Moral Absolutism

[john_doran]

Here’s how I look at this debate. If every high school theist (not just Catholics) graduating to college understood that (I’ll qualify) that scientific natualism was in no way compatible with human rights philosophy and that it then follows that “secular humanism” is an oxymoron, that student could stand his ground against any atheist college professor. I’ve done it.

In such a debate, the only defense a scientific naturalist has is to admit that if his naturalism is true then moral relativism (in all its absurdity) is also true…and that there is no such thing a human right.

but why does naturalism entail moral relativism?

 

[Doug50]

but why does naturalism entail moral relativism?

Naturalism holds that the way to understand the all of nature is through the scientific method.

I’ll answer your question with a question: What scientific method would anyone use to study an objective moral standard and how does a factual situation effect (or affected by) an objective moral standard? Objective moral standards are independent of human subjective beliefs about what is moral/immoral.

Everything in Nature that is objective is subject to the laws of nature and is represented by a theory/theorem. I know of no such theory/theorem for an objective moral standard/quality. Humans might have subjective beliefs, for example, about how the universe came to be but that in no way changes the objective facts about how it did come about. We make scientific progress when our subjective beliefs more closely resemble the objetive truth.

Zoologist observe and study animal behaviorisms. Anthropologists and sociologists study human cultural behaviorisms. The only thing these three disaplines can do is *discribe * these behaviors. In the case of humans the latter two extends to what humans subjectively believe about their world as to what is right and wrong, good and evil. In discribing different cultures, it is an observed fact that different cultures have different subjective attitudes/beliefs about what is moral or immoral. That is, what’s moral/immoral is relative to a culture’s intersubjective beliefs. Civil rights, for example, are intersubjective beliefs about what should or should not be a legal right among its citizens. These civil rights are subordinate to cultural beliefs.

What happens if a culture changes its beliefs about what’s moral? Obviously, the moral standard changed…but did the culture’s moral beliefs/understanding progress (as in moral progress) or did the moral beliefs/understanding degress?

There is no way to make that determination unless you can present an objective moral standard by which to judge a culture’s moral code against. Without an objective standard all you can say is that the culture’s moral code changed and the term “moral progress” would be meaningless. Human rights are believed to be culturally independent. In fact, humanists hold that cultural beliefs about what is moral/immoral are subordinate to human rights. IOW societies are subordinate to human rights philosophy. And as I said in an earlier post, moral progress can only happen when a culture’s moral beliefs more closely resembles that of objective moral standards, to that of a moral Truth

If humans/you hold the belief that human rights are real, not the stuff of myth making (mythology), and that these objective morals don’t conform to the scientific method then we have an interesting situation here. We are saying there is something about the nature of reality which does not conform to scientific Naturalism or to the scientific method.

How then do we come about having this knowledge? Is it by intuitionism, a self-evident truth, reasoned faith? Seems to me all three of those have the same meaning.

Atheists who claim to believe in metaphyscial Naturalism (the denial of moral realism) on the one hand and Humanism’s human rights (moral realism) on the other hand are factually being oxymoronic. It makes no sense for anyone to say they are both a moral realist and a moral anti-realist at the same time.

 

[john_doran]

Naturalism holds that the way to understand the all of nature is through the scientific method.

i think you’re casting the net a little too widely here, as there are those that are mathematical and moral realists who also describe themselves as committed to some kind of naturalism.

i think the real question is why god is needed for moral objectivity. what is god’s relation to (human) morality? how does the fact of god’s existence guarantee objective morality?

Doug50:

I’ll answer your question with a question: What scientific method would anyone use to study an objective moral standard and how does a factual situation effect (or affected by) an objective moral standard? Objective moral standards are independent of human subjective beliefs about what is moral/immoral.

well, it depends on what physical/natural phenomena you believe moral properties supervene - you’d have to ask a moral realist who’s also a naturalist.

but it seems to me that one could also be a rationalist with regards to objective normative facts and not believe in a god, in the same way that there are those who are realist rationalists with regard to mathematical and modal facts (i.e. who believe that the furniture of the world includes abstract objects like numbers, sets, and possible worlds), and who also do not believe in the existence of a god.

of course, these positions may turn out to be defeasible, but i would like to know why.

Doug50:

If humans/you hold the belief that human rights are real, not the stuff of myth making (mythology), and that these objective morals don’t conform to the scientific method then we have an interesting situation here. We are saying there is something about the nature of reality which does not conform to scientific Naturalism or to the scientific method.

