Most people around me say that is wrong to kill because it's just wrong, not because we decided that it is wrong. I don't see it the same way so it got me thinking about it, and I wanted to see what people's arguments for objective morality would be.

I think it does matter though. Of course there still are consequences of going against what the majority want. But it feels liberating to not look at morality as some moral obligation outside of other people's subjective values. And it's especially important when you go to another culture and realize that they have different subjective values, but don't think that yours are any closer to some "truth". Though some might be more useful than others for stability.

I mean it's a philosophy forum, what do you expect lol

What means objective morality?

According to you it's something that isn't about personal likes and dislikes. Put in different words it's not something that should differ across culture or time. However, and I agree, we do find such differences. Child marriage in India is rape in America. Homosexuality is not a problem in Australia but is a death sentence in Iran.

However, how does the timeline of morality look like? To me, the various moral systems seem to be converging i.e. we're beginning to find a common position on moral issues. Now, murder is bad everywhere not because its a fashion that has appealed to the tastes of the world's people but because it's objectively wrong to deprive someone of a fulfilling and productive life.

I think it's not the matter of morality being objective or subjective. It's the matter of "logic". We, as human beings, are brought up together with the power of logic which has resulted in our development, science, etc. In between, most people have gone astray and made up concepts and regarded them values which are nonsense. Morality in most cases is the same.
We still need pure logic for our decisions. We need philosophy and we have to teach children to ask themselves "why". It depends what we are considering as moral.
And about environment, it is the place we are living. Logic says do no harm to your home if you are looking for a good future. That's simple.

However, how does the timeline of morality look like? To me, the various moral systems seem to be converging i.e. we're beginning to find a common position on moral issues. Now, murder is bad everywhere not because its a fashion that has appealed to the tastes of the world's people but because it's objectively wrong to deprive someone of a fulfilling and productive life. — TheMadFool

Or it could just be that as societies have become more sophisticated they started to value cooperation more, and so murder made less sense to them. Values also can converge with the world becoming so connected with more globalization of culture and especially the internet.

I do agree with you in some sense. I don't look at actions as morally right or wrong, I look at actions as useful or not useful. And also as things I want to do or not.

If I am pretty sure I can steal from someone, there a few things preventing me from doing it. One is the obvious if I get caught somehow I deal with the consequences. But even if I knew for a 100% I wouldn't get caught I still wouldn't do it.

I don't like to harm others because I just don't like to. I acknowledge that is a product of the interaction between my genetics and upbringing/conditioning. In some sense, I value not harming others for the sake of harming. On top of that, I also wouldn't want to go down a slippery slope where I do it, enjoy it, and start developing impulses for harming others in worse ways. That could cause problems in being able to genuinely connect with others, which is also something I value, and could get me in jail.

Or it could just be that as societies have become more sophisticated they started to value cooperation more, and so murder made less sense to them. Values also can converge with the world becoming so connected with more globalization of culture and especially the internet. — SonJnana

I have very little faith in collective intelligence of the masses but I think they're right on morality.

I have very little faith in collective intelligence of the masses but I think they're right on morality. — TheMadFool

You still have to demonstrate why the morality people believe in is objective. Just because a lot of people believe it is objectively wrong to murder doesn't mean that it is objectively wrong to murder. Similarly to how just because a lot of people a lot of people believe that there is a personal god helping them in their life doesn't mean that there actually is.

This is a mistake because morality only relates to life or, in a narrow sense, human existence. — TheMadFool

So you claim.

Have I left anything out?

SonJnana, I think you don't understand that people and life itself are not one and the same thing. People indeed have different moral ideas, but life itself, when viewed on the long run, prefers some behaviors over others. If we look back to the beginnings of history, certain values and conducts became universally accepted as positive over time, while others are universally discarded as negative. Also, the answers on the question of what is virtuous/moral reached by wise-men of different cultures are largely the same. All of this points toward the conclusion that morality is not relative. This is, of course, not to say that some specific moral ideas accepted in one society must be universally true, nor that different people in the same society must have the same moral consciousness.

If you agree that it would be objectively true that the earth is not flat even if everyone believed it was flat, then we agree on definitions for objectivity. If not, then this argument would just be a misunderstanding.

