The Existence of Objective Moral Values

[Langdell]

… An atheist might think (and I am no expert on atheist thinking) society has, after millenia of observation, determined that certain acts are properly to be encouraged or forbidden. And in that sense, perhaps, to an atheist, proscription of murder, for instance, might be considered “moral”.

Speaking as a former atheist, I think that that’s what a lot of atheists do, withuot even realizing it. IOW, they adopt the sort of fuzzy utilitarianism that is so common in the West nowadays and simply assume, without really thinking about it, that whatever produces the most happiness for the greatest number is morally good. But of course there’s no reason why one should be the other.

For example, there are plenty of utilitarian arguments for why abortion is not inherently wrong. These are the things that always come up in arguments about abortion – every baby should be a wanted baby, we shouldn’t put the “rights” of a small mass of cells ahead of those of a woman, abortion reduces crime, etc. But as Catholics we know that, even if all those arguments were absolutely correct, abortion is still morally wrong.

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[Call_Me_V]

Speaking as a former atheist, I think that that’s what a lot of atheists do, withuot even realizing it. IOW, they adopt the sort of fuzzy utilitarianism that is so common in the West nowadays and simply assume, without really thinking about it, that whatever produces the most happiness for the greatest number is morally good. But of course there’s no reason why one should be the other.

Absolutely. For all of their talk about being the rational ones, they still use terrible logic just as often as everyone else.

V

 

[Ridgerunner]

If I understand you correctly, I think I agree with you. I think that our beliefs about morality are determined mostly by society, and somewhat by genetics, not by the fact that an act is truly “wrong”. I think that societies that forbid murder, for example, were obviously far more likely to prosper, while societies that encouraged it (if such a society ever existed) would have died out fast. And so on for most other tenets of morality.

V

There were definitely societies that encouraged murder; granted less so within the group than outside it. And, they tended not to last.

But regardless of whether you think our beliefs about morality are determined by society and/or genetics, it is still a source of authority we consider worthy of adherence. To the extent such beliefs exist, they are “objective”; that is, not dependant on my own personal view of things. That, after all, is your question, isn’t it?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I doubt it. There is always the bias of the individual, even an expert. If Group A and Group B are two tribes competing over limited resources, Group A may kill off Group B to ensure their own survival.

The same is true of modern countries competing over resources. They might go to war.

I don’t think the Wisdom of the Ages would have stuck around for very long if it didn’t work.

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

There are always outliers in everything. So, for example, the Comanches drove the Apaches from the southern plains into the less generous deserts. And they did it due to their greater ferocity and technical expertise in killing. But their reign was very short. They lived by the prairie lance and died by the Navy Colt, one could say.

I’m mostly Irish, so I am always a bit reluctant to praise the English. But one has to admit that the English, historically, have been very much dedicated to the notion that there are objective rules of behavior that simply must be observed, no matter what one may think about them. We can, even now, look about the Anglosphere (England, America, Canada, Australia, even, to a degree, India) and see societies that are greatly more successful than almost any others. The English (and all of us in the Anglosphere) call it the “Rule of Law” and we reverence it, notwithstanding that there are outliers who think it appropriate to march to their own drummers. That’s “objective morality” of a civil sort. No question about it.

 

[Call_Me_V]

But regardless of whether you think our beliefs about morality are determined by society and/or genetics, it is still a source of authority we consider worthy of adherence. To the extent such beliefs exist, they are “objective”; that is, not dependant on my own personal view of things. That, after all, is your question, isn’t it?

My question was not whether beliefs about morality objectively exist (I’m 100% sure that they do), but whether or not objective moral values themselves exist, in the way that most people think of morality, i.e. murder is truly wrong, outside of our beliefs on the matter.

Also, I don’t generally consider society or my biological urges necessarily worthy of adherence. I might break the law in order to save the life of a loved one, for example. Or I might fight a biological urge for a similar reason.

V

 

[Call_Me_V]

There are always outliers in everything. So, for example, the Comanches drove the Apaches from the southern plains into the less generous deserts. And they did it due to their greater ferocity and technical expertise in killing. But their reign was very short. They lived by the prairie lance and died by the Navy Colt, one could say.

