A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

Your reading of history is myopic and flawed. Mayan civilization was already in a downward spiral of decline before Europeans arrived. One of the many failures they experienced was exceeding the carrying capacity of their surrounding natural resources, another is the strict hierarchic dominance structure which was in place relating to the interaction of leaders to populace (human sacrifice among the most harmful).
What evidence do you have of Mayan cannibalism?

If we are playing the history fantasy game...
...here is an explanation of how a zombie apocalypse destroyed Mayan civilization: Invented history.

Why is it that the conquistadors were even able to unseat the already declining civilization anyway? How did so few "conquer" so many? Technology certainly played a role, technology which was the result of greater intra-cultural cooperation in Spain, and greater inter-cultural cooperation with other European cultures.

This however, is all besides the point because you have not established that morality even IS what a culture defines it as.
So why would it matter to your argument if any culture "conquers" any other culture?

Are you suggesting that you and the majority of civilization thinks it is wrong because the militarily dominant culture thinks it is wrong? Why cant you see it wrong on your own? Are you emphatically sterile? If you are I still care about you and would not like to see harm done to you.

Are you arguing that it was morally correct by absolute morality for the Europeans to conquer the Mayans (and the other Native Americans)?

The Europeans at the time thought so.

Of course their actions were not in alignment with absolute moral principles...
Would you please define your position regarding relative morality?
Are you defending moral relativism or not?

No, you really are having trouble understanding this aren't you.

If you are American, your culture conquered its land from the previous owners who we largely wiped out. Their cultures once encompassed large territories and they numbered in the tens of millions and controlled vast resources.

They have been reduced to living with the problems of poverty on small reservations their once powerful cultures have been reduced to a historical footnote.

This is the familiar story of what happens when two cultures with unbalanced military strength meet. How do we judge which culture was morally right? I will give you a hint, lots of Native Americans are now Christians.

I am not defending your straw man moral relativism.

Then what is your position?

I think of you all as hyenas neighing or yowling. I agree many of you are brilliant, but that is within your philosophic world.

I think you are trying to bore the rest of us to death.

We all share the same world Osso.
Sorry for any boredom I may have caused.

I forgive you.

That may be how you judge which culture was morally right but from my flawed understanding that is how I see who was the most sociopathicaly advanced and I hope to see things change in the future but I have low expectations.

I have been very clear.

1. The most important morality, the one that informs my behavior and your, is our personal beliefs of what is right or wrong. My personal sense of right and wrong isn't relative. I believe that abuse of woman is wrong the same as you do and will have the same reaction.

This was the biggest flaw in your strawman, and the biggest ad-hominem attack from you, that people who don't believe in a universal morality can't be moral.

2. Since humans are social animals, people share beliefs with the people with whom they share a culture. Moral beliefs are without question a sociological phenomenon. I haven't heard you agree or disagree with this idea, but it seems obvious to me with any observation.

3. You have postulated "universal morality" that "transcends society". But you believe that some societies hold moral beliefs and other societies don't have moral beliefs. You suggest that someone can judge between the moral beliefs in society to decide what is correct or incorrect. But my main objection to this is that there is no objective way to measure the correctness of a moral belief, or any way to get around the fact that any judge that is part a society is going to judge in line with the moral beliefs they hold.

Here is the place you really cross the line. If you can be certain that your beliefs about morality happen to be correct (meaning that most human throughout history are incorrect), then #3 is important.

But if you accept the fact that you have no way to tell whether #3 exists, and even if it does exist you have no objective way of measuring your own beliefs against it, you are using #1 as much as I am. The fact that #3 is as inaccessible to you as it is to me (in spite of the fact I don't think #3) exists means that whatever the truth it doesn't matter.

You have your own moral beliefs and you will live by them. This makes you no different (or superior) to me or any other human being as far as a moral code goes.

I have written to you Max, on at least 3 separate occasions, that we are discussing moral philosophy.
On 3 separate occasions I have informed you that this is not a discussion of who is a more virtuous person.
The only one who has ever brought personal sentiment into the discussion is you.

So if I am now reading you correctly are saying that...
Morality is your personal sentiment (#1).
Morality is a sociological phenomena (#2).

