Does morality exist?

[Syntax]

I don’t know what you mean by unconditionally binding. We can behave morally only by freely choosing between good and evil so in that regard we cannot be bound. If you mean universally true in every situation then I’m not sure you can say that murder is immoral because it is in fact not held universally to be true. It may be universally true that I may not murder someone of my tribe but it has been held in the past by pretty much everyone - and is so today among many - that murder of someone in another tribe is a positive good.

Your confusion springs from a fundamental equivocation on two different kinds of “Laws,” between what someone *can’t *do and what someone *ought not *to do. The Laws of physics are unconditionally binding on all objects within their domain such that, given initial causal conditions and the Laws themselves, the effect must necessarily follow. No object can violate the laws of physics. It is naturally impossible, just as nothing can accelerate to speeds greater than the speed of light.

Moral Laws, on the other, are still unconditionally “binding” on all human beings, but these laws can still be violated because we have free will. That is why we say “he broke the law,” “he acted wrongly.” The moral *ought *is what makes these laws “binding,” meaning that no person ought to break the moral law, not that he *can’t *break the moral law

 

[AntiTheist]

“Runs” refers to the property of running, and this property is what we are ascribing to John when we utter the statement “John runs.” “Furry” refers to the property of furriness which we are ascribing to bears when we say that “All bears are furry.” And “wrong” refers to the property of wrongness which we ascribe to the complex action of killing-innocent-people-for-fun when we utter “Killing innocent people for fun is wrong.”

See, here’s the problem right here. Running and being furry are actual things that exist outside of people’s minds. “Wrongness” is something that only exists in minds, and can vary from person to person.

When someone calls something “wrong” that person is only expressing his or her values. You don’t value killing innocent people for fun. And while I share that value, I also acknowledge that it doesn’t exist anywhere except in the minds of people.

Wrongness is a *really existent *property in the world

Nothing like just declaring your position to be the correct one.

“Happiness is good.” So it is the goodness property that attaches to happiness which makes the statement true.

Now I already said that I consider “happiness” to mean things that people value and enjoy, and I consider “good” to be another way of saying, “I value this.” That is the reason that I consider your statement “happiness is good” to be not a value judgment – from my definitions, it’s a tautology. How are you defining “happiness” and “good” so as to not have that statement be a tautology?

 

[Ender]

Morally impermissible actions would sometimes benefit us; for example, by saving our lives. The Christian – who believes in an afterlife – sees a reason to act rightly, no matter what the circumstance. But why should the atheist do the same?

Right, and I have no rational explanation for why he should. Do you?

Ethics, broadly construed, is the study of those things we have most reason to do.

I don’t know that I want to contest this point, but my understanding is that ethics is a system of values and morality is behaving according to those values.

The atheistic moral realist claims that there are moral truths, but this does not make them ethical truths. Why would anyone ever have the most reason to end his existence forever, by sacrificing his life for others?

I would really prefer that this not become a battle of labels. I cannot speak for atheistic moral realists, nihilists, or anti-realist cognitivists - or even for AntiTheist despite the fact that our positions appear to be the same. If I speak to my position and you speak to yours I think we will make better progress.

Ender

 

[AntiTheist]

Ender:

Right, and I have no rational explanation for why [an atheist] should [act rightly]. Do you?

Because humans don’t act rationally at all times. We act out of our values, which include putting our own self-interest aside a lot of times.

Meanwhile, let’s look at this gem from Syntax:

Wrongness is a really existent property in the world which attaches to this really existent action of killing-people-for-fun, and it is this property of the action which makes the statement “Killing innocent people for fun is wrong” true. What else could make this statement true?

So, first, you declare that wrongness exists (that’s what the debate is about, of course) and then you declare that wrongness attaches itself to certain actions (which is also what the debate is about). And that’s your argument? And you’re the guy complaining that I offer no counterargument?

 

[Ender]

If human beings likewise had no concepts, nothing could be morally evil for humans either. Certain things would still be objectively bad, but only in the natural sense in which natural beings can flourish or languish.

