Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 2:15 am
I am not sure enough what [Harry's purpose] is.
In this context, it is to counter-assert.
As I've made clear multiple times in this thread, I really didn't want to get drawn into a discussion of morality, but, at this point, it seems necessary, so, here goes, and I'll do it
properly.
The (pithily paraphrased) assertions:
IC:
"If (the Christian) God doesn't exist, then the meaning of words like 'morality' is too vague to apply." No, their meaning is sufficiently clear regardless of the existence or non-existence of (the Christian) God. See below.
AJ:
"Without a Story, there is no morality." No, a Story does not
determine moral truth; rather, its moral propositions and prescriptions are
tested against moral truth.
The moral nihilist[1]:
"Morality doesn't mean anything, or doesn't have a referent, or at least is inapplicable." On this view, although we might personally deplore the brutal torture and slaughter of an innocent child for fun, we can't say that there is anything
wrong with it. To any sane person, this is obviously untrue, and so, by reductio ad absurdum, moral nihilism is false.
[1] I am not sure to what extent this includes iambiguous, because his position is too... ambiguous... to work out precisely.
My counter-assertion:
Morality is meaningful both in the sense of definition and applicability, and, given what morality does mean, moral truths are objective.
Justification:
Although there are a variety of ways of phrasing, framing, and justifying morality, they all get at and amount to essentially the same thing.
Some of them (pithily paraphrased) are:
Henry quirk (as a libertarian):
"All persons have a natural right to their own life, liberty, and property, and to nobody else's."
Jesus Christ (affirming the Golden Rule):
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
The utilitarian:
"Maximise well-being and minimise harm and suffering."
The virtue ethicist:
"Develop those traits which are characterised by, and which lead to, treating others, and behaving, well."
Me:
"Act according to the principles of fairness and of the avoidance of avoidable harm."
And so, what is it that all of these are getting at; what lies behind them? Simply put, that conscious beings can have both positive experiences of well-being, and negative experiences of harm and suffering, and that, given that - from an objective perspective - the experiences of all conscious beings are equally significant, it is obvious
given what the words 'well-being', 'harm', 'suffering', and 'ought' actually mean that we
ought to conduce to the former and to avoid causing the latter in our treatment of others.
From that understanding, various prescriptions and proscriptions follow that are
objectively true in the sense in which I defined that term in
this earlier post:
true regardless of whether or not any mind is currently apprehending them, and regardless of whether or not any mind knows or even denies that they are true.
Objections and responses:
"But that's so vague, and you, hq, JC, utilitarians, virtue ethicists, and others are bound to disagree on many specific moral truths, so, no genuinely objective moral truth exists beyond your abstraction."
A wedge can immediately be driven into this objection with respect to the example above: the moral proscription that one should not brutally torture and slaughter an innocent child for fun is both (1) specific, and (2) beyond dispute amongst me, hq, JC, utilitarians, virtue ethicists, and any others, and any who
do dispute it are, quite clearly and obviously, objectively wrong.
Here's another clear and obvious example: it is objectively wrong to rape another person (notwithstanding the questionable success of any highly dubitable claim to an exception in such highly hypothetical scenarios as that in which declining to rape that person would result in the torture and destruction of all life on planet Earth, or some similar far greater harm).
There are plenty of other obvious examples.
Three other points refute what remains of this objection:
Firstly, the boundary between objectively obligatory behaviour, and optional, voluntary behaviour is blurry; in the border regions, it is reasonable to expect some uncertainty and ambiguity, in which genuine disagreements can occur. That doesn't refute the objective existence of moral obligations any more than the fact that the blurriness of the boundary between a human being and the world beyond that human being refutes the objective existence of human beings (which, clearly, it doesn't).
Secondly, some moral truths depend on empirical truths which themselves are unknown or at least plausibly disputed. For example, whether or not abortion is immoral depends in part on the empirical truth of exactly when a foetus becomes conscious or when its soul enters its body - a truth that is currently unknown or at least plausibly disputed. All this demonstrates is that sometimes we don't
know whether or not a moral prescription or proscription is objectively true - but, regardless of our knowledge, and with the exception of the border regions mentioned above, it either
is or
isn't objectively true.
