What are the “objective moralities/truths”? Is there a list?

[HarryStotle]

Surely it’s a mixture of what you describe as objective AND subjective.

I’m always bemused by people using God as confirmation that objectice morality exists. It seems that just saying so makes it so. Because if you ask ten people what God desires in any given situation, then you’ll get a dozen different views. You might as well say that God has decreed the answers to all moral problems and they are written on some scrolls on a small rock circling a sun in a galaxy far far away. Even if they exist we are not going to know, objectively, what they are.

Except that this problem arises with whatever objective grounds you wish to propose for morality. There will always be dissenters who won’t accept the objective nature of any of the grounds you propose. The reason for that is because moral agency must have some buy-in component for moral responsibility to be achieved. Moral agents aren’t just programmed to behave, moral behaviours must be assented to. The moral dissenters have a ready rationale for opting out of a moral imperative by appealing to the difficulty in establishing objective grounds for morality to begin with. It is a very convenient ‘out’ for moral agents who wish to justify or rationalize away at least some of their moral failings.

So what do we do when confronted with a moral problem? Well, pointing to that distant star and saying ‘The answer is up there’ doesn’t get us very far. We need an answer in the here and now. So we need to determine ourselves what the answer is. And that answer will be part objective (if we do X then Y is the result) and part relative (I value this result more that you do).

The distance to the star is kind of irrelevant since the ultimate ground for morality, whether it be God or some other, will always be questioned by those who wish to portray morality as a voluntary rather than obligatory phenomena. As soon as any “star” is proposed, the dissent begins and that dissent morphs quickly into a justification for claiming morality is, itself, subjective to rationalize moral failings. It is a built-in feature in the way that corrupt moral beings function.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

As far as the objective portion goes, there should be no argument (if I throw you off the roof then you’ll die). And as to the relative portion, we have to agree on definitions of terms such as harm, comparative value, well-being, fairness etc. And that is difficult. And there will be disagreements. And not everyone will be satisfied with the answers. But that is the nature of the the situation.

And in passing, if everyone agrees on a moral matter it does not make it objective. It just means there is a consensus.

I think there is confusion between the fact that moral agency requires moral agents to exercise responsible choice in moral matters – agency is voluntary by its very nature, otherwise morality isn’t a matter of agency at all – and the reality that properly ‘moral’ determinations are objectively and inherently obligatory and impose clear imperatives or demands upon moral agents.

Attempting to conflate the objective grounds for morality with the personal responsibility we carry as moral agents makes it appear that morality itself is a subjective or voluntary phenomenon when, in fact, it isn’t.

 

[Dan123]

If you want to begin by asserting subjectivity, you undermine completely the possibility of establishing, determining, or discovering whether objective and real grounds for morality exist in the first place.

The most reasonable course of inquiry would be to not assume either position but continue to seek possible objective and subjective components of morality until the role of both become clear. To rule one of those out before completely understanding the nature of the moral landscape is putting the cart before the horse.

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this. There is one distinct difference however in the two components. We know, objectively, that humans make moralistic determinations. They may be subjective but we all look at situations and evaluate their moral value every single day. We may some day prove there is also an objective component as well, I’m not closed off to that. The question is do you believe something until it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be false, or do you believe things when there’s sufficient evidence to believe it exists? Must you believe in Russel’s ornate teapot orbiting the sun until someone searches all of space and cannot find it?

To merely assert that morality just is subjective is a morally defective position primarily because you are assuming that universally obligatory moral acts do not exist.

I was asserting my own belief, much as people frequently assert the belief they do exist. I don’t claim it as absolute truth just my current belief and understanding. If I wasn’t clear I apologize and hope that clears it up.

As soon as you go there, how do you morally sanction murder, rape or child abuse?

This is what communities do, whether it’s small or large scale communities develop codes of conduct based on a large number of factors. When I speak of common ground I’m talking about identifying the values we want to include in a society and the criteria we want to use in evaluating behaviors that hurt the individual and community as a whole.

