I don’t think that science has disproven, nor even suggests, that it is unlikely that an Intelligent Designer was responsible for the world, and intended it to come into existence.
I don’t think that science has, nor even can, prove that divine and/or miraculous intervention is impossible.
I don’t think that the fact that we can make good predictive models of the world (and we can) in any way demonstrates that how the world has observedly panned out was not entirely foreseen and intended by some deity.
I think the world has properties that make it perfectly possible for an Intelligent Deity to “reach in” and tweak things to her liking – and that even if it didn’t, it would still be perfectly possible, given Omnipotence, just as a computer programmer can reach in and tweak the Matrix.
I don’t think that science falsifies the idea of an omnipotent,omniscient deity – at all.
I think that only rarely has this even been claimed by scientists, and, of those, most of them were claiming that science has falsified specific claims about a specific deity, not the idea in principle of a deity.
I do think that the world is such that IF there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, EITHER that deity does not have human welfare as a high priority OR she has very different ideas about what constitutes human welfare from the ones that most people hold (and as are exemplified, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), OR she has deliberately chosen to let the laws of her created world play out according to her ordained rules, regardless of the effects of those laws on the welfare of human beings, perhaps trusting that we would value a comprehensible world more than one with major causal glitches. In my case, her trust was well-placed.
I do think that the evidence we have is far more consistent with the idea that life and its origins are the result of processes consistent with others we see acting in the world, and not a result of some extraordinary intervention or series of extraordinary interventions, regardless of any question as to whether a benign or otherwise deity designed those processes with the expectation that life would be a probable or inevitable result.
I don’t think that it follows that, were we to find incontrovertible evidence of a Intelligent Creator (for instance, an unambiguous message in English configured in a nebula in some remote region of space, or on the DNA of an ant encased in amber millions of years ago) that that would mandate us in any way to worship that designer. On the basis of her human rights record I’d be more inclined to summon her to The Hague.
I think that certain theological concepts regarding a benevolent deity useful, inspiring, entirely consistent with science, and may reflect reality.
I don’t myself, any more, believe in some external disembodied intelligent and volitional deity, simply because I am no longer persuaded that either intelligence or volition are possible in the absence of a material substrate. But I do understand why people think this is false, and that consciousness, intelligence and volition are impossible, even in principle, to account for in terms of material/energetic processes, and I also understand that, although I think, for reasons that satisfy myself, that they are mistaken, the case is not an easy one to articulate, not least because of the intrinsically reflexive nature of cogitating on cogitation.
I think that “free will” is an ultimately incoherent concept; I think that the question “do we have free will?” is ill-posed, and ultimately meaningless. I think the better question is: Do I have the ability to make informed choices for which I am morally responsible?” and I think the answer is clearly yes.
Anyone else want to unload?
Here’s the claim, then:
It’s not clear to me whether or not Murray regards the MINT as “self-evident” or not. But even statements that are “self-evidently true” (e.g. the famous analytic claims of logic and mathematics) can still be analyzed in order to see why they are self-evident.
I think that MINT is mistaken, because it rests on the assumption that moral norms must be grounded in something deeper or other than the norms themselves: there must be some deep necessity. And that’s confused, for two reasons.
Firstly, it amounts to saying that there must be norms which ground the norms, that a norm that isn’t grounded isn’t a norm. And so there’s a regress, which must be closed off by some stipulation that there are real necessities, that aren’t just norms themselves but are somehow intrinsic to the very structure of reality.
Secondly, no putative candidate for such necessities can avoid being an instance of the Myth of the Given. For the necessities that ground the norms are Givens — what we might call Demands. (A Demand is to practical action what a Given is to perception — more on that thought later.)
I think you have misconstrued the argument some of us are having with you William. We are not saying that moral subjectivism is good and moral objectivism bad. We are saying your own claimed moral objectivism is no such thing .
And I am saying that at least one virtue of a socially constructed morality is some measure of objectivity (a couple, may be one, agreed tenet e.g. do as you would be done by, and common reasoning from there), that is completely lacking in your system, which boils down to “I, William, find this to be self-evidently wrong therefore it is objectively wrong”.
