Objective morality, Virtue, and Gray areas

[ThePainefulTruth]

I think objective, universal, morality exists and is basically a refined statement of the Golden Rule--which, BTW, is expressed in some form by every major religion, even though it's swamped by extraneous, non-applicable add-ons which inevitably draw most of the attention.

Morality should deal ONLY with our interactions with each other. All else is subjective, individually determined virtue. Not working or going to church on the sabbath are not moral issues, but if you think they're virtuous behavior, that's entirely up to you. Virtue should never be legislated, although it will always be subject to social pressure, though some will pay a price if they buck the pressure.

As for the fine tuned Golden Rule, it is: "Honoring the equal rights of all adult humans of sound mind, to life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud".

That's it. Subjective morality doesn't exist, but there are some gray areas lurking in the qualifiers (adult, human, of sound mind) that have to be dealt with.

Specifically, I'm referring to cases such as the differing degrees of humane treatment given to animals, when does an embryo acquire the right to life, and when do children/adolescents, the mentally handicapped or criminals, come to possess (or loose) their rights. These gray areas deal with the degree of consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness possessed by a given individual; and they're gray because there is rarely a specific time, or stage of evolution between point A when they don't have a particular right, to point B when they do. For example, children acquire the right to liberty gradually, yet we use a specific age when they're suddenly no longer considered a minor and have full legal rights as adults. The point is to recognize that picking a specific, arbitrary point for legal purposes can obviously have negative consequences. How can we allow for extenuating circumstances yet maintain equal protection under the law? Should, say, an arbitrary first trimester limit on abortion be lengthened if, for instance, the fetus has developmental problems? When does the right to life of a fetus override the right to life and liberty of the mother? For animals, is humane treatment for a dog the sames as for a chicken, or a lizard or cockroach? It isn't immoral to put (lock up) a child in playpen, restrict an adolescent from selling his TV, drinking alcohol, or making them do chores, and you don't give a child a gun to handle bullies, etc., but when do they acquire those liberties?

When we look at the extremes, 1 day old vs. 9 mo. old fetus, dog vs. cockroach, healthy adult vs. one with Alzheimers, we have little trouble making judgements. This isn't an argument against arbitrary limits, but the transition can be very problematic for deciding what's moral, and how we should deal with these issues legally. Sometimes we just don't have the information we need to make an informed judgement, and the first step is to recognize that. Some fundamentalists believe that the right to life begins at conception, but that's strictly a matter of arbitrary faith. Should a 13 year-old girl who is one day pregnant as the result of being raped by her father be forced to carry the baby to term? Others believe we can abort a healthy baby even when it's in the process of being born, but that's just as much a matter of blind faith, and should actually be considered murder.

These gray areas are gray because we don't have definitive answers for them, and the point is we need to recognize them for what they are and deal with them calmly as much as we can in our laws. All we know for sure is if a crime can have no victims, it isn't a crime. All absolute immorality stems from an adult establishing a moral double standard for himself or his family, clique, group, race, religion or country.

(I know there are questions such as under what assumptions do we adopt the Golden Rule, what would motivate society to adhere to it, and how do we enforce justice with objective morality but subjective punishment. But this is a long post already so I'll deal with those as they arise.)

[Sydney Carton]

[Replying to post 1 by ThePainefulTruth]

'PainefulTruth. Based only on the comments I've seen you post, I like you. I like the way you think. It seems that you're honest enough to admit that you have intrinsic beliefs but are also able to distance your emotions from your beliefs in a way that allows you to analyze them.

Considering emotions: we all have them, we all want to react to them. I believe this stems from our innate nature of a 'built in' moral compass. The Bible may be true, it may be false, but if it's true that means we were created in God's image. I don't believe God looks like a physical human being. If we are created in God's image I believe that means we're prideful, introspective, compassionate, capable of free will (making our own decisions even if it damages us), and wrathful (vengeful). The concept of vengeance, not protection, requires an understood moral boundary to be crossed.

If you believe in the Bible all of these beautiful emotions stem from the fact that we're reflecting our Creator's personality. The problem is that He's the Creator, we're the creations. If He chooses to be vengeful, wrathful, or anything else He wants to be, has the right to be so since He (literally) owns all of creation. When we attempt to be vengeful (for example) we're mirroring His profile but have no right to assume that much authority.

