PensivePenny wrote:Looking for some clarification on why people believe morality is objective. I just don't get it.

If there are moral facts, then those facts are either objective or subjective. Any subjective fact is a fact even if the subject is the only sentient being, but actions only have moral values if they are interacts between at least two sentient beings. So no moral fact is subjective. Accordingly, either all moral facts are objective or there are no moral facts.
Alternatively, subjective facts are specific to individuals, but morals are properties of societies. No individual is a society, so all moral facts are objective.

Is the question of morality an atheist issue? Maybe:
1) moral facts, if there are any, are facts about interactions between at least two sentient beings
2) if the world was created by a single god, at the time of creation there was at most one sentient being
3) therefore, if the world was created by a single god, at the time of creation there were no moral facts
4) therefore, if the world was created by a single god, at the time of creation that god was not good.

Thommo wrote:Fair enough, although for the record a hostile stance is no reference to "you" or a person, it means to reject, oppose, challenge or be unreceptive to.

No need to explain. I know what you meant. Frankly, I didn't understand enough of what you were saying to "reject, oppose, or challenge" you on. Nor was I looking to debate anything. Read the OP literally and understand I had no ulterior agenda as is the norm here. As for being "unreceptive"... I think a dozen or so exchanges between us would refute that idea. So... no... not hostile.

I was saying that I don't understand why you were saying things like:
"So tell me, how much does truth fucking matter...",
"You know best. Like I said... not really interested in equivocation." or
"So fuck One. It's a fine mental exercise and even somewhat relevant to this thread, but if it's introduction is only meant to confuse and obfuscate, then the person doing so is guilty of blurring the lines of truth for some personal temporary victory."
in response to what I said.

I'm genuinely not seeing the connection between lack of moral objectivity (which if its the case, has always been the case) and a lack of respect for truth in current US politics. They seem unconnected issues to me, albeit I'm not averse to the idea that moral objectivity is a fiction or that there is a lack of respect for truth in current US politics.

Maybe my language skills aren't up to the task to make it clear. Or maybe I'm just tired of trying to explain the minutiae of every single syllable I write to people who already know their own mind. You see, when I was younger I frequently conversed with people where we had a mutual desire to learn from each other. It was common for one of us to walk away having been persuaded by the other. People were receptive to new ideas. I'm not sure when all that changed, but it did... in my experience anyway. People have been so intransigent in their views for so long now, I don't even bother trying to persuade vigorously. Maybe I just don't care enough. As an existential nihilist, none of this means anything anyway.

So, I'll kindly ask you to not confuse my indifference as "hostility." I find it coercive and bullying... definitely not persuasive.

Why are you using quotation marks to denote a word that wasn't used*? You say you know what I was getting at, then argue with it and ultimately call it coercive and bullying.

How that fits with a mutual desire to learn, I'm just not getting. Like I said - and it could completely be a failing on my part, I'm prone to them - I don't see the path you took to get from moral objectivism to truth in US politics, so I'd love it if you'd expand on that. I'm perfectly open to the possibility that I'm wrong not to see a connection, but I would like to know what it is before I commit to that possibility or reject it.

I don't see what discussion of "hostility", or "coercive and bullying" adds to that.

*To reiterate, the concept of a "hostile stance" means an unreceptive or rejecting position, it's not a comment on tone.

ughaibu wrote:If there are moral facts, then those facts are either objective or subjective. Any subjective fact is a fact even if the subject is the only sentient being...

What is a subjective fact?

PensivePenny wrote:...I guess it depends on where you mark the beginning of the postmodern era. Seems ambiguous, historically.

