Does Objective Morality Exist?

[Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意]

Morals don't naturally exist, they are created. Morals are a tool, a means.

 

[stonehead]

Morals don't naturally exist, they are created. Morals are a tool, a means.

Math doesn't naturally exist, and had to be created by humans as a tool. That doesn't mean it's subjective though.

I think a lot of people are conflating cultural taboos with ethics. Eating certain animals is allowed in some countries and not allowed in others. There are a lot of moral theories that account for differences in culture though.

Theoretical moral relativism is at least internally consistent, but it doesn't really have any bite. By that I mean, it has no power to convince people to do anything. Lets say I ban the teaching of some philosopher I personally don't like. A moral relativist could object to this by saying "You shouldn't ban moral theories you don't like, it's all subjective, and their theories are just as valid as your own." But I could just say "Well, if it's all relative, then my subjective morality in which it's good to ban moral theories is just as valid as yours in which it isn't. So I'll uphold all of my prejudiced censorship."

In practice, moral relativism tends to fair a bit worse actually. Turns out, most people aren't content with there being no objective difference between themselves and a serial killer. So, in my experience at least, it usually ends up as an arbitrary double standard. Most small, traditional taboos like what you can eat, what jobs are good, and almost everything related to sex fall under the purview of moral relativism; while more foul offenses like sadistic torture, rape, and pedophilia all stay Wrong™ and can be criticized as obviously evil. (For the record, I do think all those things are obviously evil. Read this paragraph as a criticism of moral relativism in practice, not as a defense of torture or anything.)

In my view, causing suffering is wrong, and creating happiness is good. So, to go back to the cultural taboo example of eating dogs, in some hypothetical example where the dog dies naturally and isn't harmed at all, it's wrong in Western Countries, because of the mental anguish seeing a dog get eaten causes, and it's not wrong in other countries where no one would be bothered. Murder is wrong everywhere, because it causes harm no matter where you commit it. (outside of some crazy unrealistic hypothetical scenarios)

 

[Rikstah]

You might as well rename the question to whether you are religious or not.

If you have no religion, there can't possibly be an objective morality because any standard or set of rules are merely cultural preferences, no matter how scientific you try to make it.

 

[anagram.nagaram]

Coming back to review this topic and I see that the poll is perfectly divided.
Here are some additional thoughts on the issue that should be considered:

• "Just as our sense experience convinces us that reality exists, our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real"
• "A man who says it is morally okay to rape children is just as wrong as the person who says 2+2=5"
  • 
    View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU&t=2s
    
• Why should we expect moral values to be anything but objective when logic, laws of nature, and reality itself is objective. In the same way that we could line every person up in order of height, strength, intelligence, (and less testable) ambition, love, compassion, joy, peacefullness. I think we could line humanity up in order of adherence to moral law with some argument between people but agreement between the ends.
• Morality leads to prosperity and peace and long-term benefits (or to death but that's due to immoral circumstances).
• Being Moral is hard we would prefer to act immorally but we chose to act morally
• Just because people disagree does not mean it's not objective - people disagree on mass of moon and whether the kuiper belt exists, there is clearly an objective answer to this.
• If morality were a human construct we should be able to change it, but just as we cannot change logic or uncook an egg, a society cannot survive which values lies or adultery.

 

[Some_porcupine]

• If morality were a human construct we should be able to change it, but just as we cannot change logic or uncook an egg, a society cannot survive which values lies or adultery.

isnt it in-built?
were there tests that if morality is being born with, or learned?

 

[anagram.nagaram]

A baboon can achieve dominance by murduring the male babies and a lion can maintain dominance through combat and strength. But as humans we see that this is wrong and have learned that leading by election, serving, and humility (servent king trope) actually achieve even better outcomes over a longer timeline.
I'm not sure how much of this is discovered vs ingrained but I've heard babies understand the issue of fairness very early. It does not need to be taught.

 

[Mеченый Яков]

I'll shoot the morals in the face.

