Is there such a thing as objective morality?

[Neithan]

Many psychologically healthy people consider this behavior moral, not immoral.

In either case, I think the behaviour must disturb the conscience of the psychologically healthy person who actually commits the murder (or mass murder). At least in the lifeboat analogy, it’s right up close and personal, and should naturally trigger some empathy: “This is wrong,” but it must be done because the end justifies the means. We have different ethical systems without knowing which one is right with any absolute certainty, but to accept one is to claim some objective morality.

As for colours, we can at least refer to the spectral wavelength or something as an objective measurement of what is there.

 

[jeannetherese]

Even here, however, we may have one of those moral dilemmas, such as the lifeboat event in which one innocent person’s life has to be sacrificed to save the lives of all the other people. Surely some psychologically healthy people would argue that it is morally acceptable for one person to be sacrificed to save all the others, especially, let’s say, if the one to be killed is very old and very ill, whereas all the others are young and physically healthy.

I’m not so sure about this. It seems to me to be a modification of the liebensraum argument that said some (deemed to be inferior) could be eliminated to improve the life opportunities of the superior.
In a lifeboat, it might be best to sit and pray for rescue, rather than plot to eliminate others in order to improve one’s own life chances.
Is it psychologically healthier to decide that others must be sacrificed for the sake of oneself?
Self-sacrificing love is a Catholic ideal (no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friends). psychologists Would self-sacrifice to be psychologically unhealthy?
I’m curious about the ability of psychology to answer moral questions and what might be considered to be determining factors in an argument from psychology.

 

[1cthlctrth]

Killing babies is objectively morally wrong, even the murderer believes it is ok. Same with rape and slavery.

 

[meltzerboy2]

There is a branch of psychology called psychology and religion (religious psychology). As you are interested, the psychologist you might want to explore further is Dr. Paul C. Vitz, who is a Catholic psychologist and studies such matters mainly from a Catholic moral perspective. He taught psychology classes for 46 years at New York University and is now teaching at Divine Mercy University and at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia. He began as an atheist and then converted to Catholicism, and has made it his life’s work to study the intersection between religion and psychology.

With regard to the lifeboat analogy, what if there is a consensus by means of voting or some other method that one person will sacrifice himself either by suicide or murder? In this case, it is not that everyone else gangs up on the old, unhealthy person and kills him; rather, that person has also agreed in advance that one of the group will be killed so that all the others may live. In other words, everyone is on board with this decision and believes it is the most moral action. Now, I am not saying I agree or you should agree with this, since it most probably goes against our religious values; but the people involved all agree due to the terrible circumstances. Should we not at least respect their mutual choice?

 

[meltzerboy2]

Harry Truman claims he had a restful sleep the night after he ordered the A-bomb be dropped on the Japanese civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because he sincerely believed he did the morally right thing by ending the War and preventing the killing of many more lives.

 

[Neithan]

Clearly he felt the ends justified the means; but he wasn’t the one who dropped the bomb. The pilot who dropped the bomb must have been disturbed by it, if he wasn’t completely psycho, after killing so many people (unless he had completely de-humanized the Japanese).

 

[goout]

Morality is the evaluation of human acts, not a system of ethics.
Since morality is an evaluation, human beings are moral subjects whose actions can be evaluated in reference to an object.
If there is no referential object, an evaluation is meaningless. Right? A scientist says “I think I just created gold in a test tube”. Well, no one cares what he thinks. How are we going to evaluate what he did? We need an objective reference to place the evaluation in context.

Human beings are not self referential in the evaluation of our actions. We are moral subjects. Our life only makes sense and has meaning in reference to the objective good. There can’t be subjective answers to the question “should I kill the person standing in front of me”. If we insist there are subjective self referential evaluations to moral questions, then we are simply not doing morality. The question is moot in that case.

In that case, what we are doing instead of morality is simply power, or politics, or self expression, or whim, or prevailing ethics. Whatever you’d like to call it, it’s not morality.

The other misconception about morality is that it’s a list of prohibitions.
Morality is only in reference to the objective good. When we say something is an objectively evil end, we can only say that in reference to a good.
You have to start moral evaluation with the objective good in mind.

For example: “Human existence is good”. It is good to be alive.
All prohibitions against murder support this good. The moral prohibition against murder does not exist for the sake of the prohibition. Saying “murder is bad because it’s forbidden” doesn’t really make any sense, although it works to instruct in an elementary way.

 

[stpurl]

IF there were only one existence, and if every person would live forever unless somebody murdered them, you might have a point.

furthermore, the existence ‘here’ would have to be a uniformly positive existence. How often have you heard people say that their lives are so unhappy that ‘they’d rather be dead?’

So let’s take your example. Your family, we will posit, contains you, your spouse, and your two teenage children. The situation arises, you lie to protect your family.

A year or so later, one of your children, angry at ‘the world’, decides to pay back perceived slights, and kills a dozen other classmates.
Your other child is so traumatized by the stigma that after a couple of years of attempting to escape the pain through drugs, he commits suicide by jumping into traffic. In the course of this, the driver who hits him is also hit by another car, and the driver’s pregnant wife and their 3-year-old are killed.
Your spouse blames God, blasphemes, first verbally abuses, then physically abuses you.

So, ‘indisputably right’ to 'prevent the family being murdered?

 

[Ender]

If we insist there are subjective self referential evaluations to moral questions, then we are simply not doing morality. The question is moot in that case.

This is exactly the issue. To answer the OP’s question, the only possible way morality can exist is if it is objectively true. If morality is subjective it is nothing more than whim or personal preference. In a world of subjective morality choosing to kill would be no more morally objectionable than watching a movie where someone is killed.