I’m mostly Irish, so I am always a bit reluctant to praise the English. But one has to admit that the English, historically, have been very much dedicated to the notion that there are objective rules of behavior that simply must be observed, no matter what one may think about them. We can, even now, look about the Anglosphere (England, America, Canada, Australia, even, to a degree, India) and see societies that are greatly more successful than almost any others. The English (and all of us in the Anglosphere) call it the “Rule of Law” and we reverence it, notwithstanding that there are outliers who think it appropriate to march to their own drummers. That’s “objective morality” of a civil sort. No question about it.

No one denies that many people believe that there is objective morality, or that people, sometimes very many people, follow various moral codes, the question is, does objective morality truly exist or not, independently of our beliefs about it?

 

[Ridgerunner]

No one denies that many people believe that there is objective morality, or that people, sometimes very many people, follow various moral codes, the question is, does objective morality truly exist or not, independently of our beliefs about it?

The instant you confirm that there is anything at all outside yourself to which greater adherence is rightly given than to your own judgments, then you have admitted that there is such a thing as objective morality. It could even be the common experience or cumulative wisdom of mankind. The point is, that it’s not subjective. It’s outside yourself, and to that extent, it’s objective.

But, of course, if you’re question really is whether, in the face of an absolute skepticism, anything can be thought of as “objectively true”, then of course it can’t. The human mind is quite capable of imposing subjective judgments onto the objective and, by that means, becoming persuaded that there is no such thing as the objective.

 

[Langdell]

The instant you confirm that there is anything at all outside yourself to which greater adherence is rightly given than to your own judgments, then you have admitted that there is such a thing as objective morality. It could even be the common experience or cumulative wisdom of mankind. The point is, that it’s not subjective. It’s outside yourself, and to that extent, it’s objective.

This is where Richard Posner comes out. He holds that morality is real, in the sense that in any given culture, there are shared beliefs as to what is right and wrong that are independent of any individual’s opinion. However, he also holds that there is no objective way to demonstrate that one culture’s morality is “more moral” than another’s.

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[Ridgerunner]

This is where Richard Posner comes out. He holds that morality is real, in the sense that in any given culture, there are shared beliefs as to what is right and wrong that are independent of any individual’s opinion. However, he also holds that there is no objective way to demonstrate that one culture’s morality is “more moral” than another’s.

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Oh, I would agree with that. One might demonstrate, objectively, that one system is more successful in a material sense than another. But I would agree that, in the absence of some absolute truth, it would generally come down to a matter of which argument has the more persuasive evidence.

 

[edwest2]

What do you mean by the wisdom of the ages?

The great philosophers and other writers observed human behavior long ago and made observations about it. Just because we have sophisticated technology does not mean we’ve changed as people. Human behavior remains human behavior. That’s why we can watch a 2,000 year old Greek play and enjoy it. The things that make us human have not changed – the fears, the motivations – have not changed.

This collective knowledge has been recorded and analyzed.

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

 

[edwest2]

Oh, I would agree with that. One might demonstrate, objectively, that one system is more successful in a material sense than another. But I would agree that, in the absence of some absolute truth, it would generally come down to a matter of which argument has the more persuasive evidence.

There must be an agreed upon code of behavior for individuals in a society and then there are laws limiting or forbidding other behaviors.

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

 

[AntiTheist]

V,

I agree with your position that there are no objective morals or values. There are only individual values, which are largely shaped by society, biology, reason, circumstance, and probably other factors.

Let me add one thing to this discussion: I have come to the conclusion that the phrase “objectively morally wrong” is a meaningless phrase that essentially translates to “something my values lead me to dislike.”

Now, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of people in a society are going to share a great many basic values in common – like, for example, valuing living in a cooperative society where people don’t steal or commit murder, since those are the things that make a society possible in the first place. So it’s possible, given the context of shared societal values, to claim that an act is “wrong,” but the implication that there is some kind of cosmic wrong being committed is both false and meaningless (or at the very least, in the absence of supernatural value judgments, there is no compelling reason to think that it is true and meaningful).

In order to judge an act as good or bad, we need the context of values. In the absence of supernatural values, there could only be human values, rendering the claim that something is “good” or “bad” outside of a human mind utter nonsense.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

“something my values lead me to dislike.”

How can a meaningless non-objective value cause somebody to dislike something? You have it the wrong way round. We experience reality according to our nature, and we develop our opinions around what we experience according to our perspective. We can only form the opinion that something is bad if we experience something that appears contrary to what we naturally experience as good. We do not simply form the opinion that something is good based on an arbitrary whim. All artificial inventions, even bad ones can be traced back to a fundamental natural desire for something good; and this is true irrespective of invented opinion of what we think good is and how we go about attaining it.

