Does morality exist?

[Syntax]

there is no reason outside of individual values that people should value the greatest happiness for the greatest number (and furthermore, there are plenty of cases in which killing might very well lead to less suffering, as in the case of euthanasia or as in the case of killing dictators, cases that at least some people would consider “immoral”).

…umm…killing people for the greater good is perfectly consistent with utilitarianism. So I don’t know why you cited that as a counterexample to it

 

[Betterave]

To the others on the thread: you can’t simply say, “Well, murder is defined as wrongful killing,” because then you also have to define “wrongful” and explain how you decide that something is “wrongful” in the first place.

To Anti: No one was trying to do this. We are quite well aware that the tasks you mention remain after we have defined murder as wrongful killing. I’m pretty sure no one has “simply” said what you are suggesting he or she has. Try to read more carefully.

 

[Syntax]

Oh, good. You are catching on. And I agree that we have to see how the rules relate to the cards before we could determine who wins.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been exposed to your view in much greater depth than you have, which is one reason that leads me to think it is false.

Saying that Jeff is a bachelor is to relate Jeff to other men who are also unmarried. It is saying that Jeff is like this group in some way and unlike that group.

whatever. “Jeff bachelors John” doesn’t make any sense. “Jeff is a bachelor” does make sense. “Bx.” “Bx” is not a relation. If it is, show us.

So let me repeat myself

"I ask Leela to write out the “real” relation Leela claims is indicated by 1-place predications as in,

Jeff is a bachelor,

but Leela won’t show it. If “Jeff is a bachelor” is really a relation between two things and not a predication of one thing, we should be asking for a demonstration, should we not? But Leela won’t give one. Instead, we just get a groundless, post-modern, and nonsensical stipualtion that it is. Good luck in trying to get any sensible answer, Prodigal Son…"

You are privatizing the meaning of “relation” to suit your purposes. Moreover, no one else understands what you are saying. But perhaps you have some great insight into the meaning of “relation” that everyone else doesn’t? Can you show us how to rewrite the statement so we can understand, Leela? If not, you are just being stubbornly dogmatic.

Is noticing that Jeff is unmarried supposed to get us in touch with the essence of Jeff? If Jeff gets married does the essence of Jeff change? Isn’t essence supposed to be whatever it is about Jeff that is immutable?

What? No. Being a bachelor is an accidental property of Jeff that comes and goes, not an essential property.

 

[Ender]

It is certainly a difficult task explaining why “Murder is immoral”

Yes, that’s why I keep asking the question, to see not just if someone is able to give an explanation but to find out if there is someone who is even willing to try.

And there are certainly debates about which moral principle is true–so that’s two answers.

No, that’s no answers. I am not interested in hearing about more theories or what utilitarians, Kantians, or any other group might think. I want someone - anyone - to say “Murder is immoral because …” You really should ask yourself if you ever expected to get into a position where you couldn’t even explain why murder is immoral. What has all of your philosophical studying done for you if you can’t address such a basic question?

But Ender, all moral realists are aware of this problem. But you seem to think this feature makes basic moral claims themselves problematic or inherently dubious from the start.

I have asked a simple question to which I have yet to receive any answer at all. Psychoanalyzing me is irrelevant. Can you or can you not complete this sentence: “Murder is immoral because …”?

Ender

 

[Ender]

As for murder, it is immoral pretty much by definition, isn’t it? When we call a killing murder we are saying that it is a wrongful killing.

Murder is an unlawful killing; it is wrongful because it is against the law. Everyone (except Anti) believes that murder is also immoral and I would like someone to tell me why. If acts are “immoral” only because we define them that way then we could just as easily define murder as moral. I am looking for the basis by which we determine what is or is not moral and quite frankly, based on the non-answers I’m getting, it surely looks like there is no objective basis for morality, it is purely subjective, and we can define it any way we want. If you disagree then offer an alternative.