Which is an oxymoron.
You’ll have to demonstrate how this is actually different in the real world. I just don’t see the difference.
And you’ll need to explain this to me as I see no evidence of the difference in any practical sense.
Now you’re just jerking my chain. C’mom…what “necessary consequences”? The consequences “you prefer”? Or are you going to provide a third-party judge and jailor?
Again…feel free to provide substantiation for this because I don’t see the difference. Where’s the incumbent penalty come from that can’t be ignored?
Now if really all you are saying is, “given an supposed absolute moral standard, clearly there must be an absolute, unquestionable consequence for all immoral acts and I accept this on faith even though I have no evidence for such”, fine…have at your imaginary utopia. But again, for all practical purposes there’s no inherent difference between the justification of either view.
Yep, pretty much.
Ok. Fair enough.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh William…you kill me! That is funny; I actually did laugh really hard at this statement.
And yet I bet you don’t see what is funny in it. Let me ask you William, how long before such a person was locked up or given psychiatric treatment for using that justification for…acting on any given moral principle?
In other words, everyone outside the moral absolutist’s mind is going to see any action said moral absolutists takes as being an act of “personal preference”. There in lies the problem with your supposed “only in the service of right”. There’s no way to show anyone else this standard of right and thus the moral absolutist’s actions are – no matter how the moral absolutist justifies them to himself – laughably unjustifiable to anyone else.
But who cares? The only person that will buy into the justification is the moral absolutist – and only the justifying moral absolutist; other moral absolutists won’t be able to buy the excuse either. So, all you’ve established is that the moral absolutist can feel good about himself because he has his own personal justification? Wow! Why didn’t we moral relativists think of that one? Oh…wait…we did. So…yeah…no difference…
A) Hiding Jews from Nazis is not the only moral principle on your absolute moral list, is it? B) What evidence do you have that only absolute moralists hid Jews?
I don’t know…why should you listen to your stomach growling? Or why should you listen to the pain emanating from a bad tooth? It’s your body William…you are welcome to ignore whatever feedback it gives you if you have a hardy constitution and are a little foolhardy.
I’ll be honest – I fail to understand the basis of your question. I’ll toss one back: why wouldn’t you listen to your empathy? I mean…what do you think empathy means?
So there we have it: In WJM’s world, an Objective Moralist who uses force to impose their moral standards on someone else is using their might in the service of right, which a Subjective Moralist who uses force to impose their moral standards on someone else is using their might to make right.
Apparently, it isn’t possible for a Subjective Moralist to use force to impose their moral standards on someone else in the service of right. Why this is not possible is decidedly unclear, but then this certainly isn’t the only aspect of WJM’s verbiage which are equally unclear, so… [shrug]
William,
You seem to be fixated on “necessary consequences” as an essential feature of objective morality.
Suppose you knew there were no “necessary consequences” associated with gratuitous child torture. Would you still consider it to be immoral?
keiths asks:
If there were no necessary consequences, why should I care if it is immoral or not?
Cubist wonders:
You cannot be “in service to” yourself, which is all a “right” is to a subjectivist. All you are “in service” to is your own “because I want to” and “because I can”.
Robin acts & talks like a moral objectivist while claiming subjectivism:
What does it matter to the argument what anyone else might think? Are you really appealing to “what other people would think”?
Whether or not those that hid the Jews were moral absolutists is entirely irrelevant. You seem to think that I’m making a case that only those who believe in objective morality would do such a thing; I’m not making that case. One of the points of my argument is that even self-described moral subjectivists act like moral objectivists when push comes to shove; they will intervene, and they will risk personal safety in certain situations even when they would prefer to do otherwise, and even when nobody is watching and there is no real visible gain for them.
My point was that in the Nazi situation, there’s simply no subjectivist reason to hide the Jews, and every reason to turn them in.
