A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It's hilarious that you admit that you consider this is about winning and losing.

It's not about winning and losing, but when you bestow the victor's laurels on me, who am I to refuse?

Setanta wrote:

I don't agree with your point of view, and i am contemptuous of your rhetorical method. If that's winning, you're welcome to it.

My, my -- I really did wound your sensitive nature. What else can explain all those thumbed down posts?

1 Reply

@Enzo,

Enzo wrote:

What about rape is an absolute wrong? Can you think of any instance where rape is justifiable?
I personally prefer the complex simplicity of ethical maxims over moral absolutes.

This seems ridiculous. Can you think of a situation that would require rape as self defense. If your life is threatened, the majority of folks will agree you have the right to defend yourself. If you are in a position to commit a violent act of rape, danger to yourself is no longer a problem.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Moral Absolutists always believe that their moral values are Universal. And conveniently, the Universal Moral values they believe in almost always work fine in the context of the society they are living in (except in rare cases like Ted Kaczynski).

As I said: I may well be wrong about the truth of our particular opinion on what the true absolute morality is --- just as almost everyone was once wrong in their opinion on the Earth-Sun configuration. Even if everyone today adheres to an absolutely wrong theory about ethics, there may still b an absolutely right theory of ethics out there for us to discover.

About the convenient congruence with social norms you bring up: Earlier in this thread, I told you that our society is wrong in believing that infanticide wrongs the children killed by it. Right or wrong, this opinion is pretty uncommon in our culture. I'm sure I'd catch a lot of flak if I posted it in one of A2K's family threads. And since I brought up Bentham earlier: His 1785 pledge to decriminalize gay sex was outrageous to his contemporaries! Buggery being a hanging crime, it must have seemed as absurd to them as the legalization of murder would seem to us today.

Come to think of it, I believe that far-out proclamations like Bentham's are a plausible answer to your question: "is it testable"? Suppose we could communicate with the English legislators who wrote these 18th-century anti-buggery laws. Suppose we could show them the actual effects of legal buggery --- the happy gay families, the fabric of English society not falling apart, etc. If you will, think of us as the Spirit of Christmas, and the legislators as Ebnezer Scrooge. Wouldn't they accept that Bentham was right, and they were wrong, on the (absolute) morality of gay sex? I think it quite likely that they would.

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@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

Of them I ask: Name one…and tell us how it became a moral absolute?

I already did. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." (Kant 1785, as quoted by Wikipedia.) It is a moral absolute by straightforward deduction from an uncontroversial feature of morality. At a minimum, a moral principle is a principle that its adherents want everyone to follow. Therefore, any principle incapable of being followed by everyone cannot be moral.

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@joefromchicago,

I don't get into questions of thread etiquette often, but I will say that whenever I think Setanta has changed into troll mode, I just ignore him like a troll. I like the consequences of this approach, and therefore recommend it to others.

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Whose posts got thumbed down? Talk about a sensitive nature . . .

I'm gratified to think that Joe is pleased to consider himself a winner, though.

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@Thomas,

Joe inserts himself into a conversation, and then relentlessly attempts to sustain an argument, largely by alleging that i have said what i did not in fact say. You drop into a discussion of personalities--how very quixotic of you. You may consider this "trollish" behavior on my part, even though i didn't pick a fight with him. In that case, of course, you'll just ignore this post. I'll bet you read it, though.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

Quote:
Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5265978)
Frank Apisa wrote:
Of them I ask: Name one…and tell us how it became a moral absolute?

I already did. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." (Kant 1785, as quoted by Wikipedia.) It is a moral absolute by straightforward deduction from an uncontroversial feature of morality. At a minimum, a moral principle is a principle that its adherents want everyone to follow. Therefore, any principle incapable of being followed by everyone cannot be moral.

Actually, I asked two things: Name one…and tell us how it became a moral absolute?

You did “tell” me where this one came from (Kant)…but it sounds more like a suggestion than a moral absolute.

What am I missing here, Thomas?

Why would you suggest this to be a moral absolute?

