back to the beginning: morality

“Moral Relativism Is Unintelligible”
Julien Beillard argues that it makes no sense to say that morality is relatively true.
From Philosophy Now magazine.

Of course it is not my own intention “here and now” to argue that moral statements are “sometimes true”. Only that within the arguments themselves there are facts that can be established as true for all of us and reactions to those facts that precipitate value judgments that are rooted more subjectively in dasein than in any deontological assessments that philosophers and scientists can themselves demonstrate to be true for all of us.

And I agree that to the extent that moral relativists portray their own arguments as true objectively, they are certainly far removed from my own conclusions.

Or, again, rather, no assessments that I have come upon.

Also, there are the factors pertaining to the “subconscious” and the “unconscious” mind. And the manner in which all of this is related to more “primitive” components of the human brain: instinct, biological drives, libido, psychological defense mechanisms, etc.

Sure, “for the sake of argument” any number of assumptions might be made here. But how to bring those assumption into sync with arguments into sync with what can in fact be demonstrated to be wholly true regarding all of these relationships given a particular context.

Let’s face it, out in the real world it’s not whether moral codes are true or false, but how “for all practical purposes” they actually work to provide different people with different levels of acceptance and satisfaction.

That’s how it works alright. If moral nihilism precipitates reactions that appall particular people then it is not likely that anything I might argue here is going to change their mind. They just know that certain behaviors are right or wrong.

But, really, beyond this what behaviors can they in fact demonstrate [philosophically or otherwise] that all rational and virtuous people are obligated to embrace and defend?

My only assumptions here is that 1] we live in a No God world and 2] that some measure of free will does in fact exist.

friedrich from the philosophy cafe used to try to pull the same shit with his relativism as ‘self-referential paradox’ crap. remember that? guy wrote a whole essay on it. he busted out the kant and rawls and everything. i wuz like ‘dude, claiming that morality is subjective is not a moral claim in itself, but a statement of valueless fact. DUH.’

you need to check out hare’s ‘prescriptivism’, biggs. i think you could get down with something like that because it’s a generically different approach to the effort to save morality from relativism. it’s pretty solid, because hare’s coming from the non-cognitivist camp, so he makes no claim to there being objective moral facts out there in the world.

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

And nowhere, in my view, is this myth exposed better than in discussions of conflicting goods amidst human social, political and economic interactions. The closest we come to it is embodied in democracy and the rule of law. But that is basically a historical component embedded in the capitalist political economy. Prior to that, various combinations of might makes right [sustaining empries] and right makes might [sustaining God] prevailed.

And, then, in more “primitive” communities – nomadic, slash and burn, hunter and gatherer – there was the part given over to “the gods” and the part given over to the biological imperatives that sustained particular gender roles in keeping the community going.

There simply wasn’t enough “surplus labor” around back then for a community of philosophers to pop up in order to grapple “intellectually” with things like “neutrality”.

Something worked to keep the community going – fed, clothed, sheltered and defended – or it didn’t. And that generally revolved around there being a proper place for everyone and everyone being in their proper place. No laws or courts around to actually be neutral.

Okay, so the first thing we will need to look for here is the extent to which this age-old “general description” of human morality is brought out into the world of very real conflicting behaviors revolving around actual conflicting goods. And, in particular, when those who share his view that morality is objective go after others [sometimes viciously, ruthlessly] who refuse to embrace their own set of precepts and behaviors.

And, it should be noted, the author will consider all of this given the assumption that we live in a No God world.

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Okay, moral principles are intertwined historically, culturally and interpersonally in an actual community of people out in a particular world confronting particular contexts. And the “for all practical purposes” embodiment of such things as social, political and economic justice, are derived from the principles.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Particular people out in particular worlds validate or invalidate particular behaviors in particular contexts based on one or another transcending font: God, reason, political ideology, assessments of nature etc.

But: I then point out that even this discussion and debate itself is predicated on two fundamental assumptions:

1] that we possess some measure of free will
2] that anything we might conclude here and now seems embedded in the yawning gap between what any particular “I” thinks he or she knows about human morality and all that can be known about it going back to a definitive understanding of existence itself

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

This is an important admission for me because my contention is that in the absence of a transending font [which most call God], mere mortals acquire a moral narrative existentially through the course of accumulating experiences that encompass their lives. Out in particular worlds.

