Is morality objective or subjective?

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Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Belindi

I don't think 'men are ruled by their nature as human beings' is specific enough to qualify as a falsifiable factual assertion. And 'human nature includes sympathy' definitely doesn't. But 'we should treat each other with sympathy' is a moral judgement I endorse. I think it's rationally justifiable.

I don't think this argument is about linguistic form. It's about the function of two different kinds of assertion: factual and evaluative. Your first two assertions are factual - and the second is merely a re-statement of the first. But the third is arguable. Rich people with servants don't need to seek food - it comes on a platter. The point is, none of your assertions is a value judgement.

The word 'should' in my example introduces a prescriptive, judgemental function. Perhaps if I'd phrased them this way: people need food; people have a moral right to food; people have a moral (or other) duty to seek food. Does that show why factual and moral assertions are radically different, and that there's no deductive (logical) route from the fact to the judgements?
Gertie
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Gertie »

Felix
As I said earlier, not all natural needs and real goods are equivalent, they will need to be ranked and moderated according to their importance to human welfare (and by extension, the welfare of other living creatures).

Felix, this is what I was asking you to explain - what your underlying basis for founding and judging Oughts rests on. It's something which I think most of us just assume, without explicitly saying or thinking about what it means.


Harris pithily summarises it as 'the welfare of conscious creatures'. I'm suggesting that the word conscious is key here, in fact that it's the conscious experiencing of living creatures which gives life, survival, its value and meaning. It's the ability to consciously experience a Quality of Life which matters re Oughts. . Why being and remaining alive matters.


To grasp this, think about someone in an irreversible brain dead state being kept alive by a machine. There is no possibility of any mental experiential states, now or in the future. They are technically alive, still needing basics like food to stay alive. But they have no Quality of Life, no conscious needs or desires, no joy or sorrow, pain or comfort, no access to meaning or value in their own life. Would you be harming that person if you switched off the life support machine? Would it be immoral to kill their living body?


I would say no, because when they lost the possibility of having qualiative conscious states, they had nothing of value left to lose, and they might as well be dead.


So the thing of value in being alive, is having a Quality of Life - conscious states, the experiencing of being alive, of being a conscious Subject.


If you accept this, then I'd say you've moved in to the Qualiative world of Subjectivity (being an experiencing Subject), where things like Meaning, Value, Purpose reside - or as Goldstein calls it, Mattering. In that world of experiencing Subjects it makes sense to talk about Oughts, because the results of actions may affect people's quality of life, and therefore be meaningful to them. And it would (ordinarily) be wrong to kill someone, because you're depriving them of the ability to have a quality of live, which has meaning and value to them, matters to them.


An important thing to note about experiencing a Quality of Life, is that it is Subjective. Literally a Subject experiencing life from a first person pov. It is private rather than public, qualiative rather than quantitive, Subjective rather than Objective. Hence falsifiable propositional statements can't rely on publically accessible evidence we can agree is true, can't be weighed and measured against each other, in the way that objects in the world can. I can value something you dismiss, care about things you don't, have different goals and desires than you, different opinions, have different views on how to achieve my well-being and have a good quality of life.

We can agree that we need to meet our basic needs (biological, psychological, social - call these 'human rights' if you like), then agree we should have freedom to pursue our own desires, as long as they don't impinge on others' quality of life. And if we live in large complex societies, devise ways of facilitating compromises so we get along. Some ways will work better than others.


So back to Subjective vs Objective.


It is objectively true to say there are certain necessary and sufficient conditions for any conscious creature to have a Quality of Life.


There are certain things which will generally help facilitate the experiencing of a good quality of life. And some which will generally be detrimental. But there will also be differences between individual Subjects' personal goals and desires, likes and dislikes, pains and pleasures, which contribute to a quality of life.


It is a fact of the matter that it's the inherently qualiative, first person, Subjective nature of conscious experience which brings meaning, value, desires, purpose and Mattering into a dead world of rocks and 'stuff'.

