A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Trying to maximize happiness and reduce suffering is as good a standard as any, but it is still just an arbitrary standard. There is no reason to believe that maximizing happiness is a better standard than any other.

What is your reason to believe that looking through a telescope is a better standard of establishing truth in astronomy than, say, divine revelation to a Pope?

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@Thomas,

It is testable and reproducible?

Are you really arguing that science isn't more reliable than religion?

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@Thomas,

Let me make my point clear Thomas.

Utilitarianism is based on a dictum. There is no evidence or logic to say that we "should work to increase happiness and decrease suffering".

We have to accept it as true because we are told it is true. This is no different than any divine revelation.

So yes, I am claiming that science is fundamentally different than divine revelation. This is why I believe that the world is more than 10,000 years old.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Morality is an understanding of what is right or wrong.

This brings up epistemological questions such as, how do we know what is right or wrong.

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@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

Quote:
Morality is an understanding of what is right or wrong.

This brings up epistemological questions such as, how do we know what is right or wrong.

I didn't use the word "know", I used the word "understand". These are two very different words.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

It is testable and reproducible?

Very well. Putatively-ethical principles are testable against criteria that follow almost immediately from the concept of ethics itself. At a minimum, an ethical principle is one that its adherents want everybody to follow. Therefore, we can test putatively-ethical principles by asking questions such as: Is it logically possible for everyone to follow this principle? Is it practically possible for everyone to follow it? Could anyone want everyone to follow it? (Anyone, that is, who possesses the minimum of empathy and goodwill that's necessary for caring about ethics in the first place.)

To be sure, it's not a hard-and-fast test and still allows for a lot of pluralism. But it is hard and fast enough to rule out certain acts as unethical. For example we know that cutting in front of people in line is unethical, other things being equal, because it's logically impossible that all of us should cut in line of everybody else. By contrast, seeking the greatest good of the greatest number is consistent with the concept of ethics: If everybody did it, that would entail no logical inconsistency, be practically possible, and be possible to wish for. Ethical principles, then, are testable. Maybe they're not testable with quite the same rigor as propositions in physics, but certainly with the same rigor as propositions in other positive sciences such as sociology, history, or medicine.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Utilitarianism is based on a dictum. There is no evidence or logic to say that we "should work to increase happiness and decrease suffering".

Same as with factual propositions. Religious fundamentalists believe in young-Earth creationism because their holy book peddles it. Meanwhile, enlightened folks believe in evolution because geological, genetic, and morphological observations all point to it independently. What evidence or logic can you offer that will change anyone's mind about this disagreement? What evidence would persuade Pat Robertson to ignore the Bible and follow the evidence? What evidence would persuade Richard Dawkins to ignore the evidence and follow the Bible?

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@maxdancona,

What do you mean by "understand," then, if one of its definitions is, basically, "to know?"

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@Thomas,

Exactly Thomas. I don't want to follow any Holy book; not the Bible, not Bentham's Principals of Morals and Legislation. They are all writings, based on unsupportable presuppositions, that some people see as absolute truth.

I have my own truth, which includes my own ideas of right and wrong. The difference is that I don't pretend that my truth is based on anything then the society I live in and my individual beliefs. This doesn't prevent me from using my sense of morality in the same way that anyone uses a sense of morality.

It is the idea that there is a Universal Morality that humans have an obligation to follow (outside of their choice to live in a particular society) that I object to.

I don't see any difference between Utilitarianism and any other arbitrary system. It works fine for you (I assume) but there is no evidence of a universal truth to the idea that humans should be happy.

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@InfraBlue,

I must mean one of the other definitions then. You can have an understanding that isn't an absolute truth.

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@Thomas,

It follows because the cosmos exists and operates (at least seemingly) based on a set of immutable laws. The same cannot be said for what is called morality. Your analogy is false. I agree with the epistemological idea you're expressing, but if we cannot know what ultimate, absolute morality is, it is functionally non-existent. We are still left with the unanswered question of authority--whence does absolute morality derive? Saying "i like utilitarianism" is not an answer to that question.

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@maxdancona,

I agree with most of what you wrote there, Max...although I do want to mention one thing you skirted.

Very often my personal sense of morality corresponds nicely with the "morality" contained in "holy" books...or books of philosophy.