So if we agree as a community that child abuse is something detrimental to our society it doesn’t matter why we think that simply that we agree. Based on that we can work on creating laws to limit this behavior. We also hit limits however, is spanking child abuse? What if you saw someone else spanking your child without your permission, would that change the answer? Does the person performing the act affect whether it’s moral? When I say that our moral systems are subjective, this is what I mean, we can say murder is wrong but we then must define murder. We can’t define it as ‘unjust killing’ because then we have to define unjust.

Now our society has come to a general agreement on what murder is, but how do we evaluate if that coincides with objective morality, if one exists? Even without religious circles some view the commandment not to kill to include not being able to fight in wars, while other deeply religious people consider military service to be honorable and worthwhile.

 

[Bradskii]

So let’s take a simple scenario re morality. Someone has a bomb and we need to get information from him to defuse it. What exactly can we do to persuade this guy?

Now if we were able to access those scrolls that God has written on a distant rock and if we look at the section entitled Terrorism - prevention of atrocities, then in section 3, subsection 12, we might find some definitive rules that God has laid down. If these conditions are met then we can do this, if these conditions are current then we can’t do that.

That’s what you mean when you say that there is an ‘ultimate ground for morality’. It has to comply with what God wants. But we can’t access those scrolls, so whether you are right ot not (and incidentally, someone else claims there is another set of scrolls on another rock waaaay over there as well that says something different), then it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Apart from some of what is written in scripture (and after you are done picking those cherries) and what is in the catechism, most of which is open to interpretation, then all moral problems are to be solved by us. So yes (duh!), we have to agree on terms. Yes, we have to agree on definitions. Yes, we need to reach a consensus. And as the majority of the people on this planet are not homicidal psychopaths (despite what you read on the news), then we will generally come up with an answer that satisfies most people.

And yes, that’s most people. Most of the time. Not all of the people all of the time. And yes, the system is mightily screwed now and then because some guy who is quite possibly a homocidal psychopath has more power than the rest of us.

So if you have a position on whether we should be slapping the terrorist about a bit or tearing out his finger nails or threatening his family, then it will be your position. It may align somewhere and somehow with what is written, but if you claim it’s the correct position simply because it is written, then personally I will.ignore anything you say. If you can’t come up with a good reason for what we should do, then no-one will listen to you. Nor should they.

If your position on the matter is acceptable to everyone (terrorist presumably excluded), that, as I said previously, does not make it the absolutely correct answer. It may be exactly the solution we could have found in section 3, subsection 12 on those scrolls but that is impossible to know.

 

[Dan123]

Aren’t you confusing morality itself with people’s agreements about what morality is?

If this or that ideal is what we should cultivate our lives and selves towards, it doesn’t matter what is “agreed upon.”

Certainly not intentionally, I asked how we might go about identifying these objective truths without resorting to subjective methods, and how we could test and evaluate if those identified truths are accurate.

Harry’s approach involves trying to discern real values in the world, things, actions, and goals inherently desirable, and in this way is “objective,” while your approach involves attempting to find what is agreed upon by all in a given society, and thus is “subjective.” He’s interested in how people can live to their highest potential, you are interested in how to make a society “work.”

Perhaps. I think an argument could be made that functional societies are valuable in people reaching their highest potential. I don’t think the two things you describe are mutually exclusive, not even opposite sides of a coin, more like different sections of the same painting.

 

[Dan123]

The moral dissenters have a ready rationale for opting out of a moral imperative by appealing to the difficulty in establishing objective grounds for morality to begin with

Is someone who’s morality doesn’t represent your own, e.g. someone who believes killing in war is immoral vs someone believing killing in war is righteous; ‘opting out’ of morality or just opting-in to another view?

 

[goout]

The search itself points to the objective.
Every person is a subject to something outside ourselves. We all know that, instinctively. The person who does not know that is insane.
If we were the objective moral standard, and all else is subject to us, then no search necessary. Give me a beer and a remote.