How then do we come about having this knowledge? Is it by intuitionism, a self-evident truth, reasoned faith? Seems to me all three of those have the same meaning.

we come to moral knowledge by way of practical reason, in the same way we come to logical/mathematical knowledge by way of theoretical reason. two objects of knowledge, two separate faculties of knowing. hey, presto.

each, of course, will begin with self-evident propositions: “~(A&~A)”, and “good is to be done and pursued”, for example. the rest of the details are worked out from there.

Doug50:

Atheists who claim to believe in metaphyscial Naturalism (the denial of moral realism) on the one hand and Humanism’s human rights (moral realism) on the other hand are factually being oxymoronic. It makes no sense for anyone to say they are both a moral realist and a moral anti-realist at the same time.

sure. but one can be a moral realist and an atheist.

 

[Doug50]

Seems my last post didn’t go.
I’ll sum it:

Atheism only means a person doesn’t believe in god(s). That doesn’t mean he can’t believe in ghosts or anything else said to be supernatural.

Naturalism is more restrictive, however, in that it rejects every surpernatural claim. So a naturalists must reject all metaphyscial truth claims to gods, souls, angels, etc. Natualism also holds that everything objective has a naturalistic explanation that is open to scientific enquiry - open to discovery by the scientific method.

What about objective morals, are they natural or supernatural? If those who claim moral realism is explainable within the natural world then it is encumbent upon that person to present a natural explanation for their objectivity. Such an explanation has never been done. I won’t hold my breath waiting for one.

As a believer in moral realism, I use to argue, using an appeal to reason, for their existence with atheist who rejected moral realism for moral relativism. I knew these atheists argued for human rights and that by necessity human rights had to be the stuff of moral realism.

And that’s when the lightbulb went off in my mind. An appeal to reason for a non-physical object/substance is an appeal of faith. And an atheist’s belief in human rights is nothing less than a witness to his faith in there being true.

Whatever human rights are they aren’t of the natural world. If they are the naturalist believer in these moral realisms needs to explain how they somehow apply only to the human specie and not other species. If not for a spiritual awareness of such a concept then what is it that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom if ojbective morality is the stuff of natural causes?

Since I don’t believe anyone will ever discover an objective moral using natualistic means, I only point out that they are the stuff of faith…whatever that faith my be based upon. And that includes an atheists beliefs in human rights. Can an athiest hold to such a faith? Sure he can but…he cannot if he also claims to believe in scientific naturalism/materialism.

Are there criticisms to the claims of inalienable rights in Nature? Yes and to quote: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalienable_rights
"Derivation of inalienable rights from Natural Law can also be criticized on solely philosophical grounds. The naturalistic fallacy of David Hume, which is discussed at length in G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, is the derivation of an “ought” statement from “is” statements with no “ought” premise. Jonathan Wallace claims in his paper “Natural Rights Don’t Exist,”[15] that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is simply a “more elegant version of ‘Because we said so.’”

So who’s right, the believer (theist or atheist) in the true existence of human rights or the true metaphyscial naturalists who claim such rights are the stuff of myth, a more elegant version of “Becasue we say so?”

Seems to me that anyone who says human rights (any moral realism) are true then that person has made a leap of faith. I’d also go so far as to say that knowledge would have to be a mystical knowing.

 

[john_doran]

What about objective morals, are they natural or supernatural? If those who claim moral realism is explainable within the natural world then it is encumbent upon that person to present a natural explanation for their objectivity. Such an explanation has never been done. I won’t hold my breath waiting for one.

i’d say objective morals are natural, just like objective truth is natural; “people ought not to kill intentionally” is as natural and objective a fact as “~(A&~A)”.

try reading Natural Law and Natural Rights by John Finnis, or anything authored by Germain Grisez for a thoroughgoing and defensible argument for the naturalness of objective morality.

Doug50:

As a believer in moral realism, I use to argue, using an appeal to reason, for their existence with atheist who rejected moral realism for moral relativism. I knew these atheists argued for human rights and that by necessity human rights had to be the stuff of moral realism.

but the atheists on this thread (or at least mirdath) aren’t trying to argue for an objective morality and moral relativism: they are (or at least seem to be, anyway) simply arguing that one can be a moral realist and an atheist.

Doug50:

Whatever human rights are they aren’t of the natural world.

but ***we’re ***of the natural world; if the normativity of morality isn’t grounded in human nature, then what makes the moral law normative for us? how do you get from propositions like “murder is wrong”, to propositions like “one ought not to commit murder”

Doug50:

If they are the naturalist believer in these moral realisms needs to explain how they somehow apply only to the human specie and not other species.

i’ve already explained this: morality is a feature of rationality; more specifically, a feature of ***practical ***rationality. other animal species are not rational, and are thus not subject to the moral law.