I remember a time when Walter Cronkite was respected and trusted by just about everyone for delivering the news. Sure, most cities that could support two newspapers had one liberal and one conservative. But, not weaponized like today. It wasn't until about 1990 that things tipped away from "unbiased" news in this country. Cable television probably played a role. Up until about 1990, all televised news here was broadcast over the air on airwaves owned by the US government. Part of the license agreement to the networks was that they would have to have a dedicate percentage of their air time devoted to public service and the news, though the government, mindful of the first amendment more or less let the networks define "news." That system worked fine. Then Ted Turner started CNN in 1980. That was the beginning of the end, imo.

Fundamental changes in media content have taken place much earlier than that, earlier even than the time postmodernism escaped the confines of universities and made its way (in a distorted form almost totally unrecognisable from its original conception) into public consciousness. Around a century ago reporters were basically recorders. Pencil and steno pad in hand they'd write down entire speeches of politicians, and public lectures of scientists and philosophers. They were then printed in articles several thousand words long in such newspapers as The Times.

The days of reporting are long gone, and their disappearance has fuck-all connection with postmodernism. Media tycoons like Robert Maxwell, Ted Turner, Lew Grade, Frank Packer and Rupert Murdoch realised there's more money in entertainment than information. That is why we now get longer articles on some sporting fixture or Hollywood sex scandal than a parliamentary debate. We are swamped with scuttlebutt about Weinstein and the latest cricket ball tampering scandal while politicians are struggling to get a ten second screen grab broadcast. The verdummung of us is not so much due to postmodernism. It's due to money - more specifically, due to making the media more profitable to its owners. Ratings bring the advertising revenue. Therefore, fuck off with the serious stuff. Nobody reads, listens to or watches it. Who wants to sell Budweiser's piss to 5000 port, sherry, coffee and tea drinkers when you can persuade 20 million morons that it's actually beer and why not down one now?

The powers that be of course love and encourage the cretinisation of the masses. Keep them entertained with any junk that serves to distract them from the real world. They won't notice that they are not only increasingly unemployed but also redundant while they watch some unscripted reality show. Mission accomplished.

And what about those of us who fancy ourselves as rational, enlightened, educated? Where do we get our news from? Looking at many of the links posted here we seem to gather them from Bill Maher, John Oliver, Steven Colbert & Co. News smuggled in under cover of satire and comedy. FFS, the articles published by The Guardian under the rubric "The Long Read" can be read in toto in under half an hour. We are lost. All of us. Not just the deplorables.

OK, I'll stop now. This post has gone off at a tangent anyway, and I've written myself into a foul mood, but I blame both on yours for that, Penny.

Thommo wrote:

ughaibu wrote:If there are moral facts, then those facts are either objective or subjective. Any subjective fact is a fact even if the subject is the only sentient being...

What is a subjective fact?

Subjective facts lead to questions of morality about pineapple as a pizza topping.

I'm pretty sure that's just blasphemy.

Hermit wrote:
OK, I'll stop now. This post has gone off at a tangent anyway, and I've written myself into a foul mood, but I blame both on yours for that, Penny.

Then except my apologies for getting you started.

I sometimes find myself defending Sam Harris on this forum. I think he is a very clear thinker who expresses himself with acute precision, yet is often misunderstood by critics who--and the irony here is delicious--try to promote their rational credentials by claiming not to have paid attention to most of what he says (you frequently hear people saying "I listened to a third of it and that was enough!").

I agree with most of you, and do not find a compelling reason to identify Morality as objective in any real way.

But I think Sam Harris agrees with this as well. His entire goal is to combat the idea that societies need Religious Morality Grounded In An Absolute Arbiter in order to survive. He never claims to have discovered any Moral Absolutes, or to have derived Morality from perfectly grounded philosophical rigor--which is what some on this forum seem to think. He is not attempting a perfect philosophical defense; he is calling on us to be realistic.

He acknowledges our limitations in finding any hard ground on which to stand here. The point he tries to make is that, in the effort to dispense with Religious Dogma as the ground of Right and Wrong, we have little choice but to be reasonable. And Science, Data, and Realism are not impotent to help us do that. They are really all we have.

