After all, Aristotle, one of the most enlightened and smart persons of Antiquity, argued that slavery was natural and normal. We can assume that this was the dominant view on this issue until the 18th century. Not to forget that the Bible mentions slavery many times, but always in a neutral ,matter-of-fact way, never saying that it is wrong. Lets face it: the vast majority of people for the most time in human history thought that there are free and un-free humans, just as there are rich and poor people.
By the way: when the authors of the Declaration of Independance wrote that "all men are created equal" they were talking about white men, not women nor black people (many even thought that the latter were not fully human...)

Between the subjective and the objective, there is the sphere of the social or intersubjective reality. Entities which belong to this domain are mind-dependent (they can only exist in a world of minds: if all humans disappeared they would cease to exist immediately), but their existence does not depend on the opinion of individual minds. Examples are institutions, money, laws...
Paris will still be the capital of France, even if I stop believing it. The Euro is the official currency in Italy, no matter what you think about it

I'd say that there are good arguments against the idea of moral realism and moral facts, but introducing God in this question just muddies the waters.

There is no need of a quotation from MSS or any other humanist. The American Declaration of Independence talks about the "self-evident truth" of inalienable human rights. The first paragraph of the German Constitution reads: "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar = Human dignity is inalienable" and so on. They say nothing about some animal dignity. A few activist try to ascribe dignity to the Great Apes, but they are a minority, and lesser animals are never mentioned (inalienable dignity of pigeons or rats, anyone ?)
So, where does this "self-evident" dignity comes from? Where is it derived from? Is is just asserted, a mere self-attribution, just like white racists attribute a special value to the white race, humanists attribute a special value to the human race ? It seems so.

No, of course MSS's "humanism" has nothing to do with the humanism of, say, Erasmus of Rotterdam or Pico della Mirandola. But atheist humanists like MSS have great problems to explain what their 'humanum' is supposed to be that makes the human animal so special. They are unable to explain human dignity. That's the basic flaw of their theory
A philosophy that can be summed up by "We are all together on this boat; so let's be nice to each other" does not need a pretentious name like "humanism", especially if there is a gap between the postmodern and the classical variety.

you only have to scroll down to the end of the homepage to find a discussion on anti-natalism. — S

If you had read my post (not only the title) you would have seen that the content and the arguments are different from those made in the context of "antinatalism"
If my post violates forum rules: signal it to the admins and have it deleted. I would not cry

I believe it is wrong to make babies. — darthbarracuda

Why? Because of climate change? Or because you put someone into a world that is doomed? Or do you think that human life is bound to be full of miseries and suffering so that it would be a privilege not to be born?

Thanks for the warm welcome. -- Do you really expect newbies to scroll through thousands of thread titles to check if the this topic has already been discussed? I guess that all (!) interesting topics have been discussed several times in a forum that exists for years.

Recently I had a little discussion with somebody who claimed that morality comes from within and that it is (therefore) totally subjective.

I think that this claim is based on a misunderstanding. Just because we as citizens of a Western, liberal society can choose and adopt our moral values and rules, that does not mean that they come from within or are subjective. If they were, it would be up to any individual either to create or to sample his or her own morality, just as any DJ can create pieces of music by sampling from jazz, hip-hop, techno and even folk-music. No problem with that.

Even if we leave aside the question whether I am really free to choose my moral values and rules, or if - as I think - that this choice is largely determined by my character, my peer-group and other influences, a moral system - unlike a piece of pop-music - has to be coherent and consistent. Just image a liberal like, say, Michelle Obama announcing that she has become a member of the NRA, and that she now holds homosexuality to be "against nature", probably even a sin. People would wonder if she is out of her mind.
Now if morality really came from "within", it would be a result of my personal whims and predilections, and there is no reason why my whims should show any coherence or consistency (after all I can watch a splatter movie tonight and tomorrow go to a concert listening to a string quartet from Mozart).