Doug50:

Are there criticisms to the claims of inalienable rights in Nature? Yes and to quote: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalienable_rights
"Derivation of inalienable rights from Natural Law can also be criticized on solely philosophical grounds. The naturalistic fallacy of David Hume, which is discussed at length in G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, is the derivation of an “ought” statement from “is” statements with no “ought” premise. Jonathan Wallace claims in his paper “Natural Rights Don’t Exist,”[15] that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is simply a “more elegant version of ‘Because we said so.’”

but you have to avoid the humean criticism, too - if moral propositions are “supernatural”, how do you explain their normativity to natural beings, like us? how do you go from, say, “it is the case that god has commanded us not to murder”, to “we ought not to murder”?

 

[Doug50]

If metaphysical naturalism is compatible with moral realism then you have to give your naturalistic explanation for its objectivity.

I have never seen that done. The only thing you can do in arguing for moral realism is to make an appeal to reason. But appeals to reason are not scientific explanations.

Whereas in Naturalism everything that is natural is subject to the scientific method. What science is used in the study of objective morals? I know of no such science.

Quote: theaetetus.tamu.edu/phil-111/victor/moral/Relativism_handout.pdf
II. Relativism, Subjectivism and Science: relativists and subjectivists (both anti-realists) hold that there is no objective right or wrong. They usually enjoy contrasting morality and science to make their point.
A. Progress, convergence and universal validity: science has made great progress in uncovering the nature of the world, and those who investigate that world end up at or converge upon the same conclusions regardless of personal temperament or cultural background; science is therefore universally valid, yielding conclusions that hold regardless of the culture of the participants. -on the other hand, there is still massive disagreement even over the most basic moral issues, and one’s temperament or cultural background greatly influences one’s conclusions in ethics, unlike science.
**So–the relativist argues-- there is no realm of objective moral truth or reality that is comparable to the natural world investigated by science.

If you want argue for an objective morality compatible with naturalism then you need to falsify that quote using some form of science. Philosophy won’t work since naturalism rejects all philosophies and theologies that have no bases in scientific facts or open to empirical evidence. How does one even begin to study a claimed universal moral using empirical evidence open to scientific enquiry? If it can’t be done, or it isn’t open to such an enquire, then Naturalism rejects it.

You can use science (sociology) to show how societies subjectively/intersubjectively believe in such moral realisms but that isn’t evidence of their factual existence anymore than Zeus would be.

Like I said, and tdgesq for that matter, when ever a self-proclaimed metaphyscial naturalist (as most atheists are) argues that nature is all there is but then goes on to argue for human rights, that person has factually step out of and rejected naturalism as a working model for reality and into some other metaphysical belief system. What the belief system is may be debatable but it certainly isn’t naturalism/materialism.

 

[john_doran]

If metaphysical naturalism is compatible with moral realism then you have to give your naturalistic explanation for its objectivity.

I have never seen that done. The only thing you can do in arguing for moral realism is to make an appeal to reason. But appeals to reason are not scientific explanations.

so what if they’re not scientific? logic and math are not scientific, either, and neither are they empirical. and the same goes for the philosophical assumptions upon which science is based…

look, naturalism is just not the same thing as either reductionist materialism or logical positivism - the view that the natural world is all there is entails neither (A) that everything in the natural world is reducible to some kind of material entity, or (B) that empirical data are the only legitimate source of knowledge acquisition.

so even if you’re right, and objective morality is incompatible with the metaphysical naturalism you keep describing (and i continue to believe that it isn’t), there are other naturalisms that are unburdened by the such philosophical anchors as positivism and reductionism, and are so far forth compatible with a rational moral objectivity.

Doug50:

Whereas in Naturalism everything that is natural is subject to the scientific method.

simply not true, i’m afraid; at least not for a great many types of broadly naturalistic metaphysics.

