On May 16 2011 18:56 iloveav wrote: By beeing pragmatic, i learned something interesting: Moral is subjective, simply becouse on a daily basis we decide if we want to follow our moral or not, wahtever it might be. Ofc we could discuss about where morals come from, like sociaty, god, childhood, etc. But it wont change the fact we decide if we want to follow it, and that choice comes to us many many times a day.
This is a different thing though. What you are discussing is the choice of whether to follow our morals. This is different from the question of whether these morals are in themselves objective or subjective. You can choose not to follow a moral principle, but this simply means that you chose not to follow it. It says nothing about whether it is objective or subjective. In fact, it suggests an element of objectivity - since there first has to be an objective "moral rule" for you to follow/not follow. If morals were entirely subjective, then there's no need to choose - you just make up new moral codes.
I'm leaning towards the subjectivist side, but I feel that many people interpret this to mean that there are absolutely no constraints whatsoever on the morality that you choose for yourself; I don't think it is that simple.
For example, people's morals (including my own) are developed in interaction with society; basically it simply will not fly to develop a morality that is completely alien to the people around you. In fact, this is one of the major sources of friction when people from two very different cultures are forced to live together.
Second, the moral systems that are dominant in a culture usually display some internal consistency. The rule r1: "it is immoral to kill" does not stand on its own; it is in fact in instance of the rule r2: "I can't expect people to refrain from doing X to me unless I am willing to promise to not do it to them". Since being killed is considered extremely undesirable by pretty much everyone, this results in a very strong moral consensus that killing is wrong.
So moral rules are often specific instances of more abstract moral rules that you take even more for granted. At some point these rules start to become so basic that they /feel/ as if they are objective and absolute. Nevertheless they may be different for other people. For example, for me the debate about gay marriage triggers the very basic rule r3: "you should respect other people's decisions unless they somehow harm others", which is in turn derived from r2 (since I desire the freedom to make decisions without interference from others). I believe both r2 and r3 to the core of my being. (I think r1 is true generally but there can be exceptions.) But, turning back to gay marriage, for many people other morals are apparently more fundamental.
So my view is that the fundamentals of our moral system are so ingrained in our minds that we cannot help but /experience/ them as objective and absolute, and in fact we act as if they are (would give our lives to protect such ideas etc). You can't wake up one day and think "well, let's have completely different morals from today onwards". But at the same time, in the end our morals are mostly culturally determined and could have been completely different.
On May 16 2011 09:12 zemiron wrote: Moral rules don't have to be absolute to be objective. Each individual situation can have an objectively correct answer. To find the objectively correct answer to each moral situation, one needs to use logical and rational discovery based on evidence.
Even if morality isn't objective, it definitely doesn't mean that it's totally arbitrary or subjective. We can have a conversation about what makes a good car. There may not be an objectively binding answer to what makes a good car, but if someone said that a good car was a car that got terrible gas mileage and barely runs, you could confidently and correctly say that they are wrong. We can do this with morality without having an objective source for morality.
Actually, you can't find correct answers to moral situations like that. It may sound right if you have a scientific background but you have no idea how alien this sounds to someone with a proper philosophy background. Completely nonsensical.
This is due to the simple fact that you have to decide something or put your foot down somewhere. You have to decide if what you want is "well-being" like Harris mentioned. If freedom is what you want. Anyways, there's this decision to be made and it's nothing like science.
I wasn't trying to advocate something like Harris advocates. I don't want to treat morality like a science. However, I think that what we know about human beings, we can discover objective answers to moral questions by using rational and logical argumentation taking evidence into account when it is applicable. There might have to be certain assumptions that have to be made, and we can discuss these potential assumptions, debate them, and find the ones that are the most reasonable and logical. Then we can find the answers by assessing the situation and using rational argumentation. BTW, I come from a philosophical background. The main point I wanted to make above is that taking individual situations into account does not exclude objectivity.
Now, of course, we may not be able to ground morality on something objective, but this doesn't mean that morality is completely subjective and arbitrary. Some people's moral reasoning is bad, and their point of view can be shown to be wrong. For example, morality based on holy books or complete personal preference have no place within a rational discussion. There is no good reason to accept any of those as answers for morality.
i think things like racism and sexism are absolutely objectively wrong. but on the borderline, it is hard to tell what is racism ('accent discrimination') and sexism.
BUT i do think that if we were born 200 years ago, 99% of us would be horrible racists and sexists. if you grow up in a society that is racist, then if you're racist, it doesn't make you a bad person. it just means that you aren't an incredible genius. i HATE when people judge people from the past. new understandings, if society progresses, will show that we were dead wrong about a lot of assumptions we don't even know we are making.
On May 16 2011 14:33 0neder wrote: Another point to consider is that if morality is, in fact, objective, no matter how much it is not believed to be, it still is objective and founded on the unchangeable laws of the universe.
"if morality is... objective, ... it still is objective"
... care to expand and provide concrete rationale to your opinion?
This isn't very difficult to understand.... replace morality with "the sun rises in the east." No matter how much you think that the sun comes up from underneath your bed, the sun objectively still rises in the east.