I assume that things that are objectively good or bad do not change with time or place; that is, if it was good in the past it cannot be good in the future and vice versa. Do you agree?

But it is only when this natural flourishing/languishing is expressed conceptually and is made into the object of practical reasonings, reflections on the good, that a moral being comes into existence. (This is why an infant cannot commit morally evil acts.)

It isn’t clear though why the fact that we can conceptualize morality makes morality objectively exist any more than the fact that we can conceptualize God and unicorns makes them actually exist.

(An aside: One possible turn our reflection could take here would be away from the notion that knowledge of objective morality is grounded in knowledge of God towards the possibility that knowledge of objective morality naturally invites us to reflect on the possibility (indeed, the ‘moral necessity’) of the existence of God.)

Ah, but my intention was to make the exact opposite point. Given that (for this debate) God does not exist (which I stipulated in the OP) then neither can objective morality. It is therefore irrational for an atheist to claim both that he disbelieves in God and that he can behave morally.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Okay, here’s where laziness does need to be applied to you - one can be very industrious with the production of groundless claims, but still very intellectually lazy. If you want to insist on taking the attitude that it doesn’t matter what words and concepts we use in a context like this, we’re wasting our time here.

No, no … that’s not what I meant. I don’t want to quibble about terms. I am happy to use whatever term you prefer so long as you provide a reasonable definition; I just want to avoid disputes over words. It is important that terms be well defined and that everybody use them the same way and if you think there is an important distinction between rational and logical then pick the term you prefer, define it, and I’ll try to use it that way. To facilitate the discussion I’m simply saying that I am willing (in most cases) to accept your definitions instead of insisting on mine.

Ender

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Right, and I have no rational explanation for why he should. Do you?

No. This means that any consistent atheistic ethic would be, in some cases at least, voluntarist. “You tell me why a thing is wrong, but you do not tell me why I should not do wrong.” Example: a scientist has good epistemic reasons to experiment on human beings, but good moral reasons not to do the experiment. Why should the moral reasons prevail? I do not question that we have an intuition that morality prevails here, but I do point out that our moral intuitions sometimes carry little or no weight in our actions.

I think we’re on the same page here. To be clear, though: I think atheists can be moral realists, but they do not have an answer to the question: Why be moral?

 

[Syntax]

When someone calls something “wrong” that person is only expressing his or her values…

I’ve already shown this view is a contradiction in #147, #148. Do you have any arguments for this claim? Again you are just asserting it.

You complain that,

Nothing like just declaring your position to be the correct one.

then immediately do it yourself

See, here’s the problem right here. Running and being furry are actual things that exist outside of people’s minds. “Wrongness” is something that only exists in minds, and can vary from person to person.

Double standards again. Nice try. Besides, I was explaining the truth-conditions of propositions made about the outside world to Ender for his edification, not defending my view in this post. You pick the easy battles and ignore everything else your opponent says. Where’s your counterargument against my claims in posts #147,148?

Now I already said that I consider “happiness” to mean things that people value and enjoy, and I consider “good” to be another way of saying, “I value this.” That is the reason that I consider your statement “happiness is good” to be not a value judgment – from my definitions, it’s a tautology.

And I’ve already said your definitions are contradictions. Now, I’ve demonstrated this several times now. See posts 147, 148. Here’s another contradiction.

(1) John values happiness.
(2) Bill values suffering.
(3) Happiness=what Bill and John value.
(4) But suffering=non-happiness
(5) So happiness=happiness and happiness=non-happiness
*contradiction

If you think (4) is false, then you need to say why. So far you are just stipulating that it is false in spite of all the empirical evidence to the contrary. Sorry your view is just plain dumb.

How are you defining “happiness” and “good” so as to not have that statement be a tautology?