There is a link...because the people who wrote those books felt the same pressures and experienced similar experiences to what I am (and have.)

I have a "sense" that, in most cases, it is wrong to steal or to kill...for instance. I have managed to incorporate that "sense" of things into my personal morality.

Just want to acknowledge that.

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@Frank Apisa,

Sure Frank. I am not saying that religion is any different than any other basis for a moral system.

If you compare any set of moral systems you will find commonalities and you will find differences.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Moral absolutism is the belief that there is a universal right and wrong that is not dependent on individual beliefs or culture. What would you do if you gained new insight into the universal morality and discovered that your personal beliefs were wrong?

A rule that was "good in itself", without dependency upon relation or context, would belong to the unconditioned, anyway. Not a world of interdependent things (phenomena). Methodologically outputting and prescribing such a universal principle to one's self, in spite of this, is an exercise of freedom on the part of the thinking human. A rational being having a twofold view of itself as member of both an intelligible "world" and an empirical one of consequences, mechanical determinism, needs, and desires. Unlike the animal confined to its immediate experiences and habits, the moral agent conceives escape from its chains by practicing the ideal in, or bringing the ideal to, the conditioned.

However.... Usually, if not always, these endeavors will fall short; because, after all, the relativistic conventions of the sensible realm can hardly be "wrong" on their own turf; that is, it is the principles of the intellectual realm that are "alien" here, brought to Earth by creatures that have burst through into the Reason club. Nevertheless, the latter principles serve as reference point for what ideal morality would be, they can alert the imperfect moral agent to when it has strayed too far from the shoreline and should swim back toward the Higher Standard which it fails to fully achieve as an entity on its phenomenal side.

Thus, what "changes" is the elevation from barbarism, however flawed, if "barbarism" may server as placeholder for whatever humans would otherwise be if left to purely atavistic tendencies devoid of reflective thought modifying social behavior

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Putatively-ethical principles are testable against criteria that follow almost immediately from the concept of ethics itself. At a minimum, an ethical principle is one that its adherents want everybody to follow. Therefore, we can test putatively-ethical principles by asking questions such as: Is it logically possible for everyone to follow this principle? Is it practically possible for everyone to follow it? Could anyone want everyone to follow it? (Anyone, that is, who possesses the minimum of empathy and goodwill that's necessary for caring about ethics in the first place.)

Well, that's Kant's Categorical Imperative, not Bentham's or Mill's utilitarianism. Nevertheless, utilitarianism's strongest point is that it's difficult to argue with its central tenet: i.e. that all people, ceteris paribus, prefer being happy to being unhappy. It remains debatable whether one can make the leap from describing that which is desired to prescribing that which is what is good, but I think more people, at least, would agree with utilitarianism's core belief than would agree that morality's central tenet is that Jesus wants us all to be nice to each other.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Well, that's Kant's Categorical Imperative, not Bentham's or Mill's utilitarianism.

But it doesn't exclude them, either. In my judgment at least, act utilitarianism --- "seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number" --- is a maxim of one's actions consistent with the Categorical Imperative. (If every human, compelled by some law of nature, sought the greatest happiness of the greatest number, this would entail no logical or factual contradictions, and would be possible for reasonable beings to wish for.) I know that you and I disagreed about this compatibility the last time we discussed it. But while I'm happy to reopen this discussion of ours, the only aspect of it that is relevant to this thread is that at least one of us was wrong last time. Do we agree on that?

joefromchicago wrote:

Nevertheless, utilitarianism's strongest point is that it's difficult to argue with its central tenet: i.e. that all people, ceteris paribus, prefer being happy to being unhappy.

And even for those people who do argue with this, there is a variant called "preference utilitarianism". It ignores the whole happiness thing and refers directly to preferences instead. For example, if all affected people prefer one state of affairs over another, then the former must be better. This version is even harder to argue with. And in my judgement, the difficulty of arguing with it derives from something that objectively inheres in the nature of ethics. It does not derive from some shallow point of debating-club tactics.

joefromchicago wrote:

It remains debatable whether one can make the leap from describing that which is desired to prescribing that which is what is good, but I think more people, at least, would agree with utilitarianism's core belief than would agree that morality's central tenet is that Jesus wants us all to be nice to each other.

