Your posts are a pleasure to read.
All of those are pretty awkward to appeal to, with the exception of the self – the self not being a deity, but just the self, the center of thought and action, distinct from other beings and minds. The Constitution is only as authoritative as subjective minds say it is, no more, no less. Same goes fro the Supreme Court – if everyone agreed that the Supreme Court had no authority or standing, and simply disregarded any rulings it made, it would by definition have no practical authority.Touchstone
Anyway, it’s not a matter of confusion. It’s just awkward for Catholics to have to own up to their definitions as naked appeals to authority. “Objective morality” trades on the good equity of science and reason, and resonates much more successfully than “divine might makes right”. That worked better in pre-modern eras, but is a struggle to promote today.
It’s no more of an awkward thing for Catholics to appeal to the authority of their God than it is for judges to appeal to the authority of the Constitution or the Supreme Court, or for atheists like yourself to engage in a naked appeal to the authority of your God … yourself.
There are a couple of problems here. I have never encountered a Catholic writer who equated or derived “objectivity” from “authority”. These terms are unrelated except in the trivial sense that something that has authority over me must be objective. If anyone gives commands to themselves their next command should be to go see a good psychiatrist. The other thing that strikes me as inappropriate is to describe the Divine Mind as being subjective. Humans experience duality because we are finite (i.e. I end here, everything else is over there). I doubt that an infinite omniscience would experience the kind of isolation necessary to become truly subjective.
I think even that sense is problematic. If one accepts authority over oneself, that may not only be a subjective commitment by the self, the appeal for your subservience may be subjective, as well, just a demand by someone who wills such.
OK, not sure if you are talking about God here, but if so, I agree, and this is why subjectivity obtains. If God has an autonomous will, then he’s a subject. If he could choose X or Y as a function of his own will, then God is a subject, and God’s decrees/choices/values obtain just as subjectively as anything we might choose. God may be more powerful, and therefore worthy of worship/submission due to his might, but that doesn’t alter the subjective nature of God’s will as the source of value or even structure. What God wills is by definition subjective, as “objective” is the term we use for the concept that identifies states and nature that obtain independently of mind/will.
I don’t see “isolation” as related to the distinction here. An infinitely powerful and sovereign subject is still a subjective, and what issues from the will of said subject is still just as will-based as anything you or me might choose. If we just stipulate, arguendo, that God’s will is perfect in some sense, effective, etc. God’s subjectivity is not affected.
At first glance, perhaps. But when we apply the concepts to theology, people object. Not because they can’t be applied, but because it produces undesirable results. And I think the idea that “God’s morality is subjective” is a very good example of this. It’s conceptually very clean and consistent in its descriptiveness and ontology, it just makes traditionally powerful rhetorical positions problematic (“objective morality needs a sovereign God”).
Those are requirements (in many cases, repeatability is problematic in many cases), but they don’t establish objectivity per se. If I’m doing all the experimenting, and prediction testing, it remains a problem in terms of objectivity. Objectivity increases (and in science, it’s not a binary proposition, completely objective or subjective, but a matter of degrees either way) as we reduce the dependence of the hypothesis or idea on minds. Science can’t be done without minds, so there is no pure objectivity, but to the extent we can diminish the dependence of the hypothesis on any particular minds, we understand the likelihood that we have increased the objective quality of the analysis to have increased. A good example of this dynamic is seen in our valuation of instrumentation and calibrated equipment – non-mind means of measuring, testing, evaluating – as a way to increase the objectivity of our analysis. If the machines we develop and use can confirm and support our own distributed observations, we suppose that we have a more objective basis for embracing the hypothesis.
Indeed. And this is a triumph for objective analysis, no? If it works, it works independent of the discoverers’ mind; it works independently of any mind. But we need minds to test it, so we bring in other minds, minds that do not have the same (vested) interests, biases, and other distortive psychological elements (so far as we know) as a practical way to control and minimize the “dependence on mind” for the idea.
Interesting, but I think it’s crucial to understand that predictions about “your” life in some subjective way are going to defeat your purpose. That suggests to me that if such is not phenomenological, your prospects are dim. If we have moral objectivity, it won’t matter what mind (or machine) is doing the evaluation.