Happiness is a sense of well-being, accomplishment, and satisfaction. The good cannot be defined, but includes happiness as one value among many like friendship, knowledge, justice, virtue, etc. Therefore, happiness and the good are not synonymous so as to be tautologous. You are just assuming this to fit your purposes in spite of all the empirical evidence that disconfirms your view.

 

[Syntax]

Am I the only one pointing out the explicit contradictions of Anti’s noncognitivist claims?? If I haven’t decisively refuted Anti’s noncognitivist claims (see 183, 147), then somebody please tell me where my logic has gone wrong.

 

[Syntax]

Meanwhile, let’s look at this gem from Syntax: So, first, you declare that wrongness exists (that’s what the debate is about, of course) and then you declare that wrongness attaches itself to certain actions (which is also what the debate is about). And that’s your argument? And you’re the guy complaining that I offer no counterargument?

I was explaining the truth-conditions of propositions in that post; not defending my view. Why don’t you pick my posts where I DO defend my views by showing that yours are **explicit contradictions **, instead of being so self-serving by making it easy on yourself. Are you afraid to engage with my arguments, Anti? Let’s do this, buddy.

No, you have offered *no *counterarguments whatsoever, but just continue to make stipulations and assumptions. You’re being incredibly dishonest and unfair to everyone else, including Ender.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

somebody please tell me where my logic has gone wrong.

no problem, your logic is all messed up where it assumes that logic or rational examination is important than peoples intellectual pride.

 

[Syntax]

Well, apparently, you and I use very different definitions of “happiness.” I use the word to refer to things that people value and enjoy –

See 147, 183 where I show your definitions are a contradiction. Quit ignoring my posts if you want to have an intelligent conversation. I expect you to reply to my arguments, otherwise, we are just wasting our time.

Good. So the statement “Pleasurable mental feelings are better than undergoing pain” doesn’t have a truth value unless we give it a context – -]a set of values./-] For some people it will be true, and for other people it will be false.

That’s right. Evaluative statements don’t have a truth-value without knowing what context we are talking about. The context sets the conditions that make it possible to apply the evaluative concepts of “better than” and “more valuable” in the first place. But the evaluative concept “better than” and “more good than” itself doesn’t change, nor is it dependent of context. Here’s an example: statements of what we find beautiful or what we find more beautiful than another are also evaluative statements:

We can say that a nicely decorated gracian urn is beautiful. But compared to the beauty of a woman, the urn subsequently becomes ugly. Further, the woman herself then becomes ugly when compared to one of the goddesses. So the truth-value of each statement “the urn is beautiful” and “the woman is beautfiul” change depending on the context and which objects we are comparing them to. So even though we cannot give any unchanging physical instance of the concept of beauty since each instance will change depending on the context, the concept of beauty itself does not change. Why? The proof is by performing a **reductio ad absurdum **on *your own assumption *which leads to a contradiction, namely:

**(1) Beauty is defined by each physical instance of it **

(which is identical in structure to your claim that “Happiness is reducible to what each person values, or likes” so the same argument applies here.)

(2) The gracian urn is beautiful.
(3) The gracian urn is not beautiful.
(4) Therefore, beauty itself is both beautiful and not beautiful.
*contradiction

Therefore, beauty *cannot *be defined by its physical instances.
Therefore, beauty is something *other than *its physical instances.Q.E.D

If we did not have some unchanging concept of beauty, are judgments about which object was more beautiful than another would be impossible. Your view is left without an explanation for why this phenomenon occurs of our human ability to apply a concept to circumstances that change. So far, your view is doesn’t explain anything at all. The realist does have an explanation for this phenomenon, therefore our view is more explanatorily superior than your own, and hence this is one reason we have for believing realism over anti-realism.

Betterave says a very similar thing about this subject when he replies in #145 to your claims in #143–but which you choose to ignore.

