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

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The most general sense possible. E.g. think of slightly less than perfect goodness. Must a being exist that embodies slightly-less-than-perfect-goodness just because you can imagine the idea?
 
Hogwash, your post was chock full of leading language.
 
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Bradskii said:
It’s objective in the example I gave. There is objectively a difference between a few cells and a baby about to be born. Whether we class the cells as human or not is not something on which we are going to agree.
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there is a difference in development, but not kind.
No serious scientist would debate that these “few cells” is a unique human being with unique DNA.
Do you value science in helping to make moral evaluations? Or is science subject to your (erroneous) opinion?
So where there is disagreement on definitions, we agree to disagree and move on.
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We do not “move on” when something as good as human existence is in question. We make a moral evaluation based on objective criteria. We honor the good, not cast it into doubt.

Do you shoot at anything that moves in the woods because it is good for you to have a deer for supper?
 
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Whether it was or not (I truly didn’t intend it to be: the language I used was to emphasize the freedom this approach to ethics values), I’d like to listen to what he (and you, if you don’t mind) thinks is the aim of ethics, because the “principle of no harm” leads me to believe that the aim of ethics in his eyes is to allow for individuals and cultures with different lifestyles to coexist without one colliding with the other.

Christi pax.
 
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goout said:
Isn’t existence the most basic good that can be thought of?
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Not if your existence is a miserable one. There are plenty of people who have been born that wished they had never been born. While others make think the existence of such a person is the most basic good that can be thought of, I can tell you the person doing the existing does not. Which view is correct? I would argue the view of the person living the misery trumps anyone else’s view. At that point, no one else’s view really matters.
 
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Escabrosa said:
This is a definition problem then and the dilemma is still false per the definition of Church fathers, Catholic doctrine and old Jewish scholars. The Aesity of God doctrine answers your questions. God has always existed and is unchanging. The metaphysical essence of God is existence, i.e. God is ‘being’ itself.

The way I came to understand it was realizing that goodness itself=God, a simplified rendition of the above. Instead of thinking of God as an anthropomorphic being, I started with the idea of perfect goodness, an abstraction of sorts, and realized that this is what the Church refers to as God. This was my revert epiphany.

Ironically, Sam Harris helped me along the way by showing that we can arrive at the conclusion that there is objective morality through secular reasoning. He wrote a book and did a Ted Talk on it. If there is objective morality, then there is conceivably objective goodness, and so on.
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Then you didn’t follow the TED talk and haven’t read the book. Otherwise you would understand that Harris was talking about what some of us here are trying to put across. That is, if we can agree on what constitutes harm then we can definitely agree on what is harmful. And that leads to us being able to describe something as objectively bad.
 
This comes back to definitions. My definition of dumb appears to be different to yours.
 
Lucretius said:
Whether it was or not (I truly didn’t intend it to be: the language I used was to emphasize the freedom this approach to ethics values), I’d like to listen to what he (and you, if you don’t mind) thinks is the aim of ethics, because the “principle of no harm” leads me to believe that the aim of ethics in his eyes is to allow for individuals and cultures with different lifestyles to coexist without one colliding with the other.

Christi pax.
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Well, yes. That is the point. As long as no harm is done (and everyone agrees on the definition) then I could give 2 cents what anyone else says or does. Why would you care?
 
goout said:
Goodness is personified in “other”. Otherness is objective. It is “other than I”.

You didn’t create yourself, or the universe. There is potency and act outside yourself. That should be an obvious concession for any rational human being. What is that? We call it God.

And we believe that “to be” is good. Or you could say “it is good to be alive”.
So the source and summit of this being is a good thing. And it is objectively “not me”.
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I have read a lot of incomprehensible sentences on these forums but this takes the cake.
 
QwertyGirl said:
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goout:
Isn’t existence the most basic good that can be thought of?
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Not if your existence is a miserable one. There are plenty of people who have been born that wished they had never been born. While others make think the existence of such a person is the most basic good that can be thought of, I can tell you the person doing the existing does not. Which view is correct? I would argue the view of the person living the misery trumps anyone else’s view. At that point, no one else’s view really matters.
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If suffering is the last word, then suffering can crush a person, lead to despair. If suffering is one part of a whole person and is part of a redeemed life, then it is simply that:
one part of being human.

The greatest evil is death. Everyone dies. No exceptions. If death is final and timeless nothingness prevails, then life is devoid of meaning and purpose.
Existing is always a good.
 
KevinK said:
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goout:
Goodness is personified in “other”. Otherness is objective. It is “other than I”.

You didn’t create yourself, or the universe. There is potency and act outside yourself. That should be an obvious concession for any rational human being. What is that? We call it God.

And we believe that “to be” is good. Or you could say “it is good to be alive”.
So the source and summit of this being is a good thing. And it is objectively “not me”.
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I have read a lot of incomprehensible sentences on these forums but this takes the cake.
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…he says without responding to the material.
Maybe you do not understand it?
 