Doug50:

Quote: theaetetus.tamu.edu/phil-111/victor/moral/Relativism_handout.pdf
II. Relativism, Subjectivism and Science: relativists and subjectivists (both anti-realists) hold that there is no objective right or wrong. They usually enjoy contrasting morality and science to make their point.
A. Progress, convergence and universal validity: science has made great progress in uncovering the nature of the world, and those who investigate that world end up at or converge upon the same conclusions regardless of personal temperament or cultural background; science is therefore universally valid, yielding conclusions that hold regardless of the culture of the participants. -on the other hand, there is still massive disagreement even over the most basic moral issues, and one’s temperament or cultural background greatly influences one’s conclusions in ethics, unlike science.
**So–the relativist argues-- there is no realm of objective moral truth or reality that is comparable to the natural world investigated by science.

why do you keep talking about moral relativism? you seem to be simply assuming that an atheist needs to be a relativist, but that’s precisely the question at issue here…

Doug50:

If you want argue for an objective morality compatible with naturalism then you need to falsify that quote using some form of science. Philosophy won’t work since naturalism rejects all philosophies and theologies that have no bases in scientific facts or open to empirical evidence.

again, not true.

Doug50:

You can use science (sociology) to show how societies subjectively/intersubjectively believe in such moral realisms but that isn’t evidence of their factual existence anymore than Zeus would be.

you discover objective morality through the logic of practical reason, in much the same way as you discover math through the logic of theoretical reason.

Doug50:

Like I said, and tdgesq for that matter, when ever a self-proclaimed metaphyscial naturalist (as most atheists are) argues that nature is all there is but then goes on to argue for human rights, that person has factually step out of and rejected naturalism as a working model for reality and into some other metaphysical belief system. What the belief system is may be debatable but it certainly isn’t naturalism/materialism.

you still haven’t answered my question to you: if morality isn’t natural, then how are the propositions of a supernatural objective morality normative*** for us***? how do you avoid the naturalistic fallacy of reasoning from statements about moral facts to normative statements about what we ought to do?

 

[Doug50]

You can put together any logical string but that doesn’t necessarily confer truth in reality. Math is an objective language used to discribe.

For the theist, God has a nature and humans made in His image (however imperfectly) share in that nature. But as theist we reject metaphysical naturalism. As theists we find God through faith and reason (appeals to reason). You will never ever discover emphirical evidence for objective God or an objective morality. Therefore, anyone who argues for human rights (which by necessity are objective moral realisms) and for Naturalism is being contradictory.

From the American Atheists website: “The indestructible foundation of the whole edifice of Atheism is its philosophy, materialism, or naturalism, as it is also known. That philosophy regards the world as it actually is, views it in the light of the data provided by progressive science and social experience. Atheistic materialism is the logical outcome of scientific knowledge gained over the centuries.”

I see no room in that discription for a non-physical objective God or non-physical objective/quality morality.

Both of us are moral realists but we are arguing from a different POV. Natualism, today, is defined as that used by the above website. The atheists in this thread, if they’re still reading, would recognize it as such. As theists, you and I see human nature as including a supernatural quality.

Since you and I are both moral realists, we both believe in an objective morality so stop trying to convience me of something I already believe to be true. But unlike you, it seems, I don’t believe there is any method to show that moral realism is compatible with Naturalism. Therefore, I must reject Naturalism as a working model for reality. Mathamatics as an objective analogy for moral realism won’t work within Naturalism to convience any true naturalist of the truth of an objective morality. I’ve been there, I’ve tried it. Then I realized, atheist who argue for human rights were unwittingly arguing for an objective morality.

What you seem to be missing in my argument is this: Atheists who claim to be naturalists but then go on to argue for human rights are being flagrantly inconsistent because in Naturalism there is no room for moral realism, only moral anti-realism. That is, there is no room for moral objectivism, situational ethics, or moral absolutism, only moral subjectivism (aka individual relativism) and moral relativism (cultural relativism). To Naturalism, humans simply invent subjective rights and wrongs in the same way they subjectively invent gods. In naturalism, gods and morals (moral truths) are not facts of reality but non-real inventions from imagination - the stuff of mythology.

Secularims holds to => Naturalism which holds to => moral relativism (aka moral anti-realism)

Humanism holds to => the endowment of human rights onto all which are independent of any societaly prescription which mean => morality is objective and not mearly subjective (aka moral realism).

On the level of ethics, Secularism and Humanism have contradictory meanings. Therefore, secular humanism is an oxymoran.

By Naturalism (how do I stress this any greater to you?), athiests who claim all religions are mythologies are themselves unwittingly believing in their own mythology of humanism.

Chirstianity (but not limited to this religion) and certainly Catholicism is inherently humanistic in its philosophy since it asserts the existence of human rights.

