A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

@maxdancona,

In these terms I think what you are trying to say is this:
That a person's 'morals' will be similar to their cultural 'mores'. You also feel as though society is responsible for the 'mores'. Societies should be judged internally by the 'mores' of the populace.
I am unclear by what standard you think that the behaviors of societies toward other societies should be judged. It seems as though, in our conversations you judge them by personal "morals".
You deny that 'morals', 'mores', and inter-societal values have any transcending properties. You deny that something can be true at all levels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I disagree.
I think for instance that aggressive violence is almost certainly disfunctional as a moral, as a more, and at the inter-societal level. I believe that aggressive violence is an absolute moral wrong (a transcendent principle).
Transcendent meaning that it is independent of the person/culture/or inter-cultural levels.
It is wrong on all levels.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

I'm calling it a night Max.
Please let me know if you agree to the terms/definitions listed so that we can avoid further confusions between us.
I am sorry if anything I have said recently was offensive to you.
I understand that moral philosophy can be a touchy subject.

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@MattDavis,

You see the idea that a moderate level of violence can't be of any good must be one of those sad sub conscious appendixes and left overs from our Christian Edeanly Western tradition that the modern psychology sells so cheaply nowadays...I won't bother to counter this guy any longer as he lacks an entire structure of understanding for any worthwhile meaningful enlightenment and I am honestly of the opinion that his level of reasoning sounds more borrowed from a pseudo modern Sex and the City Urban cliche...I don't care if I come across as arrogant and condescending, I am not impressed for whatever level of formal education and self imagery these kind of people think to have...I just don't have at this point in my life any patience left for this kind of drag...

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

I think for instance that aggressive violence is almost certainly disfunctional as a moral, as a more, and at the inter-societal level. I believe that aggressive violence is an absolute moral wrong (a transcendent principle).
Transcendent meaning that it is independent of the person/culture/or inter-cultural levels.
It is wrong on all levels.

That is your opinion. You can accept this on faith if you want. There is no evidence that this is true.

You could construct a couple of basic principles, such the idea that all human life has value, which you would accept on faith. Then you could support your opinion about aggressive violence based on these principles.

But at the core, your opinion about aggressive violence is based on something that can't be proven.

And many humans disagree with you. There are plenty of examples from the beginning of history where people feel the lives of their tribe have value, but the lives of other humans outside their tribe don't. War is part of human nature and is clearly a product of evolution with survival value.

There is no objective judge that can decide whether you are right or people who disagree with you are right. Nor is there an objective experiment that you can run that will yield any evidence.

You just have to accept it on faith. But if it helps, I agree with you that aggressive violence is wrong, I just reject the faith path.

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@maxdancona,

Max, this was the essence of my last post to you... are going to reply or not? If not a summary of your reasons would be helpful. Also, I have an additional point to make, please read from where I have highlighted in blue below.

The principle that life should not be taken by another and this should never be violated if the scenario was that: only two sentient beings exist and they could repopulate the universe if one did not kill the other, is a definition of a ‘moral absolute’ in this simple scenario.
The reason is that life is fundamental and to extinguish life would be remove the fundamental reason for the universe. Without life the universe is meaningless as there is no life to give it meaning and living beings are the only ones interested in ‘meaning’; if this is true then it remains ‘objectively’ true for however many sentient beings there are. Therefore it is ‘always’ a moral absolute, regardless of ‘subjective’: religions, philosophies or sciences.

Also in addition to the above:

My evidence is that when soldiers arrive back from active service and have seen combat, many are 'damaged mentally' by the experience of 'kill or be killed' but they have been given 'permission' by their society to kill and they are looked upon by many as 'heroes'. So what is the explanation of their damaged minds...?

...They have gone against the 'moral absolute' of do not kill.

Isn't this the most likely reason?

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@igm,

I don't think that works IGM.

You are implying that our soldiers coming back from fighting the Taliban in Afganistan with PTSD have that disorder because they have broken an absolute moral law? And what about firefighters with the disorder for acting bravely, how did they break an absolute moral law.

PTSD is a casualty of war. Not everyone who kills gets it, and not everyone who gets it has killed.

Our society considers war (when justified) to be a moral act. We have deemed it OK when the benefits of killing people outweigh the cost. I happen to agree with that.

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@maxdancona,

Fair enough... I'm still running with my thought process... I'll just read other's comments... at least for a while.

Heuristics are always useful... is there such a thing as a 'moral absolute' I don't know and it probably depends on how you define it.

Before someone accuses me of not sticking to my guns... I ask questions just to hear the replies... more often than not Wink

It means that sometimes you'll find me arguing from one side and then the other... I find it useful.