Ever watch the movie “Inglorious Basterds”? There’s a scene where the Jew hunter knows the man in the house in the country is hiding Jews somewhere, and tells him that his soldiers are going to rip the house up looking for them, so they will be found and killed. The only difference is that the Jew hunter will spare the man’s life if he’ll save the Nazis the trouble and point out where the Jews are hiding. IOW, nobody will know, the Jews are going to die anyway, so why not save your life and point the Jews out?
Well, there’s no subjectivist reason to hide the Jews in the first place, considering that the social order and the law has said that Jews are evil. There’s certainly no subjectivist reason in the second place not to save your own life and point the Jews out.
Not who; what. The logic leads to entirely different conclusions, as I’ve pointed out, and as any reasonable person can see. Fundamentally different premises (if one truly believed and acted on them) logically lead to different behavioral outcomes – different choices.
The problem in looking at the “evidence” of how people actually behave is that most “moral subjectivists” don’t actually behave from their premise. People that think something is “subjective” don’t try forcing it on other people; they don’t expect others to have their same subjective tastes. That’s the whole nature of holding that something is just one’s personal, subjective preference. Only psychopaths, IMO, would actually be comfortable forcing their personal preferences on others because they can.
It is interesting that you think this is acceptable behavior – forcing your personal preferences on others because you can. It’s also interesting that others here are allowing you to make this representation of “subjective morality” without challenging you on it.
From the materialist/moral subjectivist perspective, empathy doesn’t “mean” anything. Under materialism, empathy is largely a psychological reaction that triggers physiological sensations. People generally have quite a few of these, which individuals can use various techniques in order to change. Just as a person can do various exercises to get their body “in shape” for various tasks, or learn how to play the piano or speak a foreign language, we have the capacity to change the physiological equipment we are born, to a large degree, towards our goals and purposes.
For example, I used to be incapable of handling interpersonal conflict. I was also extremely shy. I used various techniques to change these aspects of myself – how I would naturally, physiologically respond to certain situations – in order to pursue various personal goals. That shyness and fear of conflict would make me physically ill. Now, I have no such issues. While I don’t seek it out, I actually enjoy conflict when it comes up, and I’m much more constructive about it.
According to you, however, I should have just “listened to my body” and have continued to hide from the world and avoid conflict? No; people that exercise for competitive sports don’t “listen to their body” when it is screaming for them to eat that doughnut or stop the workout. More than a few doctors and EMTs, I imagine, have had to train themselves out of squeamishness and gagging revulsion, even horror, to pursue their fields. As humans, we don’t just “listen to our body” and do whatever it says; we often reshape it physically and psychologically to do our bidding to pursue our goals.
Now, let’s look at some vices – like greed, glutton, sloth. Under your argument, one’s “body” may be telling them to be greedy, to be a glutton, and to be slothful. It may be telling them that they enjoy beating the crap out of little kids, or torturing small animals. Should they “listen to what their body is telling them”? Or are there some things that your body tells you that you have to fight against, and retrain yourself otherwise?
And so, we come to “empathy”. Should we give our children all the candy they want, and let them behave badly because we are “empathetic” with how they would feel being deprived of what they want, or forced to stop doing what they want to do? Or, are there times we must control our empathy and do some emotionally difficult things?
Rampant empathy can be crippling and can, at times, actually harm others.
Is empathy a virtue, or a vice? Or is it part virtue, and part vice? Or neither? Is empathy like revulsion, where you can train yourself out of it in order to get to your goals? I imagine that a strong sense of empathy would make it really difficult to do a lot of jobs; without being able to at least set it aside or mute it, many jobs in the world would be mentally and physically devastating.
You and other self-described moral subjectivists throw out “empathy” as your basis for morality as if it somehow solves the “subjectivist” problem, seemingly without even thinking it through. As if people have the same “empathy”; as if it was universally applicable, as if there was any sound reason in the first place to care what one’s empathy said in any situation.
Your analogy to tooth pain is apt; if empathy is pain, you go to a doctor to make the pain stop. You don’t put up with the pain. If I want the pain to stop, what is the best solution – to try and change everything out in the world that causes my empathy to hurt me, or to simply remove the tooth that reacts that way? Should I lobby to take ice cream off the shelves because my tooth hurts me every time I eat it? Should I force others to stop drinking sodas because they make my tooth hurt when I drink them?