 

[john_doran]

What you seem to be missing in my argument is this: Atheists who claim to be naturalists but then go on to argue for human rights are being flagrantly inconsistent because in Naturalism there is no room for moral realism, only moral anti-realism. That is, there is no room for moral objectivism, situational ethics, or moral absolutism, only moral subjectivism (aka individual relativism) and moral relativism (cultural relativism).

we’re obviously going in circles here…

i’m not missing this point you keep making: i am asking you to back it up it - all you’re doing is stating the same thing over and over and over again…

why does metaphysical naturalism entail moral relativism?

why does objective morality require a supernatural foundation?

how do supernatural (specifically: non-natural) moral norms become normative for us, that is, for natural beings?

until you provide some supporting argument for your position, we’re pretty much dead in the water…

 

[cpayne]

why does objective morality require a supernatural foundation?

how do supernatural (specifically: non-natural) moral norms become normative for us, that is, for natural beings?

until you provide some supporting argument for your position, we’re pretty much dead in the water…

In response, I’d pretty much state what I stated before. I’m not sure whether or not we are actually disagreeing, since I also believe that nature is the foundation of human morality and that objective moral truths can be rationally ascertained without benefit of theistic beliefs. If that is all you’re saying, then I agree.

However (here’s the repetitive part), as Aquinas says, every law, in order to have the character of law, must be promulgated by a lawgiver. The Lawgiver of human nature is God, even if those moral laws can be rationally ascertained without reference to Him. Moral rules implanted in human nature by God actually do have a Lawgiver, and therefore have the true quality of law as such.

I think what your argument with Doug50 hinges upon is this idea: Let’s suppose moral laws within human nature are not implanted there by God’s creation of us, but are rather the naturalistic result of evolution purely (not even “guided” by supernatural creation). In that case, “law” seems to mean something different, something like “prescriptions for behavior which we commonly observe in humans.” If this is the case, where’s the normative authority? Yes, these prescriptions can be observed in human nature and should therefore be followed, even by those who do not believe in their supernatural cause. But it is precisely the supernatural cause which provides their character as moral laws, not just “things we observe about ourselves.”

You asked me earlier about how God “promulgates” these laws, since they are natural to us. Why would they need to be “promulgated”? So maybe “established” would be a better word.

 

[john_doran]

In response, I’d pretty much state what I stated before. I’m not sure whether or not we are actually disagreeing, since I also believe that nature is the foundation of human morality and that objective moral truths can be rationally ascertained without benefit of theistic beliefs. If that is all you’re saying, then I agree.

that’s all i’m saying…

cpayne:

However (here’s the repetitive part), as Aquinas says, every law, in order to have the character of law, must be promulgated by a lawgiver. The Lawgiver of human nature is God, even if those moral laws can be rationally ascertained without reference to Him. Moral rules implanted in human nature by God actually do have a Lawgiver, and therefore have the true quality of law as such.

well, i would say that god might promulgate or establish the moral law for humans in the same way that he promulgates or establishes the laws of logic for us: namely, simply by creating us.

but if you’re suggesting that god created us as rational animals first, and then had to do something extra to fix our moral norms, then i have to demur, since i believe that what’s good for us follows from our rational animality in the same way that “having interior angles that sum to 180 degrees in euclidean space” follows from being a triangle.

the only way that objective moral norms could have been made true by evolution would be if evolution could also have made us rational animals…

 

[cpayne]

that’s all i’m saying…

well, i would say that god might promulgate or establish the moral law for humans in the same way that he promulgates or establishes the laws of logic for us: namely, simply by creating us.

but if you’re suggesting that god created us as rational animals first, and then had to do something extra to fix our moral norms, then i have to demur, since i believe that what’s good for us follows from our rational animality in the same way that “having interior angles that sum to 180 degrees in euclidean space” follows from being a triangle.

the only way that objective moral norms could have been made true by evolution would be if evolution could also have made us rational animals…

 

[Doug50]

John, first of all my argument is rational.

When I say Nartualism is only compatible with moral relativism that can only stand to reason unless you can prove the contrary. Why? Because moral relativism is moral anti-realism.

Moral relativism is the negation of a moral truth, realism. You can’t prove something doesn’t exist.

For you to insist that I must prove a negation (a negative) in Naturalism is like asking an atheist to prove god doesn’t exist using naturalistic means.

Therefore, If you insist that moral realism is compatible with Naturalism then the onus is on you to prove the positive using naturalistic means.

I OTOH can’t possible use naturalistic means to prove a supernatual object or quality. Which is why beliefs in God and Human Rights are always appeals to reason.

Look at this way: All arguments for human rights are based upon declaratons of their being true. Declarations are not rational arguments.

Humanism is, at the very least, a quasi religion which has deleted all supernaturalisms truths from it except for the belief in moral truths.

