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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ย. 2024
- Who has the upper hand in moral debates: atheists or theists? Can one establish 'ought' statements as separate from what 'is'? Or are all ethics nothing more than the codification of personal preferences?
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There is no such thing as 'objective' morality.
Morality is the cognitive process of differentiating between human intentions, decisions, and actions that are morally appropriate (ought to occur in a certain dilemma) from those inappropriate (ought not to occur in a certain dilemma).
Like all cognitive assessments, moral assessments always and necessarily involve the subject's own considerations. Therefore, morality is _always and necessarily_ SUBJECTIVE.
Each and every individual is the sole arbiter of his or her own morality. I, and I alone, determine which human behaviors are moral, amoral, or immoral, just as everyone else does.
Hello friend, Would you say that a mass killer's actions can be considered morally appropriate? If such a person is found guilty of murder in a court of law, is this judgment based on objective moral truths, or merely societal opinions? In other words, is the condemnation of their actions rooted in something universally wrong, or is it simply a reflection of subjective moral standards? Is morality a free-for-all? Are some things more appropriate than others? (this is not a debate this is a discussion)
again my friend, true and false have a value judgment are they subjective as well?
@AshtonMohr1 Please ask one question at a time. I will gladly answer each and every one.
@@Theo_Skeptomai Ok, I don't really care about my first question, the answer is obvious to what you have stated. You say morality is subjective (I am agnostic so I have to somewhat agree) do you really live by this?
@@AshtonMohr1 Yes. I haven't any choice but to live by this fact.
I'm not well-versed in philosophy, but can't the same argument be leveraged against health claims in favor of "health antirealism" or "health relativism" or "health emotivism" and so forth?
I don't see a major difference in someone saying "A is unhealthy" and someone saying "B is immoral/unethical" in this context. The former seems to be making the claim, from a functional linguistic perspective -- and whether correct or incorrect -- that A is counter-productive for the functionality of an individual and the latter seems to be making the claim that B is counter-productive for the functionality of a society.
There are radical disagreements in both. For over a thousand years, apparently even the doctors of some of the most advanced civilizations believed in Hippocrates's idea of Humorism, seeing health as about balancing the four humors based on earth, wind, water and fire. Most people find the notion absurd these days since we have more reliable data. There are even people these days who claim that healing crystals are more effective for treating cancer than chemotherapy. I find that absurd given all the data I've gathered so far, but the only thing I find more absurd is the idea that one of these two claims isn't objectively better/worse than another.
Surely there are actions which -- given a certain situation -- are objectively superior and objectively inferior to each other in terms of being conducive to human nature and prosperous societies, in the same way there are actions which are more or less conducive to the optimal function and longevity of our bodies?
At least when I say that drunk driving is unethical, for example, I'm making the falsifiable claim that a society that condones drunk driving is generally going to be worse off than one that condemns it due to the safety hazards it imposes on the individuals living in it. It is similar to when I make the claim that chain-smoking is unhealthy. I could always be wrong, but it's not merely a matter of preference/opinion at least with the way I'm using the language. I am either objectively right or objectively wrong about such claims. I'm not merely saying that I prefer to live in a society without drunk drivers all over the place (even though I do); I am making the claim that everything I've learned suggests that it's very counter-productive to the function of such a society.
I can see a certain type of "relativism" emerging from the complexity. For example, the optimal treatment for cancer might differ from patient to patient. Some might benefit more from chemo, others radioactive, others hormonal therapy, etc. In a similar sense, the optimal configuration for a society might be based on all kinds of environmental factors as well as the nature of its members. But that makes neither health nor ethics "subjective" to me, only complicated and something for which we have to take into account far more variables. Yet there are still constants and patterns that I see as yielding objectively better and objectively worse solutions for a given situation. For example, any treatment which results in every patient dying an hour later in excruciating agony is almost certainly worse from a functionality perspective than one which results in them living an additional 30 years relatively free of such discomfort.
Thank you for taking the time to leave such an insightful comment! Yes, I agree with you completely. I think a lot of what you're touching on is in the same region that I tried to parse in the video: that space between 'relative' and 'objective' morality. There's a way of recognising that the reality is more complex than simply reading a set of principles on a sheet of paper, whilst still recognising that there is a Good that exists independent of our personal wills and feelings to which we respond in our ethical behaviour.
@@admoni. Cheers! I'm admittedly a little bit towards the Sam Harris camp. He makes the most sense to me as a STEM type illiterate in philosophy. I've tried to read people like Kant and Nietzsche and Plato and Aristotle and I find myself immediately at odds with their diagnosis of the nature of the universe and human beings given what I've learned about anthropology, psychology, etc. So it is very difficult for me to agree with a prognosis when everything I learned and find most utility in understanding disagrees so much with the underlying diagnosis.