Since we have sentience, since we have intelligence, we question our origins and our purpose and we have the means to come up with some answers (even if they require faith).

Subjective morality is equivalent to the absence of morality since anything can be justified when viewed in the proper light. True morality, objective morality, requires a unwavering standard that applies to all. Unfortunately, this requires faith. Since we, as humans, will never truly agree an one pure system of belief there will always be conflicts stemming from faith. That may be distressing to me but the alternative is force feeding everyone a single point of view, so it's OK.

We, as individuals and as a civilization, have very finite intelligence. Since we don't know everything, can't know everything, and will never know everything, our beliefs are just that: beliefs. EVERY person believes something. Every human makes up for their lack of knowledge with faith of some kind, even (or maybe especially) atheists. I would also say that every person applies a standard to their life, objective or subjective.

In the end we cannot, and will not, know the truth of things until we die. That being said (and since we all have faith of some kind) what you believe says less about the what the universe is and more about who you are.

[higgy1911]

I was an Objectivist for a long time. But I could never rationalize it. The whole idea of objective morality stinks of despotism and tyrannical aspirations.

Enlightened self interest tempered with empathy is as good a standard to live your life by as any, but I get nervous when anybody starts demanding we judge everyones values by our own standards.

Cause the thing is I don't have to condemn genocide as immoral to try and prevent it, I don't have to think murder is immoral not to commit it. I can keep my moral judgements subjective and all I lose is a little self righteousness.

[Bust Nak]

Subjective morality is equivalent to the absence of morality since anything can be justified when viewed in the proper light.

Would you then say there is no such thing as taste since any food can be tasty when tasted by a particular taster?
Would you also say that there is no such thing as art since any piece can be attractive when viewed by a particular critic?
And so on and so forth for every matter of opinion?

True morality, objective morality, requires a unwavering standard that applies to all. Unfortunately, this requires faith. Since we, as humans, will never truly agree an one pure system of belief there will always be conflicts stemming from faith. That may be distressing to me but the alternative is force feeding everyone a single point of view, so it's OK.

What are you saying here? So there is a problem of human never agreeing on a single standard of morality, that much I get. One can potentically fix that problem by force, ok, I get that too. But how exactly would having faith fix it? You have faith that XYZ is moral, what about those that don't?

We, as individuals and as a civilization, have very finite intelligence. Since we don't know everything, can't know everything, and will never know everything, our beliefs are just that: beliefs. EVERY person believes something. Every human makes up for their lack of knowledge with faith of some kind, even (or maybe especially) atheists. I would also say that every person applies a standard to their life, objective or subjective.

I think you are defining objective along the lines of "fair" or "without bias" here, but in the context of subjectivism vs objectivism, objective us defined as "independent from any minds." There is no reason why a subjective standard cannot be fair.

I was an Objectivist for a long time. But I could never rationalize it.

That's the thing with objectivism. One doesn't ever need to rationalize it. Objective morality simply is. "Why is XYZ wrong, it just is" is all the rationalization an objectivist need. The same why "why is this rock 348 gram?" can be asnwered with "it just is."

Many a time I catch a self-proclaimed objectivist explaining why he thinks something is immoral along the lines of the harm it causes, they are more of a subjectivist then they know.

[ThePainefulTruth]

quote="Sydney Carton"]
[Replying to post 1 by ThePainefulTruth]

'PainefulTruth. Based only on the comments I've seen you post, I like you. I like the way you think. It seems that you're honest enough to admit that you have intrinsic beliefs but are also able to distance your emotions from your beliefs in a way that allows you to analyze them.

Thanks for that. I don't know how I missed this post, but suffering the onslaught of moral relativists here lately, justifying everything from the Holocaust to the evil taste of pizza, your comments were a welcome ray of sunshine.

Considering emotions: we all have them, we all want to react to them. I believe this stems from our innate nature of a 'built in' moral compass. The Bible may be true, it may be false, but if it's true that means we were created in God's image. I don't believe God looks like a physical human being. If we are created in God's image I believe that means we're prideful, introspective, compassionate, capable of free will (making our own decisions even if it damages us), and wrathful (vengeful). The concept of vengeance, not protection, requires an understood moral boundary to be crossed.

