How would a rational system so hopelessly circular ever get us anywhere? — Mww

Such systems of desire, thought, evaluation of thought, re visit desire, think again have got us all kind of places

If this is the case, and given the choice of deciding whether or not, e.g., is courage worthy of honor, which would seem to suffice for part of a handful of thoroughly objective considerations, it would have to be shown the choice is a moral choice, and, that conscience is responsible for its evaluation. Cases in which the considerations are reversed, yet still fulfil the criterion of objective consideration, re: is arbitrarily taking a human life good, it should be asked whether the choice is predicated on actually taking one, which is indeed a very moral choice, or witnessing the taking of one, which is merely an observation resulting in criticizing a choice without any knowledge whatsoever of its moral circumstance.

Obviously, there are agreements common to humanity in general. But morality is not found in agreements, that being no more than cultural suitability, sustainability, or simply allegiance, but rather, morality is always found in disagreements, and moral philosophy has to do with the reduction to the explanations for them. Its awful hard to say one is acting morally when in fact he acting as is expected of him, in which case his particular humanity (it is not honorable to prosecute a young Muslim American for learning to speak Farsi) couldn’t be distinguished from his general complicity (if you’re America you will speak English, dammit!!!)

If (iff) one thinks morality a fundamental human condition, it follows necessarily that objective morality is at best a categorical error and at worst self-contradictory. — Mww

I don't see how any of that says anything that shows relative morality is a better explanation of near unanimous moral judgments on some issues than some degree of objective morality.

I want you all to leave your beer fueled smoke filled dorm room esoteric philosophy chat, and apply it.

Talking past each other, I say some degree of objective morality is a better explanation of near unanimous moral judgments on some issues than relative morality.

What I keep asking for, and have not seen yet is how this is explained by relative morality. You all keep telling me I am wrong, without any explanation how moral relativism addresses this.

Someone please make a coherent argument how moral relativism explains that near every human being on the planet would think torturing babies for amusement is morally wrong.

Why? You've repeated this argument several times without answering the key question about it. If the vast majority of people evaluate the earth to be flat, or the vast majority of people evaluate black people to be of lesser worth than white people (both of which have definitely been the case in some closed communities), then do we have to accept those evaluations as objective truths. If not why is the majority opinion on murder different. All you've given me so far is that murder is a matter conscience (I think the worth of black people is a matter of conscience too, but we'll deal with that later). What you've not provided is your reason why being a matter of conscience suddenly make the majority belief into objective fact. If I argued that all 'purple apples could fly' and you retorted that apples can't fly, it would not be a suitable counter argument to simply point out that purple apples are different because they're purple. You'd expect an argument as to why being purple caused this difference.

So why does the fact that moral rules occur in the conscience mean that, unlike all other beliefs, what the majority think makes a belief into objective fact? — Isaac

You can't make an argument by exception to a point I acknowledge at the outset is not for all, but for some judgments. Comparing judgments about the nature of physical things to moral judgments is a category error. One has nothing to do with the other. Let me break down my argument and you tell me what part is false.

P1 - such a thing as human conscience exists ( please no semantic "exists" arguments)

P2 - I propose that on some moral judgments, an overwhelming number of human consciences would have the same moral judgment.

Conclusion: Some moral judgments are for all practical purpose appear to be objectively true or false regardless of person, culture, time, or place.

What I have been asking for, which has not been answered yet, is how moral relativism explains this phenomenon. Lots of you have typed lots of stuff after I raise this point, none of it in anyway is close to answer.

What you call a "no seeum" argument is induction based on absence of evidence, which is permissible. It does not depend on us "looking in most all the likely places". We don't assume a god exists for the same reason we don't assume an arbitrary amount of hitherto unknown forces and particles exist - because they don't feature in our predictions. So we assumed the Higgs Boson existed, even before we could detect it, because it was part of a prediction. But the invisible teapot isn't, and so we don't assume it exists. — Echarmion

I didn't make up the term no seeum, that is the name of the argument you are describing. And, you may find this hard to believe, but at something as short as 125 -150 years ago there was nothing in physics that predicted the Higgs boson.

All science says, about anything that there is no empirical evidence for, is that there is no empirical evidence. That is all. It is non-scientists who treat science as religion, who turn that into if science does not know it, it does not exist. And they believe this by faith, despite thousands of years of empirical evidence to the contrary.

I am not a follower of any specific religion nor believer in any particular god. On the other hand, I recognize that the experience of god is a common human experience. It's something I've felt and I know many others have. Intellectually, I won't say the concept of god is indispensable to an understanding of how the world works, but it seems to me that our prime example of a godless understanding of the nature of reality - science - often misses a lot of the story. — T Clark

Not sure if you read my post above about Karl Rahner, this is very much in line with his view of what he called "pre apprehension ".

