It seems we are at an impasse. I believe my premises are true. You don’t. Oh well. — Noah Te Stroete

Only if you think that they're brute facts. Do you? Otherwise the burden is on you and you should stop making excuses.

I'm not particularly interested in you simply throwing together an argument like that, even if valid.

You begin with premises about society as if it is taken for granted that morality is all about society, which you know that I reject from the get go.

Why is it false? — Noah Te Stroete

No, you don't get to do that. You haven't demonstrated that it is true, and I'll retract my claim that it is false until you bother to attempt to support your own argument properly instead of deflecting.

I don't do:

P1. Blah blah

P2. Blah blah

P3. Blah blah

Now prove me wrong!

So stop trying, people. Do not take me for a fool.

If morality came from the individual, there would be no need for socialization.
There is a need for socialization.
Thus, morality doesn’t come from the individual. — Noah Te Stroete

The first premise is obviously false, so the argument is unsound. This is child's play.

You can't make an "is" into an "ought" that is morally relevant without a hidden premise which needs to be justified, and which hasn't been justified, and which you can't justify.

And equivocation is a fallacy.

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

All jackasses have long ears.
Carl is a jackass.
Therefore, Carl has long ears.

Pain is bad. (a given) — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, pain hurts and is undesirable. That's what you're saying there, I take it? That's trivial. Or are you going to do what a sophist would do, and exploit the ambiguity of terminology?

Pain is instinctively avoided. (another given)
Causing pain in other people is bad. (from the first given, and the fact that we live in a society as social creatures)
Causing pain in other people should be avoided. (From the second given and the third premise) — Noah Te Stroete

Nothing morally relevant. Just sophism.

Brushing your teeth is good for your health. Cheese puffs taste bad. Pain hurts.

We act relative to goals and values and desires.

Who gives a fuck? The topic is morality. Say something relevant to the topic.

He didn’t say that. He is saying that the action is MORALLY wrong. — Noah Te Stroete

You are being careless and jumping to conclusions. I know exactly what he said. And I know exactly what I'm doing. My point was that he is switching from one meaning to the other without proper justification. And I was demonstrating that by consistently applying his meaning instead of covering it up with the terminology which he is exploiting. He himself said that "wrong" is just "bad" applied to actions, and his explanation of "bad" was not morally relevant, it just meant something like severe or painful. Simply adding the word "moral" in front of that doesn't magically make his argument work.

Think before you react.

This has to be a category error or something fallacious. He isn’t saying that “pain is immoral”. — Noah Te Stroete

That was my point, which you seem to have paradoxically both missed, and yet stolen. Of course it doesn't make sense and is a category error. He is saying something else that is not morally relevant. It's not morally relevant to say that cheese puffs taste bad or that my toothache hurts real bad. It is morally relevant to say that murder is immoral. The fallacies are his, not mine. And the relevant fallacy is equivocation, as I pointed out.

He is saying that by our very nature, pain is something we instinctively avoid. — Noah Te Stroete

Which again, lacks moral relevance in itself. You'd have to make it relevant with one or more additional premises.

This misses the point in a similar way to the earlier point about brushing your teeth.

2. Pain is bad.
If you went to a doctor and said, 'doctor, this pain is bad', you would have good reason to be annoyed if his reply was, 'ah, so you have a personal dislike of pain, do you?' Everyone whose views have not been tainted by bad philosophy knows that pain is bad - this is a truth we learn by experiencing pain. If you wish to pretend that you aren't aware of this truth, then of course that is up to you. — Herg

Okay, so you're just talking about pain being bad in a sense that is not in itself morally relevant, in spite of the superficial appearance given the shared terminology of "bad". In that context, "bad" means something like severe or painful. The lack of relevance is obvious if you swap "bad" for "immoral". How do you think the doctor would react if I said that the pain is immoral? It's easy to make an obvious point, but you also need to make it relevant to the topic.

3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
Entailed by 1 and 2. — Herg

All that that is really saying, given your explanation of the meaning of "bad", is a misleading repetition of your first premise: that boiling babies causes them pain, or severe pain. So it is just a truism. No logical relevance yet.