Thirdly, while there
are genuine moral dilemmas, in which (1) we are (seem to be) in real moral territory, not in the border regions, and (2) it genuinely isn't objectively clear what the right choice is, leading to a range of different answers from different people, for the dilemmas I have in mind this is because the candidate choices are of roughly equal moral import - i.e., causing similar harm etc, just in different ways - so that in a real sense it doesn't
matter much which one is chosen, and so, even though it
seems that we are in real moral territory, in a real sense we aren't after all, because a choice between roughly equal options is morally inconsequential. Though these
seem, then, to be cases in which there genuinely is no objective moral truth, in a meaningful sense they're not really in the moral domain at all.
"But different societies, cultures, religions, and other groups have some quite different moral beliefs - some of which are so radically different at the same time as being so fundamental that they definitely aren't in the border regions that you mention - and so, morality is subjective, not objective."
The first two points above help to address this objection too, in that:
Firstly, the members of some groups collectively and voluntarily agree (even if only implicitly) to conform in aspects of their behaviour which are either (1) optional and voluntarily, or (2) in the border regions - and (tautologically) not because it is morally obligatory; instead, they do this for the sake of the harmony, coherence, satisfaction, sense of common purpose etc that come with that shared behaviour. Here, we have not inter-group differences in understanding of
objective moral truth, but inter-group differences in
preferred, optional (or border region) collective behaviour.
Secondly,
radically different
fundamental moral beliefs can in the best case be accounted for simply by radically different
empirical beliefs - about which one or more of the groups is objectively wrong, either through ignorance, delusion, poor judgement, or some other error - and in the worst case by one or more of the groups simply being wicked - knowingly or not - in one or more aspects of its behaviour. In neither case is the
existence of objective moral truth refuted.
A third point might sometimes apply too, although I can't currently bring to mind a compelling example: sometimes, the
context in which a group exists determines whether or not a specific behaviour is (still objectively, just in that context) obligatory/permissible, and the different contexts of different groups make the behaviour obligatory/permissible in some but not in others.
And so...
...after at length
pointing out and defending the freakin' obvious, I must, in the interests of
doin' this proper-like, return to AJ's earlier post so as to point out in the context of the above
even more of the freakin' obvious.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
My view is that if one focuses on Nature (the Earth the way it is, without man), that one must accept that things, there, function as they do and there can be no *argument* against the natural order.
There can be no argument that the natural order is not as it is: necessarily, the natural order is as it is, and is not as it is not.
To that insipidly tautological extent, I agree, however:
There
can be an argument that the natural order would (have) be(en) better if it involved less suffering, and, if the natural order was designed, and if the designer had better choices available, then there can
also be an argument that the natural order
ought to (have) be(en) better, by, for example, again, involving less suffering.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
A story -- and the stories we are referring to -- are ones that reveal, explain or express metaphysical ideas.
I don't know if you've ever clearly enunciated what you mean in this context by a "metaphysical idea" or a "metaphysical principle", but you
seem to mean them in the normative sense - so, corresponding to the moral truths that I've argued above are also objective truths. I assume, going forward, that that's the case, and, to reiterate, the
purported moral truths in/of/from these stories are only morally relevant to the extent that they are
actually true.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
But in my view those *metaphysical ideas* come from what I prepositionally am forced to describe as *somewhere else*. They are not, in my view, part-and-parcel of the natural system. In fact, the natural system could not and cannot function with them. They are antithetical to nature.
To the extent that moral truths aren't, so to speak, "written into the laws of physics", I agree.
To the extent that the natural world - in which, often enough, one being has to kill another to live, and there's generally a lot of suffering - was designed, and to the extent to which the designer had better choices, and thus does not
seem to have behaved morally, I also agree, but we (or at least I) don't know what that extent is.
To the extent to which you're asserting that the natural world is inanimate and/or deterministic, and thus that, outside of humans, it contains no moral or free agents, I strongly disagree - but I've told you that before.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
So in my way of seeing and explaining, if you wish to define 'truth' you have two choices: One, to refer strictly to the natural world of biological and material processes and discover, and define, "laws" of nature. But doing that, I'm afraid, will turn against any and all definitions (admonitions) that we would describe as metaphysical impositions.
Two would be to define 'metaphysical truths' that are perceived at another level and though
intellectus.
The cries of "false dichotomy" are deafening...
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
On what basis, then, are principles and morals
true?
See my essay above: they are true simply given what morality means, and that its meaning is both - well, meaningful - and meaningfully applicable.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 2:56 pm
They are false in Nature, and this much is certain.
True or false simply don't apply in this context: it is a category error to assign a
prescriptive truth value to
descriptive truths.
I've snipped the rest because I've already addressed it amongst all of the above.