#1 Is a philosophy of moral nihilism.
#2 Is a philosophy of moral relativism.

You again deny the reality of anything else.

Moral nihilism is vacuous.
Moral relativism is self-contradictory.

You deny #3 by again defining morality as that which the society holds true. You simply reassert #2.

This is not a statement about the relative virtue of either of us as persons Max. This is a discussion of moral philosophy.

No, you are not reading correct. Morality is "personal sentiment".

Your morality is your personal belief about what is right or wrong.

Do you think you understand what #3 (the proposed universal morality is)? If not, then you are acting according to your personal belief of what #3 is.

I am just pointing out that you and I are the same in any practical sense. Both of us behave based on a personal belief about what is right and wrong.

No, I cannot. I think your characterization of my "debating style" is self-serving...and incorrect.



How can you possibly know that sentient beings are the only objects capable of requiring meaning??? Maybe the existence of a stone "requires meaning."

What is the significance of "requiring meaning?"

And who says that “meaning” is important or necessary.

There is no reason to suppose the universe cannot exist without meaning.

The only reason your line of reasoning, igm, is so that you can arrive where you want to arrive…that there are moral absolutes.




I have absolutely no idea of whether or not “meaning” is of any use whatever in the universe—and there is no reason for me to suspect that “meaning” in the universe is useful to the question of whether or not there are moral absolutes. So the question does not even arise for me. You are presenting it only because it is needed to bolster your claim that there are moral absolutes…and you are unreasonably pretending this is an example of one.




I have been here much, much longer than you…and will probably last longer than you. If some people prefer not to debate or discuss with me, that is their privilege. You apparently do not want to discuss nor debate with me…and are continuing to do so relentlessly. So maybe there is hope for me.

In any case, I still have not had a reasonable example of a moral absolute…and you assigning a subjective opinion that “meaning” is necessary…and without sentient beings “meaning” cannot be present…and then threading that through a needle to imply that “therefore killing is a moral absolute”…is not philosophy or logic in action. It is, quite frankly, an example of an absurdity.

I suspect there are people here who disagree with me in general, but who can see the lack of rigor and logic in your argument. I honestly do not understand why they are not sharing thoughts about it, but perhaps it is for the reasons you suggested.

Is this what you are trying to say?
Regarding 'ethics' and 'morals' this is the layperson's usage of the terms:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals

if by "layperson's usage" you mean "dictionary definition" then sure, that says it pretty well.

The point is that whether or not there is an "official universal definition of what is right and wrong" or not doesn't matter since you can't be sure of what this universal idea of right or wrong is (since you have no way to test it.

You belief about what is right and wrong is all you have to go by. My belief in what is right and wrong is all I have to go by. We are the same, the fact that I don't belief that this official universal definition of right and wrong exists doesn't change anything.

For a scientific view, the aggregate of a cultures morals are called 'mores'.

Moral philosophy is the study of what is or is not "truly" (right or wrong),(good or bad),etc.
The goal is to derive basic principles or values.
[As a moral realist, my position is that there is such a thing as "truth" in moral philosophy.]
The findings of moral philosophy are thus 'morality', or 'moral principles'.

Ethical philosophy is the study of how to best apply morality(moral principles).
You might view this as deriving "rules" for how to best conduct behavior under various circumstances.
[As a ethical pragmatist, my position is that one must develop heuristics (short cut rules) for most common situations, but ....
one should always be able to reflect on dilemmas (difficult or high stakes situations) and may have to break these situations down to first principles.]

I think that perhaps, when discussing morality, you are assuming that morality must be rule-based.
That is not my position (ethically or morally).

So in approximate terms:
Moral philosophy is the "what?".
Ethical philosophy is the "how?".

No Matt.

The point is that basic principles (the goal of Moral philosophy) are necessarily subjective. The reason they are subjective is because they are defined, not discovered. What you think are basic principles has to do with who you are and the culture you live in with possible a few very vague principles common to the species.

As I pointed out, the basic principles have to be accepted by faith. But once you have decided on a small set of principles, you can derive ethics from there using logic.

The differences we see between cultures results from differences in the basic, non-provable subjective values the moral understanding is built from.