"Do you remember Sytax’s comments about the good not being definable, although we can give instances in all sorts of contexts of things that are objectively good? “Better than” means “more good than” so the same comments apply. Therefore the answer to your question is: Neither proposition is either true or false - they have not been defined relevant to some context by which we can apprehend what they actually mean, i.e., by which we can apprehend them as instances of the ‘more good’ or not. You could throw in a ceteris paribus clause and we might have something to say, or modify the content to make it properly abstract such that we can say something entirely abstract about it, the way you want us to (e.g., “Malice is morally better than benevolence”); or you could say something concrete, something with an adequately circumscribed context for our concepts to be applicable to it (e.g., “Fr. Damien was a better person than Josef Mengele” or “Sidney Crosby is a better hockey player than Kobe Bryant”). But none of this has truth-value in your view, you’re stymied, you don’t know what to say in any of these cases - “is it true… or false…?”

 

[Ender]

If you agree, then why didn’t you say so? Since the “slang” use of it doesn’t even make any sense, we should just drop it altogether.

Why didn’t I say so??? I never used the phrase in the first place (wasn’t it you?). I get twhacked enough for what I have said without getting cudgeled for what I haven’t.

I understand what you are trying to say. All of us are discussing whether or not there are any other positive reasons for believing objective morality exists independent of the hypothesis that God exists. But this doesn’t mean the statement “God does not exist” is an implicit *assumption * informing the context of our discussion from which further conclusions can be derived–it is completely irrelevant for our purposes in this context just as its alternative “God exists” is irrelevant.

The relevance of my axiom (more below) is twofold: it eliminates all the (irrelevant in this context) discussions about God - which is what killed the other thread - and I expected it to have relevance if we ever got past the point that, somehow, objective morality exists.

Still, you are misusing the word “axiom,” since the statement “God does not exist” in and of itself requires proof or demonstration precisely because it is *not *self-evident. Therefore, it is not an axiom.

This is the one definition I won’t cave on. Both the mathematical and the dictionary definitions of axiom exactly describe the way I am using “God does not exist.”

- a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument (Merriam-Webster)
*- An axiom is a statement that is accepted within a formal system as being true without requiring any proof. *(Wikia mathematics)

• Postulate: A statement, also known as an axiom, which is taken to be true without proof. (Wolfram, MathWorld)

I will admit that Wolfram includes (although others do not) the caveat that an axiom is a postulate that is self evidently true so I will accept that it can be either or. In this case “self evident” is not germane.

Ender

 

[TEPO]

Morality exists within the believer… But to the non-believer, morality does not exist.

Only those who seek morals will know them… Those who seek other ways will find other ways.

 

[Ender]

I think we’re on the same page here. To be clear, though: I think atheists can be moral realists, but they do not have an answer to the question: Why be moral?

I understand the issue you raise but I wonder if this isn’t a distinction without a difference. If I have no answer to your question then in what way can I be a moral realist? If you don’t believe that there is any reason why you ought to act one way and not another how can you also believe that there is a set of standards that tells you how you ought to act? Isn’t that what an ethical system is - a set of ought statements?

Ender

 

[Syntax]

Why didn’t I say so??? I never used the phrase in the first place (wasn’t it you?). I get twhacked enough for what I have said without getting cudgeled for what I haven’t.

The relevance of my axiom (more below) is twofold: it eliminates all the (irrelevant in this context) discussions about God - which is what killed the other thread - and I expected it to have relevance if we ever got past the point that, somehow, objective morality exists.

This is the one definition I won’t cave on. Both the mathematical and the dictionary definitions of axiom exactly describe the way I am using “God does not exist.”

- a statement accepted as true as the basis! for argument (Merriam-Webster)
*- An axiom is a statement that is accepted **within a formal system !***as being true without requiring any proof. (Wikia mathematics)

• Postulate: A statement, also known as an axiom, which is taken to be true without proof. (Wolfram, MathWorld)

I will admit that Wolfram includes (although others do not) the caveat that an axiom is a postulate that is self evidently true so I will accept that it can be either or. In this case “self evident” is not germane.

