The Tanager wrote:
Divine Insight wrote:So my actual "claim" is that since there is no evidence to the contrary, AND since morality as a subjective human construct fits with everything that can be shown to exist concerning this idea, then where is there any argument that we should even consider a proposal of some objective morality.
That has not been your only claim. I've brought out seven possible arguments from your posts. I then critiqued those arguments. In your latest post you have abandoned those arguments (some of which I allow were misunderstandings and, therefore, not your arguments, but not all of them).
I believe that all of your objections have been misunderstandings. Your objections have amounted to nothing more than philosophical apologies that you believe could be applied to an imagined external moral authority. We could go down that rabbit hole if you want, but even within that rabbit hole we are going to have extreme subjective disagreements on whether such an imaginary moral authority would itself be "
moral".
How could we ever hope to judge the morality of an imagined moral agent without resorting to our own personal subjective moral opinions?
The Tanager wrote:
So, what is left of the positive support for morality being a human social construct? There is nothing.
What? This is utter nonsense. The fact that humans have constructed their own personal moral values is extremely well-established and has been throughout all of history. How in the world can you deny this?
The Tanager wrote:
You claim you have presented tons of evidence, but unless you deal with the critiques, your posts fail in connecting the evidences you speak of to morality being a human social construct. Without any positive support your case is reduced to:
(1) There is no positive support for morality being a human social construct.
What in the world are you talking about? Human subjective morality exists whether an objective morality exist on top of that or not.
You are making the grave mistake of assuming that if an objective morality exists and thus trumps human subjective morality altogether then human subjective moral judgements no longer exist. But that wouldn't be true anyway.
The Tanager wrote:
(2) Morality being a human social construct is logically consistent.
Logically consistent in what way? It's clearly logically consistent with the obvious evidence that it exists. Are human subjective opinions on moral concept logically consistent with those of other humans? No. But who says they need to be?
You seem to be confined to an idea that if morality isn't self-consistent then it is meaningless. That may be true for someone who wishes that a single overriding objective system or morality could exist. But until you can show that such a lofty philosophical ideal actually exists, then that's all it amount to: A philosophical ideal that has no existence in the real world.
The Tanager wrote:
(3) There is no positive support for morality coming from outside of humans.
I absolutely hold this to be true, and you have not yet shown that it isn't true.
The Tanager wrote:
To that I would add
(4) Morality not being a human social construct is logically consistent.
If (3) is true, then wouldn't the rational view be agnosticism? The way it wouldn't be is if you could show (4) to be false. I don't think you can do that, but feel free to offer reasons if you feel you can.
YES! I have always held that the rational view should be agnosticism. I won't argue against that.
But that doesn't change the fact that human subjective morality does indeed exist and is all that we can see existing in our world. It's all that we have evidence for. There is no evidence for the existence of an idealized philosophical objective moral system.
And you most certainly haven't provided any evidence for the existence of such an imagined system.
The Tanager wrote:
If not, then we can turn to my beliefs and support for those beliefs. Here I think you may have assumed some incorrect things about what I would claim. So far, I have only been responding against the notion that there is strong positive support for morality being a human social construct.
If you believe that you have shown that there is no evidence for morality being a human social construct, then you are seriously ignoring the facts of reality.
How can you not see that subjective human opinions on morality are all that exist in the real world?
If there is such a thing as objective morality there is no evidence for it, nor does anyone know what it has to say.
The Tanager wrote:
As such, I have not actually made a positive claim. But now I will make three positive claims.
Finally we're getting somewhere.
The Tanager wrote:
(A) If theism is true, then morality is not a human social construct.
I realize this depends on how one defines theism; I mean it in the most traditional sense.
I disagree. Even if theism is true humans still have subjective opinions on what they consider to be moral or immoral. Therefore morality as a human social construct continues to exist even if theism is true.
Theism being true wouldn't make human subjective morality vanish. All it would it would do is supposedly trump human subjective moral opinions with some imagined absolute moral judgement that humans don't even have access to.
So even if theism is true, that doesn't change the fact that human subjective morality also exists right alongside any morality that might be associated with the god of theism. In fact, many humans would have no problem arguing with the moral "
opinions" of any such gods even if such gods did exist.
After all why should the moral opinions of a god be the final say?
The Tanager wrote:
(B) If atheism is true, then morality is probably a human social construct.
Morality as a human social construct already exists and pervades the entire world. This is true whether any gods exist or not.
All you could do at this point is argue that some invisible god, for which there is no evidence, has different subjective options on what he thinks is moral from what many humans consider to be moral.
Both systems of moral judgement would still exist in this situation. All you could argue for at this point is that an omnipotent god could force his opinions on everyone else and they would be helpless to resist his power. Many humans would argue that to even do this would be an "
immoral" act in their opinion.
In short, even if a god exists who demands to be the moral authoritarian, who's to say that he himself is "
moral"?
The Tanager wrote:
I think (B) would be your strongest support to counter (1) above. Although I do not think a strong rational case can be made for atheism, I think those that believe atheism is true (even if "just" more plausible than theism) are rational to believe morality is a human social construct. The reason I say "probably" is because a case would need to be made against Moral Platonism and physical reductionism (or possibly other suggestions I am unaware of). I think a good case can be made against those (at least those views I am aware of), so that I think, given your atheism, you should believe morality is a human social construct.
