A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

@maxdancona,

Max, I will reiterate that this is not a personal discussion.
We are speaking about philosophy. You are taking this too personally.
Nihilism does not inherently make someone "bad".
I was under the impression that subjective morality was important to you.
I think the concept is contradictory.
You don't.
There is no point in discussing it further, if you are going to continue to make this about your personal sentiments.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are excluding those of us who say "I value compassion based on who I choose to be as a person" from morality.

As well he should, because what you're describing isn't morality. It's just an individual taste for certain practices and an individual distaste for others: Some people love hip-hop music, some hate it. Some people are anti-murder, some pro-murder. Tomeyto, tomuhto. Why should anybody else care about your personal tastes and distastes?

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@Thomas,

Are we really just arguing about the definition of words here?

Morality is the set of values I live by. They are more than "personal tastes" (I have tastes too). My moral values drive my behavior and inform my deep feelings about what is right or wrong. At times my morals cause to act against my interests. My sense of morality is at the core of my identity; who I am as a person and how I view myself in the world.

To use the word taste for things like "compassion" and "responsibility" and "justice" is really stretching the word taste.

Morality is much deeper than that.

Your definition of morality doesn't match the dictionary definitions that I have seen, I suppose you are free to define the word based as you feel fits your philosophy.

I like Katy Perry.
I feel very strongly that the drone strikes we are now launching are unjust.

These two statements are quite different for me, One is an example of what I call "taste". The other is an example of what I call "moral value". To use the same word to describe these two very different meanings doesn't make any sense.

I don't see these two statements are equivalent in any way. I suspect you feel the same way.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I feel very strongly that the drone strikes we are now launching are unjust.

So what? Why should anybody care what you feel? I'm not asking this to be rude. I'm asking because, if there isn't any reason for other people to care, then the thing you call your morality really is just another set of personal tastes. But if there is, then this reason, whatever it is, can be independently discovered and understood by anybody --- it will, in other words, be objective.

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@Thomas,

What matters to me and drives my own feelings and behavior is my personal moral values.

I am a social animal and part of a greater society. Other people in my society agree with my moral values, and even people in my society who disagree on this issue share moral values with me that I can appeal to to change their minds.

The views of people outside my society don't matter in any practical way. People in the US 100 years ago would feel differently. People in Ancient Rome or Sparta would probably have a completely different take.

These views are irrelevant. They don't have anything to do with the choices I make personally, or that we make as a society.

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@Thomas,

I think you are playing word games. But, let's explore the difference between "value" and "taste" a little.

What you say that a moral (by your definition of the word) is equivalent to an absolute taste or a universal taste?

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The views of people outside my society don't matter in any practical way.

That is a very parochial and, in a bad way, very American answer. It is nonsense to me, having grown up in the Germany of the 70s, ten minutes from the Swiss border, an hour from the Austrian border, an hour and a half from the French border, and three hours from the Italian and Czech borders. It never occurred to me that the views of people outside my society don't matter. Indeed, we perpetually lived under the clear and present danger that the views of people outside our society might turn the Cold War hot, even nuclear on us. Americans today may be blissfully unaware of realities like this, but these are nevertheless realities. Your ignorance of other societies' views and how they matter is just that, ignorance. It doesn't rise to the level of an ethical principle.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

What you say that a moral (by your definition of the word) is equivalent to an absolute taste or a universal taste?

Not necessarily, because people have been universally wrong about facts in the past. Nevertheless, for example, it is an empirical fact that almost every human considers protection against murder worth the price of not being able to murder. It is also an empirical fact that you can reason with people about the benefits of not being murdered, the costs of not murdering, and the tradeoffs between the two. I consider these two empirical facts to be strong evidence that "you ought not murder" is an objectively true moral statement.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Quote:
Re: maxdancona (Post 5272125)
maxdancona wrote:
What you say that a moral (by your definition of the word) is equivalent to an absolute taste or a universal taste?