4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
'Wrong' here is simply the equivalent of 'bad' when applied to actions: that we happen to say 'wrong' rather than 'bad' is an accident of linguistic history. The material point is that the badness of the intended result of an action necessarily infects the intention with which the action is performed. The two cannot be reasonably separated, and therefore if an action is intended to have bad consequences, the action itself must be a bad action. — Herg

If "wrong" is simply an equivalent of "bad" in accordance with your previous usage, then you're just making an irrelevant tautology: intentionally performing an action whose effect is severe pain is causative of severe pain.

That says nothing of morality. You are equivocating your terms, hoping that nobody will really notice.

5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.
Entailed by 4 and 5. — Herg

You haven't reached that conclusion without committing a number of key errors, so it doesn't really count.

And you have put no effort at all into making any. — Herg

That's not how the burden of proof works, and I asked you why not, alternatively: in accordance with my moral judgement, pain is bad as far as I'm concerned? You merely assume or assert controversial premises and reason from that point onwards, which is the fallacy of begging the question.

It is not valid to suggest that it is the case that they're true unless proven false. And you can't shift the burden. That would be an argument from ignorance.

So how about you take this criticism seriously and try again?

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. It's in this third area that the basis for a degree of objectivity in moral truths is to be found. For example:

Proof that intentionally boiling babies is morally wrong

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.

If anyone wants to disagree with 1, 2 or 4, I'd be interested to know their reasons. I'd also be interested to know from moral relativists here how they would go about persuading someone else not to boil a baby.

Of course none of the above shows that every deontological principle is based on an objective truth, and I wouldn't want to claim that it was; my view of morality is that some of it is based on objective truth, and some of it is relative.

BTW, I'm quite a bit old than fourteen and three quarters, but it's nice to have it noted that I have a fresh and youthful approach. — Herg

I don't see anything worth taking seriously in that. It is just dogmatism. You need to actually explain, as though speaking to a sceptic, why your reader should accept that it is as you say. Why not, alternatively: in accordance with my moral judgement pain is bad as far as I'm concerned? You don't seem to have put any real effort into defending your stance against obvious objections.

Nothing to do with any teleological goals of society, unless you mean the survival of the community. Morality comes from society/socialization as we are inherently social creatures. Morality does NOT come from the individual. If it did, the world would look very much different. We probably wouldn’t even be having this discussion in such a world as the one you are claiming exists. — Noah Te Stroete

Sorry, but I'm not interested in a bunch of bare assertions strung together like that, as though they're a real argument. I already addressed some of this earlier, so you should start from what I said before, not from scratch.

all due respect, and I mean that. None of that self description is close to an argument against the point I was making. — Rank Amateur

Ah, someone else who is giving off the impression that they've never heard of Hitchen's razor. Like for like is perfectly permissible. As for arguments, you go first, and then maybe I'll respond. But understand that your assertions can simply be dismissed or met with counter-assertions.

The difference is? — Rank Amateur

The difference is that of doxastic voluntarism and doxastic involuntarism. It is about your controversial use of the word "choice" in this context.

My issue is if you chose as best you can to place yourself close to subjective end, you are forgoing the right to evaluate the moral judgment of others. It can't just be subjective for you. Nietzsche has to assume the guy stabbing him in the back with a knife is just listening to his particular truth, and his personal morality based on that truth — Rank Amateur

And you're completely wrong on all of those points.

I'm not "choosing" to place myself somewhere on the scale, I'm making an honest assessment and reporting that assessment.

I'm not forgoing "the right" to evaluate the moral judgement of others. Rights are just a useful fiction anyway, and I most certainly can and do evaluate the moral judgements of others.

It can indeed be subjective for me, and it is so.

There's not much that Nietzsche can do about a guy stabbing him in the back with a knife, unless he is equipped to defend himself and manage his knife wound, if it isn't fatal in a matter of minutes. But he certainly doesn't have to accept it with indifference as you have persistently asserted with no reasonable support whatsoever, and it makes no sense to anyone other than to you, in your own mind, with your own blinkered assumptions. So it is completely ineffectual as a criticism.

How do you think socialization works? How do you think society works? If we were all lone wolves fighting for territory, this might make sense. As the human world is, it doesn’t make any sense. — Noah Te Stroete

You're either drifting off topic or making an illogical connection. The functioning of society has nothing to do with the point that I was making. Why do people keep confusing normative ethics and meta-ethics? The issue is not what the goals of society should be and how we should best achieve them or anything of that sort. The topic isn't whatever you imagine or would like it to be.

