Atheistic Foundation of Objective Morality

[The Tanager]

So, this would be a question to those who believe that objective morality can be founded upon an atheistic worldview. What is the objective foundation?

[wiploc]

Cool. I've put in my request here:
viewtopic.php?t=19875

Once you add your confirmation, we should be good to go, as soon as the moderators get to it.

I've started a Peanut Gallery thread here:
viewtopic.php?p=910695#910695

[wiploc]

And the one-on-one discussion thread is here:

viewtopic.php?t=33980

[Artie]

[Replying to post 1 by The Tanager]

https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/5640
https://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and- ... -morality/

[The Tanager]

[Replying to post 83 by Artie]

Artie, thank you for those links. I should be able to read them soon, but I would also love to hear your thoughts on how they impact this issue. Nothing against you, but I don't like to respond to posts of articles alone. I would rather you summarize and raise points from the article you agree with.

[Artie]

[Replying to post 83 by Artie]

Artie, thank you for those links. I should be able to read them soon, but I would also love to hear your thoughts on how they impact this issue. Nothing against you, but I don't like to respond to posts of articles alone. I would rather you summarize and raise points from the article you agree with.

Sure. Here are a few sentences but you really have to read the complete articles to fully understand the points they are making and see the complete logic behind the reasoning.

"How Morality Has the Objectivity that Matters—Without God"
"The thesis of this essay is that morality is not objective in the same way that statements of empirically verifiable facts are objective, yet morality is objective in the ways that matter: moral judgments are not arbitrary; we can have genuine disagreements about moral issues; people can be mistaken in their moral beliefs; and facts about the world are relevant to and inform our moral judgments. In other words, morality is not “subjective� as that term is usually interpreted. Moral judgments are not equivalent to descriptive statements about the world—factual assertions about cars, cats, and cabbages—but neither are they merely expressions of personal preferences."

"The Macroevolution of Morals:
On Fundamental Morals from Societal Evolution, and Morality as Both Objective and Not Objective"

[The Tanager]

There are a lot of points to be interacted with, but I'll give a basic response and see if you have any further thoughts. This idea of functional objectivity is not the same kind of objectivity that moral realism talks about and the second article admits that. I think this idea of morality fails because it provides no reason as to why we ought to care about creating social stability, security, etc. Lindsay responds to this kind of critique in both objections he talks about.

In 'objection 1' he "meets" this by shifting the burden. He says "Perhaps the best way to answer this question is with another question: What's the alternative?" That is not a good way to answer the question. He then briefly brings up utilitarianism and virtue ethics as competing alternatives and says they only get aspects of morality, but not the whole of it. His view, he claims, does a better job of wholeness. But he doesn't support any of that. I think his view clearly misses aspects of individual morality because he assumes morality is only about social interactions.

Then in 'objection 2' he believes he answers why the moral norms are binding on us. His first answer is to appeal to human psychology. We need to be receptive to moral norms and socio-biological evolution gives us this. It gives us social behaviors, but the question is whether these social behaviors are more than just social behaviors. The question is whether these social behaviors are moral. Other species have very different social behaviors than humans, some we would call immoral if humans did them.

His second way of answering in this section is to say "If we accept the institution of morality, then we are tacitly agreeing to be bound by moral norms." But the question is whether we ought to accept what he calls "the institution of morality" (which I think he should call the 'institution of human social behaviors'). He is giving a hypothetical ought. If you care about creating social stability, security, etc., then you ought to take actions that do that. But the question is why ought we to care about those things.

He then confuses the objection by talking about why people would choose to care about creating social stability, security, etc. and says this problem still exists if God is brought into the equation. I agree, but this is a different issue. It's about epistemology, while the above stuff is about ontology. This isn't a way to meet an ontological objection.

Morality in the moral realism sense, it seems to me, is a categorical ought. You ought to do A. You ought not to do Z. The morality in these articles are hypothetical. If you want A, you ought to do B.

[Artie]

Morality in the moral realism sense, it seems to me, is a categorical ought. You ought to do A. You ought not to do Z. The morality in these articles are hypothetical. If you want A, you ought to do B.

I think this is just overthinking the whole morality issue. The reason we say something is moral/right/good is grounded in evolution and natural selection not just in our subjective opinion. Hence what is moral is not just subjective but can be said to be functionally objective since we are referring back to an automatic natural process over which we had no subjective control.

[The Tanager]

I think this is just overthinking the whole morality issue. The reason we say something is moral/right/good is grounded in evolution and natural selection not just in our subjective opinion. Hence what is moral is not just subjective but can be said to be functionally objective since we are referring back to an automatic natural process over which we had no subjective control.

But those articles talk about biology and society playing a role in the types of morals we have. Humans have subjective control over the social part, if they are free agents.

Now, of course, if causal determinism is true, then humans had no control in how morality played out. But even then, I still believe this functional 'objectivity' is not moral realism. It just so happens that our species is largely against rape, while another species commits it all the time. We call it immoral, sharks would call it it moral. This seems to show that rape, as an action, has no oughtness to it. It just depends on the evolved social behaviors of different species. Humans do one thing, sharks do another and there is no objective ought.

[Artie]

I think this is just overthinking the whole morality issue. The reason we say something is moral/right/good is grounded in evolution and natural selection not just in our subjective opinion. Hence what is moral is not just subjective but can be said to be functionally objective since we are referring back to an automatic natural process over which we had no subjective control.

But those articles talk about biology and society playing a role in the types of morals we have. Humans have subjective control over the social part, if they are free agents.

Now, of course, if causal determinism is true, then humans had no control in how morality played out. But even then, I still believe this functional 'objectivity' is not moral realism. It just so happens that our species is largely against rape, while another species commits it all the time. We call it immoral, sharks would call it it moral. This seems to show that rape, as an action, has no oughtness to it. It just depends on the evolved social behaviors of different species. Humans do one thing, sharks do another and there is no objective ought.

Yes it just depends on the evolved social behaviors of different species. What's objectively wrong for one species might be objectively right for another. The reason why I think we "ought" to do this and not that is not based just on our subjective opinion but grounded in evolution and natural selection too. Hence can be said to be functionally objective.

[The Tanager]

Yes it just depends on the evolved social behaviors of different species. What's objectively wrong for one species might be objectively right for another. The reason why I think we "ought" to do this and not that is not based just on our subjective opinion but grounded in evolution and natural selection too. Hence can be said to be functionally objective.

But even this functional objectivity is grounded in subjective opinion because people don't agree with these writers about what the function of morality is for the human species.