I just don’t see that at all. How would “objective” here be distinguished from “subjectively successful”? This seems to fundamentally misunderstand the concepts of “subjective” and “objective”. God, for example, explains all things. There is no scenario which can come about which “morally falsifies” God. So there is no reference frame for us to use, no non-mind, or just non-personal basis for evaluating all this. “Objective morality” as I understand it from your here, and I grant I may be just not understanding at all and need to be set straight, appears to be totally unworkable, and conceptually incoherent. And perfectly subjective in its execution, even as it claims to be objective.
I do agree with that, and appreciate it. My understanding is that on the merits, a Catholic won’t persist in the idea that Catholic morality is objective morality, but rather that Catholic morality is the Best Morality, given by the Best and Most Beautiful and Just and Sovereign Subject.
My comparative religion classes were based on the idea that animism is primitive, Hinduism is better, and so on up to Christianity being the best. I believe that or else I wouldn’t be a Christian, but I’m not sure it’s an objective decision.
Consider the moral dilemma of the trolley problem. The link talks about tests on large numbers of subjects indicating that when faced with a novel dilemma, we may all be wired with the same moral grammar. We process the conflict instinctively by comparing our emotions with our reasoning - “their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them”.
yeah, but you are conflating the issues. objective does not mean “true” and subjective does not mean “false.”
It’s reasonable to say that on Catholicism, God’s existence and God’s will obtain objectively. That is, on Catholic belief, God’s own will and existence are not dependent on any mind or will (setting aside the question of whether God is self-dependent in terms of his will for now). So, God and God’s will are “brute objects”, and obtain objectively, per Catholic theism, but that is all. Everything else is dependent on the will of God. The very universe is created by God’s will, a subjective reality, all of this, and as subject to God’s continuing and sustaining providence in every moment that passes as the moments of creation. All that it is declared to be “good” or “evil” or “wise” or “just” obtains as the subjective expression of God’s will.
Being Supreme doesn’t change the subjectivity or objectivity of morality. Being the source of existence, if it is from a will, makes that existence, by the definition of the term, subjective. Being “true” or “supreme” or “foundational” does not make God’s will or anyone else’s less subjective. If God is, per your term, the “Supreme Subject”, what flows from his will is subjective, regardless of his supremacy. This is why it’s conceptually an error to say that morality that proceeds from God’s will is “objective morality”, rather than “subjective morality”.
It’s good to exist!
A quick search yielded the following definition for subjective, “adj. Proceeding from or taking place in a person’s mind rather than the external world.”
I see your point. Many would argue that our Western civilization is not better than other civilizations (Native American, Eastern mysticism, and the various spiritual suppositions) but just a different way of perceiving and interpreting existence. Nevertheless, because of Divine Revelation, Christians understand the intrinsic value of their own lives and the lives of every person created by God. Because of Divine Revelation, there exists an objective standard in the spiritual order.
That’s the joy of discovering God’s delightful world. There is such uniqueness that we can catch a glimpse of Heaven. I recall that a young girl was gifted to have visions of Heaven and of Jesus, which she started painting at the age of 4.
Not just in the spiritual realm, but also in the practical realm, we can establish what makes a culture better, that is more workable, more stable, more profitable, etc. . .
Sure they do, and in the same way a thing’s being or existence obtains outside our definitions. This is because, on Catholic teaching, good is convertible with being. What has more being, has more good. Thus, what has unlimited being, has unlimited goodness.
This is because Aquinas’ *entire epistemology *addresses the problem. Even the beginner, who has bothered to read anything outside the Summa, will tell you this. This statement of yours displays a grave ignorance of Scholastic thought. It is something someone who got all their info from wikipedia would say.
The problem is that you don’t read correctly, and build up a massive strawman to attack with your erroneous misreading. This creates a big mess pretty quickly. It’s quite naive, further, to completely disregard all the great Thomistic commentators when reading Aquinas. To name a very few, read Banez, John of St. Thomas, Cajetan, Bullart, Gonet, Billot, Garrigou-Lagrange… not to mention the more modern, “liberal” Thomists like Maritain and Gilson, and you will see that your interpretation is akin to a 6th grader in his physics class critiquing Einstein.
This is not an objection, since God is altogether simple.
Your example rests on faulty premises.
Sure you can, although potassium is not the essence of existence. I don’t know what you mean by “potassium” anyway, though, so perhaps you are giving it the definition of God.