And this qualiative nature of conscious experience is therefore the appropriate foundation for Oughts.


To sum up. The very nature of being an experiencing Subject brings into being the qualiative properties of value, meaning and purpose, needs and desires, experiential flourishing and suffering, well-being and harm. Which is the reason our actions matter, and the foundation for Oughts and duties towards fellow conscious creatures.

In that sense, Oughts reside in the world of the Subjective, where our language and models for dealing with public, quantifiable, objectively falsifiable facts and propositional truth statements aren't a natural fit - hence the Is-Ought problem. That can lead to difficulties in forming hard and fast one-size-fits-all moral rules. But the subjective-experiential foundation for Oughts doesn't make them any less real or important.
Belindi
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Belindi »

Peter Holmes wrote: July 20th, 2018, 7:37 am Belindi

I don't think 'men are ruled by their nature as human beings' is specific enough to qualify as a falsifiable factual assertion. And 'human nature includes sympathy' definitely doesn't. But 'we should treat each other with sympathy' is a moral judgement I endorse. I think it's rationally justifiable.

I don't think this argument is about linguistic form. It's about the function of two different kinds of assertion: factual and evaluative. Your first two assertions are factual - and the second is merely a re-statement of the first. But the third is arguable. Rich people with servants don't need to seek food - it comes on a platter. The point is, none of your assertions is a value judgement.

The word 'should' in my example introduces a prescriptive, judgemental function. Perhaps if I'd phrased them this way: people need food; people have a moral right to food; people have a moral (or other) duty to seek food. Does that show why factual and moral assertions are radically different, and that there's no deductive (logical) route from the fact to the judgements?
Peter, morality is part of the necessary structure of a society as without is there would be no society only some individuals. Actually, if those indivduals were not immediately engaged in killing each other they would immediately begin to formulate rules for getting on with each other, finding food or whatever. I can imagine a scenario where the moral rules include that certain individuals have no right to feel hungry let alone seek food. The Nazi Holocaust provides an example of this.

Rich people whose food comes on a platter have to work to maintain their status, and typically are afraid of the hungry lower orders who may rise up and topple them.

The point is that "men are ruled by their nature as human beings " is a value judgement because it links in with a naturalistic theory. "Human nature includes sympathy" is a value judgement too as it links in with a naturalistic theory. Value judgements are subjective judgements, and I have already in another post answered a challenge from you to show how what you called a factual statement is a value judgement at heart. Theories, every one of those weighty scientific theories, can all be reduced to value i.e. subjective judgements. We can know nothing objectively about the truth value of propositions.

Linguistic determinism forms and perpetuates ideas. Some of those ideas are basic value judgements. The usages of 'need' are questionable.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Burning ghost »

Is morality objective or subjective?

answer: You decide! And be careful what choice you make ... especially if you’ve got no understanding of how to reason.

For a more reasonable, and more confusing line of questioning why not tackle this one:

How objective and/or subjective are our moral choices and to what extent should we value subjectivity over objectivity, or objectivity over subjectivity in any given circumstance?

Given that we cannot measure the value of something very well at all and possess no empircal units of measure for such a task ... we start on the back foot. Herein lies the intersubjective and pragmatic approach. We’re not all dead ... something must going going okay for us to be here (unless you’re a complete nihilistic moron who believes existence is zilch and “meaning” some vacuous “delusion” - see other thread for the logical problem of declaring a state you’re in as being “delusional”; basically such a statement is contradictory.)
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Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Belindi

I think you're mistaken. Why should being linked in (?) with a naturalistic theory mean a factual assertion is a value judgement 'at heart'? Why is a theory (an explanation) necessarily subjective - dependent on judgement, belief or opinion? For example, why is the theory of gravity a matter of opinion? I apologise if I missed your justification for this claim.