When humans say it is objectively wrong to kill is it because

1. they discovered/have knowledge about an objective morality where it is objectively wrong to kill

or a possible alternative

2. They constructed this idea that it is morally wrong to kill because they realized it was useful even though it’s actually not objectively wrong to kill. Similar to believing the Earth is flat even though it's not objectively true that the earth is flat. Then humans evolved to be predisposed to believe it is objectively wrong to kill and/or people growing up in society are socially conditioned from a young age to believe that it is objectively morally wrong to kill.

Can you demonstrate why it would be the first case and not an alternative in which it is not objectively wrong to kill?

It only takes one exception to confound the idea that pretends to be morally objective.
It has mostly been held to be morally acceptable to kill another human. And in the majority of cultures throughout the world, even today, that is still true.
There are instances where it is thought bad, but it all depends. And the dependant factors are culturally subjective and take into account, race, nation, gender, age, health and a range of circumstances related to the killer and the killed.

1. they discovered/have knowledge about an objective morality where it is objectively wrong to kill — SonJnana

Obviously this alternative is rubbish. How would you even make that 'discovery'?

Also , obviously the case of the flatness of the earth is a matter of fact and not a matter of opinion. Whilst all moral statements are matters of value.

Obviously this alternative is rubbish. How would you even make that 'discovery'? — charleton

I don't know. That is up to the one claiming that there is an objective morality to demonstrate.

Just because many/majority people have agreed that it is morally wrong to kill, the only objective statement about that is that it is objectively true that many/majority of people believe that it is objectively wrong to kill. That isn't a demonstration that it actually is objectively morally wrong to kill.

I can demonstrate what you ask. It has been shown by scientist that not only man, but animals in general have an innate emotional refrain from killing (obviously this does not apply to predators and theirs natural pray). In other words, it is objectively unnatural to kill, even if killing does sometimes occur in nature.

Even if that were hypothetically true for every single animal, all that means is that it is objectively true that animals have a predisposition to having emotional responses against killing. If that is just a predisposition that came about through evolution, that is not a demonstration that it is objectively morally wrong to kill.

Besides the reasoning for that claim, no.

Well, killing is nothing else but a survival strategy. When you say "objectively morally wrong to kill", you are basically abstracting away killing as if it existed outside of the natural world. But since it doesn't, we can only discuss it as it happens in the world of biology. When life becomes abundant and resources limited, predatory behavior will arise. That is where killing comes from. But it remains an exception, rather than the rule of life. Being an exception, we can say that killing is basically unnatural, that is, it can be said to objectively have negative moral value.

You agree that even if every single organism believed that the earth is flat, it would still be objectively true that the earth is not flat, right? If so we agree on definitions.

Now you have to demonstrate that even if every single organism believed that it is acceptable to kill including humans, that it would still be objectively true that it is morally wrong to kill. If the claim that it is wrong to kill is dependent on what any organism believes, thinks, or feels, then it is not objectively true.

All the way I was presuming that organisms feel and act as they do as the consequence of the universal law. If we view life as a complex system, that system has certain objective rules (maybe not rules in strict sense of the word, rather general principles). These objective general principles show themselves exactly through behavior and thinking of animals. In this sense, showing the general behavior of animals and humans is in the same time showing the objective general principles behind those behaviors.

1. A world where it is objectively morally wrong to kill so organisms don't kill

2. A world where it is not objectively morally wrong to kill, however organisms want to survive, so they've evolved to become predisposed to have an emotional component to not kill needlessly because its useful (unless it's for food or threat of danger).

How do we distinguish that it is 1 and not 2?

The way to distinguish that it is 1) that applies and not 2) is this: if 2) applied, than refrain from killing would be an evolutionary phenomenon, and killing would be a fundamental phenomenon (which was there since life's inception). However, it's the opposite: it is killing which is an evolutionary survival strategy, and life without killing was the original state. This original state is the emanation of objective universal law of life: killing is bad. So our world is basically what you describe under 1).

It's entirely possible that in a world of no objective morality, life at it's inception did not have the ability to needlessly kill because it was too unsophisticated. And as life was evolving to have the ability to needlessly kill, it was also evolving the predisposition to not needlessly kill because it that predisposition was useful (needlessly killing does not include killing for survival purposes).

