• Philosopherstoned
    1
    By definition, morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Each of us has different core beliefs concerning right and wrong, and therefore morality is subjective.

    To demonstrate this point: I believe that to do something that you think will cause suffering to another being, and consciously having an option that will not cause equal suffering to yourself, is wrong.

    Mainstream society does not believe that it is wrong to harm animals, no matter how much they suffer, for their food. Many people may be unaware how much suffering, also including through slavery of people, their dieting preferences cause. But even when they learn the suffering that their dietary preferences cause, they rarely change their diet.

    This is one of an innumerable amount of moral differences between my morals and the morals of society, and one of a nearly infinite amount of differences in opinion between individuals and society.

    The reason that I say the world is worse for it is because many people and many many more animals needlessly suffer because people do not feel morally obligated to not do things that indirectly cause suffering and they especially feel no moral obligation to relieve suffering.

    I believe this is both proof that morality is subjective and that the world is worse for it. What do you think?
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    I believe this is both proof that morality is subjective and that the world is worse for it.Philosopherstoned

    Worse than what? If there is no such thing as objective morality, you can't compare to this. If objective morality is a possibility then you cannot say for a fact that morality is subjective.
  • tom
    1.5k
    By definition, morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Each of us has different core beliefs concerning right and wrong, and therefore morality is subjective.Philosopherstoned

    Morality, or perhaps better Moral Philosophy, leaves physical traces of the moral (and aesthetic) reasoning that determined what sort of problems the moral agent wished to solve, and which problems it did solve.

    Absent certain values such as commitment to the truth, or openness to criticism, enterprises such as science become impossible.

    The moral knowledge we gain that permits science is no less objective than the scientific knowledge we discover.
  • Deleted User
    0


    Firstly, you're confusing normative morality with meta-ethics. The issue of what 'right' and 'wrong' actually are is meta-ethics, the question of what rules or guides we should follow in order to achieve 'right' and avoid 'wrong' is normative morality. The diversity you're referring to is mostly in normative morality, people disagree about how to achieve a 'good' state of affairs. There's much less disagreement (although still plenty) about what 'good' actually is. Things like avoiding the unnecessary suffering of others is pretty much universal in all moral codes.

    I believe that to do something that you think will cause suffering to another being, and consciously having an option that will not cause equal suffering to yourself, is wrong.Philosopherstoned

    I'm not sure many people would disagree with your meta-ethical position here. What they disagree with are the premises by which it is applied to your example (animal farming).
    Firstly people may disagree that it causes suffering, they may have a different opinion of how animals feel pain, how their conciousness presents it to them such that they could be justified in their belief that the animal's experience of pain is not comparable to ours.
    Secondly they may disagree that they have an option which does not cause equal suffering. Vegetable farming is not without its victims. Moles, rabbits, deer must all be controlled on a vegetable farm, not to mention the numbers of slugs and insects which must be killed.

    Of course, huge numbers of people simply don't care. Which is a problem, but nothing to do with moral relativism. In order for a moral to have any meaning, it must be possible for acts to be immoral, what you identify as the 'morals of society' are not really society's moral, they are society's actions both moral and immoral.

    Morality is not subjective, what's subjective is the extent to which morality is followed.
  • Deleted User
    0
    what is your definition for moral?Pollywalls

    It depends if you're taking an ordinary language approach or an analytical one. Either 'moral' is the thing we collectively use the term to describe, or it is something which it must be by virtue of the requirements of logic (it cannot have inconsistent properties).

    If the former, then moral cannot be entirely subjective because we commonly use the word to judge others (which would be illogical in an entirely subjective system).

    Only if the latter would it be theoretically possible for morality to be subjective, but I don't think it can be, certainly not in the way you've expressed it, if I understand you correctly.

    In order to be logically consistent morality must at least have certain properties. First, it must define something to which an alternative is at least comprehensible and for which another term is not already available (or if not, we're claiming that two terms are synonymous). So, if it were the case that "everything we do [is] already morally good for ourselves", then morality would be synonymous with 'behaviour'. That would simply define away the term. We clearly have a use for such a term so I think it makes more sense to try and see what we really mean by 'morality' rather than the choose arbitrarily between all the options that we can logically mean.

    In that sense, morality is definitely used to delineate certain behaviours from among the set of all behaviours, so I don't see any way in which it can be simply 'everything we do'.

    Without launching into an essay on ethics, the main questions are; whether what is 'good' is objectively knowable (I tend to think the astonishing consistency among human cultures indicates it probably is), and whether any maxim or set of rules are ever going to be sufficiently complex to ascertain the best way of getting to what is 'good' (I tend to think none can, hence I am a virtue ethicist.)
  • Deleted User
    0
    intrinsic values are valueless. morals might exist, but there is no obligation to be morally good.Pollywalls

    I'm not at all sure what you might mean by the first sentence. What does intrinsic mean in this context and how can a value be valueless? Wouldn't that mean it was not a value, in which case, what is it then?

    Your second proposition is clearly not true, not only do the law and social pressure clearly oblige us to follow certain moral rules, but our own internal value systems clearly create negative feelings when certain values are transgressed otherwise we wouldn't have a moral system in the first place. Unless you suspect that morality came about entirely on a whim without any shared intention. That's about as 'obliged' as you're ever going to get, unless by obliged you mean literally forced physically to comply.
  • Michael
    15.4k
    The reason that I say the world is worse for it is because many people and many many more animals needlessly suffer because people do not feel morally obligated to not do things that indirectly cause suffering and they especially feel no moral obligation to relieve suffering.Philosopherstoned

    People might feel no moral obligation even if morality were objective. You seem to conflate morality being objective with people believing that morality is objective. The one does not entail the other.

    At best you can argue that the world is worse for people believing that morality is subjective. But that says nothing about whether or not morality really is subjective.
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