That said, where I disagree with Sam Harris is that he seems to see things like neuroscience as the answer. I don't put much stock into that. Actually I tend to put the most stock into some healthy degree of skepticism; some of the best things I've done that I consider at my moral best was to raise the question to a group of people so determined that what they are doing is right, "Wait, are we actually doing the right thing?"
I'm allergic to people who seem so confident in knowing exactly what's right. I like to get the metaphorical second doctor's opinion, the third, etc -- before I settle on one that has been echoed the most and seems most supported by my research -- maybe a bit too much. But I'm allergic to people who seem so tunnel-visioned about what's right and wrong, since they seem to have lost the ability to ask questions, and I figure more questions are usually what avert the worst disasters.
@@AntiGamer-de8vp To be honest scepticism is becoming increasingly important in an age when people are being conditioned to remain within a cave of their own opinions. Especially if people around you are expecting you to have dead-set opinions: it's really a virtue to have philosophically.
If objective morality doesn’t exist, objective good doesn’t exist, and therefore wisdom, reason, and logic also don’t exist. If you can't judge an action as "objectively good", then you can't make the value-judgment that something is objectively wise, or objectively logical, or objectively reasonable, or objectively beneficial or objectively right or objectively true. You can't have Wisdom without also the Good. How can something be wise and reasonable without it also being good, otherwise? How can it be logical without it being good? You can't even make statements that are logically true, or logically sound, or logically fair, or just, because Goodness Itself entails and encompasses all these different value judgments. Every single time you make an argument in favor of a claim, or attempt to speak the truth, you are also hinging your attempt on what constitutes "good" reasoning. Your attempt to make a good argument or to speak the truth, requires you to seek "good quality" means and methods to do so, which shows that we seek what is Good in our attempt to seek what is True, or at least, use what is Good to get us to what is True.
How is morality required for logic? For something to be logical, it does not need to also be morally good.
@@Chidds because truth has a value judgement, over false
@@Chidds If you make a truth-claim (X is X), you are implicitly telling people, "you ought to affirm X is X". All truth-claims are underlied by the force of an "ought". You ought to be truthful and logical and reasonable
@@AshtonMohr1 A judgment about the accuracy of a conclusion has nothing to do with moral judgment. We assert an ought into logical judgments, but that is a reflection of the nature of humans not logic.
@@Chidds Were is logic? How do you know it exist?
If/then are normal conclusions from causality and empiricism. If we do something then a certain effect appears. So the _if_ is allready presents by empiricism as a strategy.
But from here i can ask: _am_ i planing ahead or _should_ i plan ahead? This only becomes crucial in retrospective. In order to avoid a certain effect i should have planned ahead. But was i free to plan ahead differently? Not the ought is difficult, but the proposed freedom to have acted differently.
I don''t plan each time new that i should drive right (or left). I submit to an ought, due to it's positive effects. And that reveals that we silently adopt many best practices.
Now in the case of the standard driving side, we see that most countries have adopted a rule. But what is not easy is to determine is: which is the better rule. So not the ought is difficult but the specifics. Now let's assume that one day we abolish all country borders. Now we created zones of ambiguity, and those zone can in time extend more and more. As a consequence there appear more and more accidents in those zones.
Now it is open hiow these zones will shift and whether there will be zones of a dominant standard left.
What we see here is the function of borders to seperate random specifics. we compartmentalize the specifics into seperate domains. Now what is usefull in one domain becomes dangerous in another domain.
Crossing domains can therefore become quite an experiencee, as you learn that many of your rules account for nothing.
The specifics of a system are then no more to be trusted. They cannot be taken for granted.
But how should the specifics be worked out? Is this a matter of a bottom up or of a top down approach? We see here that we just opened another level of the problem, one of governance. Again we see that there is no rule. Sometimes its a bottom up approach as guitars are stringed for right handers. Sometimes it's a top down approach as it's the governement which decides war. Again sometimes it's obvious why there is a top down approach: technical components should use standard connectors, or else they will become useless. But sometimes this is not obvious at all. Top down approaches do not automatically motivate cooperation. And the needs for cooperation are often not defined by governance (as the computer industry proves).
Morality is not fundamentally different than the question: which is the right side to drive. Whether you destroyed a friendship or your artwork, both harkens back to you. There are things which no one can take away. The responsibility to plan ahaead is with you, whether you are free to do otherwise or not.
As you gather i am a moral relativist. But let's assume that we live in a block uiverse, where the future is fixed. What then are we talking about? We actually see that we just reenact a discourse without consequences. In the block universe you cannot say that your actions have consequences. No those consequences are alredy fixed, and those consequences define your actions. There is no more certain order of time in a block universe.