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Re-read the quote that you cited. Maybe you'll notice my answer to the second part. Here, I'll even highlight the part for you.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Thomas wrote:
I already did. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." (Kant 1785, as quoted by Wikipedia.) It is a moral absolute by straightforward deduction from an uncontroversial feature of morality. At a minimum, a moral principle is a principle that its adherents want everyone to follow. Therefore, any principle incapable of being followed by everyone cannot be moral.

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@Thomas,

Good advice.

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@maxdancona,

MaxDanCona wrote:

1. The "Moral Relativism", as we are discussig here would acctually correspond to Kohlberg's stage five-- "social contract", you accept the moral values of the society that you are a part of for the purpose of a good life in your society, recognizing that other societies have different values.

I appreciate you noting the distinction, regarding social contract (stage 5) and social mores (stage 3). This is a completely valid distinction on the level of the individual, that is how the individual interacts while within his/her societal bounds. The distinction however is a matter of levels. On the level of the society (stage 5), no overarching guide exists in how to interact with other societies. Stage 5 leaves societies behaving as if those societies are stage 3 individuals. Transcending stage 5 (social contract) is necessarily for effective intercultural/intersocietal relations.
The dangers of avoiding this realization I think should be pretty obvious in terms of military conflict, ideological fanaticism, unfair trade agreements, etc.

MaxDanCona wrote:

2. Kohlberg's work is interesting, but it is not objectively testable, nor is it considered science. Kohlberg's ideas have been criticized by peers, but since they aren't objectively testable they remain untested.

I guess I am a little unsure of the definition of science under which you are operating. It sounds a little like you have the Cartesian sense of the term. I think that most social scientists and even at this point most natural scientists operate under the paradigmatic definition of science.

"Kuhn suggests that certain scientific works, such as Newton's Principia or John Dalton's New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), provide an open-ended resource: a framework of concepts, results, and procedures within which subsequent work is structured. Normal science proceeds within such a framework or paradigm. A paradigm does not impose a rigid or mechanical approach, but can be taken more or less creatively and flexibly."--Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

Of course Kohlberg's paradigm has been criticized, that is how peer-review works, that's the strength of science. Do you have some specific evidence that you feel invalidates this paradigm, or perhaps another peer-reviewed study which does so?

MaxDanCona wrote:

4. Kohlberg contraducts the argument that you and Joe have been making. He considered each of these stages as perfectly fine bases for moral systems. He claims that there are societies that function (and are perfectly moral) where no one operates above stage 3.

I must confess I haven't read all of Joe's arguments.
My impression was not that we were asking if something is "perfectly fine". I have been operating under the premise of this:

Moral absolutism is the belief that there is a universal right and wrong that is not dependent on individual beliefs or culture. --Maxdancona (in OP)

Moral absolutism can be evidenced in this sense, as I have been attempting to outline.
Not all human beings are capable of developing to any of Kohlberg's stages. I don't expect the average 6 year old to have a social contract orientation, I don't expect the average 12 year old to have universal ethical principles. I do expect an emotionally healthy and intellectually savvy, non-sociopathic adult (30-ish) to have reached a stage of universal ethical principles.

MaxDanCona wrote:

5. Your use of the term "enlightened" to describe your personal point of view, as if defining a term bolsters your argument, is very clever.

Sorry if you felt that was a sneaky way of inserting biased language. Enlightenment is a term popularized in describing much of the philosophic thought that emerged as a result of the Renaissance (of Europe).

Just to quickly address someone's criticism of theology as a "science", this is not too terribly valid a criticism, in that theology has served as a very strong supporting structure to philosophers of all stripes. You can even see the evidence of this enlightenment thinking within modern orthodox Christian apologetics (a trend that started with Thomas Aquinas).
I happen to be an atheist, but I recognize that dismissal of theology as a legitimate study is simply naive and completely underestimates the influence such study has on knowledge in general and societies at large.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You may consider this "trollish" behavior on my part,

Or I may not --- notice that I said "when I think that . . . ". I did not express an opinion on this particular exchange, and did not claim that what I think is always right. Nor does it have to be. The tactic of withdrawing and ignoring works, whether my judgement about trolling is correct or not.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Your judgment was seriously skewed in suggesting this "tactic" to Joe at a time when he was the troll. But now you've sucked up to your buddy Joe, so all is well.