Not important, I'm more interested in the general point, which is that we're all apt to overestimate our moral autonomy and when it comes to the crunch, fall mostly in line, often inventing some reason why we 'had' to. — Baden

Sure, that's true. Except when it isn't. And there's also a popular psychological mechanism to deny or underplay the darker side of our nature. Even though, like you say, it goes on every day. There have been hundreds of wars, barbaric torture, genocide, slavery, rape, and this continues into our modern times. There are still wars, crimes are committed all of the time, there's modern slavery, stoning to death, cutting off of heads, and so on. That is just part of human nature. Wherever there are humans, there are these sort of things.

It goes for almost all of us to a large degree except for true deviants like sociopaths where through some combination of environment (often abuse) and genetics, enculturation is seriously short-circuited. — Baden

True as that might be, there's a trend in ethics to dismiss anything too different or radical as some kind of illness, even though they almost certainly aren't qualified to make that judgement, given that they're most likely a) not a psychiatrist, and b) even if qualified, have not performed a proper assessment.

It paints a neat little picture, but that's all it really is. And the irony is that I've been called a romantic and a fantasist.

We are human, all too human. Being human is not an illness, is it?

Nothing you've come up with here is particularly dark compared to what goes on in the real world daily. — Baden

And the irony here is that you actually know very little about me and my life. Certainly not enough to rule out that I'm part of the dark goings on in the real world which occur on a regular basis.

You're a fragment of the sociocultural awkwardly expressed through the mostly compliant body of an ape. Your perceived individualism and autonomy is largely formed of retroactive confabulations designed to make the marriage between the fragment and the ape less acrimonious. There's plenty you can't do but manage to convince yourself that you don't want to. — Baden

Trying to play psychologist, are you? I can do that too. You're just rationalising your own deep-seated aversion to confronting the dark side of our human nature.

And where does the individual stem from? Hint: It begins with "S". You didn't choose your moral system so much as it chose you. — Baden

Except that I'm autonomous and it is fully within my power to override whatever influence that the morality of society has over me. Do you think that I would let that stop me if it mattered that much to me? If, for example, I really thought that murder was good, and worth the very high risk of going to prison?

I haven't seen a good response to this. Just name calling. Ugh! Deviant! You're irrelevant! You don't matter! You're an anomaly!

In practice, though, your morality is not going to differ form the vast majority unless you're one of the deviant few; so it is not uniquely yours, and you never would have had it in the first place if you were not enculturated into it.

Of course, on the hand, I am not saying that an individual's moral principles are not what matters most to them. — Janus

Whether it is uniquely mine or not, in the sense of whether or not it matches up to the moral judgements of others, is a difference which makes no difference.

Yes, and I suspect that would be because you don't consider corporations to be morally justified in their practices, and therefore feel justified in taking whatever you can from them. But you declined to spell that out. — Janus

That's true to some extent. But I've also knowingly done bad things in the sense of popular or traditional morality, and in the sense of being in two minds about something, perhaps feeling that it is wrong in a sense, but also right in a sense, yet doing it nevertheless. I am indeed an amoralist at times. It is quite liberating. You know, just steal the wallet and don't even worry about it. Morality is what we make it and nothing more. Life is what we make it and nothing more. There are no rules which we simply must follow, absolutely. And being categorised as a rapist or murderer really only matters insomuch as it matters to me.

How's that for radical thinking? Does that make me a deviant? Even if it does, does it matter to me? It's just another box to be put in.

So, you'd do the same to an individual as you would to a corporation then? Just for the money? — Janus

No, you know that I didn't say that, and you're bright enough to pick up that I specified a corporation for a reason.

It's all but universal, and that's what matters. The anomalies of a deviant few are irrelevant. — Janus

But it doesn't matter that it's all but universal in terms of my morality, because that's not where my morality stems from. My morality has pride of place in any consideration of morality whatsoever. If murder being good was part of my morality, then that would be of greater importance to me than an almost universal judgement that it was not good.

The anomalies of a deviant few if they are other than me are irrelevant either way, because it is my moral judgement that matters to me. I'm not appealing to theirs or anyone else's. You are fundamentally mistaken about where morality stems from. It stems from the individual, from their moral feelings. I would stand by my moral judgement that murder is wrong, even if everyone else in the world judged it to be right.

Ah, the romantic fantasy of the individualist! You're not the first to indulge it, and you won't be the last; but it's a woefully simplistic view. — Janus

It's just the truth, plainly spoken by yours truly. The fantasy is yours. Universal my arse.