But here we are talking about it, and debating it, and searching for it.
And since we are persons, and are looking for something “other” to gather round in our search for moral truth, it seems we are directed toward something (someone) personal. Not a list.

Looking for a list is a fundamentalist idea.

 

[Dan123]

And since we are persons, and are looking for something “other” to gather round in our search for moral truth, it seems we are directed toward something (someone) personal. Not a list.

That’s where I think things diverge. You see a reason to anthropomorphize it, not everyone does. I find us pointed towards ideas such as personal autonomy and freedom hedged by compassion and empathy. I don’t need to imagine ‘compassion’ existing as a ‘someone’.

 

[goout]

goout:

And since we are persons, and are looking for something “other” to gather round in our search for moral truth, it seems we are directed toward something (someone) personal. Not a list.

That’s where I think things diverge. You see a reason to anthropomorphize it, not everyone does. I find us pointed towards ideas such as personal autonomy and freedom hedged by compassion and empathy. I don’t need to imagine ‘compassion’ existing as a ‘someone’.

Ideas come and go. Ideas are not objective. They are ephemeral. If you subscribe to “the Great Idea” you need to find that book or a list. Joseph Smith did that. Others look to the bible in a fundamentalist way: “there is the cookbook for morality”. Or they look to socialist manifestos: “this is how human beings should behave.”

And it all ends in potency, or the powerful wielding their power. Even such things as morality by consensus are nothing more than raw power.

 

[Dan123]

I never said they were objective, you described a search and I was describing what I see when I follow that path. In the past many people followed that search to an end which allowed them to justify slavery. Thankfully as you pointed out ideas come and go and I for one am thankful that idea has largely been abolished after thousands of years of it being codified in our societies, and hope some day it will be eradicated everywhere.

I would hate for the search for morality to have ended at a time when such atrocities were still occurring in such numbers.

 

[Bradskii]

We are subJect to others. To our spouse. To our children. To the society in which we live. No man is an island. And that’s it. It’s what has got us here. It’s why you are sitting there reading this. There is literally no other reason.

We write this down on ocassion. In holy books that we revere. In declarations that make us proud. In constitutions that we die for. In speeches that inspire us. In commitments that bring us together.

It doesn’t matter where they are written, or who inscribed them, or what language they are in or when they were written. They simple record the fact that we are all in this together. And that has got us to this point and we must not forget it.

 

[goout]

sounds good to me

 

[Lucretius]

Surely it’s a mixture of what you describe as objective AND subjective.

I’m not sure what you mean, but in my account of objective and subjective, “objective” morality is where the good is what is desirable and ought to be desired, while “subjective” morality is what is desired is considered necessarily good (at least to some extent). In the one, we might say the “objective” determines the “subjective,” while in the other, the subject determines the objective.

Usually these approaches end up opposing each other except in regards to a virtuous person (and ethical tastes, but that’s another set of worms), because what he desires is actually good, while in most of us, what is desired is not necessarily so.

I’m always bemused by people using God as confirmation that objectice morality exists.

If God is wise and good, if he tells us about how we should live, it makes sense for us to listen.

I understand what you are saying though: there isn’t any set of rules for how to navigate every possible situation, and we are very weak and ignorant. At best we can get a list of what not to do regardless of the situation.

However, God could reveal to us principles to inform our ways, and teach us what we should intend and desire: that is to say, God could teach us what our hearts should want.

Christi pax.

 

[Lucretius]

What do you mean by objective, and what do you mean by subjective? And further, what do you mean by subjective methods?

Perhaps. I think an argument could be made that functional societies are valuable in people reaching their highest potential. I don’t think the two things you describe are mutually exclusive, not even opposite sides of a coin, more like different sections of the same painting.

What I believe is that the “getting along practically” aspect is ordered towards the becoming the ideal human. In fact, I believe that living the Catholic human ideal has the effect of “everyone getting along.”