Your assertion, 'We can know nothing objectively about the truth value of propositions' is self-defeating. Is it a falsifiable factual assertion, or a judgement? Is it true or false? And is its truth value a matter of opinion, which is what it asserts? (Mind-warp, or what?)
Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Belindi

Put it this way: if there are no falsifiable factual assertions, but only judgements - if the fact / value distinction is illusory - what justifies the claim that there are no falsifiable factual assertions? Is that merely an opinion?
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Burning ghost wrote: July 20th, 2018, 1:59 pm Is morality objective or subjective?
(unless you’re a complete nihilistic moron who believes existence is zilch and “meaning” some vacuous “delusion” - see other thread for the logical problem of declaring a state you’re in as being “delusional”; basically such a statement is contradictory.)
This parenthetic rant is utterly irrelevant to the question you have put.

The balance of subject/object in the matter of morals does not hinge on belief.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Peter Holmes wrote: July 20th, 2018, 2:15 pm Belindi

Put it this way: if there are no falsifiable factual assertions, but only judgements - if the fact / value distinction is illusory - what justifies the claim that there are no falsifiable factual assertions? Is that merely an opinion?
You are shooting yourself in the foot I think?
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Felix
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Felix »

Gertie: It is objectively true to say there are certain necessary and sufficient conditions for any conscious creature to have a Quality of Life.

There are certain things which will generally help facilitate the experiencing of a good quality of life. And some which will generally be detrimental. But there will also be differences between individual Subjects' personal goals and desires, likes and dislikes, pains and pleasures, which contribute to a quality of life.
I agree with all of that.
It is a fact of the matter that it's the inherently qualiative, first person, Subjective nature of conscious experience which brings meaning, value, desires, purpose and Mattering into a dead world of rocks and 'stuff.'
Partly, but we are also social beings, with more than a smattering of mattering, which is why we need a more objective basis for morality. This is where prescriptive moral truths come in.
And this qualiative nature of conscious experience is therefore the appropriate foundation for Oughts.
First off, is that qualiative as in qualia (is that an accepted term?, the site spell check cries foul) or did you mean qualitative?

Subjective individual wants/desire are of course the only appropriate basis for subjective Oughts, but we're seeking to establish an objective (or if you prefer, intersubjective) moral code, and therefore must go beyond our personal subjective desires to the needs that we all have in common, which are not merely subjective, and which are the necessary foundation for the realization of our human potential. These are the "real goods" (biological, social and aesthetic/spiritual) most essential to human health and welfare that we Ought to seek for the benefit of one and all. Once we have ascertained what these common needs are - most are fairly obvious - we may form a set of true prescriptive judgments about them.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Sy Borg »

Great avatar, Felix :)

Thing is, morality stems from social living. However, different social groups live in different environments that place different demands on people, thus moralities necessarily tend to be more specific than general. However, there are commonalities between all societies, generally taboos regarding murder, theft and rape. Even so, there's often no concomitant thought given to the killing and harming of other intelligent species.

So an ape group might have a rather different view as to which humans are moral than the humans, and I would probably agree with its assessment more than those at the top of the human power tree. If I was to trust a human to behave fairly and reasonably with me, I'd first eliminate from the list anyone who was uncaring about the vulnerable, including denizens of the wild.

If there is an objective morality that exists, presumably humans will gradually arrive upon it over time. Perhaps that process is already in train? Consider the atrocities that were once routine amongst humans - sacrifices, murder of "enemy children", rape, slavery and extreme torture methods that are now outlier behaviours.

So there does appear to be a moral thread through human history relating to harm and suffering within the mess of varying moralities, but that ethical thread is developing at different (and varying) rates in different societies. Naturally there will be backward steps too, but this ethical trend from the first civilisations to now clearly leans towards reduced atavistic sadism. Empathy in humans appears to be slowly growing, again in a wildly uneven manner that only comes clear over the span of history, far broader than a human lifetime.

Thus, within one life we cannot expect that morality will advance - there are some famous moral backward steps in history and we might even be within one now for all we know. However, we can be pleased that morality has improved somewhat over the past few millennia because our lives today would otherwise be shorter and nastier.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Burning ghost »

Hobbes -

What ya talkin’ ‘bout?