Not necessarily, because people have been universally wrong about facts in the past. Nevertheless, for example, it is an empirical fact that almost every human considers protection against murder worth the price of not being able to murder. It is also an empirical fact that you can reason with people about the benefits of not being murdered, the costs of not murdering, and the tradeoffs between the two. Together, these two points are strong evidence for me that "you ought not murder" is an objectively true moral statement.

C'mon, Thomas. You were doing so well--actually making a bit of sense. And then you went to this???!!!

Were you thinking no one else was listening...or were you just trying this out to see how it would run?

Fact is, together, those two points are strong evidence that "we ought not to murder each other" makes lots of subjective sense.

Trying to make that into an objective moral example is significant over-reaching.

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@Thomas,

Galileo Galilei wrote:

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth."--Letters to Johannes Kepler

The pendulum of history swings yet again.
You can't convince those who refuse to look through the "telescope".

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@Frank Apisa,

No one is claiming an objective rule-based morality.
Morality is built from objective principles, else it is not morality.
The term for subjective sentiments regarding behavior on a societal level is "mores".

For example:
There is no rule that says "No object can float unsupported."
However there are principles which explain both floating and non-floating circumstances. That is the goal of "scientific" understanding. To find the principles.
It is not the goal of science to make a catalog of all the "floating" and "non-floating" circumstances. That would be sorting, that is not understanding.

There is no rule that says "We ought not kill each other."
However there are principles which explain both killing circumstances and non-killing circumstances. That is the goal of understanding morality. To find the principles.
It is not the goal of moral study to make a catalog of all the varied sentiments of individuals in various societies. That would be sorting, that is not understanding.

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

You can't convince those who refuse to look through the "telescope".

As you well know, right, Matt? Faced with the inanity that was your first submitted prescription, you made some feeble excuses and then fled. But you aren't much different than Frank A, or Thomas or JoefromChicago. It's really odd that y'all can sound so bright and yet you guys can let yourselves be duped by the non-existent proof of charlatan prescriptivists.

In fact, there's rarely, exceedingly so, any mention of proof from anywhere. There's just Matt, or Frank or Thomas or Joe or ... mumbling about how Mrs Bee, your fifth grade teacher told you, or other equally inane things.

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@Ice Demon,

Ice Demon wrote:

And my final thoughts on the discussion of moral absolute truths is that the burden of proof is on you, because you claim to believe that such truth exists.

Ah yes, the old "burden of proof is on you" dodge.

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@joefromchicago,

Nice attempt at a dodge, but fool someone else. Before I even joined this thread, you made the claim that absolute moral truths exists. The person who is making a claim always holds the initial burden of proof. Once that claim is made and the burden of proof is overcome, the burden of proof falls to any challengers of that argument, because what is a challenge to an argument but a claim to the contrary? You show me the proof and verify it with hard evidence and I'll decide if I want to agree with what your believe.
And don't think I haven't skimped on my burden to support my point. I have replied the points you made in our conversation with meaningful counter-points, didn't I?

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@Thomas,

No Thomas. The societies in Germany and Austria and France are very similar. There are not only deep cultural and social ties, there are also legal ties.

The ties between Germany and Switzerland matter. The ties between Germany and ancient Egypt don't.

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@MattDavis,

Matt,

In science there is a telescope. What human beings see in the telescope is objective and testable.

In moral philosophy there is no such telescope.

That's the difference between science and religion.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The societies in Germany and Austria and France are very similar.

Just from reading this sentence, I can predict that there's at least one country on this list that you haven't spent much time in.

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@Thomas,

This is comical.

You state that "people have been universally wrong in the past". Then you argue that the "fact" that every human considers murder to be wrong is evidence of an objectively true moral statement.

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5272144)
No one is claiming an objective rule-based morality.

You are absolutely sure of that, are you???

Quote:

Morality is built from objective principles, else it is not morality.

C'mon. are you actually going to define "morality" in such a way that your view of what "morality" means has to be correct?

Quote:

The term for subjective sentiments regarding behavior on a societal level is "mores".

Fine.

If there is an "objective absolute morality", Matt...just give an example of it.

Just name one.

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@Frank Apisa,

Suffering is a negative value. Eudaimonia is a positive value.
Value as defined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28ethics%29

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A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

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