Again; we experience the world according to our nature and through that experience we are compelled to think that certain things a good. For instance we value being alive because firstly we have a natural desire to live and secondly we experience life and many of the things in it as fundamentally good. It is only when we experience the absence of good that we form an understanding of wrong or bad and feel that our dignity is being undermined in someway. Dignity is not something imagined, but rather it is something we experience and we have thus formed a word for it. Thus we experience right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice; and we can only experience those things first by having the nature that we do, and secondly by coming into contact with objective reality.

This strongly implies to me that there is more to objective reality than physical interaction and clockwork mechanisms. It implies that there is a objective meaning both at once transcendent and immanent to physical expression.

 

[Langdell]

V,

I agree with your position that there are no objective morals or values. There are only individual values, which are largely shaped by society, biology, reason, circumstance, and probably other factors.

Let me add one thing to this discussion: I have come to the conclusion that the phrase “objectively morally wrong” is a meaningless phrase that essentially translates to “something my values lead me to dislike.”

Now, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of people in a society are going to share a great many basic values in common – like, for example, valuing living in a cooperative society where people don’t steal or commit murder, since those are the things that make a society possible in the first place. So it’s possible, given the context of shared societal values, to claim that an act is “wrong,” but the implication that there is some kind of cosmic wrong being committed is both false and meaningless (or at the very least, in the absence of supernatural value judgments, there is no compelling reason to think that it is true and meaningful).

In order to judge an act as good or bad, we need the context of values. In the absence of supernatural values, there could only be human values, rendering the claim that something is “good” or “bad” outside of a human mind utter nonsense.

There’s a middle ground between pure subjectivity and a supernatural source. Posner develops it in Problematics, which I mentioned above, and it’s similar to what some mathematicians and philosophers have developed regarding the objectivity of math (e.g., What Is Mathematics, Really?).

Essentially, the middle ground is that morality (like math) exists outside individuals, as a “social fact.” The morality of a culture is independent of any given individual in the culture – it exists by virtue of the shared ideas of those in the culture (and ideas shared across generations) and by virtue of artifacts (books, pictures, etc.) that record the shared ideas. I can’t change the moral reality of 2010 USA by personally holding that something immoral is moral, just as I can’t change math by personally holding that numbers change over time. (I can try to change this moral reality by trying to get my culture to change – Posner calls such people “moral entrepreneurs” – but that’s another matter.)

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[AntiTheist]

The morality of a culture is independent of any given individual in the culture – it exists by virtue of the shared ideas of those in the culture (and ideas shared across generations) and by virtue of artifacts (books, pictures, etc.) that record the shared ideas.

I agree with this, and this is the precise point I had in mind when I wrote, " So it’s possible, given the context of shared societal values, to claim that an act is ‘wrong’."

But it’s a whole different kettle of fish to claim that something is “objectively wrong” beyond that shared culture. I think it borders on meaningless nonsense.

MindOverMatter2:

We experience reality according to our nature, and we develop our opinions around what we experience according to our perspective.

Obviously. I thought that that pretty much went without saying, that we experience things that please us (and thus we label them “good”) and that we experience things that displease us (and thus we label them “bad”).

I think values are significantly more complicated than that, though. For example, many values are learned. There are plenty of children who are taught to value racism by their parents, for example, and many of these children unquestioningly repeat the biggotry that they are taught, in some cases for the rest of their lives.

Learning more about the environment that you’re in can cause you to revise some of your values (such that a racist can change his mind about his beliefs), but some values are a question of learned habits of thought, rather than immediate sensory like/dislike.

Anyway, I fail to see how any of the above suggests that values are not completely natural products of the physical universe. Perhaps you can explain that point further?

 

[MindOverMatter2]

But it’s a whole different kettle of fish to claim that something is “objectively wrong” beyond that shared culture. I think it borders on meaningless nonsense.

To desire life is not a preference, it is an expression of the objective reality of life. The value is included in the objective truth of it; the very living of it. It is in being aware of life that we first perceive value; the value of life.This foundational precept leads to the development and understanding of further values. Are you going to say there is no such thing as life including the objective value that is evident in the experience of it? When our life is threatened we comprehend the ought implied in the word dignity because we are aware that we are going to lose something valuable, and we are aware of that fact as being true. This is true for all rational humans since we seek to defend it; and you do not consciously defend that which has no value in it. You have to believe that it truly has value; otherwise people would not risk there lives for others. The very experience of life compels us to defend life even when we know that some danger is lurking. It is not just a matter of artificial preference or fear. We see glory in some actions even when those events have no relation or effect on us. We perceive glory and we perceive it as being objectively true. You have to beware of the value of it in the first place in order to act. We desire glory in so far as it benefits the value and quality of life.