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@Setanta,

I wish you guys would reserve the epithet "troll" for the really extreme cases. I don't think Thomas is a troll because of his objectivism, nor Joe because of his Jesuitic absolutism, not even Set when he throws around insulting labels. Jerks, sometimes, but never trolls.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

4. Kohlberg contraducts the argument that you and Joe have been making. He considered each of these stages as perfectly fine bases for moral systems. He claims that there are societies that function (and are perfectly moral) where no one operates above stage 3.

I don't think Kohlberg had anything to say about moral systems at all. He was a psychologist, not a philosopher.

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@JLNobody,

Jesus wept, this is so typical. I didn't "throw around insulting labels." It was Thomas who decided to describe me as a troll. I am so ******* sick and tired of the self-righteous clowns around here who sit in judgment of others, while decrying behavior of which they are themselves guilty.

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

Transcending stage 5 (social contract) is necessarily for effective intercultural/intersocietal relations.
The dangers of avoiding this realization I think should be pretty obvious in terms of military conflict, ideological fanaticism, unfair trade agreements, et

Again you have that backwards.

It is Moral absolutism that often causes wars. If you believe that other cultures are inferior then you can justify invading them to stop whatever about their culture you think is immoral. Conversely the belief that other cultures can be different without being immoral makes you more likely to accept their right to exist.

The Spanish conquistadors were moral absolutists, they were confident they had the absoulte moral right to their brutal conquest of the Americas.

Later in the US, "Manifest Destiny" was the philosophy that we were moral and that others wern't moral, it justified and led to war and conquest (which ironically you probably now think is immoral).

And right absolute moral values like the treatment of women in Muslim culture is being used to justify our continued war in Afghanistan and drone war elsewhere.

If you accept that people in different cultures are equally moral, in spite of the fact they have different beliefs, you will be less likely to go to war against them.

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@joefromchicago,

Joe wrote:

I don't think Kohlberg had anything to say about moral systems at all. He was a psychologist, not a philosopher.

I tend in some sense to agree with you Joe.

Kohlberg was introduced because Max seems to take the social level view of reality as axiomatic. I was attempting to show how from this level of viewing reality, someone might learn enough to transcend cultural relativism and/or social mores and think in terms of universal ethical principles.

In general however I think that drawing lines in the sand about where specific domains of reasoning apply is often over used. There is plenty of overlap between many domains. Philosophy overlaps with everything from mathematics, to psychology, to even theology.

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@maxdancona,

Your issue is not so much the absolutism but what kinds of actions it leads to.
There is a viewpoint that morality is not relative, in the sense it is on a basis of realism. BUT that that does not prevent different forms and interpretations of well-being from existing (this is what the whole concept of a “moral landscape” with different peaks and troughs is about). So one society might emphasise equality over liberty, and another might emphasise liberty over equality, but they might both be “high” on the moral landscape.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5266469)
Re-read the quote that you cited. Maybe you'll notice my answer to the second part. Here, I'll even highlight the part for you.
Frank Apisa wrote:
Thomas wrote:
I already did. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction." (Kant 1785, as quoted by Wikipedia.) It is a moral absolute by straightforward deduction from an uncontroversial feature of morality. At a minimum, a moral principle is a principle that its adherents want everyone to follow. Therefore, any principle incapable of being followed by everyone cannot be moral.

So Thomas, you are saying that because Kant claims that one can come to the conclusion that there is a moral absolute by straightforward deduction of what he considers an uncontroversial feature of morality…then we must accept that moral absolutes exist?

Seems to be a bit of circular reasoning; begging the question; and appeal to authority involved there.

Any chance YOU actually have an example of a moral absolute…which, of course, is what I actually asked for?

1 Reply

A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

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