Thanks for your patience. Having waded waist-deep into the pounding surf in my annual defense of Sam Harris, I now attempt to escape the undertow by turning back to shore and wading right back out.

Thommo wrote:The problem, in my view, with the question of what is the best argument for morality being objective is that the answer depends on what you think is meant by both "objective" and "morality". The entire debate in philosophy resides in the fact people do not agree about the content of those terms and whether any particular system that prescribes behaviour actually represents what people call morality in the real world.

Even if I concede that some particular form of (say) positive, or negative utilitarianism is objective (in that it prescribes results for actions that everyone can agree are the results of the system, rather than results of a subjective interpretation or judgement) and I concede that this represents a moral system, what does that actually tell us? We can say that this is a morality that exists, and is objective (in some sense), but so what? If that's not how people actually make decisions in the real world, what is it we're actually saying?

Nothing, it seems.

This is, after all a property of both (to stick with the examples) positive utilitarianism and negative utilitarianism and yet those systems will prescribe differing courses of action for the same circumstances, we still need to make a subjective arbitration to choose between them (and thus the courses of action) anyway.

Further to this, those arguing for an objective morality need to deal with the is/ought conundrum.

The conundrum that felltoearth describes is a very real one. In some sense it can be said that it needs to be dealt with when arguing for objective morality. But not if we're just trying to be realistic.

In realistic terms, we deal with the conundrum (I admit loosely) when we inject IF statements into our reasoning: teaching children that it IS wrong to kill others IS likely to prevent some of them from killing others. So IF you place importance on not being killed by someone else, then you OUGHT to teach not killing each other as a moral principle.

It's not really objective, and it's not a perfect philosophical edifice, but it IS realistic. And it seems to me that it's important to be realistic.

felltoearth wrote:
Further to this, those arguing for an objective morality need to deal with the is/ought conundrum.

Getting back to the OP, and my wondering what do those kinds of people use as an argument in defense of objective morality, all they are left with is the poor argument of is/ought perhaps? I asked the OP because I thought if anyone would know the valid arguments used by believers on the topic of objective morality, this would be a good place to start.

It seems to me believers are generally as comfortable with connecting is and ought as most of us here are with uncertainty of things yet discovered, which annoys the shit out of a lot of believers. I'm not defending them. On the contrary! They (you know who you are) find comfort in the certainty of answers, rooted in faith, devoid of evidence, which I find equally incomprehensible.

Sadly, I doubt they will confront the "need to deal with the is/ought conundrum" any more than they will confront the lack of evidence to support the existence of god and the mounting evidence increasing the unlikliness of that.

pelfdaddy wrote:I sometimes find myself defending Sam Harris on this forum. I think he is a very clear thinker who expresses himself with acute precision, yet is often misunderstood by critics who--and the irony here is delicious--try to promote their rational credentials by claiming not to have paid attention to most of what he says (you frequently hear people saying "I listened to a third of it and that was enough!").

I agree with most of you, and do not find a compelling reason to identify Morality as objective in any real way.

But I think Sam Harris agrees with this as well. His entire goal is to combat the idea that societies need Religious Morality Grounded In An Absolute Arbiter in order to survive. He never claims to have discovered any Moral Absolutes, or to have derived Morality from perfectly grounded philosophical rigor--which is what some on this forum seem to think. He is not attempting a perfect philosophical defense; he is calling on us to be realistic.

He acknowledges our limitations in finding any hard ground on which to stand here. The point he tries to make is that, in the effort to dispense with Religious Dogma as the ground of Right and Wrong, we have little choice but to be reasonable. And Science, Data, and Realism are not impotent to help us do that. They are really all we have.

Thanks for your patience. Having waded waist-deep into the pounding surf in my annual defense of Sam Harris, I now attempt to escape the undertow by turning back to shore and wading right back out.