If there is no such thing as immorality then how come we experience guilt when we are convinced that we have “truly” (objectively) committed some immoral act to some objective person? If it does not correspond to an objective fact about what we ought not to do in respect of other persons then how is it possible that we experience it as having that relation? Out of nothing comes nothing. If morality is merely learned habits, then how is it that one can be convinced to adopt some other moral idea, if it is not for the fact that one has realized a moral error in their thinking? This is not possible unless Morality is in some sense trans-cultural. It is true that not all can agree above a “practical level” because we would have to accept the full consequences of the objectivity moral values in order to understand that something such as abortion is truly wrong and we would have to understand it in the context of a divine purpose and plan. Ethical truth isn’t always evident since we have to use reason; a moral evil isn’t always self-evident. But we all have a general knowledge about honer, glory, cowardice and courage, and we are inspired by and know about these concepts because we experience them in the objective actions of other human-beings; we experience it as an objective fact as much as we experience physical reality. When we see a child getting raped and murdered, the vast majority of us can recognize that the dignity of that person is being destroyed. We become morally outraged. We see degrees of evil that suggest to us that some actions are in truth more evil then others. These are not merely habits or preferences; they are experiences; and we respond to that experience by inventing words for it.

It seems to me that you think that just because people can be mistaken about what is morally true that therefore there is no moral truth. But we also experience much agreement across cultures in general. We all seem to agree that there is such a thing as cowardice and we are compelled by our experience of the fact to think that it is objectively “true” that such and such is acting as a coward and we see it in a manner that suggests that such and such a person ought to be courageous. This is not just a personal preference but something we experience in objective reality and thus we have a word for it. Personal actions appear to imply objective moral distinctions. Some moral realities are not as obvious as others, especially when a lie is mixed with falsehood; or good is mixed with bad.

And so, one either accepts the fact of their experience and takes objective moral values as self evident just like they take physical reality as self evident. Or they can say that there is no justified reason to believe in objective moral values without evidence. However, since we experience values as objective, it seems to me that it is up to the opponent to provide evidence to justify disbelief, as you are the one that is saying it is an illusion; and i do not think you have. We don’t need to scientifically justify realism and so i see no reason that we need to justify moral-realism. In this case, it is you that needs to justify you skepticism. You certainly haven’t justified your statement that the idea of moral truth is nonsense.

Anyway, I fail to see how any of the above suggests that values are not completely natural products of the physical universe. Perhaps you can explain that point further?

It is evident that physical events actualize qualities such as experience. However there is no evidence whatsoever to think that experiences are synonymous to physical events or that physical reality is their absolute origin, and neither does it make any sense to claim that they are. But if you are going to claim that all is tangible you are going to have to say that thoughts are made of atoms and if thoughts and values are made of atoms we should be able to see the subjective contents of other minds, including values. But we can’t. Why not? because they are not physical.

 

[AntiTheist]

Your response, long and rambling as it is, can be boiled down to this:

since we experience values as objective, it seems to me that it is up to the opponent to provide evidence to justify disbelief, as you are the one that is saying it is an illusion; and i do not think you have. We don’t need to scientifically justify realism and so i see no reason that we need to justify moral-realism. In this case, it is you that needs to justify you skepticism. You certainly haven’t justified your statement that the idea of moral truth is nonsense.

Essentially, you are saying that it feels like values are objective, so they therefore are, and you’re going to consider them objective until someone comes along and demonstrates otherwise.

But what does it mean to value something? Value only has meaning in a context of desires. You give a great example yourself: life is something that is valued by the creature living. And in fact, we find that creatures tend to value their own lives and the lives of other members of their species (in the case of social animals, like humans).

But no living thing values “all life.” A lion values its own life, but not the life of the gazelle it chases down and eats. I value my own life, but not the life of the trees that died so that I could have a table. And there are people who are in chronic pain with terminal diseases who no longer value their own life. Various mothers throughout the animal kingdom value the lives of their offspring over their own (and some value their own lives over that of their offspring).