Is this the criteria then? Not that you are able to demonstrate that your own moral values reflect the most rational frame of mind, but only that you take them seriously?

Again, there may be those who argue that, in the absence of a transcending font from which to forge an objective moral narrative, you might just as well be plucking down values at random from trees. But that is certainly not my own contention.

On the contrary, my argument is that any number of moral objectivists come into conflict precisely because they are able to construct coherent arguments containing any number of facts to support political agendas from all along the ideological spectrum.

Just choose a particular conflict, a particular context and let the rational assessments flow.

But: Who then is to say what the most rational assessment is? The one able to demonstrate that they take their own values the most seriously of all?

Like, for example, the Nazis?

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

You either move the bishop according to the rules or you don’t. If, however, your opponent is distracted and you move the bishop up or down or left or right, you are cheating. That’s when the is/ought world kicks in for most. Some will argue that cheating is necessarily immoral while others will insist all that the counts is winning the game…by whatever means necessary.

Same with flossing. Few will argue that flossing is a moral obligation. They simply note that if your goal is to have healthy gums and teeth, it is reasonable to floss.

Yes, but if your own moral philosophy revolves around sustaining your own self-interests, you’re not concerned with following the rules so much as not getting caught if you break them. If there is money riding on the game and you need money, cheating is merely another option.

How would a philosopher go about demonstrating that cheating here is necessarily immoral? Where’s the argument establishing that?

No, not so. At least not necessarily so. Silver merely informs others that he accepts the rules because he knows that is what they want to hear. That he is not inclined to follow the rule, however, is, from his point of view, his own business. If, for whatever personal reason, it is important for him to win the game, he rationalizes the cheating.

yeah i dunno about this silver guy. he’s already talking bullocks right out the gate. rules don’t ‘motivate’, but govern. what motivates is the desire to reach an end… and the manner in which that is done either ‘follows’ rules or does not.

he also conflates rules following with commands and prescriptions; ‘floss your teeth’ is not a rule, but a prescription. now how you floss your teeth would be an instance of rule following. but that only amounts to exhibiting the behavior you learned which was the ‘right way’ to floss your teeth. but you don’t have to floss your teeth ‘way x’ to participate in flossing your teeth. on the other hand, you do have to move the bishop ‘way x’ to participate in playing the game. if you move it differently, you’re not playing the game. the former is a command, and the latter is a rule.

tighten up, silver.

i tell ya, these objectivists will say anything to try and convince us that morality is objective. see how silver tried to throw us off with that analogy? you gotta watch em, man.

If enough objectivists deflate what silver means by this’n that, then they would not have to keep try’n to outguess each other what they mean.
They can git down right mean of they don’t sort it out. Rules are oft whatever they make it out to be, however they intend at the moment.
At least that’s how they did in the wild wild west.

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

What am I misconstruing here? He seems to be arguing that if I accept any particular set of “permissibility rules” that – that – makes me a “moral objectivist”.

Is this what he is really stipulating here? Or am I missing the point?

Sure, if you lived in the only human community on earth, and everyone accepted which behaviors were to be permitted and which were not then, I suppose, for all practical purposes, within that community, morality can be said to be objective.

On the other hand, what on earth does that have to do with the world that we actually live in?!!

Where, in reality, does such a community function? Instead, while there are particular communities who fiercely practice what they preach – the Amish for example – there are always those within the community that question the ethos. And there are certainly any number of other additional communities that may well share the conviction that their own moral narrative and political agenda is objective; but that is only applicable to the extent that the communities don’t come into contact with each other in any significant way.

When that happens prepare for conflicting goods.

wrong thread

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

This [to me] is merely a description of any of hundreds of particular human communities in which members have more or less reached a consensus regarding the right things and the wrong things to do. Predicated on one or another combination of “might makes right”, “right makes might” or “moderation, negotation and compromise”.

My own argument doesn’t kick in until 1] the rules of one communitity come into conflict with the rules of another community or 2] within the community someone decides that the rules should be changed.

Then what in regard to “moral objectivism”?