I do not want to turn this into a theism v. atheism debate, though, so what are left with if we treat that question as unsettled? That brings me to a third positive claim.
You've just voiced a human subjective opinion:
The Tanager wrote:
Although I do not think a strong rational case can be made for atheism
Yes, you are right, that would take us down a whole other topic. Because I feel precisely the opposite. I think the case for atheism is profound.
Clearly you are bringing in ideals that you have already accepted and including these as part of the "
premises" for you philosophical arguments.
But I have no reason to accept the premise that a strong rational case cannot be made for atheism. I feel that just the opposite can be shown to be true.
So I reject your assumed premise on this. Argument based on premises that I have not agreed to aren't compelling arguments.
The Tanager wrote:
(C) Given agnosticism concerning the theism question, it is more plausible to believe morality is not a human social construct.
Wrong again. In our world today morality is indeed a human social construct.
This remains true even if some imagined invisible moral dictator exists. Human subjective morality is still a fact of reality. Nothing can change this.
The existence of a god who demands that his opinions on morality will ultimately be forced onto everyone does not change the fact that human subjective morality still exists. And as I've mentioned earlier some humans wouldn't even have a problem arguing morality with any such dictator gods. And if the god unleashed his wrath upon them for simply disagreeing with him wouldn't that god have just proved that the human's subjective morality is superior to his?
What makes a totalitarian dictator who forces his opinions onto everyone else through the use of violence morally superior to anyone?
Even if a god exists, it would be hard to make a case that this god is "
moral". Even that would come down to human subjective opinion.
The Tanager wrote:
To me, we would be left in agnosticism in our question if it weren't for our common human intuitions about morality. As I observe humankind I think it is natural for humans to think and act as though morality is not a human social construct. We act differently towards child torturers than we do those countries that drive on the other side of the road from us. People have to overcome those natural intuitions to become a consistent subjectivist.
Pointing to common consensus concerning
extreme scenarios hardly constitutes evidence for common human moral intuitions.
This idea simply breaks down too rapidly. What about gays? Should people have the right to love and live with whomever they choose? Clearly there is no common human intuition concerning this question. In fact, when polled most people have the moral intuition that people should be free to live and love however they choose as long as they aren't harming anyone. No harm = no immorality. This would different from the moral opinions of some traditional gods.
We can also point to countless moral questions where humans passionately disagree. Should a severely abused woman who kills her abusing husband be found guilty of "
murder" or acquitted on a principle of "
self-defense"?
Different humans have different moral intuitions concerning these question as well.
So pointing to something like child torturers as an example of common human moral intuition is actually quite dishonest, IMHO. Not to imply that you are being dishonest. I'm just saying that it's not an argument that takes into account all relevant moral scenarios.
The Tanager wrote:
I think the
simplest answer is that we have these intuitions because they are true.
I suggest this is bad debate form. You are assuming here that you have just established a "
premise" that all humans have the same moral intuitions and that you can now continue on using this supposedly "
established premise" to support your argument further.
But you haven't established that humans have universal moral intuitions at all. That has not been established and I have even given scenarios where humans clearly do not share the same moral intuition.
So it's not a valid premise to claim that humans share common moral intuitions. That's a fallacy. It's simply not true.
The Tanager wrote:
I think that is the most rational belief until a defeater comes along. In the same way we can trust our vision until evidence comes along to defeat that and show that we are seeing a mirage, for instance. Atheism, if true, would probably be the defeater (unless cases can be made for Moral Platonism, physical reductionism, or some view unknown to me).
But your entire argument here is based on a false premise.
You have premised that humans have common moral intuitions, but that premise can be clearly shown to be false.
So you are making your argument based on a premise that has not been established to be true, and has even been established to be false.
The defeater of your argument has already come. You've introduced a false premise. That's the failure of your argument right there.
The Tanager wrote:
But let's say that one doesn't buy this.
I think a lot of people aren't going to buy into the idea that all humans have the same moral intuition. This can be easily demonstrated to be a false premise.
The Tanager wrote:
I don't see how anyone can make the case to automatically distrust our universal human intuition and sway the balances towards morality being a social human construct. That would leave us back with agnosticism. Now, at that point another consideration (risk v. reward) might come into play, but we have enough to discuss so far, so that question can be saved.
What?
See, you are now arguing as if you have somehow established that human moral intuition is universal.
If this is going to be your line of argument then you're not going to get very far.
You lay claim to a premise about universal human moral intuition. And to support that premise all you've pointed to is "Child Torturers" concluding that if everyone agrees that torturing children is wrong then your premise of universal moral intuition has been well-established.
No, it doesn't work that way.
So your entire argument based on a premise that there exists universal human moral intuition is simply false.
That has not been established, nor could it ever be established becasue it simply isn't true. I've already given examples where humans have different moral intuition on moral questions.
So your first argument for objective morality based on an imagined universal human moral intuition is false. It doesn't fly.
Humans have very strong independent moral intuitions. Save for only a few extreme scenarios (
like torturing children) humans are not likely to share the same moral intuitions. So your claim that this universal moral intuition exists is false. There is no evidence for any such thing. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that humans do not share the same moral intuitions universally.
So thus far you have no argument for the evidence of any objective morality.