Why would a moral subjectivist run around changing the world every time they feel pain about a thing? What not just re-train their own psychology to not feel pain at those things? Or, better yet, why not extract the tooth – get rid of empathy so it no longer causes you pain?
You see, you’re responding and arguing like an objectivist; you don’t even understand what would be the actual subjectivist response to the pain – change how I feel about it, retrain my body and mind, which is what a real subjectivist would do; only an objectivist would consider going out into the world and attempting to change it, for everyone else, because they felt physiological pain when encountering certain things. You’re behaving as if the pain you feel is the world’s problem, and not just a physiological issue you are subjectively experiencing.
KN said:
No. My argument is that the only way to avoid “might makes right” (because I prefer, because I can) morality is the premise of objective morality, and the only reason to care about that objective morality would be if there are necessary consequences.
You are logically free to classify any sort of behavior as objectively true, but without necessary consequences, who cares?
So what’s the difference between that and what I was calling the morality-implies-necessity thesis?
The only difference I can see is that you put some emphasis on the idea of care or caring. But I’m having some trouble seeing how this is supposed to work.
Firstly, I don’t understand why my own caring about my own moral behavior depends on my believing that there are necessary consequences to that behavior. If that is indeed your view, it just seems like a complete non sequitur to me.
Secondly, the “who cares?” suggests that, if I were to accept that there are necessary consequences to moral and immoral behavior, that would give other people a reason to care about my behavior. But that can’t be right — the reasons they have for caring about my behavior can be quite distinct from the reasons I have for acting in one way or another.
Thirdly, I’m not sure if we’re talking about moral psychology or about the justification of moral actions. You seem to talk about the former when you talk about what motivates us to act morally — e.g. when you talk about why we care about morality — and you seem to talk about the latter when you talk about what is logically consistent with what. But moral psychology is ultimately a question of what causes moral behavior, and moral reasoning is about what justifies it. Those are just apples and oranges.
Aardvark says:
I think most self-described moral subjectivists adopt that concept out of an emotional necessity – because they are horrified by their conceptualization of command-authority objective morality as it has been painted to them (mostly in their youth). IOW, they rightly reject (IMO) any god that would command children be dashed against the rocks and call it “good”, or command innocents be blown up and call it “good”.
However, unless one is a sociopath, one cannot actually act as if subjective morality is true. Note your moral outrage and willingness to condemn me as a “monster”; but based on what? Your personal, subjective preference? That would render any argument you make about my “monster-ness” nothing but rhetoric and emotional manipulation, because my morality would be as valid as yours based on the “personal preference” metric.
Outside of sociopaths, we all act and argue as if our moral views are objectively valid and binding and even obligatory; but, because they are emotionally committed to the idea that morality cannot be objective (oh, the horror!), they are willing to be, essentially, functional hypocrites and also willing to – in some cases, like Robin – even admit that their morality (because it is subjective) is nothing more (essentially) than forcing our personal preferences on others because we can.
You are left in the unenviable position of rejecting the “sky daddy” command morality (because I say so, because I can) while advocating for exactly the same basis for morality yourself.
By (1) rejecting all command-authority morality (objective or subjective) and (2) adopting an objective natural-law morality that is (3) individually, fallibly interpreted and (4) has necessary consequences, a logically coherent system of morality that dovetails with how we must actually act can be realized. It is also, IMO, the best way to ameliorate the potential for abuse and the best foundation for civilized coexistence with a bare minimum of social “engineering” or oppressive. freedom-destroying, punitive laws.
I didn’t say anything about “your moral behavior”. I said, there’s no reason for me to care about an assumed objective moral standard if there are no necessary consequences. That would be like a law for which there is no penalty for breaking – who cares? Why even propose such a law in the first place? If I feel like doing something else, I’ll do it because there’s no penalty for breaking that “law”, nor any benefit for obeying it.
keiths:
William:
That doesn’t answer my question. Would you still consider it to be immoral if there were no “necessary consequences”?