 

[Doug50]

infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/moral.html
Quote
I should note that this article is targeted to an audience that already accepts philosophical naturalism, the view that everything that exists is natural (and thus the supernatural does not exist). Since supernaturalism would be deaf to appeals to explanatory simplicity and it would be impossible to discover the supernatural origins of anything, one cannot gauge whether any supernaturalist account is any more or less plausible than any other supernaturalist account, including an account of the origins of objective moral laws.

In Defense of Moral Subjectivism: An Argument for the Subjectivity of Moral Values
In his reply to my letter to the editor, Theodore Schick accused me of arguing “that morality must must be subjective on the grounds that * cannot see how it could be objective.” But this is not what I argued at all. I said that I thought that the idea that “there can be no objective moral laws” was plausible to atheists. I think it is perfectly possible that objective moral laws exist in some Platonic realm of ideas, but I think it is implausible that such is the case. Since moral laws refer to the actions of sentient beings, it is difficult to conceive how they could originate by unconscious natural mechanisms. That laws of nature originated after the Big Bang is plausible because natural laws govern the physical components (forces, particles, etc) that arose from it. But ethics does not come into play in the history of the universe until very recently–when Homo sapiens appeared. It is possible that moral laws have existed since the Big Bang, but that they could not manifest themselves until sentient beings arose. However, such a view implies that there is some element of purposefulness in the universe–that the universe was created with the evolution of sentient beings “in mind” (in the mind of a Creator?). To accept the existence of objective moral laws that have existed since the beginning of time is to believe that the evolution of sentient beings capable of moral reasoning (such as human beings) has somehow been predetermined or is inevitable, a belief that is contrary to naturalistic explanations of origins (such as evolution by natural selection) which maintain that sentient beings came into existence due to contingent, accidental circumstances. If objective moral laws are part of the natural universe (not part of some supernatural realm), then the universe cannot be unconscious–it must be, in some unknown sense, sentient. Few naturalists would want to accept such a nonscientific pantheistic conclusion.

Another reason that moral objectivism is implausible is because all the laws of nature that we are aware of are descriptive: they describe how certain configurations of matter or energy will behave under different circumstances. But moral laws are prescriptive: the describe how certain sentient beings should behave under different circumstances. This is why a law of nature like the law of gravity cannot be violated, but a moral law like “Thou shall not kill” can be. Nothing else in the universe has this strange prescriptive quality–nothing we know in nature gives any part of the natural world a “duty” to behave in a certain way.

We do not accuse a lion of immorality for tearing a giraffe to shreds. Animals are not ‘subject’ to moral laws because they don’t make moral decisions. Yet, if we all accept a purely naturalistic evolutionary account of the origin of Homo sapiens, it follows that human beings are merely another species of animal, and consequently we are not subject to moral laws. What differentiates humans from the other animals is that we are animals that make moral decisions. But decisions are mental states which exist in minds–individual human minds. Decisions will vary between people with different thoughts on a subject, hence it is reasonable to argue that moral values are subjective and vary with individual conscience.

cont’d*

 

[Doug50]

In his response to my letter to the editor, Schick claims that most ethicists reject moral subjectivism not because of the success of various moral objectivist theories, but because moral subjectivism leads to contradictions. He then gives the following argument as an example:

Premise 1: What makes something morally right is that a person believes it is morally right.

P2: Person A believes genocide is morally right.

P3: Person B believes genocide is not morally right.

4: Genocide is morally right (from 1 and 2).

5: Genocide is not morally right (from 1 and 3).

This reductio ad absurdum leads to contradiction; 4 and 5 are opposite conclusions, thus the argument is invalid. However, I never claimed that I believed premise 1; Schick assumed it. Premise 1 assumes that there is an objective fact of the matter over whether genocide is right or wrong. Ethics, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The argument I am proposing is that there is no objective fact that genocide is morally wrong anymore than there is an objective fact that rock and roll is better than country music. Both statements, no matter how well agreed-upon by most people, merely express the opinion of the people who state them. They do not refer to some “state of the world”, and that is exactly what an objectivist theory of ethics requires of ethical statements. Consider the following argument:

P1: What makes something aesthetically better than some other thing is that a person believes that that thing is better than some other thing.

P2: Person A believes that rock and roll is better than country music.

P3: Person B believes that rock and roll is not better than country music.

4: Rock and roll is better than country music.

5: Rock and roll is not better than country music.

