Why there is no such thing as objective morality

[Dranu]

Pain bad, pleasure good?

Fire bad, water good?

No, those are all ‘good’ unless there is some objective reason to call them bad. Me feeling like I am liking something and not liking another is no reason to give an objective label of ‘bad’ or ‘good’. I could just dismiss such labels by ‘feeling like it’.

Perhaps because some do ‘harm’? But is it really harm when things change in one direction or another? Water being dried by the sun we might say would ‘harm’ the wetness. But what objective standard could we judge that there is an actual being independent of the totality of nature being ‘harmed’. Isn’t the wetness of the ground just a part of the nature which includes the sun. So the wetness truly isn’t anything but a ‘part’ of nature, which merely changes (nature remaining quite intact).

(Note: For the OP, I would like if you answered my first question before moving on to other points I discuss)

 

[ToddM]

No, those are all ‘good’ unless there is some objective reason to call them bad. Me feeling like I am liking something and not liking another is no reason to give an objective label of ‘bad’ or ‘good’. I could just dismiss such labels by ‘feeling like it’.

Perhaps because some do ‘harm’? But is it really harm when things change in one direction or another? Water being dried by the sun we might say would ‘harm’ the wetness. But what objective standard could we judge that there is an actual being independent of the totality of nature being ‘harmed’. Isn’t the wetness of the ground just a part of the nature which includes the sun. So the wetness truly isn’t anything but a ‘part’ of nature, which merely changes (nature remaining quite intact).

(Note: For the OP, I would like if you answered my first question before moving on to other points I discuss)

I seem to have a real ‘gift’ of provoking the very point I was trying to illustrate. Oh well.

Am ‘evolved’. Thumbs and fire are hard.

 

[ToddM]

Answer this question first, because I am confused with your position. Once I figure it out I can hopefully give a shot in giving you an answer.

"How do you account for ‘bad’ and ‘good’ things if there is no objective morality?"

Oh, to more directly non-answer your question… I, for one, cannot give an account for this, because it is impossible to do so as near as my fingerpaints and crayons mind can comprehend.

Using same, I don’t see how God could either.

If there is no God, and this is the ‘biggest’ if ever, then because I say so, thus making a claim to the ‘non-existent’ throne.

I suppose another argument could lie along the lines of (party who
opposes my will) ‘…has stupid hair’ or the like. Hey, it ‘works for me.’

Does anyone else wish the smileys were a bit more ‘Chuck Norris’ and much less ‘tickle me elmo’

Pride. Sorry if my hair is stupid, Pax.

 

[bogeydogg]

Lessee…I cannot say with even a reasonable, let alone absolute, certainty that if I take a certain, specific course of action I will not be committing homicide. Since I am aware of this, even though I will go to ridiculous, unreasonable measures to rationo-lies doing so, I cannot likewise not be sure that this will not be a specific form of homicide, namely murder.

Ah, well, lets kill it anyway. I know, I’ll sidestep the basic issue with more hypotheticals.

" " “”<<<<

huh

 

[ToddM]

huh

Pro-death position people cannot know, or clearly demonstrate, or understand (admit) that a fetus is a baby, then they are playing morality roulette in possibly MURDERING a human being.

When in doubt, take the most destructive and irreversible course of action. ‘Forceps…sponge…suction…’ >>>>>""<<<<<<
(facetious ‘yeaaaaah death, woot.’ )

 

[Foreigner]

According to your own philosophical tradition, a man is always bound to follow his conscience. So, hypothetically, if a man were sincerely convinced that there is no God, he ought not believe God exists and in fact ought believe that it doesn’t exist.

Furthermore, hypothetically, if a man were sincerely convinced that God ought not be loved, that man ought not love it. But if God as your philosophical tradition says is absolute power and absolute goodness and absolute truth and these are in res all one and the same thing, then you would be acknowledging that in this situation the man being so would be obliged, subjectively, by conscience, to not love absolute goodness. And in the former situation above, the man would be likewise obliged to not believe in the existence of absolute truth.

There is a way to avoid these contradictions and that is to reject the notion of objective morality. The fact that Catholic philosophy distinguishes between what one is subjectively obliged (or not obliged) to do and what one is objectively obliged (or not obliged) to do causes a fundamental problem that cannot be repaired by the rejection of monotheism. Here’s the problem. According to your own philosophy, if one is subjectively convinced, sincerely and not in a self-deceiving kind of way, that one ought to burn a heretic (and let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is objectively speaking always morally forbidden), then one has a subjective obligation to do so. But how can one in any sense be obliged to do that which is “objectively” forbidden or (and let’s assume that this is the case) intrinsically perverse? If burning a heretic doesn’t qualify, substitute that with torturing an innocent child.

