The Tanager wrote:
Clearly, humans have subjective opinions concerning moral issues. If this is all you mean, then you've argued for it in a very confusing way. I never argued against this. That has never been what people mean by "objective morality". If this is what you have thought all along, then I would love to hear why you brought that to counter something I said in that other thread. .
Where did I ever suggest that subjective opinions = objective morality?
I don't believe I ever did that.
The Tanager wrote:
I thought we had been talking about whether these "subjective opinions" is a distinct concept from "morality" or not. I thought you were claiming (the equivalent of) that they are distinct. I think they are distinct, just like "humans having subjective opinions concerning the shape of the earth is distinct" from "the shape of the earth."
Perhaps you misunderstand. I'm not trying to argue for a meaningful model of "
subjective morality". All I'm saying is that this is all we see.
The only evidence for any concept of morality that we can see is our own human subjective opinions of what we individually judge to be right or wrong.
I'm not arguing that this constitutes any meaningful system of morality. I'm simply pointing out that human subjective opinions about morality are all that exist. There is no evidence for the existence of any consistent moral system beyond that.
The Tanager wrote:
That humans have their own subjective opinions is a part of both of the solutions I thought we were providing, so it doesn't naturally point to one being true over the other.
I'm saying that your apparent claim (which I would say is equivalent to "human subjective opinions concerning moral issues" is not distinct from "morality") has no positive support for it. If you have been making the further claim, then you need to respond afresh to my post 58 within that context.
I don't even see where the claim you have associated with me makes any sense, much less that I have ever made this claim.
Why would I claim that there is no distinction between morality being nothing more than human subjective opinions or being some imagined consistent objective moral code written in stone in an imagine Platonic World?
Of course there would be a distinction. Morality as subjective human opinions is basically meaningless, other than reflecting the moral views of individuals. Although, in this sense it's only "
meaningless" if you want to claim that human opinions are meaningless. In a social democracy we value individual human opinions. Therefore we can vote on moral issues and let the majority opinion rule.
I don't personally favor such a system of morality. But as far as I can see, if we want to construct a system of morality, then that's all we have to work with.
I would argue that we shouldn't even be thinking in terms of morality (i.e. in a religious sense of the term). In other words, there's no need to even judge the guilt or innocence of the individual person in terms of being a good or bad person.
Instead we should be focused on simply making laws based on how we expect people to behave on our society. No question of morality required.
So it's my position that morality is a useless concept in any case.
I'm not trying to argue that subjective morality has any merit. I'm simply arguing that it's all we see existing in our world.
That's all.
The Tanager wrote:
I didn't offer it as evidence for X. I'm talking about how people think and act as though the other person should agree with us. We appeal to a principle, a truth, that we think they should know, or accept as true. If we acted as though morality really were nothing more than a human social construct, it would look differently.
I would suggest that this is because historically humans have been indoctrinated by religions to believe in an absolute morality. So why are they going to suddenly accept that everyone's opinions on morality should have equal merit?
I also disagree with you observations here. I think that many humans do indeed accept that our moral codes are created by our individual opinions on morality.
After all, have you forgotten that secularists argue over moral questions too?
Of course they are also convinced that they can make logical arguments to support their moral views. This would then be an appeal to an objective morality based on logical reasoning.
The problem with this is that often times logic can be used to support both sides of a moral argument. Both sides simply offer up different premises to support their logic. And then they simply end up disagreeing about the premises.
Logic itself is highly ineffective in determining moral issues because even when using logic we need to begin with unproven premises at some level. And that introduces subjective opinions right there.
Is two people can't even agree on which premises to based their logical reasoning on, then logic itself is dead in the water.
In fact, as a direct point I've focused on one point you made in the above quote:
The Tanager wrote:
We appeal to a principle, a truth, that we think they should know, or accept as true.
Exactly. And you should also be aware that they can seldom even agree on what that starting truth should be.
Say you are in an moral argument with someone over whether or not gays should be permitted to live their lives as they so choose. What fundamental principles or truth are you going to point to that you think will support your conclusions?
And don't you think the other person is going to come up with fundamental principles and truth that they too can point to for support for their argument?
Logic alone cannot be the basis for objective morality because ultimately even logic ends up being dependent on subjective opinions when it comes to choosing fundamental premises upon which to build the logical arguments.
Logic can never be a basis for an objective system of morality because ultimately logic itself is based on subjectively chosen premises. Especially in the case of moral questions. Who's to say which premises we should build from?
The Tanager wrote:
If we truly thought morality was a human social construct we wouldn't try to reason with the other side or try to justify our own actions, whether we go to war over the differences or not.
This is the fundamental problem with the very concept of morality. The mere fact that we have been convinced that there should only be one absolute objective moral answer to every moral question is often what actually causes us to go to war in the first place. This is certainly true in the case of religious wars.
Take the question of gays as an example.
I would personally argue that the behavior shouldn't even be judged as being "right or wrong". As far as I'm concerned it's already an extremely misguided notion to even think that we need to judge the behavior as being moral or immoral.
Why can't it be amoral just like which flavor of ice cream we like best?
We don't pass moral judgements on people's choice of ice cream. Why should we pass moral judgements on people's choice of a partner in life?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'll leave you with this thought:
IMHO, to try to hold up the idea that there exist some absolute objective moral code causes us to also believe that every possible question and choice must then have an absolutely correct moral answer.
That's already absurd.
Why should it make any difference who a person chooses to become intimate with or life out their life with? Why should that even be a moral question?
Once you you have accepted a notion of absolute objective morality that's carved in stone (
even if allowing for situational independence), it still causes you to then believe that there must be a moral answer or judgement on every possible action or situation.
But why? Why should ever possible action or situation need to be judged as being right or wrong. Why can't many actions be amoral. Just like choosing what flavor of ice cream to eat. No one is going to pass a moral judgement on that.
Why do we need to pass moral judgement on gay people?
Why do we need to pass moral judgements on a couple who married and later discovered that they can't stand living with each other?
Why brand them as "immoral people". What has been gained by doing this?
Why brand people who had sex before marriage as having committed an immoral act?
Why bother passing moral judgements on anyone?
What good does it do to brand a school shooter as being an immoral person? That isn't going to change what happened. Branding any criminals as being immoral people is useless. It has no meaningful value.
The only people it can have any meaning for at all are people who believe that there is a God who will punish immoral people after they die.
And look at how silly Christianity is (not to pick on this religion but it just so happens to be true). Even in Christianity Jesus is offering to let immoral people off the hook anyway if they simply ask him for forgiveness.
So morality is not only a meaningless concept in reality, but it's even a meaningless concept in religion.
In Christianity Jesus is offering to toss morality right out the window. All we need to do is ask him to go ahead and do ti. And he'll do it for us.
So much for the rock of objective morality. Jesus is prepared to toss that rock aside anyway so we are told.