I don’t dispute this at all, that without mind, value does not obtain. Why you continue to state this, as if you’ve made some giant metaphysical point, is beyond me. Betterave has continually pointed out this strawman to you, yet you keep on attacking it. No one is here disputing what you mean by “value” insofar as it cannot obtain outside any mind at all.
Yep. And it’s not lost on me that while God may be a “person” (or three persons!), that “personhood” is of a different quality than a human person. Nevertheless, I think the salient distinction there works, all the same. “Subjective” is an effective term for pointing at this concept of ‘will-driven’, or 'of mind", as a way of being rigorous in locating and classifying the sources of values, aesthetics, and even physical reality itself (i.e. on Catholicism, all of nature proceeds from the will of God).
Agreed, and I haven’t disputed that. Rather, I suggest that “perfect knowledge” doesn’t “objectify” the mind, but rather fully “subjectivizes” it. To the extent Catholic beliefs are correct, and Yahweh exists and is omniscient and omnipotent, this renders him, as someone put it upthread “The Supreme Subject”.
Right, this is very good, making progress in the discussion. That is a statement that fully resonates with me. The very universe – forget values for the moment, just talking atoms and physical matter, here – is “mind-dependent”, on Catholic theism. That isn’t something Catholics shy away from, but proclaim proudly, one of their major contributions to the spectrum of possible beliefs in men. But this interdependency links God and the God-willed universe, necessarily, in a way that is totally incompatible with the idea of “pure objectivity”, if that phrasing works for you – the existence of something (a universe) that is perfectly brute fact, and no more dependent for its existence or structure on God’s will or mind than on your mind or mine.
That is my understanding, yes. Our will and God’s will (on Catholicism) are not only distinct, but fundamentally different as “types of will”. Yet, they are both perfectly subjective in being will-based in their choices, actions and degrees of freedom.
I think a key point to consider is the idea I gave above, that “subjectivity” in no wise implies or entails fallibility, bias, distortion, dishonesty or ignorance. We humans are subjects, making subjective choices, but the problems with our epistemic limitations and other problematic motivations and flaws are wholly incidental to this, not predicated on it.
It’s just an application of the concept. Whether God actually exists or not doesn’t change the subjectivity distinction. A non-existent God is just “hypothetically subjective” in that case, and “actually subjective” if God does exist. But the principle can be applied without prejudice to the question of his existence.
OK.
Here’s post I submitted yesterday in reply to… you, as it turns out, on just that question:
Could be. But I believe I can point to clear and consistent conceptual principles (which I believe are not controversial outside of theistic circles, which, as I said, strike me as replete with ad-hoc exceptions and special pleading on this) that distinguish “objective” from “subjective”. If X obtains objectively, it obtains **independently of mind or will. **If we wish to speak in terms of degrees, X obtains objectively to the degree that it obtains independently of mind or will.
Yes.
“objectively immoral” is an incoherent concept as far as I can see. It’s a “square circle” term, especially in case of concrete examples like this (I understand that humans have an innate physiology that predisposes them to a rudimentary “moral grammar” in their psychology, and that this fact of nature obtains objectively, totally independently of any mind or will, but an example like this makes “objective morality” as an adjective unworkable).
In a society where private property and a right to life is both socially embraced, and publicly enforced, the killer is engaging in vice – furthering his own ends at the gratuitous (and violent!) expense of another. Moreover, the killer has betrayed his own principles; as a human just like his victim, he does not want to be killed, nor robbed, and in so doing he has acted in ways he would not like to be treated. He understands that society cannot function without such social contracts and reciprocity, and yet even as a member of the community he cheats the system, violating the principles that support what he depends on.
a lot of this goes back to the distinction i tried to make before between ontological subjectivity versus objectivity and epistemological subjectivity versus objectivity.
ontologicalRocinante
morals are ontologically subjective in the sense that they do not exist independently of conscious experience.
Again, this is not the issue of this thread, and I don’t understand why you keep insisting that it is. Nobody on the Catholic side is disputing that morals would not exist if humans didn’t exist. However, humans do exist. Morality also exists. What I am trying to get out of you is whether there are objectively good and bad morals, or whether all morality is only governed by the subjective whim of the individual?
I don’t know how to make it any plainer than that. If I see the word “ontological” in this thread again, you are very likely to hear me screaming at the other end!