Except you can also say...
If the world is flat, no matter what anyone thinks, the world is still flat. or... If unicorns are real, no matter what anyone thinks, unicorns are still real.
On May 16 2011 18:56 iloveav wrote: By beeing pragmatic, i learned something interesting: Moral is subjective, simply becouse on a daily basis we decide if we want to follow our moral or not, wahtever it might be. Ofc we could discuss about where morals come from, like sociaty, god, childhood, etc. But it wont change the fact we decide if we want to follow it, and that choice comes to us many many times a day.
what u are talking about is if ppl always do what moral says them or not. not if moral is subjective or objective. and btw in ur answer u use an objective version of moral =)
Does anyone here even know anything about Kant, Mill, Hobbs, Rowels, or Pinker? It seems to silly for people to discuss stuff without knowing anything about it, much less being versed in it.
Why wouldnt people be allowed to have their own musings on the objectivity of morality without having read the musings and oppinions of others (even if the others were great thinkers)? A good argument remains a good argument, regardless of the source.
There is some confusion about the relation between subjective, and objective. If you don't believe then subjective can give information on objective then you wouldn't tell your doctor how you feel because that would give him no information on what is the best treatment.
Subjective can have insight into objective just because somebody else can't exactly experience the pain as somebody else it doesn't mean that it is arbitrary if somebody finds pain bad or good. Sure how you experience pain depends on your specific brain but everybody brains works according to the same objective physics laws. The same can be said about weight of an object x, it would depend on where the x is, on earth it would weight differently, on mars it would weight differently as well that doesn't mean that weight of an object is just an opinion and anybody estimate is as good as anybody else estimate.
The other problem is that people believe that morality is only based on culture, but they forget that culture doesn't make experience of pain different somebody can find sacrifice of pain worth something else, but the objective truth about pain isn't affected by culture. Believing such just goes against neurology, and evolution the process that without any bias or culture had selected pain to feel in specific way, torture itself is always bad for tortured if he find something else worth to get through it or not. That leads me to conclusions that cultures where there is more suffering, and less well being are worse adapted to the reality of what those things are, and have morally inferior values.
There is also a hypocrisy or some bad value judgement in people who think that cultures should not be judge because that can be offensive. You must believe that offending somebody is worse then horrible unequal treatment of women that those cultures promote, that it is worse then stopping scientific progress is, it would be much bigger if those countries were civilised. You can't improve culture if you pretend that all are equal in principle.
I think that morality is inherently subjective, however there are some overarching principles enshrined globally that many people strive towards. For example, many countries (most, in fact) declare human rights - such as the right to life a universal moral freedom and obligation. Of course, how one defines this is entirely subjective. Also, how the term 'morality' is mobilised in public and political discussion is a play on subjectivity ENTIRELY.
In Australia our government propounds that our country is moral. The irony in this however is our policies on refugees. We signed an international declaration of rights which supposedly upholds the objective morality we all aspire to achieve, we are under an OBLIGATION to assist these refugees! Yet our government constantly argues we need to send these people who have been displaced from their homes because of wars and forces outside of their immediate control back home on the grounds that they are just trying to get a free ride. We justify this objective immorality in a subjective and discursive morality: that we are being moral because refugees are a danger to Australia, that they will ruin our economy, etc. In this way, morality is objective and subjective, it all depends on if it is being spun for some sort of purpose, or if it is taken in an entirely broad way.
If you want to see how fluid morality is check out Milgram's Experiment:
Basically, the experiment attempted to demonstrate that many humans would disregard morality under the influence of authority (i.e. 'following orders') regardless of whether or not their character is judged as good or bad. This was following the trials at Nuremberg and is interesting considering the moral tensions arising within the trials themselves. The results speak for itself, with most people continuing to 'torture' others when under duress of authority.. These are 'ordinary' citizens too!
On May 29 2011 18:33 Vasili wrote: I think that morality is inherently subjective, however there are some overarching principles enshrined globally that many people strive towards. For example, many countries (most, in fact) declare human rights - such as the right to life a universal moral freedom and obligation. Of course, how one defines this is entirely subjective. Also, how the term 'morality' is mobilised in public and political discussion is a play on subjectivity ENTIRELY.
In Australia our government propounds that our country is moral. The irony in this however is our policies on refugees. We signed an international declaration of rights which supposedly upholds the objective morality we all aspire to achieve, we are under an OBLIGATION to assist these refugees! Yet our government constantly argues we need to send these people who have been displaced from their homes because of wars and forces outside of their immediate control back home on the grounds that they are just trying to get a free ride. We justify this objective immorality in a subjective and discursive morality: that we are being moral because refugees are a danger to Australia, that they will ruin our economy, etc. In this way, morality is objective and subjective, it all depends on if it is being spun for some sort of purpose, or if it is taken in an entirely broad way.
Actually all of your examples comes down to human well being, why are human rights good? Human rights are based on what humans are, on what they need.