I like to use the analogy of a car or a ship. We need to have reason (Truth) at the helm, but we won't go anywhere without our emotions (faith) as the engines providing the motive power. Without reason, we run aground, and without emotions, we're dead in the water. Faith guided by reason is not blind. And though I'm a deist, I often refer to the excellent analogy of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (If there is a God), we are indeed made in It's image, being self-aware and thus automatically understanding that violating others is wrong and evil. It's, as you put it, our built in moral compass.

If you believe in the Bible all of these beautiful emotions stem from the fact that we're reflecting our Creator's personality. The problem is that He's the Creator, we're the creations. If He chooses to be vengeful, wrathful, or anything else He wants to be, has the right to be so since He (literally) owns all of creation. When we attempt to be vengeful (for example) we're mirroring His profile but have no right to assume that much authority.

I believe that God doesn't do anything but watch. To intervene, for God to even reveal It's existence, would undermine our free will by knowing that we were being watched.

Since we have sentience, since we have intelligence, we question our origins and our purpose and we have the means to come up with some answers (even if they require faith).

Yes, we can speculate. If God is only watching, we may still speculate about motivations, such as why create a 13 billion year old universe instead of doing it instantly. I can think of no other reason than to serve as a natural, rational stage on which to exercise our God-given free will, influenced only by ourselves.

Subjective morality is equivalent to the absence of morality since anything can be justified when viewed in the proper light.

If there's any Truth in this world, that's it. Of course, the subjective moralists also claim that there is only subjective Truth. There is no reason in Wonderland, yet they make a show of using "reasonable" arguments that there is no reason. High tea for the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.

True morality, objective morality, requires a unwavering standard that applies to all. Unfortunately, this requires faith. Since we, as humans, will never truly agree an one pure system of belief there will always be conflicts stemming from faith. That may be distressing to me but the alternative is force feeding everyone a single point of view, so it's OK.

I think objective morality requires reason so that we may codify it in the simplest terms to be understood universally by the reasonable. Of course the anarchists will always attempt to obscure the Truth, and their first line of offense is the dictionary, ergo the oxymoronic subjective morality.

We, as individuals and as a civilization, have very finite intelligence. Since we don't know everything, can't know everything, and will never know everything, our beliefs are just that: beliefs. EVERY person believes something. Every human makes up for their lack of knowledge with faith of some kind, even (or maybe especially) atheists. I would also say that every person applies a standard to their life, objective or subjective.

Yes, unfortunately for some, because subjective morality puts evil out of sight and thus out of their mind.

In the end we cannot, and will not, know the truth of things until we die. That being said (and since we all have faith of some kind) what you believe says less about the what the universe is and more about who you are.

Well, I believe in Truth, and that Truth is God. Wherever the Truth leads, there God will be. And though I didn't come to that belief in an effort to cover all my bases, that's in effect what it does. For me, the pursuit of Truth (knowledge, justice, love and beauty [objective < - > subjective]), is how we worship God.

Mind if I ask, what do you think about the moral gray areas in the OP? Some would consider them equivalent to subjective morality, and in a way, it does involve a transition from the subjective to the objective. It's hard enough to get agreement that murder is wrong, then there's the gray stuff. Woe is us.

[ThePainefulTruth]

I was an Objectivist for a long time. But I could never rationalize it. The whole idea of objective morality stinks of despotism and tyrannical aspirations.

Because governments and religions have been teaching us, in government and church schools, that morality includes a whole bunch of stuff that it doesn't. Morality is ONLY honoring our rights to life, liberty, property and self-defense--nothing else.

Enlightened self interest tempered with empathy is as good a standard to live your life by as any, but I get nervous when anybody starts demanding we judge everyones values by our own standards.

I've been hammering enlightened self-interest for years. But if there is no objectivity at all, what do you focus your enlightened self-interest on? And again, morality and values are deliberately intermixed for the purposes of confusion, and thus needing Big Brother, or Big Shaman to "explain" them to us. Gathering sticks on the sabbath is immoral according to the Bible, punishable by death. But it isn't immoral, while murder is. The Ten Commandments contain 5 actual examples of immorality, and 5 extraneous examples of bogus values or virtues.

Cause the thing is I don't have to condemn genocide as immoral to try and prevent it, I don't have to think murder is immoral not to commit it. I can keep my moral judgements subjective and all I lose is a little self righteousness.