This is why I reject the notion of any objective morality. Morality is real, but it is an expression of who you are and what is moral or how moral it is is just determined by how truly it expresses your true self – and since what one subjectively believes, thinks and feels is part of one’s true self at any given time (though not the entirety of what define’s one’s true self), there is no conflict in my proposal between “objective” and “subjective” obligations. We ought ask not whether something conforms to some external or object-based standard, but simply whether it is an instance of someone’s self-expression, personal growth and evolution.

I personally reject also the notion of “God”, but this post was primarily about the philosophical problems the notion of “objective obligation” versus “subjective obligation” present.

The only benchmark of truth is God. All other truths are only true if they are true when measured relative to Him.

So if you reject the notion of God then of course there is no such thing as objective morality.

 

[ToddM]

According to your own philosophical tradition, a man is always bound to follow his conscience. So, hypothetically, if a man were sincerely convinced that there is no God, he ought not believe God exists and in fact ought believe that it doesn’t exist.

Furthermore, hypothetically, if a man were sincerely convinced that God ought not be loved, that man ought not love it. But if God as your philosophical tradition says is absolute power and absolute goodness and absolute truth and these are in res all one and the same thing, then you would be acknowledging that in this situation the man being so would be obliged, subjectively, by conscience, to not love absolute goodness. And in the former situation above, the man would be likewise obliged to not believe in the existence of absolute truth.

There is a way to avoid these contradictions and that is to reject the notion of objective morality. The fact that Catholic philosophy distinguishes between what one is subjectively obliged (or not obliged) to do and what one is objectively obliged (or not obliged) to do causes a fundamental problem that cannot be repaired by the rejection of monotheism. Here’s the problem. According to your own philosophy, if one is subjectively convinced, sincerely and not in a self-deceiving kind of way, *If you are rejecting truth, then you are decieving yourself *that one ought to burn a heretic (and let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is objectively speaking always morally forbidden), then one has a subjective obligation to do so. But how can one in any sense be obliged to do that which is “objectively” forbidden or (and let’s assume that this is the case) intrinsically perverse? If burning a heretic doesn’t qualify, substitute that with torturing an innocent child. *nice appeal to emotion, advertising? *

This is why I reject the notion of any objective morality. Objective truth, but not objective morality? * Morality is real, but it is an expression of who you arebut is it an expression of what you should be? Yeah, I know, you decide that for yourself.* and what is moral or how moral it is is just determined by how truly it expresses your true self – and since what one subjectively believes, thinks and feels is part of one’s true self *what does true mean exactly? *at any given time (though not the entirety of what define’s one’s true self), there is no conflict in my proposal between “objective” and “subjective” obligations.social, ephemeral, emotional sense of obligation/mechanisms that may or may not be identical to actual, objective ones We ought ask not whether something conforms to some external or object-based standard, but simply whether it is an instance of someone’s self-expression, personal growth and evolution.

I personally reject also the notion of “God”, *wouldn’t your god be your feelings, thoughts or you ate /sacrificed to them that day?*but this post was primarily about the philosophical problems the notion of “objective obligation” versus “subjective obligation” present.

Still struggling with thumbs and fire. This ‘filozofee’ stuff doesn’t seem to be very true to me.

 

[dbg]

right. the logical term for what you’re calling “demonstrative”, is “deductive”; and the term for a bit of reasoning that makes its conclusion more or less probable is “inductive”.

I’m not quite sure what the definition of deductive would be except for a technical one, but I take deductive to refer to a style or form of argument and demonstrative to refer to the certainty of the argument’s conclusion. I can imagine and I’m sure you could conceive also, an argument which is demonstrative yet not deductively sound. Be that as it may …

you’re saying you have one or more inductive arguments for the existence of other minds (or at least one other mind).

Actually I would say I have a deductive one with respect to at least one other mind and inductive ones with respect to the existence of any particular mind that I come in contact with.

absolutely. fire away…

Premises
My life is meaningful
If I were the only person to actually exist and were there never to be any other person to actually exist, my life would not be meaningful.

It follows from these two premises (leaving the steps implied as I’m sure you would see it) that there is at least one other person besides myself.

One would of course to establish that the argument is sound as well as valid, need to argue for the truth of the premises and I believe that can be done as well.

 

[Dranu]

I seem to have a real ‘gift’ of provoking the very point I was trying to illustrate. Oh well.

Oh, hehe, didn’t realize. Still even if I did, I think I might answer just for the fun of sharpining my dull knife of philosophy skills .

And yes, ‘Chuck Norris’ smilies would be awesome, though the angry face one might send too many people running, while the toothy grinny one D) might cause people to lose sight from the blinding brightness of his white teeth!

 

[ToddM]

Oh, hehe, didn’t realize. Still even if I did, I think I might answer just for the fun of sharpining my dull knife of philosophy skills .