Therefore moral values and rules exist "out there", they are not objective like the moon, but they have a status that is beyond personal whims and predilections. I am (more or less) "free" to choose or adopt among existing moral systems (i.e. values and rules), but I am not their origin, which would be the case if they were "subjective" and that they "come from within".

Another point liberal Westerners tend to forget: That we are able to leave the moral world of our family in order go "shopping around" in the market of existing moral systems is a privilege and an exception; it is not typical for morality as such. My guess is that if the vast majority of all people of the present or the past abandoned the moral system of their group (family, caste, class, village...) they suffered severe consequences, from being just the village weirdo, to being ostracized or even killed ("honor killings"). Those who take the moral world of the USA or Germany (as they are today!) to be representative for humankind in general must be really blinkered.

Therefore the claim that morality is subjective is wrong, from a philosophical and from an anthropological point of view. Morality is a *social* phenomenon, even today in liberal societies.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Def. : "subjective": based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions; dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence

Truth and objectivity are not the same thing. One can arrive at true theories in a non-objective way. Indeed, one can hit upon the truth purely at random. Conversely, objective theories are not necessarily true. The history of science provides plenty of examples of the objective formulation and defence of theories that have turned out to be false and have been replaced by other theories. Objectivity is no guarantee of truth, any more than truth can only be the outcome of objectivity

The problem with thinking of objectivity exclusively in general terms, as elimination of prejudice or bias, is that it encourages an absolutist view of objectivity. The prime example of such an absolutist conception is the view from nowhere.

There are two problems with this conception. First, the idea that we are being guided towards *the* truth is wholly misleading. What we are being guided towards are the best answers to the questions that we pose. If you deploy objective procedures in answering a misconceived, confused or misleading question, it is highly likely that the answer will get you nowhere.

Second, any attempt to assimilate objectivity and truth faces the difficulty that they behave in different ways. Note in particular that objectivity comes in degrees. One theory can be more objective than another, but a theory cannot be truer than another.
Whereas truth is absolute and does not come in degrees, objectivity *only* comes in degrees. The idea of absolute objectivity is a misconception. encouraged by thinking of it as a view from nowhere.

What we are seeking to do in imposing standards of objectivity in our judgments in modern science is to identify and separate the informative and the uninformative, with a view to producing reliable results.

We do not need free will but the illusion of it. We are living as human being in moral communities, and we have to ascribe to other people not only agency but responsable agency. Apes do not know morality and responsability and therefore they do not need the illusion of free will. If an ape feels the urge to punish another ape, he simply does so, without any reflection.
But we humans do not function like that: When we feel the urge to punish somebody for a moral transgression, we have to justify (!) this punishment to ourselves and of course to the other members of the group. We have to say : "You could have acted differently!"

Alors.. here's an aphorism:
"Il est impossible d'être jugé par quelqu'un qui a moins souffert que nous. Et comme chacun se croît un Job méconnu..." (De l'inconvénient d'être né"]
"It is impossible to be judged by someone who has suffered less than we have. And as each one believes himself to be an unrecognized Job..."

The distinction between morality and ethics is: morality is about specific rules how members of a given society or community should (not) behave.
Examples : "Pregnant women must not eat shellfish"; "the father has the right to reject a newborn"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "If a shudra touches a brahmin, the latter has to perform a purifying ritual" ... and so on.

Ethics is the reflection about those rules, whether they are justified; which are the general principles to justify them.
Many people associate morality with (stupid) religion and ethics with (enlightened) philosophy, because ethical reflection involves the capacity to question moral rules, something religion usually discourages.
Personally I do not believe in ethical reflection because we always have to take some principles or basic values for granted, which cannot be questioned.

I can relate to what you wrote. I have been suicidal since my compulsory military service (1986-87!), which really knocked me out mentally. It is an on-off thing, fluctuating with the mood swings.

Apart from my personal experiences with that topic I think that people should not kill themselves until they have reached the age of about forty. A lot of things can happen when you are young (and 29 is still young), but when you have reached age 40 you have seen what is in stock for you. The rest can be extrapolated from the way travelled so far

From the philosophical viewpoint I do not see any reason why somebody should not switch off his or her own light. It's just a shortcut to nirvana. Nobody is obliged to wait and suffer till the reaper comes and drags you to the grave.