The mere fact that living things tend to value their own lives tells us nothing about the “objective” value of life itself, outside of the perspective of those living things, especially when just about all (complex) living things go about killing other living things all the bloody time.

The fact that you subjectively get all warm and fuzzy when you think about preserving your life, that you think of your own values as “objective,” tells us nothing about whether or not such objectivity exists.

Given the fact that values depend on the context of desires to have meaning, the only way that someone could claim that values are “objective” – that is, for all people, regardless of perspective – is for some supernatural context to exist in which we could measure value.

Such claims are magical claims for which there is no evidence or compelling reason to accept.

But if you are going to claim that all is tangible you are going to have to say that thoughts are made of atoms and if thoughts and values are made of atoms we should be able to see the subjective contents of other minds, including values. But we can’t. Why not? because they are not physical.

Well, of course they’re not physical, but they are emergent properties of physical things. The point is that they don’t exist separately from physical things – or, at least, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that they do.

 

[Call_Me_V]

When our life is threatened we comprehend the ought implied in the word dignity because we are aware that we are going to lose something valuable, and we are aware of that fact as being true.

True to us, valuable to us.

This is true for all rational humans since we seek to defend it; and you do not consciously defend that which has no value in it.

You do not consciously defend that which has no value to you, for obvious reasons.

You have to believe that it truly has value; otherwise people would not risk there lives for others.

They would if it had value to them.

We see glory in some actions even when those events have no relation or effect on us. We perceive glory and we perceive it as being objectively true.

Yes. The 9/11 hijackers perceived glory in flying planes into buildings, and they perceived it as being objectively true. That was objectively true to them. So, basically, relative to them.

If there is no such thing as immorality then how come we experience guilt when we are convinced that we have “truly” (objectively) committed some immoral act to some objective person?

Because we are convinced that we have truly committed some immoral act. But the fact that paranoid people are convinced that someone is out to get them lends no strength to the hypothesis that someone is actually out to get them.

If it does not correspond to an objective fact about what we ought not to do in respect of other persons then how is it possible that we experience it as having that relation?

If my little brother’s belief that monsters are under his bed does not correspond to an objective monster under his bed, how is it possible that he experiences it as being true?

Out of nothing comes nothing. If morality is merely learned habits, then how is it that one can be convinced to adopt some other moral idea, if it is not for the fact that one has realized a moral error in their thinking?

One has seen what one perceives to be an error in their moral thinking.

This is not possible unless Morality is in some sense trans-cultural.

Yes it is.

But we all have a general knowledge about honer, glory, cowardice and courage, and we are inspired by and know about these concepts because we experience them in the objective actions of other human-beings;

Yes…

we experience it as an objective fact as much as we experience physical reality. When we see a child getting raped and murdered, the vast majority of us can recognize that the dignity of that person is being destroyed. We become morally outraged.

Yes we do.

We see degrees of evil that suggest to us that some actions are in truth more evil then others. These are not merely habits or preferences; they are experiences; and we respond to that experience by inventing words for it.

We see degrees of evil that suggest to us that some actions are in more evil to us than others.

It seems to me that you think that just because people can be mistaken about what is morally true that therefore there is no moral truth.

No, but the fact that people can be mistaken about morality means that our moral intuitions are not a very good guide, and the fact that we experience false beliefs about morality show that our beliefs do not necessarily correlate to actual moral values; they are simply our opinions.

But we also experience much agreement across cultures in general. We all seem to agree that there is such a thing as cowardice and we are compelled by our experience of the fact to think that it is objectively “true” that such and such is acting as a coward and we see it in a manner that suggests that such and such a person ought to be courageous.

Yes, there is agreement. No offense, but so what? The odds of some views on morality being accepted by most if not everyone seems to me to be a lot higher than the odds of every culture disagreeing with every other culture about morality. I think that some agreement was the most likely scenario.

In any case, I don’t think that there’s nearly as much agreement on morality as most people think. In modern times, that’s more true, but in humanity as a whole, most ancient culture genuinely had no problem with rape, murder, etc. (so long as it wasn’t your own tribe). Many saw the chance to rape the females of a conquered tribe as simply being a totally acceptable part of the spoils of war, for example. When you look at all of human history, there is not nearly as much agreement on morality as you seem to imply.

Or they can say that there is no justified reason to believe in objective moral values without evidence.

I would agree.