I find this odd. The reason people propose laws is because they want to suppress behaviours they think should be suppressed. Theft, for instance.
A penalty might be a good reason for someone who doesn’t give a damn about theft not to steal, but the sequence of reasoning behind the law itself is: “this is immoral so we should impose a penalty to discourage it”; not “there is a penalty for this, so it must be immoral”.
I’d stop “considering” morality at all if I knew that there were no necessary consequences.
I consider such command-morality reasoning oppressive and flawed. “Theft is immoral” = “Theft is wrong” = “let’s make a law against it; how is this any different from “Homosexuality is immoral” = “homosexuality is wrong” = “let’s make a law against it”?
You shouldn’t start off with “X is immoral”, so let’s make a law against it. You can justify anything that way, especially if morality is accepted as “whatever I prefer” or if it is claimed as an edict from God. Morality should never be the basis for secular laws.
William seems to say, in saying
that he accepts the necessity of a bare minimum of laws. Leave out his “objective” and I have a hard time disagreeing with his general aspiration. Devil’s in the detail, I suspect.
More precisely — given what you’ve said elsewhere here — you would stop considering morality altogether if you stopped believing that there any necessary consequences.
What the debate boils down to is that you, for reasons of your own personal psychology, are unable to comprehend how anyone could take objective morality seriously and yet not believe that there are any necessary consequences to immoral (or moral) action. But that’s nothing more than a fact about how the quest for certainty drives your own moral psychology. It has nothing at all to do with what any one else is rationally committed to or entitled to.
William,
You seem determined to avoid my question, which was:
Why are you refusing to answer?
If you have people that feel comfortable imposing what they happen to prefer on others, or people who feel comfortable claiming “what god wants us to do”, using morality as the basis for secular laws is a recipe, IMO, for disaster. The more laws you create, the more people you vilify and ostracize, the more criminals you make, the less happy more and more segments of society become. IMO, the best government is that which governs least. That assessment is not a moral one, but rather an opinion.
And, it’s something I can embrace because no god or other entity is depending on me to enforce any moral rules. That allows me to not just tolerate others, but to embrace them as fellow adventurers in this realm of personal freedom and personal responsibility.
Especially the psychopaths. In an ideal society, there would be no need for laws, police or a judicial system. Unfortunately, in the real world there are cheaters who are prepared to exploit others. Being unfair to criminals is an unfortunate consequence of trying to legislate (even minimally) for a fair society.
I’m not saying it isn’t, William. I’m saying that I don’t see that what you are proposing escapes the flaws.
Positing some unspecified “necessary consequence” and singling out one particular moral imperative as “self-evident) doesn’t get you off that hook, it seems to me.
I agree. But I think that secular laws (constitutional and culturally), collectively constructed, are the source of your “self-evident” moral conclusions.
keiths,
As usual, the failure of my answer to satisfy you doesn’t represent a failure on my part to provide an answer.
Nothing is foolproof against human error and corruption; I said that my system ameliorates the glaring opportunities for abuse inherent in both objective and subjective command-moralities.
Then what any society does is moral by definition, which boils down to because we say so, because we can, might-makes-right. Unless there is something held as beyond the capacity of any society to make “right” (like gratuitously torturing children), then you are logically bound to admit that such an activity when collectively agreed to by society is by definition as moral as the behavior of any other society.
Only, none of us really act as if that is true. – unless, of course, one is a sociopath. Otherwise, why the moral outrage at what any society, religious or not, has done in the past? What would then serve as the moral principle by which an individual stands against social consensus?
I think “fairness”, like empathy, is a fundamentally flawed concept upon which to build a society – but again, that’s my personal opinion, not something I consider a moral rule. That would be something to hash out in public debate, not to be imposed “because I/we can” or “because God says so.”
Fairness is hardly a complex concept. “Not fair” is about the first thing kids seem to use as a philosophical argument. Unfairness is a very destabilising element in society. The interplay between the desire for fairness and the desire for stability governs whether there is acceptance of one’s lot or revolution.
BTW wouldn’t public debate just end up as “might makes right” with the majority holding sway?