 

[mydadiscar]

I'll shoot the morals in the face.
View attachment 82952

UNION OF EGOISTS REPRESENT

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmdB8R9sm4Y


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6QMmrM4BmI

 

[Ashman]

UNION OF EGOISTS REPRESENT

I guess I could be considered an Egoist. I don't really care about soyciety I just want to do the stuff I think is correct

 

[Mеченый Яков]

UNION OF EGOISTS REPRESENT

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmdB8R9sm4Y


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6QMmrM4BmI

View attachment 82956
View attachment 82957

Now this is what i'm talking about.

Grab your iron, let's burn this world down my nigga

 

[stonehead]

Coming back to review this topic and I see that the poll is perfectly divided.
Here are some additional thoughts on the issue that should be considered:

• "Just as our sense experience convinces us that reality exists, our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real"

I'm not a moral relativist or anything, but a lot of these arguments have easy answers.

• Why should we expect moral values to be anything but objective when logic, laws of nature, and reality itself is objective. In the same way that we could line every person up in order of height, strength, intelligence, (and less testable) ambition, love, compassion, joy, peacefullness. I think we could line humanity up in order of adherence to moral law with some argument between people but agreement between the ends.

The Is-Ought gap is a well-known philosophical proof that logic and reason can never take you from a list of "is statements" (describing the way the world is) to "ought statements" (telling people what they should do). For example, consider the argument
1) Your shirt is on fire
2) There is a lake nearby
3) Jumping in the lake is the quickest way to put out the fire
therefore
4) You should jump in the lake.

Technically, this is not a sufficient argument. You need another premise "Your shirt shouldn't be on fire" for the argument to work. Most people share a lot of premises about what should be, (you shouldn't starve, you shouldn't hurt people, you shouldn't steal, etc) so arguments like this work just fine for normal conversation. But, if you encounter someone with a totally alien set of "should" assumptions, you'll never be able to convince them using only "is" statements.

• Morality leads to prosperity and peace and long-term benefits (or to death but that's due to immoral circumstances).

A lot of things that most people would consider immoral would hypothetically lead to prosperity and long-term benefits. Eugenics and forced-sterilization are a good example. It would lead to curing genetic disabilities, but we choose not to implement it, because it would be immoral now, in the short-term.

• Just because people disagree does not mean it's not objective - people disagree on mass of moon and whether the kuiper belt exists, there is clearly an objective answer to this.

This is true, but people also disagree on the best color and the best movie. Both of which most people would agree are subjective.

• If morality were a human construct we should be able to change it, but just as we cannot change logic or uncook an egg, a society cannot survive which values lies or adultery.

Morality has changed, pretty significantly over the years. Aristotle infamously defended slavery. The word "sinister" comes from a word meaning "left handed" because people used to think it was morally wrong to be left handed.

• "A man who says it is morally okay to rape children is just as wrong as the person who says 2+2=5"
  • 
    View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU&t=2s

Arithmetic is also founded on axioms, which we merely decree to be true. We assume zero is a number, and that equality is reflexive, and then show that under these assumptions, 2 + 2 is in fact equal to 4. This only works under the axioms we stipulate though, and those axioms have changed over time. The introduction of 0 is a perfect example.

Now, here's the part where I say child abuse is bad. In mathematics, we pick axioms that make our system line up with reality as closely as possible. So, we might take two boxes, stack them on top of eachother, and see that the new height is twice the height each individual box. Then we'll decide that whatever axioms we choose to base mathematics off of, if it doesn't come to the conclusion that 1 + 1 is 2, then it won't be very useful to us. You can do a similar thing with ethics, but "useful to us" is ahrder to demonstrate in that field. Most people agree on simple cases, earlier you mentioned that lying is wrong. But when really pushed about it, they often don't hold to those convictions. Is letting kids believe in Santa wrong? It's a lie. If someone's child dies in a horribly slow and painful way, would it be immoral for the emt to lie to the parents and say it was a quick death?

Proving that your moral system is objectively true is an uphill battle, and lots of very smart people are trying to prove that different systems are objectively correct.