As for the problem with emigration it all comes down to human well being as well, on one hand you can help refuges, but on the other it can cause problems to well being of citizens that you have now. The principle of human well being stay the same, it is just the judgement on doing what is better for it that changes.
On May 29 2011 18:33 Vasili wrote: If you want to see how fluid morality is check out Milgram's Experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TAqBbFJtfE&feature=related Basically, the experiment attempted to demonstrate that many humans would disregard morality under the influence of authority (i.e. 'following orders') regardless of whether or not their character is judged as good or bad. This was following the trials at Nuremberg and is interesting considering the moral tensions arising within the trials themselves. The results speak for itself, with most people continuing to 'torture' others when under duress of authority.. These are 'ordinary' citizens too!
That doesn't show that morality is fluid but that humans have flaws, one of them is they emotional connection to authority figures. Proponents of objective morality don't believe that all believes bout morality are equal.
Does this prove that reality of how the puzzle box works is fluid, or that humans are mislead by they emotional feelings towards authority words/instructions? Such experiments are important, and everybody should know about they own flaws to be better at understanding what is objectively better, we need to know our flaws to go beyond them.
Science, and logic places our understanding of natural world beyond our intuitive/emotional limitations, it can do the same for our morality.
I think there are a few things that can be seen a objectively bad; which are basicaly the few things that goes against our own survival as the human race : killing / raping / destroying all our meaning to survive, like food. The rest is subjeciv.
On May 29 2011 18:33 Vasili wrote: If you want to see how fluid morality is check out Milgram's Experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TAqBbFJtfE&feature=related Basically, the experiment attempted to demonstrate that many humans would disregard morality under the influence of authority (i.e. 'following orders') regardless of whether or not their character is judged as good or bad. This was following the trials at Nuremberg and is interesting considering the moral tensions arising within the trials themselves. The results speak for itself, with most people continuing to 'torture' others when under duress of authority.. These are 'ordinary' citizens too!
That doesn't show that morality is fluid but that humans have flaws, one of them is they emotional connection to authority figures. Proponents of objective morality don't believe that all believes bout morality are equal.
Does this prove that reality of how the puzzle box works is fluid, or that humans are mislead by they emotional feelings towards authority words/instructions? Such experiments are important, and everybody should know about they own flaws to be better at understanding what is objectively better, we need to know our flaws to go beyond them.
Science, and logic places our understanding of natural world beyond our intuitive/emotional limitations, it can do the same for our morality.
I think you're exemple is flawed because you don't see what the subject does just after obtaining the candy. The chimp would eat it as soon as they got it but what about the kids ? I'm sure they would not.
Take a kid, starve him to death, then make him play the game, and you will see that he will do as the chimp : rush to get the candy. It's the same with the fork and the knife, we use it to eat, but as soon as we picture in our head a starved "savage", we imagine him rushing to the food and eating raw with his hands. This has nothing to do with moral but it's about our civilisation and how we are now freed from our basic needs.
On May 29 2011 17:55 Polis wrote: The other problem is that people believe that morality is only based on culture, but they forget that culture doesn't make experience of pain different somebody can find sacrifice of pain worth something else, but the objective truth about pain isn't affected by culture. Believing such just goes against neurology, and evolution the process that without any bias or culture had selected pain to feel in specific way, torture itself is always bad for tortured if he find something else worth to get through it or not. That leads me to conclusions that cultures where there is more suffering, and less well being are worse adapted to the reality of what those things are, and have morally inferior values..
That is simply not true at all. Neurology is sketchy and is inextricably linked with subjective consciousness. Why is it that there is a significant correlation between belief of something and the physiological reaction to it, when it is objectively devoid?
For example, many experiments demonstrate that someone who is given a placebo and told it will act just like a certain drug have the physiological and neurological response as if one actually ingested the drug. There are countless experiments demonstrating that participants who 'believe' they have been given alcohol 'feel' intoxicated, and this can be examined through physiological and neurological patterns suggestive of intoxication (i.e. a depressant effect on neuronal activation indicative of alcohol consumption).
Also, I think to assume that just because someone is accustomed to a life of suffering does NOT mean they are devoid of morality. I would say that people placed into situations of conflict and suffering have just as much morality as the rest of us, just that they are placed within a different context which demands a different subjective application of morality. For example, I think it is moral for someone who is destitute to steal bread to feed their starving family because in that context it is ENTIRELY rational. This person DOES NOT have inferior values, they have the same values as us: Family and survival.
On May 29 2011 19:12 darkness wrote: Definitely subjective. For example, Al-Qaeda think it's right to do what they do, while we all think it isn't.
The truth about how long our universe existed is definitely subjective, for example scientist thinks that it is 13.75 bln years, and young earthen that it is 6000 years. Why belief that humans can't be wrong about what is moral, and what isn't?
morals are purely subjective, what might seem wrong for johny do-good might be right for someone else. I can't even believe people are debating the other side.
Everyone has their own morals, those morals are based on what they believe to be "good", where good is also subjective. Just because YOU think that your beliefs and morals are global does not make it so.
EPT