OK, so could you say more about how it does this. Because I’m not seeing the benefits of your system right now.
Certainly what any society prescribes and proscribes is moral by its owndefinition. And a member of any one society may well, using its own definition, condemn the proscriptions and prescriptions of another as “immoral”. Just as I condemn the stoning of adulterers and the hanging of gays in Iran to be immoral.
Now, if we posit that there is some “objective” morality, we can also posit that by that “objective” morality, some of these societies’ moralities are more moral than others.
However, that still leaves us with the problem of how we decide between them. You have rightly rejected the idea that anyone has privileged access to Divine Command, and also that any text contains the Word of Divine Command, and of course I agree.
In other words – positing an some Absolute majority gets us nowhere if we can’t actually access it.
And I’m not seeing you present a solution to that problem.
On the other hand, game theory does in fact present us with some solutions as to what behaviours, collectively agreed, will lead to a positive-sum game – i.e. a game in which everyone benefits. In other words, game-rules exist that maximise gain for everyone, including the “sociopaths”. So you could, I suggest, define “objective morality” as “that set of game-rules that delivers the greatest probability of gain for all players”.
And I suggest that that is in fact the underlying logic of the Golden Rule.
If you characterize rhetoric and emotional pleading as “philosophical arguments”, okay. IMO, fairness is “hardly a complex concept” only to those that have not looked beyond their own idea of “what is fair”. Fair .. in what sense? Based on what commodity comparison? Does fair mean equal? Are natural physical or mental advantages considered fair? Fair opportunity? Fair outcomes? Etc.
Fairness isn’t the real issue; the real issue is maintaining a real, functioning, productive, relatively happy society – otherwise, you won’t have one. What may work in an ideal world may be non-effective, or even counter-productive, in the real world, even if one could logically quantify “fairness” in some non-nebulous, non-personally serving way.
Large segments of society being unhappy with their place in society, whether it is fair or not, is what destabilizes society. The concept of “unfairness” is so vague and malleable that it can turn whole groups of people from being content, productive and happy into revolutionaries for no reason other than that they were talked out of their happiness and convinced the situation was “not fair”.
Might makes public policy, not “right”.
You seem to be struggling to disagree with me. Appealing to someone’s sense of fairness is a powerful way to get a response. Talking of vagueness and malleability does not alter its simplicity and ready acceptance as a universally useful idea in a social context.
I’ve made that case to my satisfaction.
IF you agree that social consensus dictates what **is** moral in any given society, THEN you are logically committed to agreeing that whatever the social consensus is in Iran, it is moral **by definition**, and that while you may dislike what they do, and would never do it yourself, it is still moral by definition – by your definition of what determines (social consensus) if an act is moral or not.
That what they are doing in Iran would be immoral if that behavior was transposed to your society is a complete non-sequitur. Under your view, the moral value of any act is determined solely by that society’s consensus, not by someone who disagrees with that consensus.
You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too; you don’t get to claim subjective morality, and then act and judge as if it is objectively valid and binding.
Since you seem to agree that “appealing to a sense of fairness” is largely a rhetorical and emotionally manipulative ploy, I’m fine with letting this rest here.
I certainly think that appealing to a sense of fairness can be very persuasive and that such a sense of fairness is an almost universal trait, at least in Western culture.. Why the use of the pejorative “manipulative”? Come to that, rhetorical ploy, too!
William, you are of course under no obligation to engage me or anyone else here or anywhere. I mentioned before somewhere that I happen to have 10 days or so at a bit of a loose end and am spending much more time here than I would normally have available.
There is no game where everyone benefits, because there are some people that only wish to harm others. I’m fine with some forms of game theory being used to make social laws; I’m not fine with calling that system “morality”.
No, there are no such game rules. One can maximise gain for the most people, but certainly not for everyone.
More accurately, the set of game rules that delivers the greatest probability of gain (as defined by most players) for the most players. However, as I’ve said before, I do not adhere to you idiosyncratic concept of “objective”. It’s not an objective morality; it’s a consensus morality. And therein lies the problem when one attempts to define their preferred social construct as “morality”.
