Objective Morality

[x1plus1x]

The question about objective morality is something that I have done a lot of thinking about.

Let me define what I mean by Objective Morality. By Objective, I mean a perspective that is not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices. In other words: outside of opinion. An example of an objective truth is "1+1=2", this is true no matter who analyzes it. When I say Morality I mean the idea of right and wrong, which is often associated with good and evil. People who are seen as lacking a moral compass are often described as committing evil acts.

It is my view that morality stems directly from a particular society. I do not believe that there is an objective morality. There is no act which can be agreed upon to be morally wrong by everyone from every civilization that ever existed.

Morality is strictly attached to society.

One big example that I can point to is murder. We in the modern world pretty much all agree that we shouldn't kill each other (although we do it anyways).. So surely murder has an objective morality.. right? Well, let me remind you of the civilizations of meso-america, where it was imperative that they murder people. Human murder is what kept the earth functioning. Human murder was institutionalized by the State as a means of continuing the society. Of course we now know that murdering people has nothing to do with the earth spinning.

If Objective Morality does exist, surely we would find it in nature. Aside from some highly evolved mammals, we see no morality in nature.
Hypothetically speaking.. How would you characterize the morality of a person who had the ability to wield the power of a hurricane? If there were a person behind the scenes controlling Katrina that killed many people and damaged an entire region of the US, what would you think of this person? (the person is nature)

Male lions will murder their own cubs for food, or to eliminate competition.
Theft, Rape, Adultery, etc are rampant in the animal kingdom.

If there is no Objective Morality, do Right and Wrong really exist? And by really exist I mean, is it something that you can separate from opinion and have it maintain it's integrity.

Morality evolved in animals because it has an advantage over no morality. It is in my best interest to ensure that my tribe stays alive and healthy. There is safety in numbers. This is where morality, and other related things such as empathy, and altruism come from.

[dusk]

If you believe Evolution is goal-oriented toward "multiply more than the competition", then you are in the minority of Evolutionists. And that's fine, and certainly makes your argument that morality is also goal-oriented toward "a less cruel society with less fear of getting killed any minute" much more consistent than the others.

That is pretty standard evolution no minority opinion in the least. It is a goal in so far as the rivers goal is to flow down the mountain into the valley and wherever it can find to go lower until it hits a basin. (Leaning on the example of x1plus1x)

So my question to you would be: against what standard are you measuring these goals of being "more" or "less"?

Evolution or Morality?
Evolution is easy more/better is whatever yields more breeders. If a race is ugly, stink, stupid as hell but breeds like rabbits that branch wins.

In Morality the fact of reality is that we compare it against our own subjective wants and needs. What serves better to accomplish the social environment that we want to surround ourselves with.
That is how our social ethics systems change. Some horny dudes want to be faithful to their wives but don't trust themselves so all women should dress "proper" and not entice them. Others think the horny dudes should keep a hold on themselves and prefer to share a world with emancipates women that is fair, because they want to be treated fairly in other areas or because they just don't think keeping to marriage oaths for the rest of ones life doesn't justify anything.
What ever we believe to be right or wrong has only two sources. Indoctrination call it revelation and simple reasoning that we do consciously and unconsciously everyday. Most people think rules from revelation that make no sense and show no apparent benefit shouldn't be followed (like eating kosher). That effectively just means they think a rule (right/wrong) for which even after long deliberation no sound reasoning can be found not a true right or wrong. Therefore all morality is no more than the culmination of individual reasoning in society or its leaders that is sometimes transcribed to future generations via revelation/tradition/just so teachings.

To be honest I didn't really understand your question so I wrote this. Maybe it contains the answer or helps in the same question 2.0.

[Zetesis Apistia]

The question about objective morality is something that I have done a lot of thinking about.

Let me define what I mean by Objective Morality. By Objective, I mean a perspective that is not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices. In other words: outside of opinion. An example of an objective truth is "1+1=2", this is true no matter who analyzes it. When I say Morality I mean the idea of right and wrong, which is often associated with good and evil. People who are seen as lacking a moral compass are often described as committing evil acts.

It is my view that morality stems directly from a particular society. I do not believe that there is an objective morality. There is no act which can be agreed upon to be morally wrong by everyone from every civilization that ever existed.

Morality is strictly attached to society.

One big example that I can point to is murder. We in the modern world pretty much all agree that we shouldn't kill each other (although we do it anyways).. So surely murder has an objective morality.. right? Well, let me remind you of the civilizations of meso-america, where it was imperative that they murder people. Human murder is what kept the earth functioning. Human murder was institutionalized by the State as a means of continuing the society. Of course we now know that murdering people has nothing to do with the earth spinning.