Would you accept the addition that they fail to acknowledge that once reason has been applied, then the product of that reason is a product of reason, not and no longer a mere "passion."

Does passion have anything to do with it? Sure, why not - it depends on a pretty thorough explication of "passion" though.

Maybe passion like milk, eggs, flour, sugar, yeast (and some other yummy ingredients). Correctly mixed and baked and iced and you have cake. From the ingredients, but no longer just the ingredients. — tim wood

I think our passions (what we desire), impacts our thoughts, and ordering and evaluating our thoughts against our passions, and our values, and against the things we hold as true impact our reason, and our reason impacts what we desire, and so on and so on. And I can think of no way you could isolate any part of that system as being before the other. It all seems so interdependent to me.

But again, happy to call it human nature, or evolution, or what ever you like. It is as near a fact as I can think of, that on more then a handful of moral choices, nearly every human conscience on the planet would evaluate it the same. That is difficult to reconcile without allowing for some degree of objective morality on some issues.

as crazy as this possibility is, I might disagree with the nose analogy, even crazier, you could be wrong. It is possible. It does seem a tad ironic that the group who argue relative and subjective in regard to morality, act as if this particular view of morality is objectively true.

You-all relativists apparently would choke before you might acknowledge it wrong, just plain wrong. — tim wood

I think, whether or not the are conscious of it or not, the rope the relativists can not let go off, is a question of source. Like you, I tried to show on some moral questions there would be a near universal view. The only relativinist answer to this is an amazing coincidence, or pointing to some incredibly rare outlier and say, " see he doesn't think so, so it is relative". All other answers require a source outside the individual, a source for a common belief or thought. That is a hard rope to let go of for some.

It always has a clear answer on whether or not something exists. It's either part of our predictions or it isn't. — Echarmion

The entire wonderful history of science is finding stuff it didn't believe existed- until it did. Every generation believes its science has the answers, and looks with bemusement at what science believed just a few generations earlier. Pretty sure some future generations will be bemused at us. Science is just science. Science just does science, and it is wonderful, but be careful not to make a religion out of it.

We can establish whether or not a god, or gods exist empirically through science. Empirically, whatever is not part of the current best explanation doesn't exist. So unicorns, invisible teapots and gods all do not exist, except as purely mental concepts. — Echarmion

There is a very very big logic fault in equating the no seeum arguments for teapots and unicorns to god. Here is the flaw, all no seeum arguments say the same thing, we looked around, in all the places where we know how to look, and we haven't seen ( fill in the blank), and we would know it if we saw it. So it does not exist.

We know a lot about tea pots, and horses, and flying, and horns on foreheads. We have the ability to look in most all the likely places teapots and unicorns might be. We have no basis at all to know anything at all about what such a thing as God is, nor any reason to think we could even understand how to apply such a thing to a specific time space model we could even investigate.

These are poor analogies.

, performed at a time when there were no other means of accounting for the damnable facts of existence: "How and why the hell did we get here?" — Bitter Crank

As far as I know we are still not at the bottom of that, did I miss something?

Most people in the world (what, maybe 80%?) believe in some system of divinity. Obviously, belief in the divine (however conceived) is useful and compelling. Religion is compelling because the stories (narratives) are pretty good fiction, and a lot of behavior codes are comfortable vested in religious doctrine--like, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." — Bitter Crank

Or maybe as Karl Rahner would say, all human beings have a latent ("unthematic") awareness of God. In his theology, this search for existential meaning is a part of the human condition, because we "pre apprehend" there is something else. We don't know what it is, but as human beings we know it is there on the horizon. Rahner uses the word mystery for God, we have no basis to know what God is, but we seem to have a sense it is there. In other words, there is a search for meaning and an acceptance of such a thing as God, by so many, is because it is real. Maybe not, but maybe so.

Goodness, in the moral sense, is a feeling, badness is a feeling. I can quite easily say that the pain is bad without any objective measure. I can say this apple tastes good without any objective measure. Why does it suddenly become a problem when describing moral feelings? — Isaac

But you can’t bite the apple and tell someone it tastes both good and bad at the same time. In order to communicate your view of the taste of the apple you have to use adjectives with some degree of objective meaning. If we have widely varied subjective views on goodness or badness as it relates to apple taste we can’t effectively communicate. Your view of the apple is now meaningless to me.

so you have subjective judgments described by subjective adjectives describing subjective concepts -

Why would anyone care about such a judgement ?