Just because life did not have the ability to needlessly kill doesn't not mean that it was due to some objective moral principle. It may have been due to the fact that the laws of physics were only able to create life that was too unsophisticated at it's inception to have the ability to needlessly kill.

Just because life did not have the ability to needlessly kill doesn't not mean that it was due to some objective moral principle. It may have been due to the fact that the laws of physics were only able to create life that was too unsophisticated at it's inception to have the ability to needlessly kill. — SonJnana

It may have been so, but it's very unlikely and to me doesn't make much sense. If you believe that killing is not natural on an objective level, things easily come together and phenomenons that we can observe around us fit in. If you from the other side believe that killing is just as natural as non-killing, all kinds of facts become difficult to explain, like for example why there is relatively little bloodshed in nature compared with peaceful life today, why there was no predation in early stages of life (the argument you try to make does not stand, since viruses for example are extremely simple organisms yet they are destroying cells more complex than them).

If you from the other side believe that killing is just as natural as non-killing, all kinds of facts become difficult to explain, like for example why there is relatively little bloodshed in nature compared with peaceful life today, — Dalibor

I already addressed this point

And as life was evolving to have the ability to needlessly kill, it was also evolving the predisposition to not needlessly kill because it that predisposition was useful — SonJnana

why there was no predation in early stages of life (the argument you try to make does not stand, since viruses for example are extremely simple organisms yet they are destroying cells more complex than them) — Dalibor

1. Viruses are not considered organisms. They are non-living

2. Even if hypothetically they were living organisms, they kill cells because it's necessary. That's not the same thing as needlessly killing.

The way I see it is that if something evolved over time on the level of all that is living, that automatically means that it had to be so as the consequence of an objective universal principle. If the act of killing is an exception (a deviation) in all that is living, doesn't that mean that there is an objective principle behind it? If think it has to be the case, and if we don't agree here than this discussion must go towards more general subject than the one we are now discussing.

Besides the reasoning for that claim, no — BlueBanana

I've stated the obvious haven't I? Do worms have anything to do with morality? What are your views?

The way I see it is that if something evolved over time on the level of all that is living, that automatically means that it had to be so as the consequence of an objective universal principle. If the act of killing is an exception (a deviation) in all that is living, doesn't that mean that there is an objective principle behind it? If think it has to be the case, and if we don't agree here than this discussion must go towards more general subject than the one we are now discussing. — Dalibor

I don't agree. Just because something is doesn't give it any objective ought morality value. You can get to an objective morality in this case only after you've laid out presupposition values. You can say that you value (meaning it is important to you) life, therefore it is objectively true that in that context of those values it is morally wrong to kill. But those values are subjective. Someone else may value differently. Even if every single living organism values life, that doesn't make it objectively morally wrong to kill. It means that based off of what all living things value (which is subjective), in that context there are some things that actions that are better to express a value than others. To say that it is objectively true however, you have to demonstrate that there is some objective moral value that exists outside of what anyone values.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRguTJhTlYQ If you start this video at 5 minutes I think it does a good job of describing my position in case it's still unclear.

i understand your position. And as I have said, we reached a point that leads us towards a more general discussion: the relationship between subjective and objective in general.
You simply hold those two to be disjunctive. But I don't see the world that way. I believe there is a strong connection between subjective and objective. Now, in order to explain the details of this belief of mine, I would have to write a whole essay, which I can't do in this moment. I would just invite you to think for yourself: can you divide the world on subjective and objective as if those two are unrelated?

I agree with you in that dividing the two may be demonstrably impossible in an absolute sense. We can't absolutely know that it is objectively true that the earth is not flat. However in terms of the way we generally use the word knowledge and objective, we can demonstrate that it is objectively true the earth is not flat. In those terms I am not convinced we can say that it true that killing is objectively morally wrong. We can only say killing is bad after presuppositions of values which are not objective in the same sense that the earth not being flat is objective.

I don't know. That is up to the one claiming that there is an objective morality to demonstrate.

Just because many/majority people have agreed that it is morally wrong to kill, the only objective statement about that is that it is objectively true that many/majority of people believe that it is objectively wrong to kill. That isn't a demonstration that it actually is objectively morally wrong to kill. — SonJnana

Objective either means true regardless of opinion;
True whether or not any one even knows it is true;
Or just some stuff that the establishment tells you is true.

What's it gonna be?