If you don't condemn them, you condone them. If you don't condemn murder and genocide, you enable them. That's exactly what happened in Germany. The only way for evil to succeed, is for good people to do nothing. Being moral is not only refraining from murder, it's not enabling it by condoning it. If you see a rape in progress, do you not judge the rapist and try to do something to stop it? What, if you're not actually there, you're not enabling it by not judging and thus condoning it? Virtue is a choice, but morality isn't. You don't judge the rapist yet you judge the objectivist?

[Goat]

I was an Objectivist for a long time. But I could never rationalize it.

That's the thing with objectivism. One doesn't ever need to rationalize it. Objective morality simply is. "Why is XYZ wrong, it just is" is all the rationalization an objectivist need. The same why "why is this rock 348 gram?" can be asnwered with "it just is."

Many a time I catch a self-proclaimed objectivist explaining why he thinks something is immoral along the lines of the harm it causes, they are more of a subjectivist then they know.

Which, of course, puts them into a conundrum, since they proclaim 'something is wrong', as an axiom, but can not show that they are right, without violating that. They can not answer 'why', even when another ojectivist has a different opinion on it.

[Bust Nak]

... suffering the onslaught of moral relativists here lately, justifying everything from the Holocaust to the evil taste of pizza...

That's a tad bit disingenuous, no?

I would also point out that you have yet to demostrate the claim that moral is objective, and by extension, subjective morality is an oxymoron.

[ThePainefulTruth]

Subjective morality is equivalent to the absence of morality since anything can be justified when viewed in the proper light.

Would you then say there is no such thing as taste since any food can be tasty when tasted by a particular taster?
Would you also say that there is no such thing as art since any piece can be attractive when viewed by a particular critic?
And so on and so forth for every matter of opinion?

Still trying to obscure things by equating subjective issues of taste and opinion, with the objective immorality of genocide? Or are there some sarcasm tags I'm not seeing here.

What are you saying here? So there is a problem of human never agreeing on a single standard of morality, that much I get. One can potentically fix that problem by force, ok, I get that too.

You do? Oh, yeah; subjectiveists aren't restrained by objective consistency or reason, thus saying one thing here and another thing there with impunity.

I think you are defining objective along the lines of "fair" or "without bias" here, but in the context of subjectivism vs objectivism, objective us defined as "independent from any minds."

No, an objective Truth is a universal Truth which is true of itself; but it's only detectable by, and only has meaning for sentient, rational self-aware creatures. Subjective morality, being irrational, is therefore non-existent and irrelevant.

Many a time I catch a self-proclaimed objectivist explaining why he thinks something is immoral along the lines of the harm it causes, they are more of a subjectivist then they know.

What is subjective about harm?

[Bust Nak]

Still trying to obscure things by equating subjective issues of taste and opinion, with the objective immorality of genocide? Or are there some sarcasm tags I'm not seeing here.

The subjective issues of taste and opinion, IS equivalent to subjective morality.

I am demostrate that the argument against moral subjectivism, also applies to subjective issues of taste and opinion. It's the simpliest way to illustrate the non-sequitur nature of the argument. Let me be more explicit, by Modus tollens:

1) If moral that changes with opinion is no moral at all, then taste that changes with opinion is no taste at all; then beauty that changes with opinion is no beauty at all.

2) But taste that changes with opinion is exactly what taste is; beauty that changes with opinion is exactly what beauty is.

3) Therefore it is not the case that, moral that changes with opinion is no moral at all.

You do? Oh, yeah; subjectiveists aren't restrained by objective consistency or reason, thus saying one thing here and another thing there with impunity.

The disingenuousness I mentioned above, rear its head again. What inconsistency are you seeing here?

Subjectivists like all rational beings are restrained by objective consistency and reason. We just recognise that somethings are not matter of logic, or of facts, but of opinion.

No, an objective Truth is a universal Truth which is true of itself; but it's only detectable by, and only has meaning for sentient, rational self-aware creatures. Subjective morality, being irrational, is therefore non-existent and irrelevant.

Category error. There is a huge difference between not being matter of rationality, and being irrational. I love vanilla ice-cream, I just perfer it, it's not a matter of rationality, you don't analyse the chemical make up of ice-cream in a lab, you simply taste it and see if you like it. Yet one doesn't say it's irrational to like vanilla ice-cream.

What is subjective about harm?

Being dependent of the mind, is what is subjective about harm.

[ThePainefulTruth]

What is subjective about harm?

Being dependent of the mind, is what is subjective about harm.

Somebody wants to bury himself, I say hand him a shovel. You having the last word is working out pretty well.