Are we all confused? Hard to have dialogue when we don’t understand something, and don’t ask specific questions.

Part of being take seriously is this:
I understand an opposing viewpoint, and I can articulate that viewpoint even if I disagree with it. I can address the viewpoint in good faith, head-on without straw men, and refute it with some integrity.
 
goout said:
suffering is the last word, then suffering can crush a person, lead to despair. If suffering is one part of a whole person and is part of a redeemed life, then it is simply that:
one part of being human.

The greatest evil is death. Everyone dies. No exceptions. If death is final and timeless nothingness prevails, then life is devoid of meaning and purpose.
Existing is always a good.
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I would argue there is nothing objective about this. Tell someone who lives with chronic suffering this. It is quite possible your belief is not their reality.

Nor do a lot of people view death the way you do. Death can be the greatest peace to many.
 
QwertyGirl said:
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goout:
suffering is the last word, then suffering can crush a person, lead to despair. If suffering is one part of a whole person and is part of a redeemed life, then it is simply that:
one part of being human.

The greatest evil is death. Everyone dies. No exceptions. If death is final and timeless nothingness prevails, then life is devoid of meaning and purpose.
Existing is always a good.
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I would argue there is nothing objective about this. Tell someone who lives with chronic suffering this. It is quite possible your belief is not their reality.

Nor do a lot of people view death the way you do. Death can be the greatest peace to many.
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It is objective. Your paradigm of my belief/your belief is not objective, it is definitively subjective.

By subjective, we mean the matter at hand is subject to the individual. It’s value and meaning is determined as a subject of opinion or whim, whether of a group of people or an individual.

By objective, we mean the matter at hand has an independent value and meaning that is not subject to opinion or whim, whether of the individual or the group.

For example: all human life and existence is good and has an inherent value that should be honored.
In that statement we honor a value that is not subject to any particular opinion. The meaning and value of human life stands on it’s own.

History clearly shows that when this objective value is lost, and is subjected to opinion, whim, and force, tragedy is the result. Like this:
““In my opinion, Jews are not human beings, blacks are not human beings, and unborn are not human beings.The value of their lives is subject to my opinion, my desires, my will to power, etc…””

We know where moral subjectivity and relativity leads by experience.
 
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lisaandlena said:
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goout:
For example: all human life and existence is good and has an inherent value that should be honored.
In that statement we honor a value that is not subject to any particular opinion. The meaning and value of human life stands on it’s own.
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The fact that you can’t see that that statement is subjective is mind-boggling.
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Well go ahead and dissect it for us. I want to see what is boggling your mind.
Humor me please.
 
Bradskii said:
That’s not true. There are obviously negative implications in having a baby if you don’t want one. So you balance the harm resulting in going through with the pregnancy versus having an abortion.
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It is interesting that you include the potential future “harm” to the mother in your moral calculus but not the future harm to the fetus. All things being equal the fetus will become a viable, fully developed, human person. So here you are weighing the “negative implications” to the woman, but completely nullifying the “negative implications” to the fetus cum human person.

Also, you are looking at the situation from a completely negative perspective allowing only the “obviously negative implications” the woman now believes (however unwarranted) she will experience in the future. The possibility is that childbirth and motherhood may just as likely lead to “obviously” positive implications if the woman is open to them. Why should the woman’s current beliefs (however warranted or unwarranted) be the determining factors for whether another human being lives or dies?

In no other moral circumstance do we allow one person’s unwarrantable expectations about the future be the sole determiner of their capacity to kill another person purely because they make the choice to end that other person’s life. Seems a lot like special pleading.
Bradskii said:
Now, if like me, you don’t consider a blastocyst to be human, then we only consider the potential harm to the woman in either having or not having an abortion (including, in either case, psychological as well as.physical harm).
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Regardless of whether a blastocyst is considered by you to be “human” in the sense you wish to permit, it seems mighty capricious of you to consider only “potential” harm to the woman in the future, but completely ignore the potential harm to the future human you currently refer to as the blastocyst. That blastocyst, all things being equal, will be a human person as much as the woman will be in the future. So why count only her harm as relevant and not the harm done to the future person who now takes the form of a blastocyst? Remind yourself that you were also once a blastocyst and would have been irreparably harmed had your mother aborted you.
Bradskii said:
If the foetus is late term, then other consideration need to be taken into account.

But harm is the deciding factor.
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No, it appears that only the perspective of “harm” you wish to include in your calculus is the “deciding factor.” Your determinations regarding that “harm” capriciously favour certain humans above other humans, especially when you begin including potential or future harm in those determinations, besides the fact that you only count unrealized future “harm” to the woman, completely ignoring that childbirth and motherhood may be extraordinarily beneficial to that same woman if she would approach them with a different attitude.
 
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