And here is the problem which was there from the start and has not diminished. How does “preferred social construct” apply any the less to your particular subjective world-view (morality, if you like) than to any other consensus morality?
If morality is understood as being connected to and having obligations with respect to other humans and creatures and the environment, then “libertarian free will” simply reduces to a sociopath’s self-indulgence that sees everything else in the world as “serving one’s own selfish purposes.”
Liz advocates morality as social structure; I advocate that social structure has nothing to do, per se, with morality. You ask how does it apply less? My question is, how could it apply any less than if you hold that one has nothing to do with the other?
In my understanding, you just asked me: What is the difference between the idea that A=B, and the idea that A is not equal to, and has nothing to do with B?
No, William, I asked you how you can justify to yourself that your word-view is any less subjective than anyone else’s. Whether you want claim it as “objective morality” hardly matters.
I never said I could “justify my worldview” as “less subjective than anyone else’s”. I don’t see how your questions or comments have anything to do with my actual argument.
William J. Murray,
I must have misunderstood the thrust of your argument, then. I thought you claim to be able to derive an objective morality by reason. What would you say was the essential point you are intending to make or could you link to what you regard as your definitive statement on objective morality*? ( * is that the important issue?)
No. I’ve said that one can use reason to arbit morality starting with self-evident and/or necessary moral truths, not that one can derive morality from reason alone.
My main point here is that the subjective-morality model is incoherent, hypocritical, and / or fatally repulsive, and that nobody (other than sociopaths) can actually act as if morality was subjective.
My main statement about objective morality would be that, between subjective and objective models, the model that better explains how we actually act, and which is more rationally coherent, and which offers a minimization of potential for abuse and mistake/misguided notions of morality to be imposed on people, and which allows for the greatest moral freedom and individual moral responsibility – is the “natural law” objective morality model – whether or not it is true.
OK! I see Wikipedia has an entry on Natural Law. Any of that coincide with your morality model? Hobbes?
I’ve asked this simple yes/no question three times:
Three times William has refused to answer. It’s not hard to see why.
If he answers “yes”, then he is admitting that all this blather about “necessary consequences” is irrelevant to morality.
If he answers “no”, then he is admitting that gratuitous child torture is wrong not because the act itself is wrong, nor because the child suffers horribly, but merely because the perpetrator will suffer “necessary consequences” at some point. It is a self-interested “morality” in which the well-being of others has no intrinsic weight.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, eh, William?
No, I didn’t, William – I said that morally was socially constructed i.e something we construct, collectively. I didn’t say it IS “social structure”. I don’t know what that would even mean.
You didn’t? So you aren’t claiming in your morality is objective and ours is subjective?
Do you mean that there are people want to harm others AND don’t mind being harmed themselves?
But do answer keiths’ question first, William. It does seem to be rather important.
No. Never have, never will make such a claim.
OK, so what is wrong, in your view, with our (or my, for instance) morality?
I thought objectivity was supposed to be your systems selling point.
I’ve already answered it – just not to keiths’ satisfaction.
Of course there are, but “being harmed yourself” is not a necessary consequence – it’s an arbitrary one. If people think they can get away with it, or abuse the system in their favor, they have no compelling reason not to.
What difference does it make if aspects of my natural law argument happen to coincide with aspects of other models listed on Wiki?
It’s a yes/no question, William. How about giving a yes/no answer? (Feel free to add a supplementary explanation, if you wish.)
Otherwise, you are confirming my suspicions:
I’ve made this case about as well as I can here. TL;DR: it’s offensive,and/or hypocritical, and/or logically incoherent, and/or doesn’t match how we actually behave in life.
No. The selling points are down the road from the assumption that what morality refers to is objective (absolute) in nature. IOW, you can only logically get to a non-hypocritical, non-repulsive (might makes right), logically coherent morality that matches how we actually behave in life by beginning with the premise that morality refers to an absolute (natural law, not command authority) commodity.
You cannot logically get to those selling points if you begin with a “morality is subjective” premise.