Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 10:11 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 8:33 pm
Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 5:58 pm
But I throw down the challenge: I do not think you can present a convincing argument for the existence of objective moral truth.
Well, let's do it. But let me ask you this, so I know what my task is.
What do you regard as the necessary criteria for proving that something is genuinely "moral"?
What do you mean by "genuinely moral"?
Well, when we ask somebody if what they want to do is "moral," we don't mean "practical," or "popular," or "convenient," or "desirable," or "lucrative," or whatever. We mean something quite different, the kind of quality that makes an action or person, in some sense, "good," or "principled," or "noble."
All I'm asking is what this special quality associated with the word "moral" ought to be, in your view.
And to help, I gave you examples of how an Objectivist would go about responding to that question -- because they have means to respond -- but I can't see that Subjectivist or Solipsists have the same sorts of things in view when they say "moral." And I can't put words in your mouth. So I want to know what you DO think being "moral" entails.
This is a concise definition of morality that I got from an online dictionary. I think there is much more to morality than can be gleaned from this short sentence, but it does convey the gist of what I understand "morality" to mean:
"A set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character"
If you do not agree with this definition, then I respectfully ask you not to criticise it, but rather, just provide an acceptable definition of your own.
I did do that, in my previous message. I listed four things that Objectivists can say are qualities of things that are "moral." I'll repeat:
But an Objectivist would say, and I would say, that for an axiom to be genuinely "moral," it would have to have a certain set of features. Among these are that it would have to be conformable to the objective truth (obviously). Secondly, it would have to be logical in view of, and rationalize with, the Moral Objectivist's fundamental assumptions about the universe. Thirdly, it would be obligatory for all persons who are in the relevantly similar situations, so universal, and capable of informing others. Fourthly, it would have to be authoritative...and I could go on.
The definition you gave from the dictionary above has none of them, because it fudges the question. It says, for example, that morality involves "standards" (which would seem to imply they hold for more than one person, or at least hold regardless of one's personal disposition, but that's not definite) and then they say these "standards" can be "social," which makes some sense, but then "personal" could get us back to mere Solipsism again. Whatever else one can say about that definition, therefore, it's too equivocal to tell anybody much. It works only as long as one doesn't think about it very hard.
Then I added the problem I think you're going to face in honouring that request:
I have to ask, because it seems obvious to me that Subjectivism has no such criteria. It accepts everything -- and hence, distinguishes nothing-- as "moral." Anything a person can desire or do is equally "moral" to everything else, under Subjectivism, which is the same as to say that the word "moral" itself fails to pick out anything in particular. It voids the word itself of any particular referents, and makes it refer to nothing.