Now, again we have a contradiction; but does this mean that it is irrational for me to claim that rock and roll is better than country music? No, it is a rational claim. But it is a claim about my tastes and preferences. Similarly, it is perfectly rational for me to claim that genocide is morally wrong. But that expresses my emotional reaction to the action; it does not express some objective state of the world. It is rational because here premise 1 is false, just as it was in the example Schick provided. When I say that rock and roll is better than country music, it is tacitly assumed that I am expressing an opinion and not making a claim about the actual objective nature of rock and roll. Similarly, when I claim that genocide is wrong, I am not making an objective claim about the morality of an action; I am expressing an opinion.

In this essay I have set forth to: 1) Show that the existence of objective moral values is implausible (not impossible) on a purely naturalistic account of the world; and 2) show that the claim that objective moral values do not exist does not lead to contradiction (i.e., is logically consistent). I have not tried to show is that the existence of objective moral values is impossible, for there is no logical contradiction in assuming the existence of such laws. But given that moral subjectivism is just as logically viable as moral objectivism and that moral objectivism is implausible if a scientific naturalism is true, I think that there is a good case for the nonexistence of objective moral values. In addition to this, if we are to accept Ockham’s razor[1] as a valid general principle of rigorous scientific and philosophical inquiry, then the burden of proof falls on the moral objectivist[2] to show that the introduction of a new kind of nonphysical entity into our picture of the world–an objective moral law–is necessary to explain some tangible aspect of human morality that cannot be touched on by a subjectivist account. end quote

 

[john_doran]

John, first of all my argument is rational.

When I say Nartualism is only compatible with moral relativism that can only stand to reason unless you can prove the contrary.

ok, this is just not true: anyone making an affirmative statement - positive or negative - has an obligation to support that claim. so, when you say “naturalism entails moral relativism”, you need to provide the argument that establishes the entailment relation.

Doug50:

Why? Because moral relativism is moral anti-realism.

Moral relativism is the negation of a moral truth, realism. You can’t prove something doesn’t exist.

For you to insist that I must prove a negation (a negative) in Naturalism is like asking an atheist to prove god doesn’t exist using naturalistic means.

i’m not asking you to prove a “negative in naturalism”; i’m asking you to establish an entailment relation between naturalism and moral relativism.

Doug50:

Therefore, If you insist that moral realism is compatible with Naturalism then the onus is on you to prove the positive using naturalistic means.

and i have. here it is again:

1. naturalism is the general belief that the natural world is all that there is, that there are no supernatural entities;
2. one form of moral realism grounds moral norms in practical reason;
3. naturalism is broadly compatible with a belief in reason and, more generally, mind as supervienient on/reducible to natural events or states of affairs;
4. therefore naturalism is *prima facie *compatible with moral realism.

more generally, though, i am simply arguing, as cpayne notes, that whatever else may be true about the ontology of moral realism, moral norms are at least knowable without appeal to any divine truths; i.e. that moral norms are grounded in human nature rather than divine nature/activity.

look, i am a moral realist and a metaphysical non-naturalist; i believe, for example, that our rationality requires a non-corporeal principle as its foundation, which means that, ultimately, though i also think that morality is grounded in human nature, i also believe that human nature contains a supernatural (specifically, non-natural) element.

i just don’t think that once god has fixed the facts of human nature, he needs to do anything extra to fix the moral facts of the matter.

Doug50:

Look at this way: All arguments for human rights are based upon declaratons of their being true. Declarations are not rational arguments.

i’m not sure what you’re getting at here: politically, there are declarations of human rights, but philosophically, there are many arguments about the nature and content of human rights (and which make absolutely no appeal to any supernatural claims) - for example, Natural Law and Natural Rights by John Finnis, and The Morality of Freedom by Joseph Raz.

 

[john_doran]

infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/moral.html
Quote

that essay is an argument against your position: namely that moral laws are themselves nonphysical entities created or “laid down” by a supernatural (divine) lawgiver.

which also means that it is also not an argument that metaphysical naturalism entails moral relativism, since there are moral objectivists (like me) that don’t think that one needs to introduce “nonphysical entities” to account for the normativity of practical reason generally, and moral norms more specifically.

look, if one can be a naturalist and have no problem accomodating the normativity (i.e. prescriptivity) of a propositions like “if one wants to build a house efficiently, then one ought not to use a limp noodle to hammer a nail into a two-by-four”, or “if one wants to add two numbers in base 10, then one ought to carry the 1”, then why should there be some new, strange problem with propositions like “if one wants to be healthy, then one ought to eat certain foods and avoid others”, or “if one wants to be a good person, then one ought not to murder”?