If you quote me quote me clearly and don’t splice together bits of what I wrote to make it look more obtuse than it already was - which it was if you haven’t read the context I putlined in the other thread.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Burning ghost »

Hobbes -

Anyway, how does belief get involed then? Or what does it “hinge on”? Personally I don’t see how you ca talk about morality without belief: this could be due to slightly different interpretations of “belief” if you choose to add religious weight to that word (which many do and cannot be blamed for.)
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Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

I'd like to point out what I think is a common misconstrual of the word 'subjective', and therefore of how it contrasts with the word 'objective'. And I think this misconstrual contributes to the intuitive rejection of - even outrage at - the idea that morality is subjective. Here's a summary.

1 Among the many things we do with language, we produce two kinds of assertion with different functions: factual and non-factual.

2 Factual assertions, such as 'the earth orbits the sun' assert something that may not be the case. They're falsifiable, because what they assert can be shown not to be the case. So their truth-value - whether they're true or false - is independent of anyone's opinion. That the earth orbits the sun is the 'object' that makes the assertion 'the earth orbits the sun' true - a true factual assertion - which we call a 'fact'. And the word 'objective' means 'relying on facts rather than opinions, judgements or beliefs'.

3 Non-factual assertions are different. They express judgements, beliefs or opinions, such as 'slavery is wrong', 'knowledge is good', 'murderers deserve capital punishment', 'this music is sublime'. and so on. These assertions - and the judgements they express - can matter very deeply to us. But they don't make factual claims about something that may or may not be the case - an 'object' that gives them factual truth-value, independent of anyone's opinion. So they're what we call 'subjective', which just means 'relying on judgements, beliefs or opinions, rather than facts'.

4 Our intuitive compulsion to believe judgements really are factual is enormously powerful. For example, many contributors here insist that moral judgements of good, bad, right and wrong are objective. But to justify that claim, all they can do is appeal to facts about reality and our lives as social animals. If they are indeed facts, they're objective. But the choice to make those facts - rather than some others - the criteria we should use for moral judgements is itself a judgement. And we have to make those judgements to form our moral values, because we have no choice.

5 The mistake moral objectivists make is to believe a moral judgement. such as 'slavery is wrong', is a fact - a claim about something that really is the case. And this is a category error, because judgements aren't factual - that's not their function. We can and do justify our moral judgement about slavery by appealing to facts about slavery, but it remains a judgement.

6 The misconstrual - misunderstanding - I began with is this: 'subjective' doesn't and can't mean 'true or false depending on personal opinion' - because a judgement doesn't have a truth-value at all. It's just a judgement. What horrifies some objectivists is the assumption that, if morality is subjective - if there are no moral facts - there can be no justification for moral judgements at all - and moral nihilism is the only possible conclusion. But this nonsense comes from the misconception - the category error - that there can be moral facts in the first place.
Belindi
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Belindi »

Peter Holmes wrote: July 20th, 2018, 2:15 pm Belindi

Put it this way: if there are no falsifiable factual assertions, but only judgements - if the fact / value distinction is illusory - what justifies the claim that there are no falsifiable factual assertions? Is that merely an opinion?
Yes, merely an opinion. However within the set of opinions some opinions are better than others because they are more reasoned, more knowledgeable. That's an opinion too. You and I Peter and everyone else are makers of order. If there is ,as Immanuel would claim, intrinsic order we cannot know that for sure and it's a matter of faith.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

The case against moral objectivism is very simple: it entails contradictions.

1 The word 'objective' means 'relying on facts rather than judgements'.

2 The claim that a moral assertion, expressing a value judgement, is a fact - a true factual assertion - means that any such assertion is a fact. So if the assertion 'slavery is wrong' is a fact, so is the assertion 'slavery is right'. And such a contradiction shows that the reasoning is faulty.

4 The claim that some moral assertions are facts, but that others aren't facts, is special pleading that falsifies the claim that moral assertions are facts.

5 The conclusion has to be that moral assertions don't express factual claims, but rather value judgements, and so they are subjective.
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