And yes, ‘Chuck Norris’ smilies would be awesome, though the angry face one might send too many people running, while the toothy grinny one D) might cause people to lose sight from the blinding brightness of his white teeth!

A. They’d have to call them ‘Chuckies’ (taken)
B. Mr. Norris would choke us to death with a Total Gym. Chuck Norris don’t do ‘smileys’ Good Guys wear entrails.

 

[john_doran]

I’m not quite sure what the definition of deductive would be except for a technical one, but I take deductive to refer to a style or form of argument and demonstrative to refer to the certainty of the argument’s conclusion.

ok, i’ll bite: then deductive arguments are necessarily demonstrative.

dbg:

I can imagine and I’m sure you could conceive also, an argument which is demonstrative yet not deductively sound. Be that as it may …

depends on what constitutes the “certainty” of the demonstrativity of the argument: if it’s simply a subjective reaction to a piece of reasoning, and is unrelated to its logical characteristics, then sure: one could find an unsound argument “demonstrative”.

dbg:

My life is meaningful
If I were the only person to actually exist and were there never to be any other person to actually exist, my life would not be meaningful.

It follows from these two premises (leaving the steps implied as I’m sure you would see it) that there is at least one other person besides myself.

One would of course to establish that the argument is sound as well as valid, need to argue for the truth of the premises and I believe that can be done as well.

yikes - talk about tendentious…

why should anyone believe your first premise? are you suggesting that if everyone on earth but me were to die, then my life would be meaningless? or could i use your argument as a demonstration of intelligent life on other worlds? or, if it could be “demonstratively” shown that i was the only person left in the universe, maybe your argument is a good argument for the existence of god…

and it’s just as easy to construct the opposite, nihilistic argument:

1. there are no other minds but mine;
2. if there are no other minds but mine, then life cannot be meaningful;
3. therefore my life is not meaningful.

you’re going to have a hard time unpacking “meaningfulness” in your first premise to get it to do the discursive work you’re asking it to do, i’m afraid. and until then, your argument isn’t a good one, any more than this is a good theistic argument:

either i am 20 feet tall, or god exists;
i am not 20 feet tall;
therefore god exists.

 

[john_doran]

but all of that is as may be…

you’re original point was that you differentiate belief in the existence of other minds from that of objective morality, by the fact that you think there are arguments to be made for the existence of other minds, but none for objective morality.

my point is, ultimately, that there are plenty of basic beliefs that you have for which no argument exists or is even possible (like the existence of an extra-mental reality, or the reliability of the senses, or the past, or…). and yet you still hold to those beliefs…

so why not in the case of objective morality?

but if you do need an argument for objective morality, howabout this one:

1. my life is meaningful;
2. if there were no objective morality, then my life would be meaningless;
3. therefore there is an objective morality.

 

[Jean_Anthony]

Please return to the OP’s topic, everyone. Thank you.

 

[bogeydogg]

Pro-death position people cannot know, or clearly demonstrate, or understand (admit) that a fetus is a baby, then they are playing morality roulette in possibly MURDERING a human being.

When in doubt, take the most destructive and irreversible course of action. ‘Forceps…sponge…suction…’ >>>>>""<<<<<<
(facetious ‘yeaaaaah death, woot.’ )

And have you somehow imagined that I am pro-abortion?

 

[bogeydogg]

The OP never established his original premise and therefore it is impossible to have a discussion about his point drawn from said premise.

 

[ToddM]

And have you somehow imagined that I am pro-abortion?

Maybe I’m just being true to myself. You do not, or will not see that this is on exactly the same slope. You win though, I just got through talking about ‘spinning wheels’. I’m hitting the brakes. Peace and out.

 

[bogeydogg]

Your posts are so random and stream of conscious that they are hard to follow. Why not just be blunt so that everyone not in your head can follow too.

 

[Deacon_Ed_B]

New to the forums; first post. Here’s my question, or rather questions, related to morality:

In a nutshell, how do Christians account for “bad” things happening to “good” people and vice versa? Is it merely by the notion of an afterlife (i.e. punishment/rewards are issued post-death) or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance.

I answer this very first post, acknowledging that I have not read all 8 pages of this thread. To answer this question, I go to one of Fr. John Corapi’s homilies wherein he addressed this in one of his doctoral theses.(he has several) God lets bad things happen so he can bring about a greater good. The example he gives is with the question, “What is the greatest evil ever perpetrated by man?” We would all have to say, the crucifixion. We then ask, “What is the greatest good ever accomplished for man?” We have to answer the redemption of man brought about by the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We may not always know the answer to that question, “Why does God…”?. , but God does. Let’s put our trust in him.
Prayers & blessings
Deacon Ed B