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One ought to ask when violence is legitimate and why since so much of it occurs on all biological levels...it certainly doesn't seam like a failed strategy at all, quite on the contrary...dismissing it with some linear arguments wont change the facts nor will it further the understanding on why it happens and what is its usefulness...a more refined discussion on the matter would be to wonder about proportionality and its importance on the definition of adequate moral behavior.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

The minimalist definition of violence can be resumed to that natural expansive pattern of behavior (action) that can be extended from an agent to the others...in that minimal sense being alive by definition is aggressive, as thinking and exposing what you think is a natural pattern of aggressive behavior...thus defining a notion of Universal good or wrong should not opposite violence versus pacifism but rather ask about the proportionality in the reaction taken to any other action.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...as thinking and exposing what you think is a natural pattern of aggressive behavior...

Mmmm... no... unless you mean sometimes.

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@igm,

I think earlier in this thread I argued that there couldn't be such a thing! Thing meaning 'moral absolute'. I don't think anyone replied.

Here it is:

igm wrote:

igm wrote:

The test for a 'moral absolute' could well be whether an 'exception' can be found. My guess is that mostly an 'exception' can be found.

There may be uncountable variations for every possible action therefore it is unlikely one could know 'for certain' that there wasn't an 'exception' for every potential candidate put forward as a 'moral absolute'.

Conclusion: one may never be able to know if a proposed 'moral absolute' is in fact a 'moral absolute'.

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@igm,

...amended above post.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

And many humans disagree with you. There are plenty of examples from the beginning of history where people feel the lives of their tribe have value, but the lives of other humans outside their tribe don't.

Being the fifth apes that we are I can see this to be true, if I am not mistaken other apes think this way today but it seems that many of us have evolved and became more emotionally intelligent and have a larger ethical radius that includes many more people into our tribe. We found that it is more profitable to work with the people on the other side of the hill than to use up our resources fighting them

Quote:

War is part of human nature and is clearly a product of evolution with survival value.

I would like to think that one day we might see the life's and treasure that we invest into wars and find a way to divert that into the well being of all societies around the world rather than to tear them apart.

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@igm,

Quote:

I think earlier in this thread I argued that there couldn't be such a thing! Thing meaning 'moral absolute'. I don't think anyone replied.

Well morality can be very complex and we can find many dilemmas to talk about but I personally think that they are distraction and that morality should be studied at very simple levels and expanded outward using logical consistencies.

As for your statement "'moral absolute" Do you think it could ever be seen by a society to be "absolutely" morally correct to burn all of their offspring for fun?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

Do you think it could ever be seen by a society to be "absolutely" morally correct to burn all of their offspring for fun?

If everyone was 'insane' and they decided to define it in that way Laughing

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@igm,

Quote:

If everyone was 'insane' and they decided to define it in that way Laughing

At least there would be none of them left to tell about it

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@igm,

igm wrote:

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...as thinking and exposing what you think is a natural pattern of aggressive behavior...

Mmmm... no... unless you mean sometimes.

Lets see if I can explain it better...if a pattern of behavior from an agent is informative towards another then that pattern can be said to be "aggressive"...it disrupts the resting state of the other pattern or at least attempts to...if the pattern is not informative and it is trivial then its not aggressive but can be said to be irrelevant ! Laughing

...Exposing your thoughts in the sense that they are distinct from others thoughts and thus are informative and not trivial it is indeed an act of aggression, whether such acts are necessarily bad only because they disturb a resting state is the question up for debate, which of course on this light becomes as hard to get as an the egg of Colombo's...

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@reasoning logic,

Quote:

We found that it is more profitable to work with the people on the other side of the hill than to use up our resources fighting them

Are you kidding?

We spend more then $600 billion on a military which is currently involved in a shooting war as well as several active hostile standoffs. We are killing people daily. The military is by far the biggest part of our discretionary budget, and I am not even counting the human cost. This all has enjoys broad support from American society.

We recently toppled the governments of the Taliban and Saddam through direct military force, each time causing great social upheaval and each time acting with the intent of forcing social changes (e.g. more rights for women).

We are currently giving military support to the Syrian rebels.

There is no indication that we have learned anything about working with "people from the other side of the hill".

We get along just fine with people who accept our values, but that has always been the case. Of course, having dominant military strength makes it easier to find people who accept our values.

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@maxdancona,

Maxdancona: " 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 [and what] you are and the culture you live in with possible a few very vague principles common to the species.
...
The differences we see between cultures results from differences in the basic, non-provable subjective values the moral understanding is built from."

Let me tell you, Max, that this seems to me to be among the very best posts I've read on A2K (pardon my enthusiasm and my edits).

I agree that the subjective foundations, the fundamental presuppositions of our culture(s), the axioms of our epistemological constitutions reflect, as you say, who--and I added what--we are, AS HUMAN BEINGS. That sets the range of possibile principles we can generate, as reflected in the range of perceptual, conceptual and behavioral variations we encounter cross-culturally.

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@JLNobody,

It just so happens patterns of behavior are not that far apart from each other even from the most remote culture you can find for an example...it doesn't ad up ! When there are differences most of them are rather dependent on geographical economical functional and actual constrains and as soon you use the very same constrains in another environment you immediately start getting the same reactions...

1 Reply

A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

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