If Objective Morality does exist, surely we would find it in nature. Aside from some highly evolved mammals, we see no morality in nature.
Hypothetically speaking.. How would you characterize the morality of a person who had the ability to wield the power of a hurricane? If there were a person behind the scenes controlling Katrina that killed many people and damaged an entire region of the US, what would you think of this person? (the person is nature)

Male lions will murder their own cubs for food, or to eliminate competition.
Theft, Rape, Adultery, etc are rampant in the animal kingdom.

If there is no Objective Morality, do Right and Wrong really exist? And by really exist I mean, is it something that you can separate from opinion and have it maintain it's integrity.

Morality evolved in animals because it has an advantage over no morality. It is in my best interest to ensure that my tribe stays alive and healthy. There is safety in numbers. This is where morality, and other related things such as empathy, and altruism come from.

Let me answer it like this...
Suppose you were walking down a dark street and you saw a woman being attacked by two men. Naturally you would feel two impulses. One impulse would tell you to run and preserve your life, and the other would prompt you to help a person in distress. Besides those two impulses you would experience a third thing which would tell you which impulse you ought to follow. But where does this third thing come from and why does it declare one right and one wrong. And if we fail to heed the suggestion of this third thing why do we walk away with a sense of self disappointment when we fail to heed its command?If we are free to form our own subjective rule of law why does this third thing order me to choose the right impulse?

[x1plus1x]

The question about objective morality is something that I have done a lot of thinking about.

Let me define what I mean by Objective Morality. By Objective, I mean a perspective that is not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices. In other words: outside of opinion. An example of an objective truth is "1+1=2", this is true no matter who analyzes it. When I say Morality I mean the idea of right and wrong, which is often associated with good and evil. People who are seen as lacking a moral compass are often described as committing evil acts.

It is my view that morality stems directly from a particular society. I do not believe that there is an objective morality. There is no act which can be agreed upon to be morally wrong by everyone from every civilization that ever existed.

Morality is strictly attached to society.

One big example that I can point to is murder. We in the modern world pretty much all agree that we shouldn't kill each other (although we do it anyways).. So surely murder has an objective morality.. right? Well, let me remind you of the civilizations of meso-america, where it was imperative that they murder people. Human murder is what kept the earth functioning. Human murder was institutionalized by the State as a means of continuing the society. Of course we now know that murdering people has nothing to do with the earth spinning.

If Objective Morality does exist, surely we would find it in nature. Aside from some highly evolved mammals, we see no morality in nature.
Hypothetically speaking.. How would you characterize the morality of a person who had the ability to wield the power of a hurricane? If there were a person behind the scenes controlling Katrina that killed many people and damaged an entire region of the US, what would you think of this person? (the person is nature)

Male lions will murder their own cubs for food, or to eliminate competition.
Theft, Rape, Adultery, etc are rampant in the animal kingdom.

If there is no Objective Morality, do Right and Wrong really exist? And by really exist I mean, is it something that you can separate from opinion and have it maintain it's integrity.

Morality evolved in animals because it has an advantage over no morality. It is in my best interest to ensure that my tribe stays alive and healthy. There is safety in numbers. This is where morality, and other related things such as empathy, and altruism come from.

Let me answer it like this...
Suppose you were walking down a dark street and you saw a woman being attacked by two men. Naturally you would feel two impulses. One impulse would tell you to run and preserve your life, and the other would prompt you to help a person in distress. Besides those two impulses you would experience a third thing which would tell you which impulse you ought to follow. But where does this third thing come from and why does it declare one right and one wrong. And if we fail to heed the suggestion of this third thing why do we walk away with a sense of self disappointment when we fail to heed its command?If we are free to form our own subjective rule of law why does this third thing order me to choose the right impulse?

Interesting reply.

In my opinion.. this third thing which would tell you which impulse you ought to follow is your morality. This morality comes from the culture in which you developed. Different people from different cultures might very well have that third voice telling them two entirely different things. If you were raised in a culture of intolerance, and this woman happened to be doing / saying / wearing the wrong thing, then your impulse might be to join in the attack.

So, as much as I like your example because it forced me to think a little differently, I still don't see the objective morality here.

[Zetesis Apistia]

The question about objective morality is something that I have done a lot of thinking about.