Gods were always conceived of as human-like (see the Greek and Roman Gods), only with powers and long lives and whathave you — StreetlightX

True, but could it be the combination of linear time plus the conception of God as object (no longer subject of the world and all its events) that initiated the first and decisive steps towards what became the early modern period?
The two sides changed roles: During the Middle Ages Man was the object of God the Almighty, then Man discovered his power and became the subject whereas God was more and more the object of human conception and action ?

Religions unsurprisingly here playing the role of reacting against modernity, — StreetlightX

According to Gavin Hyman (the quote in the OP is from his book) this is a misconception, because the linear time was already dominant during the Middle Ages, but what changed was the way people conceived of God. Modernity as we know it is therefore a child of (Christian) religion, even if centuries later Christian authorities have done all they can to 'catch' this child and neutralize it.

What changed (according to Hyman) was:
"The advent of modernity brought with it a transformed conception of God, a distinctively ‘modern’ theism. When God is understood to be an object of thought, then God is created in the image of humanity. God comes to be conceived in human terms, his transcendence is domesticated and, in some instances at least, God increasingly takes on the characteristics of a ‘big person’. In effect, God becomes a projection of the human subject."

Humanists are not bound, for some reason, to value based on evolution, which the other poster seems to think — Coben

I guess that "the other poster" is me?
I never claimed that Humanism per se is bound to do this, only "Evolutionary humanism" which is the topic of my OP.
Of course humanism is much older than the idea of evolution and traditional, pre-Darwinian humanists based their core value on Christian ground: that Man - unlike any other creature - had been endowed with a divine spirit by his creator, and that therefore Man was the mediator between the sphere of the divine and sacred on the one side and nature on the other, lower side,

They often believe that humans are smarter than other animals and capable of more things. I am not sure if 'human dignity' is one of their beliefs. They value human capabilities and nature. — Coben

If you take certain capacities of Homo sapiens as your base for human dignity or human rights, you 'll into troubled waters when a person does not have (any more) those capacities. Think of severely mentally handicaped persons, or comatose or demented people: they do not have those typically human faculties, but according to humanism they nevertheless have unalienable rights based on their specific human dignity. That is one of the basic aspects of humanism: that human beings have unalienable rights, regardless of their mental or physical capacities.

The one big question remains: where does this unalienable dignity come from? How can it be justified given that from the point of view of evolution H. sapiens is 'just' another animal?

But where are you getting the idea that humanists are basing their ideology on evolution (thereby committing the naturalistic fallacy)? — SophistiCat

As I said in my OP: there is a movement called "Evolutionary humanism" and in Germany it is the dominant philosophy/ideology among atheist humanists.

Thanks for your comment. Very interesting !

Are you trying to gather as many points as possible, or why are you posting single words and half-sentences instead of arguments?
These threads are already quite frayed out sometimes.

What do you mean Canada? The surface of earth and things in it controlled by the Canadian government? The people of Canada? The government of Canada? — Frotunes

All of this and more. Everything that is so to speak tagged with the idea "Canada". It is this mental tag that makes all the rivers, hills, prairies, institutions , people etc. Canadian.
Canada therefore is above all a set of institutions, it's an "institutional fact" in the sense of Searle, like a curreny (Dollar, Euro) or an office (POTUS) or a rite like marriage. All these "things" are institutional, they do not exist independently of human minds like planets or viruses exist, but they are not subjective either (they do not depend on the will, preference, whim or whatever of any given subject).

That is a pretty good aphorism! Is it yours ?

That reminds me of something I read a few days ago:
"Philosophers have been profoundly wrong on alomst every question under the sun over the last 2500 years. You should never listen to the answers of philosophers, but you should listen to their questions." (Christof Koch)

Humans are untrue beings as they revolve around constructions impossible to have knowledge of. When enough people believe the same thing to be so, it is so (becomes same as gravity)...even if it isn't so in the extrahuman world. Social constructions are similar to the supernatural in this way. Money is ghosts. — Anthony

Well put!
That reminds me of one of the central ideas in the work of Yuval Harari:

"We are repeatedly told these days that we are living in a new and frightening era of “post-truth”, and that lies and fictions are all around us. Examples are not hard to come by.