In other words, instead of embracing or enduring the “law of the jungle”, where the strong and the powerful always prevail, we come together and, in a civilized manner, create a set of rules that more or less sustain the interests of those own and operate the global economy. The historical advent of capitalism. They sustain what they deem to be permissible or not permissible behaviors. In accordance with what sustains their own interests. Until the Communinists came along and insisted that other behaviors were more consistant with the advent of scientific socialism.

So, okay, how does the author here go about determining which behaviors ought to be permissible such that everyone is able to agree that this constitutes “objective morality”.

Still, which of these “other philosophers” have been able to intertwine their intellectual contraptions with the world of actual human interactions out in a world still bursting at the seams with conflicting goods?

As for the “soft sciences”, what have they managed to pin down with regard to our ubiquitous moral and political conflagrations? What constitutes “the most acceptable rules” in order to ensure fairness and equality among those dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, or mass shootings, or the immigration quagmire.

This is a good post. But I still think it gives short shrift to unconscious morality. It’s good to have an “examined life” and make sure that the decisions you make unconsciously are morally good ones but outside of rare, really deep decisions (and even then) that’s going to be retroactive. I make good decisions because I’ve spent time morally cultivating myself. I don’t morally cultivate myself so I can make good decisions. Philosophy is like going to the gym.

Get morally swole.

This gets tricky though. After all, unconscious morality might actually be interchangeable with conscious morality in a wholly determined universe. If human consciousness itself is merely an adjunct of a human brain merely an adjunct of inherent, necessary laws of matter, then even this exchange itself is subsumed in the only possible reality.

This is clearly a “general description” of human morality. What we need to explore now is the manner in which you take this abstract assessment out into the world of actual conflicting goods.

Suppose John and Jane are in conflict over the right to bear arms in America. John, a staunch supporter of the NRA and fiercely anti gun control, insists that “I make good decisions about gun ownership because I’ve spent time morally cultivating myself.” Jane, a staunch opponent of the NRA and fiercely pro gun control, insists that “I make good decisions about gun ownership because I’ve spent time morally cultivating myself.”

If philosophy is like going to the gym, which workout will resolve this once and for all?

Cerebellum gets all the attention but don’t skip brain stem day.

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

This merely assumes that because philosophers down through the ages have attempted to organize our value judgments into what is construed to be either reasonable [permissible] or unreasonable [impermissible] behaviors, that this in and of itself accomplishes the task of actually demonstrating that moral and immoral behaviors can be properly distinguished. At least until you bring their intellectual contraptions down to earth.

Exactly! So, tell us, what behaviors ought to either be permissible or impermissible in regard to bullfighting?

Here I’m thinking I must be misunderstanding his point. Am I?

“Gut feelings” as the basis for permissibility?

How then are the conclusions we come to regarding “consistent” behavior not more the embodiment of the manner in which I suggest that value judgments here are more the embodiment of dasein? One person’s gratuitous suffering is another person’s grand entertainment.

And, so, back again to this: then what?

“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

He notes this as though these factors and others are merely incidental to the fact that someone has aligned himself with a set of “permissibility rules” that, as far as he is concerned, encompasses an objective morality.

Is that what he is arguing?

If so, it seems preposterous to me. What happens when your set of rules come into conflict with other sets of rules. What happens when new experiences prompt you or others to want the rules to be changed?

Yes, one can see rules of this sort – a single standard – being sustained in, say, an Amish community. One for all and all for one set of moral prescriptions established by “the elders”.

But how many of us live in that sort of community? Instead, given the interactions most of us engage in there is always the possibility of that which you construe to be permissible behaviors will be deemed as anything but by others.

But: what happens when these many perspectives are not able to arrive at the optimal perspective? Imagine, for example, taking his argument to those fiercely at odds in regard to conflicting goods that have rent our species now for thousands of years. Which perspectives will take precedence when it comes down to enacting actual laws in which certain behaviors are punished if engaged.

Let’s look at his example:

Okay, but in a world where religion is often more or less intertwined with political power, the respect you have for another’s “permissibility rules” may well be shunted aside. You are instead construed to be an infidel. The Other are only interested in sustaining the one true set of righteous behaviors. Their own.