 

[Doug50]

that essay is an argument against your position: namely that moral laws are themselves nonphysical entities created or “laid down” by a supernatural (divine) lawgiver.

I’ll reply to both of yours here:

That argument is exactly my point. It’s just that it’s coming from an atheist who understands the associated problem of asserting an objective morality within Naturalism. He therefore holds to subjectivsm/relativism.

Moral objectivism/realism is a metaphysical postition. The normative argument for morality fits quite well within Cultural Relativism. But what’s normative in one culture isn’t necessarily the norm in another’s. Civil rights are objectified norms (as I’ve already been here on that point) within a culture.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
Putting aside the arguments that appeal to moral disagreement, a significant motivation for anti-realism about morality is found in about the metaphysics of moral realism and especially about whether moral realism might be reconciled with (what has come to be called) naturalism. It is hard, to say the least, to define naturalism in a clear way. Yet the underlying idea is fairly easy to convey. According to naturalism, the only facts we should believe in are those countenanced by, or at least compatible with, the results of science. To find, of some putative fact, that its existence is neither established by nor even compatible with science, is to discover,** as naturalism would have it, that there is no such fact. If moral realism requires facts that are incompatible with science (as many think it does) that alone would constitute a formidable argument against it**.

Moral realists, in contrast, are standardly seen as unable to sustain their accounts without appealing, in the end, to putative facts that fly in the face of naturalism. This standard view can be traced to a powerful and influential argument offered by G.E. Moore (1903). As Moore saw things, being a naturalist about morality required thinking that moral terms could be defined correctly using terms that refer to natural properties. Thus one might define ‘good’ as ‘pleasant’, thus securing naturalistic credentials for value (so long as pleasure was a natural property) or one might define ‘good’ as ‘satisfies a desire we desire to have’ or as ‘conforms to the rules in force in our society’ or ‘promotes the species.’ Any one of these proposed definitions, if true, would establish that the facts required to make claims about what is good true or false were compatible with naturalism. Yet, Moore argued, no such definition could be true. Against every one, he maintain, a single line of argument was decisive. For in each case, whatever naturalistic definition of moral terms was on offer, it always made sense to ask, of things that had the naturalistic property in question, whether those things were (really) good.

Consider someone who held not merely that pleasure was something good but (as a definition would have it) that pleasure was goodness – that they were one and the same property. According to that person, in claiming that something is pleasant one is claiming that it is good, and vice versa. In that case, though, it would not make sense for people to acknowledge that something is pleasant and then wonder, nonetheless, whether it was good. That would be like acknowledging that something is a triangle and then wondering, nonetheless, whether it has three sides. Yet, Moore maintained, the two cases are not alike. A person who wonders whether a triangle has three sides shows he does not understand what it is to be a triangle. His competence with the terms in question is revealed to be inadequate. In contrast, Moore observed, for any natural property whatsoever it was always an Open Question (as he called it) whether things that had that natural property were good. A person who raised that question did not thereby reveal himself not to be competent with the terms in question. What this shows, Moore argued, was that moral terms did not refer to natural properties and so a proper account of moral claims would have to recognize that they purport to report non-natural facts.

cont’d

 

[Doug50]

Now of course moral realists can consistently acknowledge this and then argue against naturalism — perhaps, at least in part, on the grounds that it is incompatible with acknowledging moral facts. This was, in fact, Moore’s position. Yet one then has the burden of explaining how moral facts are related to natural facts and the burden of explaining how we might manage to learn of these non-natural facts. A good deal of the work that has been done defending moral realism is devoted either to meeting these burdens or to showing that they do not pose a special problem just for morality. Moral realists of this sort allow that moral facts are not natural facts, and moral knowledge is not simply of a piece with scientific knowledge, even as they defend the idea that there are moral facts and (at least in principle) moral knowledge. They thus reject the idea that science is the measure and test of all things.

NATURALISM AND MORAL REALISM† by MICHAEL C. REA UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

NATURALISM AND MORAL REALISM by JAMES M. SIAS III

 

[Doug50]

Oh and John the arguments in this link are exaclty ones you and I have made…just a bit more long haired in it’s language.

NATURALISM AND MORAL REALISM by JAMES M. SIAS III

You have a choice: Either you accept moral realism at the rejection of naturalism (ego becoming a non-naturalist) or you do as Keith Augustine did in this article infidels.org/library/mode…ine/moral.html you accept Naturalism and reject moral realism for its antithisis, relativism/subjectivism.

Just as James M. Sias’ argument is rational so is mine. Our conclusions are the same