I'm not a fan of Harris, but I also don't have any strong objections to him either. Your defense of him is well-grounded. Pull up a beach towel and dry your feet for a spell.

pelfdaddy wrote:The conundrum that felltoearth describes is a very real one. In some sense it can be said that it needs to be dealt with when arguing for objective morality. But not if we're just trying to be realistic.

In realistic terms, we deal with the conundrum (I admit loosely) when we inject IF statements into our reasoning: teaching children that it IS wrong to kill others IS likely to prevent some of them from killing others. So IF you place importance on not being killed by someone else, then you OUGHT to teach not killing each other as a moral principle.

It's not really objective, and it's not a perfect philosophical edifice, but it IS realistic. And it seems to me that it's important to be realistic.

I would frame it in more of an IF/THEN statement, but I agree with you. There is no need of a unified "morality" per se (right and wrong), imo, rather action/consequence. Law has that characteristic of action/consequence and I don't believe there is an argument that the law equals morality. Ultimately, the individual will decide to kill or not kill with the knowledge that there are repercussions. Whether acting on it is "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant in that case as to label it one or the other isn't likely to have much impact on either the act OR the consequence. People will do what people will do. We're all just a tree branch away from swinging through the trees.

I can see your point, of course. And with a bad shoulder, I can only be thankful that we have graduated beyond the trees. Brachiation is not an option for me.

pelfdaddy wrote:I can see your point, of course. And with a bad shoulder, I can only be thankful that we have graduated beyond the trees. Brachiation is not an option for me.

Hmm

I presume prehensility is equally disqualified?

pelfdaddy wrote:So IF you place importance on not being killed by someone else, then you OUGHT to teach not killing each other as a moral principle.

What you're really describing is the unwisdom of teaching people to kill others, because there's a good chance it will backfire on you. You're not really obliged to teach anyone anything unless you're hunting around for some ironclad morality that you think has somehow gone missing due to changes in lifestyle.

Depositing teaching obligations on others (which is what morality is basically about) is not all that unlikely to annoy someone you don't want to annoy. Given the importance you place on not being killed by someone else, craft your words carefully: It really does depend a lot on how likely you think it is that somebody is going to want to kill you. Your estimation may be good, or it may be lousy. You may have very good reasons for thinking it likely that somebody is going to try to kill you.

pelfdaddy wrote:In realistic terms, we deal with the conundrum (I admit loosely) when we inject IF statements into our reasoning: teaching children that it IS wrong to kill others IS likely to prevent some of them from killing others. So IF you place importance on not being killed by someone else, then you OUGHT to teach not killing each other as a moral principle.

It's not really objective, and it's not a perfect philosophical edifice, but it IS realistic. And it seems to me that it's important to be realistic.

I agree with this in part, oughts certainly are simply the second part of a conditional statement, and I agree that extending that plain language concept to morality is as good as we can do.

The problem is that this is not the unique way to prevent your children killing you (even taking for granted that this value is held). And teaching your children to only kill in self defence, or to only kill people from other tribes, or to only kill who you tell them to etc. etc. might be equally effective or better in some or all circumstances. On top of that there's genuine uncertainty in working out what works best, and when it does, which leads to legitimate disagreements.

Which means that IF you place importance on not being killed by someone else, then you CAN teach your children not to kill each other as a moral principle. Unfortunately it doesn't say you OUGHT to do it.

PensivePenny wrote:Getting back to the OP, and my wondering what do those kinds of people use as an argument in defense of objective morality, all they are left with is the poor argument of is/ought perhaps?

I don't see how you could have missed it, but. . .

ughaibu wrote:If there are moral facts, then those facts are either objective or subjective. Any subjective fact is a fact even if the subject is the only sentient being, but actions only have moral values if they are interact[ion]s between at least two sentient beings. So no moral fact is subjective. Accordingly, either all moral facts are objective or there are no moral facts.
Alternatively, subjective facts are specific to individuals, but morals are properties of societies. No individual is a society, so all moral facts are objective.