Also, it is one thing to say that the concept of morality is problematic, and quite another to say that this concept does not exist as you have done previously in this thread. Why would you say that any concept that we already have in our minds does not exist?

The concept of unicorns may exist but unicorns surely don’t. I don’t care about the concept of morality; I care about its existence.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Anti: Help!!

Perhaps if you answer my question the others will understand what is being asked.

“Murder is immoral because …”

Ender

 

[Syntax]

No, that’s no answers. I am not interested in hearing about more theories or what utilitarians, Kantians, or any other group might think. I want someone - anyone - to say “Murder is immoral because …”

What? Of course those are answers. And if you are not willing to hear about how these moral theories expound further on these answers, then how do you expect to ever get an answer? Just saying that the answers don’t suffice without your investigating further is just plain lazy on your part. That’s no one’s problem but your own.

You really should ask yourself if you ever expected to get into a position where you couldn’t even explain why murder is immoral. What has all of your philosophical studying done for you if you can’t address such a basic question?

That is completely presumptuous, Ender. I have been exposed to this problem for years in my philosophical studies. My own theory is a kind of “Divine Command” view that justifies ethical claims and sanctions ethical behavior, and a Virtue Ethics account of the Good. So I am perfectly familiar with what’s going on; I just take it for granted because I already know what I think.

I have asked a simple question to which I have yet to receive any answer at all. Psychoanalyzing me is irrelevant. Can you or can you not complete this sentence: “Murder is immoral because …”?

My own belief is that murder is immoral because God decreed that it is. Like I said, my own theory is a cross between a “Divine Command” view that justifies ethical claims and sanctions ethical behavior, and a Virtue Ethics account of the Good and the Bad. I’m not about to expound on this view because I simply don’t have the time. But if you want to find out further for yourself, there are plenty of great philosophers I can recommend. If you don’t want to investigate further, no one can help you.

 

[Syntax]

there is no objective basis for morality, it is purely subjective, and we can define it any way we want. If you disagree then offer an alternative.

I’ve already offered potential answers; you just unanimously reject all of them and refuse to explore the matter further.

 

[The_Exodus]

there is no objective basis for morality, it is purely subjective, and we can define it any way we want. If you disagree then offer an alternative.

This is actually what follows if there is no God. A foundation of ethics cannot exists if it is built within man himself, for man is not the basis of his own existence.

Fortunately, no one really believes (or at least, very much fewer than those who say they do) morality doesn’t exist. If you truly think morality – call it “meaning” if you want – does not exist, then go kill your mother, or your spouse, or your child.

Don’t really do it, obviously.

But seriously, if morality is merely a subjective construct of your mind, you have all the freedom in the world to change that construct, reject what you please, etc. But actually what you will find out is that you are not free to do anything at all, except fall back into the nothingness and abyss of trying to generate meaning from non-meaningful universe. For any ethic you “choose” is nothing more than an arbitrary choice, motivated by inherent desires which you are not responsible for having, nor have you complete mastery of. They are merely “authorities” (i.e. that I love my mother, spouse, child) which have been set up in your mind, because you have been programmed, basically, by your genes and your environment to feel a certain way in response to certain stimuli.

Therefore anything - anything at all - which you would inwardly appeal to, in order to contruct your own modality of ethics, would be an appeal, ultimately, to the irrational forces of the universe, which just happen to release certain chemicals in your brain when you see a certain stimulus. Since these chemicals are not objectively good or bad (how could dopamine - a combination of atoms - have moral value in an objectively meaningless universe) there is no ground for you to stand on, ethically speaking.

Your existence – without the absolute – is completely absurd. Many brilliant atheist philosophers have come to this conclusion, because this is what it means if we are only the product of the universe, of mere matter acting on itself.