However, since we experience values as objective, it seems to me that it is up to the opponent to provide evidence to justify disbelief, as you are the one that is saying it is an illusion; and i do not think you have.

Since paranoid people perceive someone to be objectively out to get him, it is up to us to justify our disbelief in someone actually being out to get them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I agree with this, and this is the precise point I had in mind when I wrote, " So it’s possible, given the context of shared societal values, to claim that an act is ‘wrong’."

But it’s a whole different kettle of fish to claim that something is “objectively wrong” beyond that shared culture. I think it borders on meaningless nonsense.

I think we have a definitional problem here, but I also think you’re pulling your argument too long.

Something “objectively true” is something that’s true whether I think it is or not. Religion is not required for people to recognize the objective truth of many things. It is not unreasonable to believe that sometimes shared culture is a reasonably good teacher of what is “good” in terms of “successful for human life” or harmful, though sometimes it’s not. Sometimes certain things are experienced as universally true regardless of what a shared culture thinks about them.

Going back to my example of the Comanches. Their “shared culture” countenanced murder, rape, torture and thievery, and even saw them as “good”; mostly outside the tribe but sometimes also within it.

It was a spectacularly unsuccessful “truth” notwithstanding that it was part of the “shared culture”, inasmuch as neighboring peoples eventually put an end to them precisely because of those values they held. So it could not have been a “truly” or “objectively” good course of conduct.

There is some tribe in, I believe, New Guinea, whose “shared culture” impelled them to eat the brains of their dead. The truth about the practice did manifest itself, however, in that it caused the spread of a deadly spongiform encephalitis. Notwithstanding that their shared culture said it was “good” to eat the brains of the dead, the truth, which existed independently of their notions about it, was that it was “bad” to do it.

Regardless, I think you are taking “objective” to mean “cognitively inescapable” or something like that, and believe that, since not all actions are experienced as inescapably harmful or bad and others to be inescapably good or beneficial, there is no such thing as objective truth.

“Objective” does not mean “inescapable” in a cognitive sense, because, (yes, outside of religion) everybody just feels their way along through forms of conduct until they hit an absolutely “inescapable” wall, like spongiform encephalitis. Because humans don’t usually fare too well in colliding with truly inescapable walls like that, they collect experiences and point to certain things being “good” or “bad” and accept that they can’t successfully make them otherwise simply by wishing them so. If humans didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have laws. Laws are the universal human recognition that, whatever the source of their “absoluteness” certain things simply are absolutes when it comes to human conduct.

 

[AntiTheist]

Going back to my example of the Comanches. Their “shared culture” countenanced murder, rape, torture and thievery, and even saw them as “good”; mostly outside the tribe but sometimes also within it.

It was a spectacularly unsuccessful “truth” notwithstanding that it was part of the “shared culture”, inasmuch as neighboring peoples eventually put an end to them precisely because of those values they held. So it could not have been a “truly” or “objectively” good course of conduct.

You’re using “good” here simply to mean “useful.” I agree that treating neighboring peoples nicely is indeed good, in this sense, if your goal is not to impel those neighboring peoples to wipe you out.

Similarly, I think it is good not to eat brains if your goal is to avoid certain illnesses.

But, as you can clearly see, “good” – when used in this way – only has a meaning in the context of individual (or societal) goals. If someone’s goal was to contract a horrible disease, then eating brains would certainly be a good thing.

Now, obviously most members of a society will probably have similar goals (survival, cooperation, owning property), so it’s not surprising that they’ll judge “good” and “bad” similarly in a great number of cases. These goals are another way of talking about values, which is precisely what I’ve been talking about in this thread.

But when moralists talk about “good” and “evil,” they’re talking about something else altogether than questions of usefuless. They’re talking about something that is intrinsically worthy of pursuing or avoiding all the time, regardless of its consequences.

I’ll give you a good example: a long, long time ago, when tribes were small, I’ll bet people had a very good reason for seeing homosexuality or masturbation as “bad” – hey, if people can get their jollies without procreating, then that’s going to have some terrible effects on the tribe! It’s “bad” in exactly the sense you mean above – i.e. it can lead to bad consequences.

But nowadays, the context is different. We no longer have to keep up our population numbers, so, correspondingly, there’s no rational reason to judge homosexuality or masturbation as “bad.”

There can only be such a reason if you assume that there are supernatural value judgments that are unconnected to questions of usefulness. And obviously, such assumptions are magical claims for which there is no evidence.