Same with secular ideologies. In some cases moderation, negotiation and compromise are embraced based on the assumption that this is the least dysfunctional manner in which to reduce conflict among those who are most strongly invested in their own permissible behaviors. But this is basically predicated on the assumption that right makes might is just as unreasonable as might makes right.

And where in the world does objective morality fit in here?

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

For me, it’s not a question of accepting or not accepting permissibility rules but of exposing the gap between such rules [in any given community] and objective morality.

Clearly, down through the ages, historically and culturally, men and women have been able to establish rules of behavior. A consensus is reached based on one or another combination of might makes right, right makes might and democracy and the rule of law. This is permissible, that is not. But what does this or that have to do with conflicting goods that often come into existence between communities? Or how contingency chance and change within any one particular community precipitates new contexts in which some want the rules to be changed?

It’s not a question of being without morals, but of recognizing how clearly “situational” moral and political narratives are out in the real world of human interactions; rather than in a world of words assessment in a philosophy magazine.

It is the moral objectivists who are more likely to embrace a “theoretical posture”. Worse, to the extent that some try to impose their own “permissibility rules” on the entire community, we know where that leads. “Permissibility” comes to revolve around a sacred or a secular dogma.

Temporarily pretend? People who embrace objective morality in the modern world today, don’t do a whole lot of pretending. They are generally hell bent instead on insisting that their own permissible rules of behavior ought to be yours and mine as well.

On the other hand, sure, I am completely mussing his point here.

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

First of all, “robust” is all in the mind of the beholder. To the extent that my own understanding of moral nihilism is in fact a reasonable frame of mind, there is very little in the way of a robust reaction on my part. Instead, “I”, in being both fractured and fragmented and down in an existential hole, precipitates considerably more glum and gloomy reactions to the world around me.

Yes, “I” have more options in not being anchored to an objectivist font, but: those options are never construed by me to be anything other than existential contraptions rooted both precariously and problematically in dasein.

And the narratives conveyed by those on differing sides of any particular human interactions that precipitate conflicting goods are deemed less to be “equally valid” and more to be predicated on assumptions that the other sides can’t necessarily make go away.

So, given one or another set of assumptions, the arguments of the pro-life camp and the pro-choice camps can be construed as reasonable.

Then what? Sans God.

This is not at all what I am arguing given my own particular rendition of moral nihilism. My point is that if one assumes the priority embedded in the abortion conflagration is the “natural right” of the unborn baby to live, then “permissibility rules” will be very different from the ones embraced by those who insist the priority must be embedded instead in the “political right” of women to choose abortion.

Then what are philosophers/ethicists able to determine are permissible or unpermissible behaviors?

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Here [believe it or not] he addresses the question, “Is it immoral to eat carrots?”

Now, from my frame of mind, the focus here revolves less around the fact that Jim believes eating carrots is permmisible while Jane believes it is impermissible, but why they came to believe this given the life that they have lived. What actual experiences with carrots did they have that led them to this conclusion? What were they told about carrots by others? What had they read about carrots that drew them to conclude what they did?

Then the part where the reasons they give either do or do not appear reasonable. Why should it be either permissible or impermissible to eat carrots? Are there actul demonstrable facts about carrots that would obligate all rational and virtuous men and women to either consume or not to consume them?

Finally, the part where one side or the other is actually able to enforce a policy [through political power, through the law, through rewards and punishments] that establish actual consequences in regard to eating carrots.

Meaning the more individuals you involve here the greater the likelihood that permissible rules of behavior [believed to reflect objective morality by each party] will become hopelessly entangled in conflicting goods.

Then this part…

Again, from my frame of mind, it’s not that one does not accept permissibility rules. After all, whenever human beings forge a community, rules of behavior follow. Name me even a single community where this was not the case. Instead the question comes to revolve more around why different individuals come to accept different assessments of “okay to do”, “not okay to do”; and then the extent to which conflicts that arise as a result of this are able to be either reconciled or resolved by, among others, philosophers using the tools at their disposal.

All he is basically arguing here is that if the folks in group X all agree that through one or another God or political ideology or set of assumptions rooted in reason or in an enlightened frame of mind, agree on what is permissible that makes morality objective!!!