In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. Ever since the stone age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives. Indeed, Homo sapiens conquered this planet thanks above all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions.
We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.

So if you blame Facebook, Trump or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked themselves inside a self-reinforcing mythological bubble, never daring to question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their unquestioning faith in the Qur’an. For millennia, much of what passed for “news” and “facts” in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons and witches. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries an Untouchable – yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts for ever.

When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion. But I am not denying the effectiveness or potential benevolence of religion. Just the opposite. For better or worse, fiction is among the most effective tools in humanity’s toolkit. By bringing people together, religious creeds make large-scale human cooperation possible. They inspire people to build hospitals, schools and bridges in addition to armies and prisons. Adam and Eve never existed, but Chartres Cathedral is still beautiful. Much of the Bible may be fictional, but it can still bring joy to billions and encourage humans to be compassionate, courageous and creative."

(in: Yuval Noah Harari: "Lessons for the 21th century"

Is belief in the supernatural an intelligent person’s game?

If you assume that religious belief is the game of the stupid, you are mistaken. Some of the brightest minds of humanity are and have been religious, not only in the way Albert Einstein embrazed Spinozism, whichis not really a religion. All those men who invented "science" during the early modern period where believers too, some more, some less, but none of them was an atheist or naturalist

Are all things either objective or subjective?

No. This distinction may be sufficient for everyday use. But when we want to explain a cultural phenomenon, this dichotomy is too simplistic, because cultural entities are socially constructed, they are neither objective nor subjective, but someting in between.

An *objective* phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs (be it an individual or the whole of humanity). Example: Measles is caused by a virus, tuberculosis is caused by bacteria. These are facts, representations of a reality "out there", whether we believe or know this reality or not.

The *subjective* is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of an individual. My political opinion, my personal tastes, my memories... all these "things" are subjective, they depend on a subject, in this case it is "me". If I think that "Life of Brian" is the funniest movie ever, so be it, nobody can prove my wrong.

But most cultural entities are are neither objective nor subjective: they are *inter-subjective*:
"The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. Inter-subjective phenomena are neither malevolent frauds nor insignificant charades. They exist in a different way from physical phenomena such as radioactivity, but their impact on the world may still be enormous. Many of history’s most important drivers are inter-subjective: law, money, gods, nations.
Similarly, the dollar, human rights and the United States of America exist in the shared imagination of billions, and no single individual can threaten their existence. If I alone were to stop believing in the dollar, in human rights, or in the United States, it wouldn’t much matter. These imagined orders are inter-subjective, so in order to change them we must simultaneously change the consciousness of billions of people, which is not easy." (from "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari)

Take for example law or language (e.g. the meaning of words): It is obvious that they are not objective, because they depend on the minds of human beings. And they change, be it slowly and unintentionally, or per *fiat* (a legislative authority promulgates a new law or changes an existing law). But they are not "subjective" because a given subject cannot change them (unless we espouse the rather mystical idea that a whole society is a "subject"). From the point of view of individual subjects (the only kind of subjects that exist), laws or the meanings of words (or grammatical structures) are "quasi-objective", they exist "out there" and they continue to exist even if I stop believing in them, because they exist in the minds of thousands, maybe millions or billions of other people.