Let me define what I mean by Objective Morality. By Objective, I mean a perspective that is not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices. In other words: outside of opinion. An example of an objective truth is "1+1=2", this is true no matter who analyzes it. When I say Morality I mean the idea of right and wrong, which is often associated with good and evil. People who are seen as lacking a moral compass are often described as committing evil acts.

It is my view that morality stems directly from a particular society. I do not believe that there is an objective morality. There is no act which can be agreed upon to be morally wrong by everyone from every civilization that ever existed.

Morality is strictly attached to society.

One big example that I can point to is murder. We in the modern world pretty much all agree that we shouldn't kill each other (although we do it anyways).. So surely murder has an objective morality.. right? Well, let me remind you of the civilizations of meso-america, where it was imperative that they murder people. Human murder is what kept the earth functioning. Human murder was institutionalized by the State as a means of continuing the society. Of course we now know that murdering people has nothing to do with the earth spinning.

If Objective Morality does exist, surely we would find it in nature. Aside from some highly evolved mammals, we see no morality in nature.
Hypothetically speaking.. How would you characterize the morality of a person who had the ability to wield the power of a hurricane? If there were a person behind the scenes controlling Katrina that killed many people and damaged an entire region of the US, what would you think of this person? (the person is nature)

Male lions will murder their own cubs for food, or to eliminate competition.
Theft, Rape, Adultery, etc are rampant in the animal kingdom.

If there is no Objective Morality, do Right and Wrong really exist? And by really exist I mean, is it something that you can separate from opinion and have it maintain it's integrity.

Morality evolved in animals because it has an advantage over no morality. It is in my best interest to ensure that my tribe stays alive and healthy. There is safety in numbers. This is where morality, and other related things such as empathy, and altruism come from.

Let me answer it like this...
Suppose you were walking down a dark street and you saw a woman being attacked by two men. Naturally you would feel two impulses. One impulse would tell you to run and preserve your life, and the other would prompt you to help a person in distress. Besides those two impulses you would experience a third thing which would tell you which impulse you ought to follow. But where does this third thing come from and why does it declare one right and one wrong. And if we fail to heed the suggestion of this third thing why do we walk away with a sense of self disappointment when we fail to heed its command?If we are free to form our own subjective rule of law why does this third thing order me to choose the right impulse?

Interesting reply.

In my opinion.. this third thing which would tell you which impulse you ought to follow is your morality. This morality comes from the culture in which you developed. Different people from different cultures might very well have that third voice telling them two entirely different things. If you were raised in a culture of intolerance, and this woman happened to be doing / saying / wearing the wrong thing, then your impulse might be to join in the attack.

So, as much as I like your example because it forced me to think a little differently, I still don't see the objective morality here.

Yes but quite often the third thing tells us to follow the least preferred instinct. The thing is we are not in control of this third thing. It is independent of us. We may see a wino at the side of the road and be conditioned to have no pity on him because we have been taught that these people are just lazy. Why then at times would we walk away feeling bad because we didn't help when we were conditioned not to?

[4gold]

I don't quite follow your description of evolutionist saying that evolution doesn't improve anything, because that would imply an objective reality outside of evolution.

I would say that evolution does improve. Think about the eye. The objective reality is: there is light in an environment where there is life, and life needs to consume food to continue living. If I can see my dinner, I have a lot better chance of eating. Therefore sight is better than not having sight. I think this is a real, measurable objective improvement - not just my brains way of understanding change.

You asked the question "what standard are we measuring to say a certain change is an "improvement"?" I would suggest that we measure the change over the previous state to determine if the change is indeed an improvement. Does the change lead to better efficiency, better security, etc?

Some do say that evolution does improve. And so if that is your opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. That is my opinion as well.

Materialist and naturalist evolutionists would say that it's not that the eye has sight, and so it is better than non-sight. It's that creatures without sight died out, and creatures with sight survived, so it seemed like sight was an "improvement" or "better" than non-sight. In reality, they argue, there are only blind and purposeless forces of mutation and natural selection whose results only seem as if they furthered some natural end or goal.

What I'm driving at, as I'm sure you can see by now, is that since (a) morality is progressive and goal-driven, and (b) since purposeless forces cannot produce purposefulness, then (c) directionless evolution could not have created a progressive morality.

We can say that evolution has purpose, which I think you are saying (and I am saying as well), and so a goal-driven evolution could produce a goal-driven morality (and so you and I are in agreement). This would be rejected by Dawkins and all other materialists on its face, because evolution does not have purpose, it only seems like it has purpose.