On my view neither understanding nor meaning are objective, so obviously I'm going to have a problem with this part — Terrapin Station

you just agreed a sec ago that good cant equal bad, and right cant equal wrong on a specific issue - that means they have objective meaning.

enjoy your day

so then there has to be a near objective understanding of good or bad or right and wrong - for all these subjective judgments to have any meaning.

How does moral relativity deal with the issue that it needs some objective understanding of good or bad right or wrong - for their moral judgments to have any meaning ?

perfect. would you also agree there is some line, in regard to any issue where they are dichotomous. Good cant ever equal bad, and right can not equal wrong about the same issue.

You could try just telling me what the percentage of people with some stance has to do with relative/subjective vs objective morality in your view. — Terrapin Station

I have, a few times, in a few forms. but once again- other than in a smoke filled dorm room - near unanimity of a particular view would clearly cause a problem with a view they all reached that conclusion independently and it was just an amazing coincidence -

Lets talk about the concepts of Good and Bad, or right and wrong.

You all believe that all moral judgments in one degree or another are relative. But due to the fact they are moral judgments they involve making some qualitative statement about their nature they have to be good or bad, right or wrong.

Are we ok so far with this so far ?

was kind of a big clue
— Rank Amateur

How is that not a big clue? The two things don't have anything to do with each other. How in the world would I know just how common some relatively unusual stance might be? That has no impact on being able to guess that there might be some people with that stance.

if you don't think that if 99% of the people in the world could hold the same moral view and it not be relative to a discussion of relative - vs objective morality - we will just have to disagree
— Rank Amateur

How would it have anything to do with "relative vs objective morality" unless you were doing what I noted before that you objective to--my pet peeve, re the apparent assumption that it goes without saying that the popularity of something has some significance for its normative merit. — Terrapin Station

now you are just wasting time just repeating back the same point - and making declarations without support or reason.

going down this whole line of reason with you, and has turned into, is you guys are right and i am all wrong because morality is relative because you all say so. Not one of you has directly addressed the issue. It is all tactic and repeat - like , i think we have reached a point of diminished returns on this line of reason -

good news is i might have another one

Yes and I attempted to explain to you that the notion that only some moral judgements are objective (and others may not be) makes no sense. — ChrisH

I must have missed the explanation of this - can you follow up that statement with an explanation

Yes, of course. The pragmatic difference is that the two are two completely different things. Agreement, commonality has nothing whatsoever to do with objectivity. — Terrapin Station

just some amazing coincidence that on some issues, there is probably a near uniformity of all human conscience judgement. Just a tail on the bell curve of moral judgments.

Why would you assume I'm not giving you my honest guess? — Terrapin Station

well, the

I wouldn't be able to guess how common any stance would be, — Terrapin Station

was kind of a big clue

Relevant to what? (Other than itself) — Terrapin Station

if you don't think that if 99% of the people in the world could hold the same moral view and it not be relative to a discussion of relative - vs objective morality - we will just have to disagree

What do you mean by "same moral view". All you've established is acceptance here that a large majority of people will have similar moral views about one specific issue - 'child torture'. There are very many contentious moral issues facing us today which are far less clear cut and in my view it would be profoundly unhelpful for either side of these disputes to claim objective truth for their views — ChrisH

No where did I say all moral judgments are objective - only some, and maybe only a handful.

And I repeat that if as i think. and it think you would, agree 99% of the people in the world could hold the same moral view on a handful of moral judgments, and that has no bearing on if morality is always relative or not - I would have to respectfully disagree

Physical facts about the universe are not matters of conscience, they are matters of reason. There is a difference. Your conscience does not tell you there is a cat on the chair, your reason does. Your conscience tell you it would be wrong to torture the cat for fun.

But I am happy to go down a road where you think there are absolute moral truths, no matter what we think about them - but that is not where you want to go.

That's because it's presented axiomatically. It is defined to be true. There's nothing wrong with this, but we should be aware that it's being done. The truth of "2+2=4" depends on number theory and arithmetic, for a start. Maybe other stuff too. And all of this 'stuff' is human-created. That it proves useful in describing some parts of the real world is not magic. We created maths to help us think about the real world. Why would we be surprised when it proves useful for that task? — Pattern-chaser

wonderful -

I have said quite a few times on here that all physics is, is a mathematical model of some observed reality. Redundant and maybe seems obvious when I say this - but often it seems not. The reality is real, the physics is the model. Once we have a model - than we can change the variables and see what what it predicts, and then experimentally test the predictions. If they work, we have a good model, if they don't we go back to the drawing board.

is there some pragmatic difference between 99% of the world having the same moral view about some action and a high degree of moral objectivity about that action ?
— Rank Amateur

The question makes no sense. Either a moral proposition is objectively true (true independent of anybody's "moral view") or it's not. The phrase "high degree of moral objectivity" makes no sense — ChrisH

if you don't think it would matter to the subjective vs objective argument if 99% of the people in the world held the same moral view - You are right there is no need to keep chatting -

But you don't mean some explanation do you? You've been given some explanation - evolution. You're waiting for a particular type of explanation. One involving God — Isaac

no - i am happy with human nature, evolution, take your pick -

But if you don't see that there are probably a few moral questions that 99% of the people in the world, if they honestly answered what their conscience said, would have the same moral view is not an argument against there are some things that are for all practical purposes objectively wrong - then you are wed to proposition in conflict with that - sounds like religion to me.