We see that morality in this scenario becomes a farce.
In order to avoid the block universe, we had to assume fundamental chaos. Now the future is no more set. But are you able to freely and responsibly change the future? What responsibility does chaos have? The point of a dice is that it negates our planning.
But what about absolute morality? We can use science to study how we adopt rules. But there is no science to predict the specifics. In the blockuniverse there is no science which can achieve anything. And in the chaotic universe science has its limits.
Of course we also have the compartementalization of science. The science of the cosmologiest does not seem relevant to Sam Harris for example.
Compart-mentalization helps to play philosopher who can have platonic uncaused rationality on monday, and on tuesday he becomes a hardcore determinist. Empricism can lead to such an insight and end in a state that we are talking heads in a temporary bubbles, who cannot even relate the bubbles to each other.
Now where does theism atheism come in? We have bubbles and one is labeles religion and one is labelled irreligion. Compartmentalization tells us that we can have different rules in each bubble. In the reliogion bubble you talk about god and satan. In the science bubble you talk about causality and chaos. In both bubbles there are most fundamental creative principles. And in both bubbles you have a certain urge to unify the principle. Thus other gods or Satan is denied in the religion bubble, or chaos is denied in the science bubble. So in both bubble there exist Calvinists (predeterminists) and their opposites.
The predeterminists whether religious or secular say the same thing against free will.
The compatibilists of both domains say the same thing for free will.
So where is there a notable difference? If you are religious you can go to church and be very emotional. If you are secular you can be very emotional and watch Batman versus Superman on Netflix.
If you are religious you can stick to devine command theory. If you are secular you can stick to causal command theory.
And if you want it to be more murky you introduce Satan or chaos, and you have an excuse why you sinned or why your piece of art did not fullfill quality standards,
Question: What is the difference between these bubbles when the differences are within the bubbles?
paraphrasing you: Atheism cannot provide why there is something which transcends an objective good.
I can define an objective good: humanity continues!
Paul defined another objective good: humanity must not continue! The world must fundamentally change.
Paul was wrong. The parousia did not happen. Now being wrong is not tragic. What is however obvious here is that i can define a top level good and yet still disagree with Paul.
So maybe i should try another good:
- everybody must die!
- Paul: Jesus rose to incorruptibility, and that is an ideal
Again Paul and i disagree!
But the difference here is that Paul condems the creation as is, while i accept it as is.
So Paul is in opposition to the creator while i am in accordance to causality, the prime creative principle.
Again Paul was wrong. Now the question is: who is the atheist among us: is it me or is it the rebellous Paul?
Transcending goods from a pseudo theistic faith system is obviously fraught with errors.
My position is that creation is what it is. It's 100% deadly for each of us. But there are those who impose an ought on the creator.
The creator was wrong or humans were so powerfull, but not in the case of Paul or christianity.
So is eternal life an objective good?
If it is, then it is a postulate against creation.
If it is not, then reality transcends the end of life as objective good.
And whether you call that creative principle god or causality does not matter at all. What matters is your attitude against that principle.
The middle ground...
How do we come to the conclusion that there can be middle grounds? I already showed that there is an internal split in the theistic realm as in the atheistic realm.
The problem is not in defining superior creative principles. But to resolve the paradoxes. and there are varying schools which try to resolve the paradox differently.
I can come up with a statement and then claim that it is objectively true.
- Any moral statement or action must support the flourishing of morally enabled beings, else that statement or action is called amoral or immoral.
- this presupposes that morality can only exists through morally enabled beings.
Application: By that definition general antinatalism cannot be called a moral position.
But how can i do that? It's based on the idea that a good should preserve a good.
If morality is a good, then morality should preserve itself.
But if morality is not a good? General Antinatalists only seem to use morality as a commodity. It's a good to them beyond the justification for the existence of morally enabled beings and the same sense as a gun can be a good.
So i can make an absolute moral statement based on philosophical concepts. But is that really grounded?
I actually don't trust my ability here. But it certainly would get a broad support because it sound's nice.
At some point in the future morality will end on earth, and it's clear that there is no principle which respects this philosophical proposition.
So your middle ground is wishfull thinking. And you can ask yourself whether a dice or causality motivated it.
@@iwilldi
Our actions have real consequences ( *objective* ) But without the pre - agreed desired goal ( *subjective* ) we can NOT make a determination of what we *"SHOULD"* or *"OUGHT"* do or not do, we are unable to differentiate between human intentions, decisions, and actions that are appropriate from those inappropriate.
If i hit someone they feel pain ( *objective fact* ) means nothing without first agreeing "we don't want people to feel pain" ( *subjective goal* ) only then can we say "I OUGHT not hit people"