We can debate whether this or that standard is the objectively true one, but if we are unwilling to acknowledge that such a standard must exist we cannot reasonably argue that man can behave morally. His actions would be indistinguishable from animal behavior, and we do not pass moral judgment on animals.

 

[o_mlly]

There seems to be a bit of confusion here between circumstantial morality of morally neutral actions (e.g. killing) and the idea that morality itself can just change between eras, cultures and individuals. This a mistake I often see moral relativists make.

Yes. And in the concrete, all human acts are moral acts as the object of the act and all circumstances are specified. Only in the abstract can one speak of morally neutral acts with varying circumstances.

 

[Wozza]

IF there were only one existence, and if every person would live forever unless somebody murdered them, you might have a point.

furthermore, the existence ‘here’ would have to be a uniformly positive existence. How often have you heard people say that their lives are so unhappy that ‘they’d rather be dead?’

So let’s take your example. Your family, we will posit, contains you, your spouse, and your two teenage children. The situation arises, you lie to protect your family.

A year or so later, one of your children, angry at ‘the world’, decides to pay back perceived slights, and kills a dozen other classmates.
Your other child is so traumatized by the stigma that after a couple of years of attempting to escape the pain through drugs, he commits suicide by jumping into traffic. In the course of this, the driver who hits him is also hit by another car, and the driver’s pregnant wife and their 3-year-old are killed.
Your spouse blames God, blasphemes, first verbally abuses, then physically abuses you.

So, ‘indisputably right’ to 'prevent the family being murdered?

Congratulations. You win this week’s Most Convoluted Hypothetical.

So I tell the gunman the truth and my kids are raped and murdered.

‘What in God’s name did you do that for?’ demands my wife.
‘You idiot’, I reply. ‘Don’t you know what would happen if we let them live? A year or so from now, little Jenny, angry at ‘the world’, might decide to pay back perceived slights, and kill a dozen other classmates! And you won’t believe what could happen next! Trust me, it’s for the best.’

 

[Wozza]

Since morality is an evaluation, human beings are moral subjects whose actions can be evaluated in reference to an object.

The object being that which is affected by the actions. If no-one is affected then it is an amoral act. If someone IS affected then we need to discuss the circumstances and decide if the actions were justified.

I’m really not sure why people feel this is so complicated.

 

[Wozza]

etcustodiatte:

There seems to be a bit of confusion here between circumstantial morality of morally neutral actions (e.g. killing) and the idea that morality itself can just change between eras, cultures and individuals. This a mistake I often see moral relativists make.

Yes. And in the concrete, all human acts are moral acts as the object of the act and all circumstances are specified.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘in the concrete’. If it simply means ‘in all cases where the object of the act and the circumstances are specified’ then it seems somewhat superfluous to mention it. But then that’s part of what I’ve been saying. That the object and the circumstances are required to ascertain whether it is a moral act or not. It is relative to those conditions and thus becomes a subjective matter in interpretation.

Without those conditions (lying is wrong) there is no way to tell. Add conditions, making it relative to those conditions (there’s no-one home but me) and you can personally make that call.

 

[Ender]

The object being that which is affected by the actions. If no-one is affected then it is an amoral act. If someone IS affected then we need to discuss the circumstances and decide if the actions were justified.

What criteria do you use to justify an act, and are those criteria objective or subjective?

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

The object being that which is affected by the actions. If no-one is affected then it is an amoral act. If someone IS affected then we need to discuss the circumstances and decide if the actions were justified.

What criteria do you use to justify an act, and are those criteria objective or subjective?

Does it cause harm.

That is almost always an objective criteria. But then we have to move on to whether the harm can be justified. Which is always subjective.

 

[Ender]

Does it cause harm.

That is almost always an objective criteria.

I disagree: this is an arbitrary criterion. It may convince you but it doesn’t convince me, and since I am no more bound by your standards than you are by mine, I offer a different standard: what harms me is bad, what helps me is good. True, it is no less arbitrary than yours, but if we get to invent our standards I think mine makes more sense.

 

[goout]

goout:

Since morality is an evaluation, human beings are moral subjects whose actions can be evaluated in reference to an object.

The object being that which is affected by the actions. If no-one is affected then it is an amoral act. If someone IS affected then we need to discuss the circumstances and decide if the actions were justified.

I’m really not sure why people feel this is so complicated.

No one said it is complicated.
Why do you find it complicated?

 

[stpurl]

I notice you’re not addressing what I actually said. If you ever wish to do that instead of trying to put words in my mouth for your jollies, let me know.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Does it cause harm.

That is almost always an objective criteria.

I disagree: this is an arbitrary criterion. It may convince you but it doesn’t convince me, and since I am no more bound by your standards than you are by mine, I offer a different standard: what harms me is bad, what helps me is good. True, it is no less arbitrary than yours, but if we get to invent our standards I think mine makes more sense.

Hey, you just asked me what criteria I used. I told you what I use, and you complain because you don’t like it? How does that work?

It’s my criterion, not yours, but if you think yours is better (and I don’t think that you do), then tell me why. That might make a better discussion: Yours doesn’t work because A, B and C and mine does because X, Y and Z.

You go first.

 

[Wozza]

I notice you’re not addressing what I actually said. If you ever wish to do that instead of trying to put words in my mouth for your jollies, let me know.

I’m not answering it because it’s nonsensical. You want me, in the example given, to tell the truth because…something much worse might happen in the future if my kids live so I should let my kids get raped and murdered. Utterly bizarre.

Maybe when one of yours runs out into the road you shouldn’t stop her. Imagine what a monster she may become if she lives.

And I can hardly be accused of putting my words in your mouth when I cut and pasted what you actually wrote.