Ender

Again, I get what you are saying, but “god does not exist” still does not satisfy any of the conditions you listed above to be counted as an axiom in our context. I bold-faced the necessary conditions, all of which it fails to meet:

First, what do you think (1) and (2) mean? They mean that “god does not exists” would have to be a basis for further arguments, but this claim is not peforming this function at all in this thread. It supports nothing else being said here. Think about it: How can the non-existence of something support the claim that objective moral values exist or do not exist. The non-existence of some being can’t support either claim one way or another, at least not in our context; but it would have to be, if we are going to count it as an axiom.

Suppose Anti said something like Dostoevsky did:

God does not exist.
Therefore, morality does not exist.

then Anti would be treating “God does not exist” as a premise to support Anti’s conclusion, and in this case, “god does not exist” would be being treated like an axiom. But no one is doing this here, not even Anti. Anti offers claims against the existence of objective morality independent of whether or not god exists. Therefore the statement is not performing any axiomatic functions at all here.

Second, “god does not exist” is not being accepted as true without proof by anybody–not by me anyways. Both sides are simply trying to give reasons for or against believing objective morality exists independent of any claims made about God’s existence. But if “God does not exist” were an axiom, then it **would ** be supporting other claims made in these posts, but it clearly is not. Therefore, it is not functioning as an axiom, at least not in the context of our discussion. So the assumption is irrelevant.

 

[Syntax]

Ender,

If you want a really good reason for why we should be realists and not anti-realists about morality, read my post #186

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Hi Syntax,

Generally, I think your comments are spot on, but one issue…

Suppose Anti said something like Dostoevsky did:

God does not exist.
Therefore, morality does not exist.

Dostoevsky didn’t say this. Perhaps a character did, but Dostoevsky himself was Christian. Not only did he believe in God, he also believed in morality.

Am I missing some irony here, or was the statement just mistaken?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I understand the issue you raise but I wonder if this isn’t a distinction without a difference. If I have no answer to your question then in what way can I be a moral realist? If you don’t believe that there is any reason why you ought to act one way and not another how can you also believe that there is a set of standards that tells you how you ought to act? Isn’t that what an ethical system is - a set of ought statements?

Ender

An ethical system may simply be a set of reasons, all other things being equal. It may be better to tell the truth if I have nothing to gain from lying, but better to lie if I have something to gain. The moral realist only needs to acknowledge that moral reasons are valid, not that moral reasons are decisive.

 

[AntiTheist]

If we did not have some unchanging concept of beauty, are judgments about which object was more beautiful than another would be impossible.

We don’t have some unchanging concept of beauty. When I call something beautiful, I mean nothing more than “It appeals to my senses.” Some things appeal to my senses more than other things. Different people rank things differently according to the way that things appeal to their senses. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of agreement – there should be, since human senses are all constructed pretty similarly – and there’s also a lot of disagreement. But there’s no unchanging concept that’s being applied. The word is just that – a word – and it’s used to label subjective reactions to the environment.

I don’t agree at all that “beauty is defined by each physical instance of it.” “Beauty” is a term that individuals attribute to things they find aesthetically pleasing. That’s all it is. You can’t start with a circular definition, like “beauty is defined by each physical instance of beauty” and then expect any reasonable person to understand you when you speak.

Further, when I call something beautiful, I recognize that it is a completely subjective statement of my own values and that not all people will put the label “beautiful” on it. Not all people are going to call a goddess more beautiful than a woman; in fact, some of us like imperfection a lot more than some ideal.

Do you by any chance mean a “grecian” urn? I always did like Keats. And yes, that’s a perfectly subjective judgment.

EDIT: I realize now, upon re-reading this, that you probably intended to attribute “beauty is defined by each physical instance of it” to me. That’s not my definition. “Beauty” isn’t a “thing” by my account. Not at all. It’s shorthand for “stuff that is aesthetically pleasing to me.” There’s no contradition – at all – in saying that some things are more aesthetically pleasing to me than others and that some things are more pleasing to one individual than they are to another.