Ethics can only be founded in the absolute - that is, in God, who is the Good and is Being itself. Things are right/wrong insofar as they conform to the way in which he wills the world to be governed. But what he wills is not arbitrary, because God is not “beyond” goodness but is Goodness, Being, Life, etc. itself. All creatures necessarily desire happiness, and true happiness consists in being united with the almighty life-giving source of existence.

 

[Ender]

My own belief is that murder is immoral because God decreed that it is.

Finally, an answer. The only problem with it is that I stipulated that for the purposes of this discussion, God does not exist. So now I would like an answer that doesn’t depend on God’s existence. After all, you have been claiming that morality objectively exists sans God, so … if God does not exist, why is murder immoral?

Ender

 

[Ender]

This is actually what follows if there is no God. A foundation of ethics cannot exists if it is built within man himself, for man is not the basis of his own existence.

Thank you. This conclusion always seemed obvious to me but it has taken well over 300 comments to get us there.

Ethics can only be founded in the absolute - that is, in God, who is the Good and is Being itself.

I agree and this was the point I’ve been driving at since I stipulated in the OP that God does not exist and the challenge I offered was to explain how morality could objectively exist in that situation.

Ender

 

[Leela]

Murder is an unlawful killing; it is wrongful because it is against the law.

Even if you insist on a legal definition of the term murder, you will run into descriptions that distinguish murder from manslaughter or self-defense where a key issue is whether or not the killing is justified.

Murder is unlawful because is it unjustified which is another way of saying that murder is unlawful because it is a killing that has something wrong about it.

You won’t be able to explain what is wrong about murder unless you hold as an axiom that all human life is precious (like all sane people do). If you do accept this premise, then the wrongness of murder is obvious. If you don’t, then you are a psychopath. You are incompetent to judge whether a killing is or is not murder.

You seem unwilling to want ti apply the notion of competence as an observer to judge right and wrong. Just as I would be incompetent to look into a scientist’s microscope to judge whether or not an experiment proved what she says it proves, you, as a psychopath, would be incompetent to judge the morality of killing.

A certain degree of competence is required in a laboratory for judging what happened in an experiment, yet you don’t doubt whether there really is some truth to the matter to be judged. Why is the idea of competence a problem for you in thinking about morality?

Everyone (except Anti) believes that murder is also immoral and I would like someone to tell me why. If acts are “immoral” only because we define them that way then we could just as easily define murder as moral. I am looking for the basis by which we determine what is or is not moral and quite frankly, based on the non-answers I’m getting, it surely looks like there is no objective basis for morality, it is purely subjective, and we can define it any way we want. If you disagree then offer an alternative.

The concept of unicorns may exist but unicorns surely don’t. I don’t care about the concept of morality; I care about its existence.

Ender

You position may be better put as skepticism toward the notion that moral assertions have truth-value. Do you feel forced into the position that they do not have truth-value by certain arguments?

Do you actually live as though moral assertions have or have no truth-value? Pragmatically, the answer here is what you currently believe on the matter.

Best,
Leela

 

[Betterave]

The concept of unicorns may exist but unicorns surely don’t. I don’t care about the concept of morality; I care about its existence.

Ender, I’m going to ask you a couple of (related) questions and request that you answer them:

How do you think humans grasp the existence of anything, e.g. a unicorn, or a horse, or a struthiomimus?

Do you or do you not think that humans grasp what really exists by means of concepts?

 

[Betterave]

Even if you insist on a legal definition of the term murder, you will run into descriptions that distinguish murder from manslaughter or self-defense where a key issue is whether or not the killing is justified.

Murder is unlawful because is it unjustified which is another way of saying that murder is unlawful because it is a killing that has something wrong about it.

You won’t be able to explain what is wrong about murder unless you hold as an axiom that all human life is precious (like all sane people do). If you do accept this premise, then the wrongness of murder is obvious. If you don’t, then you are a psychopath. You are incompetent to judge whether a killing is or is not murder.