The realm of inter-subjective entities, or "imagined orders", as Harari calls them, is the sphere of cultural conflicts, because what is "objective" for group A is "subjective" for group B. Religions are the best examples for this kind of conflict. Countries are another example. Before a dedicated group of like-minded men created the United States of America, this "thing" did not exist. Their challenge was to convince enough other individuals of their belief. If they had failed and if the idea of an independent country called USA never had taken root in the minds of a critical mass of other men and women, the USA would not exist. But this idea did take root in the mind of billions of people (is there anyone who denies its existence?), and therefore its existence is *quasi-objective*; not *really* objective, because countries - unlike true facts - can cease to exist (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia...). Mostly these "imagined orders" do not simply vanish but are replaced by another imagined order (the Deutsche Mark ceased, but was replaced by the Euro)

The point is: the "essence" of a belief by thousands or millions is different from the "essence" of a personal thought that happens to be in my mind. I can have a moral intuition ("That poor beggar! I'll give him a euro" ), but that is different from a moral rule: "Thou shall give a tenth of your income to the poor!" Private thoughts and intuitions come and go, but moral rules can - and they did - stay and evolve: from fuzzy rules shared by a tribe, to a written law (e.g. in the codex of Hammurabi), to a full-blown Constitution which serves as a kind of OS for a whole society of 350 million individuals. It would be ridiculous to call a constitution "subjective", and if it is not, then the moral rule shared by a tribe of 300 is not either

Collectively shared ideas often evolve to form institutions (courts, governments, corporations, councils...) which in their turn can be studied as if they were just as objective as the moon or a virus (there is vast literature on Canon Law), whereas their "objectivity" derives entirely from the shared belief of thousands or millions of minds (the objectivity of the virus does not)

Therefore it would be a great progress if everybody acknowledged that the dichotomy objective/subjective is dangerously simplistic and cannot be applied to everything (to every thing), but that a lot of "things" we are talking, discussing, arguing, fighting about are neither nor, but *inter-subjective* or social.

Evolution led to the development of morality, first in protomoralities in many animals, perhaps even fully morality in some of the higher mammals, and then in us. — Coben

Of course: morality is a feature that is the result of evolutionary processes and mechanisms, but that does not mean that the process and its mechanisms (variation, selection, reproduction, drift) are inherently moral. Sexuality is another feature that evolved, but evolution is not sexual.

These same humanists could view humans as the most complicated life forms or use some other adjective and therefore value humans in ways they do not value other speciies. — Coben

Yes, humanists value human beings in a way they do not value other animals, but they are unable to justify this special treatment if they base their philosophy / ideology on evolution. What is the justification for the basic value of "human dignity"? Is humanism just a form of "speciesism"? Do (atheist) humanists prefer and value humans in the same or a similar way that white supremacists prefer and value white people? Just because it is "us"? That would be a strange sort of justification.

Humanism has nothing to do with some mythical being up in the skies. It's a secular thing. — Frotunes

Humanists believe in the unique value of the individual human being, in human dignity. These are fictions like other religious fictions, they are "superhuman" as karma or spirits or heaven.

Morality, from an evolutionary standpoint, is a handicap. — Tzeentch

If this were true, morality would have gone extinct, would have disappeared long ago. But Homo sapiens is an inherently moral animal, moral rules and values are a kind of "operating system" for human societies, and one can even say that morality helped Homo sapiens become the "master of this planet", because this strange naked bipedal animal is only strong as a member of a group, and morality provided (among other things) the social glue for effective groups.
Therefore morality is the outcome of evolutionary forces but evolution itself is not moral.

I wrote in my OP about humanism; you wrote about human nature. The two are neither synonyms nor are they connected in such a way that the one could be deduced from the other.
Nowhere do I claim that "human nature is good"

Some arguments question the claim that humanism is moral, inherently or otherwise. — Frotunes

How can humanism be amoral? As I said: if 100 wildebeests die in a flod, that is just nature, but if 100 human beings die (for example refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea), it is a tragedy. If you look at the two events with same moral attitude ("shrug it off"), you are certainly not a humanist.