 

[anagram.nagaram]

I'm not a moral relativist or anything, but a lot of these arguments have easy answers.

The Is-Ought gap is a well-known philosophical proof that logic and reason can never take you from a list of "is statements" (describing the way the world is) to "ought statements" (telling people what they should do). For example, consider the argument
1) Your shirt is on fire
2) There is a lake nearby
3) Jumping in the lake is the quickest way to put out the fire
therefore
4) You should jump in the lake.

Technically, this is not a sufficient argument. You need another premise "Your shirt shouldn't be on fire" for the argument to work. Most people share a lot of premises about what should be, (you shouldn't starve, you shouldn't hurt people, you shouldn't steal, etc) so arguments like this work just fine for normal conversation. But, if you encounter someone with a totally alien set of "should" assumptions, you'll never be able to convince them using only "is" statements.

A lot of things that most people would consider immoral would hypothetically lead to prosperity and long-term benefits. Eugenics and forced-sterilization are a good example. It would lead to curing genetic disabilities, but we choose not to implement it, because it would be immoral now, in the short-term.

This is true, but people also disagree on the best color and the best movie. Both of which most people would agree are subjective.

Morality has changed, pretty significantly over the years. Aristotle infamously defended slavery. The word "sinister" comes from a word meaning "left handed" because people used to think it was morally wrong to be left handed.

Arithmetic is also founded on axioms, which we merely decree to be true. We assume zero is a number, and that equality is reflexive, and then show that under these assumptions, 2 + 2 is in fact equal to 4. This only works under the axioms we stipulate though, and those axioms have changed over time. The introduction of 0 is a perfect example.

Now, here's the part where I say child abuse is bad. In mathematics, we pick axioms that make our system line up with reality as closely as possible. So, we might take two boxes, stack them on top of eachother, and see that the new height is twice the height each individual box. Then we'll decide that whatever axioms we choose to base mathematics off of, if it doesn't come to the conclusion that 1 + 1 is 2, then it won't be very useful to us. You can do a similar thing with ethics, but "useful to us" is ahrder to demonstrate in that field. Most people agree on simple cases, earlier you mentioned that lying is wrong. But when really pushed about it, they often don't hold to those convictions. Is letting kids believe in Santa wrong? It's a lie. If someone's child dies in a horribly slow and painful way, would it be immoral for the emt to lie to the parents and say it was a quick death?

Proving that your moral system is objectively true is an uphill battle, and lots of very smart people are trying to prove that different systems are objectively correct.

Well said. I don't think we can even say that movies are subjective though. People will prefer different movies but a porn-rape-flick (idk) is objectivly worse than lets say Star Wars: A New Hope if morality is objective, right? Or maybe a movie that conveys less information (due to damage, lack of focus, or low resolution) is lesser than a movie which does not do these things.

Maybe the battle line is really about existance of good and evil instead of morality.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Reification, Wikipedia

 

[7Pebbles]

I believe that there is objective morality, in the sense that there is always an optimal action to be taken. As finite beings, we don't know for certain what it is in every scenario, so we use approximations and rules of thumb to not get bogged down. A person who is functioning well, would take what they observe works (or doesn't) for them in their life, what causes them to survive and thrive (or not), and use that to adjust their morals, and by proxy, their future actions.

The problem with this system is when we get it backwards. When someone takes their rule set, decides that it IS correct in all situations, no matter what, and then use that to bash other people into submission. This is the most common problem with religions. Dogmatic adherence to systems that don't work. There should be a recognition of the scientific method in any religion. If God is endangered by reason, then he doesn't exist. We have nothing to fear of reason.

There are a couple ad-hoc assumptions in what I've described above. I've made the assertion that an objective reality exists, that being alive is better than being dead, and that knowing the truth (fully contextualized) is always the best for everyone involved in a situation.

I'm still exploring this all for myself; implementing it into my own life. Its a damn sight better than how I operated before, and it hasn't failed me yet.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Boy in fgountain argument , is it stupid?

 

[Vul Lord of the Spiders]

morality only exists when you want it to exist