You seem unwilling to want ti apply the notion of competence as an observer to judge right and wrong. Just as I would be incompetent to look into a scientist’s microscope to judge whether or not an experiment proved what she says it proves, you, as a psychopath, would be incompetent to judge the morality of killing.

A certain degree of competence is required in a laboratory for judging what happened in an experiment, yet you don’t doubt whether there really is some truth to the matter to be judged. Why is the idea of competence a problem for you in thinking about morality?

Exactly: why? You have been given this argument repeatedly, Ender, but you continue to just ignore it.

 

[AntiTheist]

Anti: Help!!

Always happy to help a friend in need.

Syntax:

What? Of course those are answers. And if you are not willing to hear about how these moral theories expound further on these answers, then how do you expect to ever get an answer?

No, you’re missing the point: all of these “answers” – the Kantian answer, the utilitarian answer, the Catholic answer, the XYZ answer – are at odds with each other. If there is an objective morality, it should – one would reasonably expect – be a simple thing to explain which of these answers is the correct one and why. If it’s not a simple thing, that raises some questions about this whole “objective morality” claim.

The fact is that all of these “answers” rest upon principles that people accept, individually, on the basis of individual values. The fact that I might want the greatest good for the greatest number and the fact that my neighbor might want to follow the categorical imperative are reflections of our individual values. There’s nothing about the universe that makes it so that everyone should act in a way that promotes the greatest good for the greatest number; there’s nothing about the universe that makes it so that everyone should follow the categorical imperative; and so on.

Since all the moralists can do is enumerate different moral systems – that all lead to different attributions of “moral” and “immoral” – it seems to strongly suggest that this “morality” stuff is, at best, something we choose individually, based on our own values and our own ideas of what people “should” do. That being the case, there’s no argument at all for there being an “objective morality”

Betterave:

The point was that if we don’t know the truth value of certain moral propositions, it does not follow that morality is not objective/real or that moral propositions are not subject to cognitive appraisal

I’ve heard this response before, and I continue to be unimpressed by it. It’s true that no one seems to be able to objectively determine whether act X is immoral. And it’s true that this fact is not, in and of itself, an airtight argument against the existence of morality; however, this fact seems to imply that it’s impossible to determine whether something is moral or not.

What exactly is the difference between:

a) a world where there is an objective morality that cannot be determined by anyone, and in which there exists a number of possible “answers” to moral questions, none of which having any evidence behind them.

and

b) a world where there is no objective morality, and in which there are just a bunch of value judgments that give rise to possible “answers” to moral questions, none of which having any evidence behind them.

I submit that the two worlds would look entirely identical and that, absent compelling evidence that morality is something real and objective, the best interpretation of the facts is that there is no objective morality – just value judgments.

Ender is nicely cutting to the quick here. If you can’t explain simply and directly why murder is immoral, then what use is all this pontificating about “morality”?

Now, look: just because murder isn’t “immoral” doesn’t mean we should all rush right out and start committing murder. We have lots of good reasons not to do it, the biggest reason being that very, very, very few people walk around with the urge to do it. We still have lots of good reasons to condemn murder, the biggest reason being that it’s disruptive to the orderly functioning of society, which is something that is common to all of our values.

Nothing changes about the world when you admit that there is no objective morality – it goes on as it ever has, with one key difference: you stop perceiving things through the imaginary lens of “right” and “wrong.”

And, of course, people who believe in magic, in things like magical god beings, can simply say that morality is part of the magic. Which was my point all along: objective morality is a faith-based magical claim.

 

[Betterave]

But seriously, if [1] morality is merely a subjective construct of your mind, you have all the freedom in the world to change that construct, reject what you please, etc. But actually what you will find out is that you are not free to do anything at all, except fall back into the nothingness and abyss of trying to generate meaning from non-meaningful universe. For any ethic you “choose” is nothing more than an arbitrary choice, motivated by inherent desires which you are not responsible for having, nor have you complete mastery of. They are merely “authorities” (i.e. that I love my mother, spouse, child) which have been set up in your mind, because [2] you have been programmed, basically, by your genes and your environment to feel a certain way in response to certain stimuli.