What is the difference between the "best answers" and the "truth"? — Harry Hindu

That answers come in grades. There are good, better and best answers, and we can strive to refine, to improve our answers, whereas truth is all-or-nothing. That is the reason why people who like a clear-cut world-view like to talk about "truth".
Scientists prefer to talk about "growing evidence" or "sufficient evidence". Objectivity is not a state we can reach, but it has more to do with a regulative idea, which is unattainable but serves as a guiding principle for all those who honestly (!) what to find out about X (whereby X is the "object".)
That is the point that @Terrapin Station refuses to understand: Objectivity is nothing that we "are", it is an attitude, something we strive to be.

it seems to me that the ideas of the French postmodern philosophers have had a massive impact over the past 50 years on political thought, political correctness, the advent of the social justice warrior, attitudes toward gender and race, etc. — Joshs

All these movements have their proximate origins in the US (in the "civil rights movement" as well as in the Sixties with all those ideas about "empowerment") ...
Derrida or Deleuze - as far as I can see - have little or no influence on these movements, their impact is much more in the spheres of art or literary criticism.

I do not think that the term "monopoly" makes sense in the political sphere. If there is one person or party in power, we call it autocracy or dictatorship.

If I had to come up with a description of the current situation of the political system of the USA I'd say it is still a liberal democracy, but veering towards a plutocracy, because money more and more undermines the checks and balances that are vital to a true democracy

Are these your ideas or is there some source?

Objectivity is a rational inclination, truth is a rational construction. — Mww

I simply haven't the foggiest what this could mean :-)

The point of every sentence I type is just what that sentence says. — Terrapin Station

The problem is that your sentences do not say anything that could in any sense be considered valid in the contect of my OP.

You say that there is no objectivity, and the only "reason" you seem to give - after all that is the point you keep mentioning - is that all we have are beliefs. Even a "?" attached to a belief is a belief. And because beliefs are inherently subjective, objectivity is a mirage.
Does that in any way invalidate my arguments in the OP? No. You are just deliberately misinterpreting them.
If it's all beliefs from top to bottom: what is the difference between these two beliefs?
(a) Grinded rhino horn is a remedy for erectile dysfunction
(b) AIDS is caused by the HI virus

My impression is that you are contradicting my posts and comments just for the fun to be able to contradict somebody.
What is your point? That "to doubt" is also a "belief". No, it is not. You can hold a belief ("Accra is the capital of Ghana") and then you can doubt it (without replacing it by another belief), simply because you are not sure about this very belief and you are aware of this doubt. The doubt itself is not a belief. And if you in your private universe call a doubt a belief, so be it, I am not going to discuss this because it is not relevant.

What is relevant is that human beings - and as far as we know this capacity is unique to Homo sapiens; animals cannot do this trick - are able to reflect on their perceptions and beliiefs, because human cognition is a multi-tier affair: I have a perception or a thought and then - on a "higher" level so to speak - I can relate to this thought/belief/perception. If you are not able to do this, if you are condemned to take all your perceptions and beliefs at face value, I'd say that this a severe deficiency. I guess that people like Trump are also unable to question their beliefs: every idea or belief that pops up in the mind of Donald "The stable genius" Trump is relevant and true and even brilliant. No doubts nowhere

You do not pretend that you can be non-biased, objective, etc...? Neither do I. That is why I distinguish objectivity and truth in my OP. Objectivity is not a state of affairs ("I know the truth") but it is an intellectual QUEST fuelled by my knowledge that I am biased and fallibe. If you say "I am subjective and everything is subjective and that 's it" - there will be no quest, no progress of knowledge, no science. The moment you decide to try to find out about X, you are trying to be objective, because your intention is directed towards an object.
If you just remain in your own subjectivity then you'll never find out anything.
Some people enjoy wallowing in their ignorance.

OK, so you are taking offense at the metaphor "to stand back from X"?
How do you call it when you hold a belief and then it occurs to you "I could be biased or prejudiced or simply mistaken"?
"I think it is water over there, but it could be a mirage"; "I think that Abidjan is the capital of Ghana - or is it Accra?"

Or do you never doubt or question any of your beliefs, judgements, perceptions?

I never claimed that there "are no perceptions or beliefs", but you can question your beliefs (and if you are unable or unwilling to do it, other people can do it for you - that is the essence of science: trying together (!) to be as objective as possible).
If you told me that you are never doing this, I would not believe this for a second.