At one time 99% of the world judged that the sun went around the earth which was the centre of the universe. Did that make their judgment true? — Isaac

you do realize that point supports objective truth don't you ?

At any rate, there's no moral stance that I can't imagine someone sincerely having. I wouldn't be able to guess how common any stance would be, but I don't think that's relevant to anything. That irrelevance was just my point immediately above. — Terrapin Station

More tactic - very tiring - Of course you can guess, we all can guess - just asking for your honest guess. And, at least to me it would be a relevant point if 99% of the world held the same moral judgement on some specific issue. That would require some explanation.

A proposition is subjective if its truth value is is dependent on personal feelings, tastes or opinions (i.e. existing in someone's mind rather than the external world)

A proposition is objective if it's truth value is independent of the person uttering it.

In other words if it's subjective it reflects how people feel rather than any mind independent reality. This was essentially what the OP and the ensuing exchanges have been about. — ChrisH

Thanks for the definitions - and like I said label it as you wish, is there some pragmatic difference between 99% of the world having the same moral view about some action and a high degree of moral objectivity about that action ?

My answer would be much as Terrapin's above. The incrediblely minute exceptions are what we're talking about from a meta-ethical position. And they're important because at one time, people who thought women should be allowed to vote were the incrediblely minute exception. — Isaac

Not all moral judgement are the same, and I am not saying that there is a morally objective answer to every question. Woman voting and torturing babies are not equal.

So even if you bring it down to the very basic values (by which I mean values that are not derived inductively from other more basic ones), I see no factor in the world which would prevent some brains from developing some particular base value. — Isaac

and yet again - a non-answer - how many 10 in 7.6 billion ? 1 % (that's 76 Million by the way) a tenth of 1% ??

so tell me the pragmatic difference between 99 % of the people in the world would have the same moral judgement and there is a near objective truth about that judgement ??

Sorry the delay - real life getting in the way for a bit. Not ignoring or forgetting you. Will be back

how about, instead of wondering, guessing, or thinking tactically on what this does or does not do to your argument and position, you just honestly answer the question. It is just an opinion, it is not provable, just want to know what your honest thought is on it.

I added the "except" part because I have been on this board awhile and absolute statements would send me down 15 posts about absolutely instead of the concept at hand, thought would try and get it out of the way.

What bothers me about comments like this--and they tend to be legion--is the apparent assumption that it goes without saying that the popularity (or as others prefer, "prevalence," just to avoid Aspieish confusion) of something has some significance for its normative merit. Basically it seems to be an endorsement of an argumentum ad populum. — Terrapin Station

It was a question, not a comment. And I was just hoping for an honest response of what people truly think about it. Conscience seems an important concept in this discussion. Wondering if you, in your understanding of conscience and in your interaction with your own conscience, can you imagine that, without some very very small exceptions, many human consciences find needless children torture morally permissible. If your honest answer is yes, we can handle the popularity issue after that.

I can but even if we accept for the sake of argument that no such people exist, then all you have then is universal intersubjectivity. It doesn't get you an objective morality. — ChrisH

Other than the label you apply to it, is there some pragmatic difference between universal subjectivity and objectivity?

the question was not do they, the question was, would they be acting in accordance with their conscience. I understand that we humans can rationize or justify just about anything, to others and to ourselves. Just because they do it, or say it, does not mean they are acting or talking in conflict with their conscience.

wondering your thought on this as well. Can you imagine, except for some incredibly minute exceptions, that any human being could actually be honest with their conscience, and say it would be moral to needlessly torture innocent children?

Thanks. Wondering what your opinion would be if I posited this. No way i guess to argue or reason such a thing. But I would posit that with maybe an infinitesimally small number of exceptions, every human conscience on the planet would say slavery is immoral. Some may say they do, some may rationalize or justify they do, but I think that in their heart they know they are acting against their conscience.

sorry the delay and know you have moved on. But to finish

Than would you say moral relativism would require the individual moral judgements to be authentic and honest need to be in accord with one’s conscience

I can get very very close to that.