[1] contradicts [2]. Did you notice this?

Therefore anything - anything at all - which you would inwardly appeal to, in order to contruct your own modality of ethics, would be an appeal, ultimately, to the irrational forces of the universe, which just happen to release certain chemicals in your brain when you see a certain stimulus. Since these chemicals are not objectively good or bad (how could dopamine - a combination of atoms - have moral value in an objectively meaningless universe) there is no ground for you to stand on, ethically speaking.

Exodus,

I think people often get themselves into big trouble when they try to tell others what those others think and how their concepts work. Your way of viewing the atheistic universe is obviously not based on an attempt to sympathetically understand the basic conceptual moorings of that universe. It should be. The atheist can obviously take as a basic datum the fact of meaning situated within human communities, without reducing that meaning to brain chemicals. Goodness and badness can obviously be conceived relative to the flourishing and languishing of the human organism (biological reality) as well as of the human person (psycho-social reality) - it does not have to be conceived as relative to God (and if not to God, then (absurdly) relative only to meaningless chemicals).

 

[AntiTheist]

You won’t be able to explain what is wrong about murder unless you hold as an axiom that all human life is precious (like all sane people do). If you do accept this premise, then the wrongness of murder is obvious. If you don’t, then you are a psychopath. You are incompetent to judge whether a killing is or is not murder.

I dispute the claim that anyone who does not think that human life is “precious” is a psychopath.

Certainly, you’d think that human life is precious – you’re a human! You have a strong, vested interest in the idea that humanity is something important. Your biases are not of interest to me.

Alright, let me address this claim a little more seriously: “Human life is precious” is a value judgment. It exists entirely in people’s minds. There is nothing in the universe that makes human life “precious,” any more than there is something in the universe that makes bacteria “precious.”

It sounds like you’re arguing that “It’s immoral to destroy anything that most people consider ‘precious’” – but why should that be? On what basis do you accept that claim?

It all comes down to values eventually.

 

[Betterave]

Betterave: I’ve heard this response before, and I continue to be unimpressed by it.

That’s because you continue to misunderstand it!

It’s true that no one seems to be able to objectively determine whether act X is immoral. And it’s true that this fact is not, in and of itself, an airtight argument against the existence of morality; however, this fact seems to imply that it’s impossible to determine whether something is moral or not.

That’s a ridiculous non sequitur: it obviously only implies “that it’s impossible to determine whether act X is moral or not.” You have no grounds for generalizing what is true of ‘act X’ to *all *acts.

What exactly is the difference between:

a) a world where there is an objective morality that cannot be determined by anyone, and in which there exists a number of possible “answers” to moral questions, none of which having any evidence behind them.

and

b) a world where there is no objective morality, and in which there are just a bunch of value judgments that give rise to possible “answers” to moral questions, none of which having any evidence behind them.

No difference; but that’s beside the point…

I submit that the two worlds would look entirely identical and that, absent compelling evidence that morality is something real and objective, the best interpretation of the facts is that there is no objective morality – just value judgments.

…Yes, Anti; but the point is that “value judgments” are judgments and judgments (as such) aim to be objective; judgments, by definition, are *not *based on purely personal preferences.

I invite you to try to answer the same questions I asked Ender.

 

[AntiTheist]

That’s a ridiculous non sequitur: it obviously only implies “that it’s impossible to determine whether act X is moral or not.” You have no grounds for generalizing what is true of ‘act X’ to *all *acts.

Then give me an act you can determine the morality of and explain what makes it moral or immoral.

 

[Betterave]

“Human life is precious” is a value judgment. It exists entirely in people’s minds. There is nothing in the universe that makes human life “precious,” any more than there is something in the universe that makes bacteria “precious.”

Anti, do you understand that humans are in the universe and that humans are not nothing?