What most materialist and naturalist evolutionists say instead is that since (a) evolution is blind and purposeless, and (b) since evolution caused morality, then (c) morality must be blind and purposeless.

[4gold]

That is pretty standard evolution no minority opinion in the least. It is a goal in so far as the rivers goal is to flow down the mountain into the valley and wherever it can find to go lower until it hits a basin. (Leaning on the example of x1plus1x)

Evolution is easy more/better is whatever yields more breeders. If a race is ugly, stink, stupid as hell but breeds like rabbits that branch wins.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Standard evolutionary theory posits that creatures that breed more are no better than creatures that breed less. It's just that the creatures that breed more have survived and the creatures that breed less have died off, so it seems like evolution has furthered a natural goal or purpose. In reality, they argue, evolution is blind and purposeless.

In Morality the fact of reality is that we compare it against our own subjective wants and needs. What serves better to accomplish the social environment that we want to surround ourselves with.
That is how our social ethics systems change. Some horny dudes want to be faithful to their wives but don't trust themselves so all women should dress "proper" and not entice them. Others think the horny dudes should keep a hold on themselves and prefer to share a world with emancipates women that is fair, because they want to be treated fairly in other areas or because they just don't think keeping to marriage oaths for the rest of ones life doesn't justify anything.
What ever we believe to be right or wrong has only two sources. Indoctrination call it revelation and simple reasoning that we do consciously and unconsciously everyday. Most people think rules from revelation that make no sense and show no apparent benefit shouldn't be followed (like eating kosher). That effectively just means they think a rule (right/wrong) for which even after long deliberation no sound reasoning can be found not a true right or wrong. Therefore all morality is no more than the culmination of individual reasoning in society or its leaders that is sometimes transcribed to future generations via revelation/tradition/just so teachings.

To be honest I didn't really understand your question so I wrote this. Maybe it contains the answer or helps in the same question 2.0.

My point is this: (a) morality is progressive and goal-oriented, and (b) something that is purposeless and blind cannot produce something that is progressive and goal-oriented, then (c) directionless evolution cannot have produced a progressive morality.

Of course, if evolution is not directionless, as you state, then it certainly could be the author of a progressive morality. This would be my position as well.

[4gold]

I don't quite follow your description of evolutionist saying that evolution doesn't improve anything, because that would imply an objective reality outside of evolution.

I would say that evolution does improve. Think about the eye. The objective reality is: there is light in an environment where there is life, and life needs to consume food to continue living. If I can see my dinner, I have a lot better chance of eating. Therefore sight is better than not having sight. I think this is a real, measurable objective improvement - not just my brains way of understanding change.

Materialist and naturalist evolutionists would say that sight is not better than non-sight. It's just that creatures without sight died out, and creatures with sight survived, so it seemed like sight was an "improvement" or "better" than non-sight. In reality, they argue, there are only blind and purposeless forces of mutation and natural selection whose results only seem as if they furthered some natural end or goal.

So by saying that the "chance of eating" is the objective standard of measurement against which sight is determined to be "better" or "worse", you are stating that there exists an objective standard of measurement outside of our brains.

You asked the question "what standard are we measuring to say a certain change is an "improvement"?" I would suggest that we measure the change over the previous state to determine if the change is indeed an improvement. Does the change lead to better efficiency, better security, etc?

Against what do you measure if the change in efficiency or change of security is "better"?

[Waiways]

A long while back, I read an article that proposed a system for creating the least arbitrary moral system possible, namely by taking a few extremely well-defined statements and considering them unconditionally true. Form that, you could, theoretically, use logic to make (also unconditionally true) conclusions that would make up the moral system. I have no idea if that would work or not, or how many statements you would need, but it seems a good way to create a low-arbitrary moral system, IMO.

[4gold]

A long while back, I read an article that proposed a system for creating the least arbitrary moral system possible, namely by taking a few extremely well-defined statements and considering them unconditionally true. Form that, you could, theoretically, use logic to make (also unconditionally true) conclusions that would make up the moral system. I have no idea if that would work or not, or how many statements you would need, but it seems a good way to create a low-arbitrary moral system, IMO.

Didn't the Sophists already try this?

[Waiways]

No, moral absolutism does not include any exceptions caused by context, while this system might, depending on the initial statements.

Moral absolutism is an ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other circumstances such as their consequences or the intentions behind them. Thus stealing, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good (e.g., stealing food to feed a starving family), and even if it does in the end promote such a good.