How would you justify that to yourself? — Janus

I'd just want the money. I wouldn't care about the moral status of the act.

As I see it "the debate that's going on" is itself a litany of irrelevancies and category errors. — Janus

Not so different from other debates then. The key debate, as I see it, has been about meta-ethics, and has been moral subjectivism vs. moral objectivism, with some trying and failing to argue for a sort of "third way" whereby they have their cake and eat it.

On the broader issues it is, for all intents and purposes, universal. — Janus

This is just smoke and mirrors. It simply isn't universal. Full stop. Adding "for all intents and purposes" completely undermines your claim. We could all just say "for all intents and purposes" morality is objective, or universal, or absolute, and be done with this debate. But it's deeper than that.

The fact that there might be some deviants who think that what most people consider to be heinous acts are actually good is what is morally and subjectively irrelevant. — Janus

I agree that it's irrelevant normatively, but normative ethics is itself irrelevant in this context, so you aren't saying anything relevant in making that point. I don't share the moral judgements of the deviants in terms of all of the big stuff, like rape and murder, so in that sense they don't matter, but that sense is relative and subjective. Still no objective morality.

That should be obvious; I am talking about the context of inter-subjectively shared values being the overarching context within which, perhaps even against which, individuals define their own sets of moral values. How do you think it is not significant? — Janus

Well, for a start, it wasn't clear to me what you were getting at, so why would you ask me that as though I actually knew exactly what you were getting at and was denying the significance of it? Just saying that it should be obvious is naive. Just be clearer next time. It's not difficult. If you had simply said that the last time, I would've understood.

Anyway, now that you've explained yourself properly, I'm not saying that I don't see the supposed relevance. But I don't agree. Primarily, my morality is founded individualistically. My moral feelings are my moral feelings, not those of all of the other subjects. Whether they happen to share my feelings or not is neither here nor there. I appeal within myself, not outside of myself to others.

You of course realize that relative to my point of view all of equally applies to you. Ironic — Rank Amateur

You of course realise that I have not committed to relativism in general, just moral relativism. Ironic indeed. We can swap around for this part if you want to. You're wrong, irrespective of what you think. Reason is objective, not subjective. Facts are certainly not subjective. Nor rocks. Nor meaning, as I conceive of it.

Those beliefs are objectively immoral if you count universal inter-subjective agreement as being objective. — Janus

So this was what you were getting at. Well no, I don't, because it isn't. It's not universal for starters, and it isn't objective. It is subjective.

Individuals are part of the inter-subjective web, not totally autonomous, self-creating atoms. — Janus

And again, what's the supposed significance of that, given the strict confines of the topic?

This is true if you are holding to a notion of individual subjectivity. If you hold to a notion of collective subjectivity or inter-subjectivity, then not so much. — Janus

The distinction seems trivial, since a collective is made up of individuals. So what if lots of us have in common a moral judgement. The topic is meta-ethics, not normative ethics. All I can think of are normative points or more value judgements. Where's the supposed relevance, given the confines of the topic?

Either way, the better and worse is relative, it's not that everything is equal. What's not to understand about that? Better or worse by my standard, better or worse by the popular standard...

Fantastic response. Bravo.

Here's what I conclude:

1. You have no argument, or at least no valid argument.

2. You aren't willing to help yourself out of your own incredulity. Rather, you want us to repeat our earlier attempts ad neaseam, even though there is little evidence that you'll get it this time instead of repeating the same problems.

3. You don't realise that your criticism of moral relativism as meaningless is not uniquely a criticism of moral relativism, but applies in general and can easily be turned back on you.

Yes, that is my entire point - there is no meaningful value judgement that can be made about competing moral views if you hold to subjectivity - they can only be different - there is no meaningful subjectively better or worse. — Rank Amateur

I know what your conclusion is. I was questioning this supposed argument you referenced.

Then please show me how it is possible, before you invoke the fallacy - show it applies please. — Rank Amateur

But I think that you need to go back and reconsider the explanations already given, not that I need to repeat them. It should go without saying that without a contradiction, then it is possible. And there's no contradiction. That a contradiction results from one of your premises that we don't accept is in itself trivial.

