Objective morality, Relative morality, or No morality...?

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mosher:
What defines an act as moral or immoral? The moral quality of an act is considered intrinsic to the act itself. This means that the act itself is either good or bad and no amount of circumstance or other qualifyer can change its quality.
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I’m struggling to understand exactly what you mean here: where does intent fit into your understanding of moral acts? Do you include both the object and the intent in your definition of the act? If so, I think that obscures the calculation involved in determining the moral nature of the act which depends on the moral goodness of both the object and the intent.

Ender
 
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Ender:
I’m struggling to understand exactly what you mean here: where does intent fit into your understanding of moral acts? Do you include both the object and the intent in your definition of the act? If so, I think that obscures the calculation involved in determining the moral nature of the act which depends on the moral goodness of both the object and the intent.

Ender
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Intent helps determine culpability. Intent to do good through the means of an intrinsically evil act is itself evil and can never be given a favorable moral quality. Willed acts (human acts) are either positive or negative in the concrete (meaning in reality as opposed to the abstract). One must remember the question of Socrates:

“Is a thing good because the gods love it or do the gods love it because it is good?”

The answer to this is that the gods love it because it is good in itself. Goodness or Evilness are things that stem directly from the nature of the act. Ones culpability (responsibility) for that act is increased or decreased based on various modifiers such as the one that you cited.
 
Originally Posted by AntonLaVey5446
But the concept of sinning is subjective.
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Are we to understand that as subjective or objective truth? 😉

I think he mixes “belief” with “truth.” “Truth” is that which corresponds with reality. While “belief” is that which one holds to be true. Truth is objective, while beliefs are subjective.
 
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mosher:
Intent helps determine culpability. Intent to do good through the means of an intrinsically evil act is itself evil and can never be given a favorable moral quality. Willed acts (human acts) are either positive or negative in the concrete (meaning in reality as opposed to the abstract).
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I agree that the object of an act can be intrinsically evil and never moral regardless of the intent, but it is also true that an act with a moral object can be rendered immoral if the intent is immoral. Both the object and the intent have to be moral or the act is immoral. There is no such thing as an objectively moral act that is independent of intent.

Ender
 
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Ender:
I agree that the object of an act can be intrinsically evil and never moral regardless of the intent, but it is also true that an act with a moral object can be rendered immoral if the intent is immoral. Both the object and the intent have to be moral or the act is immoral. There is no such thing as an objectively moral act that is independent of intent.

Ender
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Correct if you are speaking of the act in toto. However, what I was pointing out is one particular part of an act. With that in mind you are correct in the final determination. However, we must also remember that it does not work in reverse. An intrinsically evil act can never be good but as you say and intrinsically good act can be corrupted.
 
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