What I have issue with in our culture is in how “getting along” is understood sentimentally. We let our emotions and desires define what is good, and, even though this works in many extreme and clear cases (most people aren’t so broken as to want to constantly rape, murder, and pillage), is too vague in many unclear cases (say, many situations of sexual harassment), and often ignores immorality that’s consequences are not immediately or easily visible (many matters of sexual morality, but also many matters of business and bank ethics).

Morality defined by sentiment ignores the fact that what we desire is not necessarily what we want, or rather what we desire is not necessarily what we should desire, that our desires are not necessarily in line with the human ideal or even in line with what we actually want anyway.

I think this idea of moral consensus is a symptom of this error: we want to make morality by common sentiment.

I think, instead of approaching ethics by how we can all live given much of our current sentiments and activities, we should ask something more like what our sentiments and activities should be aiming for, what ideal should we want to incarnate? It is in this light we can the talk about tolerance of certain behaviors even if they don’t live up to the ideal.

Christi pax.

 

[IWantGod]

Objective moral law is an expression of God’'s absolutely perfect nature. God’s nature is love. Beginning with God’s nature we can make some deductive inferences. We can know that to take a life would be a selfish act since it would be the opposite of love. etc.

 

[Bradskii]

I’m assuming that you’d be able to work that out anyway.

 

[IWantGod]

What I find troubling, is just how much evil and suffering has been inflicted in the name of morality. And yet many it seems, would credit God, the source of that morality…as being the justification for that evil.

It’s shocking to me too and incredibly disheartening. Nothing is more shameful then when an atheist has the higher moral Ground. But it’s one thing to be presented with a message and another thing to actually comprehend it. Christianity has been exploited for much evil, but i dare say that has more to do with human ignorance than it is to do with what is actually being taught.

Any ideology or belief that gives power over other individuals is bound to be exploited and distorted for the sake power and self interest much like how political parties may exploit peoples beliefs to gain their votes. But no matter how they might try to twist scripture to their own ends they will never be able to destroy the core underlying message which is love. In the end Christianity is only asking people to love each-other and treat each-other as sacred creations of God.

 

[IWantGod]

But do we really need God in order to understand that the greatest morality of all is to love thy neighbor as thyself?

God is the objective ontological basis for thinking that we “ought” to love our neighbor, but we don’t necessarily need God to have the intuitive realization that loving each-other is what we are suppose to be doing.

 

[IWantGod]

So in the end, isn’t the truest indicator that someone is a Christian, not whether they’re baptized, or whether they follow this religion or that religion, but rather, whether they do intuitively, that which God has sacrificed so much, and tried so hard to teach them?

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

God is the very nature of love, thus while one can intuitively realize that we should love one-another, one still requires God to fully comprehend what it really means to love thy neighbor and what the consequences are in not doing so. Thus divine revelation is important as well because to know love one must also know God…

An atheist can love, but the love of an atheist is limited to what he or she believes about the world. So while one can rightfully say that an atheist knows love, this does not mean that an atheist comprehends love in it’s proper context. The act of loving someone takes on other dimensions when viewed through the lens of divine revelation. Thus an atheist may think there is nothing wrong with lust or fornicating, but the christian can see there really is something wrong with those things when viewed in the context of God’s nature and revelation and his relationship with the world…

 

[Dan123]

We can know that to take a life would be a selfish act since it would be the opposite of love. etc.

Sometimes this is easier than others of course. There’s a lot of different forms of taking a life and while there’s many we’d all agree on, e.g. murder being wrong, what about self-defense? I think most of us, though not all would say that isn’t an act of hate, could even be one of love if it’s done to protect another. What about killing in a war? Though small there are Christian sects as well as members of other religions which don’t think they should serve in war because it would be taking life. Death penalty? Obviously a lot of opinions on both sides from every aspect of society on that one. What about allowing someone to pass away by removing life support? Does it change things if the person is suffering greatly? Could prematurely ending someone’s life ever be an act of compassion and love if the suffering was great enough and the hope of reprieve small enough?

To be clear I’m not asking for individual answers just to acknowledge that sometimes the simplest beginnings can lead to the most complex results.