And they are welcome to their view, but it has no real meaning to anyone else. — Rank Amateur

That's not true, because people become moral subjectivists. They're not born that way. I became one myself, because I found it convincing enough. But yes, obviously if you're not convinced by it, and that can't be changed, then it is meaningless in a sense. That's not unique to moral relativism, it is true in general. How do you suppose we see your position?

It muddies the waters because it is a false, or at least weak, analogy. We don't tend to care much what others like to eat, provided it doesn't smell too bad. When it comes to morals almost everyone agrees about the basic principles, and those principles are based on what makes for a harmonious community.

Kant was basically right: there would be a contradiction in saying that you want to live harmoniously with others, but that you think it is OK to lie, cheat. steal, exploit, rape and murder. If you are honest and say that you don't really care about living harmoniously with others, but that it suits you to remain in society because you don't like being alone, you wouldn't be able to survive alone, you need others to exploit and torture lest you be bored, and so on; then there would be no contradiction. But would such a person be moral, immoral or amoral?

(What I don't like about Kant's CI is the notion of duty). — Janus

I still don't agree that it muddies the waters. I think that you're throwing mud into the water and blaming it on the analogy.

What supposed relevance is a harmonious community in the very specific context of this discussion, as opposed to the context of morality in general? I care about a harmonious community to some extent, but so what? I would steal from a rich corporation if I could get away with it, whether we assume that that's immoral or otherwise. I wouldn't rape or murder, even if I could get away with it. None of this seems relevant in terms of the debate that's going on.

That is my position that I have been arguing - not theirs. — Rank Amateur

You've been arguing it? Are you sure about that?

How can one subjective moral view be better than any other subjective moral view - if the basis for both is purely the subjective view of the person who holds it? Any judgment on either view that does not employ some degree of objective morality as a standard to measure against is just one more subjective view. — Rank Amateur

So an argument from incredulity. You don't see how it is possible, so it's not possible. We've all tried to explain it to you. You can lead a horse to water...

If all moral views are subjective, by definition none can be objectively better than any other. — Rank Amateur

Moral subjectivists don't claim or accept that, so it doesn't work as a criticism at all. That's like saying to a solipsist that the existence of other people means that they can't be the only one who exists. It's kind of silly when you think about it.

The trivial point is that some people won't be convinced, no matter what. And the illogical connection is that moral objectivism somehow magically has the answer.
— S

Absolutely. — Isaac

Predictable, ain't he?

To be honest I think subjectivism has the edge here and people are using it despite claiming to oppose it. Look at Tim's argument, or VS's. It's basically saying "I think x is wrong and I'm very clever, wouldn't you like to sound clever like me?" — Isaac

Oh yes. And Tim has used all the tricks in the book! They might've worked on me if I hadn't taken the time to learn about logical fallacies and develop my skill in being able to identify them.

Argument 1
Moral relativism: boo! Moral objectivism: yay!

Argument 2
It's obvious.

Therefore, moral objectivism.

That was Tim's tactic in a nutshell. Vagabond Spectre's was more like: "I agree with everything you say, but brushing your teeth is handy, therefore objective morality".

We've got some stiff competition on our hands.

Isaac - I can help you with the right answer - here it is:

Rank - Me and a few million other relative morality believers all seem to hold 2 of the same subjective beliefs - the first one is we think Hitler is a monster, and the second one is we subjectively believe we are going to hang anyone who doesn't subjectively think he is a monster too.

Now I am convinced.

Wish there was kind of name we could use for such a widely and commonly held belief. — Rank Amateur

There is a name for that. It's called a popular belief, and it does nothing to support moral objectivism. Boy, it turns out you were easy to convince. You would've been convinced that slavery was a good thing back in the day.

Poor cat!

Wallow wallow... — Wallows

Poor me.

Another drink.

Oh, like setting the world on fire...

Wallow wallow... — Wallows

Yes, starting with my cat. Then I'm coming for you. :fire:

Go feed the cat.

Wallow wallow... — Wallows

It's round my mum's. And I'm too busy wallowing. Except I wallow differently. My wallowing involves making light of everything. It's my coping mechanism.

Yes, it was a sad day.

Wallow wallow. — Wallows

Not for me it wasn't. I make me laugh.

Wallow wallow ...

Poor cat.

Wallow meow.... — Wallows

Hey, do you remember that time I pointed a gun at my cat in real life? Good times. :lol:

Wallow wallow.

Did you feed the cat?

Meow meow. — Wallows

No, but I fed the me.

Me, me, me, me, me...