You are making it very hard for me to pick a fight with you. I agree. Bummer.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I know that you and I disagreed about this compatibility the last time we discussed it. But while I'm happy to reopen this discussion of ours, the only aspect of it that is relevant to this thread is that at least one of us is wrong. Do we agree on that?

I don't think we've ever disagreed about the compatibility of the categorical imperative with utilitarianism (it's an interesting notion). Instead, we've disagreed about the compatibility of utilitarianism and Lockean natural rights. Coincidentally, I just finished reading Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and he falls into the same error.

Thomas wrote:

And in my judgement, the difficulty of arguing with it derives from something that objectively inheres in the nature of ethics. It does not derive from some shallow point of debating-club tactics.

Whether its happiness or preferences or something else, ultimately it's all an "is-ought" problem. I'm not sure if any utilitarian has adequately addressed that problem (most don't even recognize it as a problem), but then I'm also not convinced it's insoluble.

Thomas wrote:

You are making it very hard for me to pick a fight with you. I agree. Bummer.

It's only page three. Give it some time.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't think we've ever disagreed about the compatibility of the categorical imperative with utilitarianism (it's an interesting notion).

Thanks. I was thinking of our disagreement in this thread. Perhaps we misunderstood each other. On re-reading some of the thread, I get the impression that I was still fishing for a way to phrase the thought clearly, and that I did not distinguish adequately between Kant on the one hand and the Categorical Imperative on the other.

joefromchicago wrote:

Instead, we've disagreed about the compatibility of utilitarianism and Lockean natural rights. Coincidentally, I just finished reading Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and he falls into the same error.

We continue to disagree on that one. But I agree that's a harder case to make. I also agree that Notzik's case has holes in it. That's why I didn't quote him much even at the apex of my career as a libertarian.

joefromchicago wrote:

It's only page three. Give it some time.

It's never too late to put our similarities aside and reach a mutually-satisfactory disagreement.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

I suppose if I ever came to distinguish between my personnel moral beliefs and a "Universal morality", in the sense that I acknowledge it for such, that would necessarily entail a disposition to question my own frame of reference to the point of being in the process of gaining a new ground, as I don't ever recall people having any other kind of personnel moral schema that they don't believe it to be more or less Universal, after all humans are a social animal ...now what normally happens is that people sometimes opt for suspending moral behavior or ease the burden of its obligations with relativistic arguments (that eventually they might end up truly believing) when the unfolding judgement of a moral problem is not per se all to evident up front...and that's why people got so good in small cheating the system, as few other then sociopaths rather take the shark do it all approach...the loss of moral campus hardly is a matter of direct choice of a personal against Universal frame of reference, but rather a matter of a natural step by step self indulgent progressive predisposition to become unaware of moral alarms... a matter of "normalizing" immoral action through increasingly loosing touch with sound frames of reference...it works a bit like entropy, you just have to do nothing to let it work its way through. Laughing

PS...its no wonder the righteous argument common denominator of moral justification always sidesteps the more greyish more sober greater good principle as means of reference...

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Thanks. I was thinking of our disagreement in this thread. Perhaps we misunderstood each other. On re-reading some of the thread, I get the impression that I was still fishing for a way to phrase the thought clearly, and that I did not distinguish adequately between Kant on the one hand and the Categorical Imperative on the other.

Thanks for drawing my attention to that thread. After looking at that, I think I'd say now that a Kantian can't be a consequentialist, but a consequentialist could be a Kantian, at least to the extent of adopting the Categorical Imperative as a rule. For rule utilitarians, a rule is a rule, and it doesn't matter who came up with it as long as it proves more utile than any other rule. So I think a utilitarian could follow the Categorical Imperative, whereas a Kantian could never follow Bentham or Mill.

Thomas wrote:

We continue to disagree on that one. But I agree that's a harder case to make. I also agree that Notzik's case has holes in it. That's why I didn't quote him much even at the apex of my career as a libertarian.

Nozick's argument is particularly frustrating because Nozick is such a terrible writer, and he really didn't understand Rawls.

Thomas wrote:

It's never too late to put our similarities aside and reach a mutually-satisfactory disagreement.

I agree.

I mean, I disagree.

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A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

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