exist.
It may even be possible, in a No God world, to pin down “the right thing to do” in any conceivable context. All I can do is go in search of the argument and the demonstration that convinces me this is in fact true.
But even here it would only be deemed true by me. How would it all be put together by someone such that all rational men and women are obligated to believe this behavior is right and that behavior is wrong.
As for torturing a baby, yes, that is likely to be considerably closer to objective morality than, say, littering.
But in a No God world someone can always rationalize doing even that…and for whatever personal reason that propels them. Perhaps they loathe someone so much that they punish them by torturing the baby in front of them. Perhaps they are sociopaths who just want to experience what it might be like.
After all, look at all of the ghastly behaviors [up to and including genocide] that have rationalized by human beings down through the ages. Some to the point where the behaviors are actually seen to be righteous!
For me God is absolutely vital here.
Though even then assuming I have the autonomy necessary to believe that of my own free will.
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Glyn Hughes
Hmm…
The part [perhaps] where “do the right thing” meets a brain equipped only to do what it must?
In other words [perhaps] before you can test your moral narrative here you need first to test the extent to which it might possibly be the only one that you could ever have had.
On the other hand, there are surely parts of the brain that come closer to “human morality” than others. But how to distinguish them. How to pin down precisely the manner in which they are intertwined when any particular one of us is faced with the next context in which we must decide what is in fact the right thing to do. Objectively.
And the extent to which that pertains to fact at all.
This is the part that most of us here have little choice but to leave to the “experts”. After all, what do we know about the actual science here? Only what we read, right? So that what we think we know depends a lot on who and what we read. Not unlike so many other discussions we have here.
“There does seem to be…”
Okay, then bring an assessment of this sort down to earth and examine in more detail what your feelings and experiences are telling you about particular conflicting behaviors based on conflicting value judgments in an actual context.
How might the “fixed and objective process by which the moral comparison” is made be applicable in regard to, say, the immigration debate?
Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine
Paul Mealing
That’s always been my point of course.
It’s the difference between words defining and defending the meaning of other words in an argument and this meaning then confronting a set of assumptions that breeds a very different meaning. The two then forced to confront a context in which the variables embedded in actual human interactions can come at you from all directions. Factors applicable to genes, to memes, to historical and cultural norms, to gender, to ethnicity, to class.
And then, individual to individual, we confront sequences of personal experiences that can vary considerably. Communication breakdowns happen all the time. The same words are being exchanged but in the world of value judgments it can often seem as though there is little recognition of that at all.
So, what then, Mr. Philosopher? Is there really the equivalent of, say, the Golden Mean here? Or, even more remarkably, a frame of mind that is argued to reflect the actual moral obligation of those said to grasp the wisdom that some insist is within the reach of the technical discipline? Moral narratives said to be most in sync with such philosophical tools as logic and epistemology.
In other words, when “morality in theory” comes face to face with political agendas rooted in conflicting value judgments pertaining to a particular context:
What else is there then but to go along with this or to insist that, no, philosophers are able to establish what all rational people [in India or anywhere else] are bound to do in this particular set of circumstance.
The other side of the coin. Once someone has managed to convince themselves that, philosophically, moral obligations are within reach, how far will they go in insisting that others are obligated to share those beliefs. In either a God or a No God context.
How far is one permitted to go in rewarding those who are “one of us” and in punishing those who are “one of them”?
My point is merely to suggest that this struggle is embedded in the very components of my own moral nihilism. There is no getting around the struggle other than in attempts to mitigate it through democracy and the rule of law.
Both objective and subjective morality have both theory (I/we think this is good) and practice (I/we try to implement what we think is good). The difference is that objective morality relies on external measures to determine what is good and to evaluate it. Subjective morality is largely in the mind … whatever you think is good, then is good and external measures can be entirely ignored.
Pedophiles are made to feel guilty too.
And thieves, killers and rapists.
End result : If you let these gangs rape and kill whenever they want to, then India becomes a shithole for young women. Objectively.
That sounds like his subjective theory of correct morality, since he does not refer to any external reasons for why it is appropriate.
