We've been here before, Mr Can: that's why we have the law. I do not need a universal axiom to support or oppose laws.Immanuel Can wrote:You need a universal axiom or, by definition, no one else in the world is either rationally or morally obliged to pay any attention to your preference.
A Critique on Objective Morality
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
- Immanuel Can
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
That's because you've not yet seen it. You imagine that your "opposition" or "support" can possibly count for something if it's only you that's backing it. But none of us -- not me, and not you -- has any authority to compel morality upon others.uwot wrote:We've been here before, Mr Can: that's why we have the law. I do not need a universal axiom to support or oppose laws.Immanuel Can wrote:You need a universal axiom or, by definition, no one else in the world is either rationally or morally obliged to pay any attention to your preference.
You judge the law as "right": you must do so on the basis of a universal axiom, or you've got nothing. You judge it as "wrong" or "unjust": you can only do so by assuming a universal axiom. No axiom? No power to judge...not even a basis for personal judgment, actually.
The difference between you and me, so far, on that point is this: I know that I'm doing it, whereas (so far) you are, by your own profession, simply oblivious to the fact that you've been relying on universal axioms all along.
Or will you respond that I'm "wrong" for saying so? But then, you cannot even state that without the axiom, "It's wrong to misrepresent people's views."
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
It's called democracy, Mr Can.Immanuel Can wrote:You imagine that your "opposition" or "support" can possibly count for something if it's only you that's backing it.
That's right, Mr Can. That's why we have the law.Immanuel Can wrote:But none of us -- not me, and not you -- has any authority to compel morality upon others.
I know enough about the philosophical history of ethics to know that there never has been a universal axiom that is ever likely to be universally accepted. Not everyone is a religious nut, Mr Can, and with no theological axe to grind, some of us can advocate pluralism and tolerance and support laws that promote those things. Throw in a bit of social and economic redistribution and you pretty well cover my interest in politics.Immanuel Can wrote:You judge the law as "right": you must do so on the basis of a universal axiom, or you've got nothing.
Some of what I think is 'wrong' is specifically advocated by the bible. We have mentioned slavery and circumcision, the only purpose of which is to desensitise the glans and reduce sexual pleasure, there are many more. Even you have to pick and choose, so clearly the bible contains no universal axioms in the way you demand.
- Immanuel Can
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
Actually, it's called "justification." You need to justify your confidence by reference to a universal truth that binds other people to accept your argument.uwot wrote:It's called democracy, Mr Can.
Hah. You've already admitted you don't think law= right, but you can't say why you believe it either. See below...That's right, Mr Can. That's why we have the law.Immanuel Can wrote:But none of us -- not me, and not you -- has any authority to compel morality upon others.
That remains true. All you're saying is essentially, "I, uwot, like X," or "I, uwot, do not like Y." You're not capable of convincing anyone else they owe it to join you in your assessment. And you can't show that the laws you "like" are good ones.Immanuel Can wrote:You judge the law as "right": you must do so on the basis of a universal axiom, or you've got nothing.
Universally moral does not imply universally accepted. You've made a category error there, an unwarranted amphiboly.I know enough about the philosophical history of ethics to know that there never has been a universal axiom that is ever likely to be universally accepted.
Everybody realizes that a person may run afoul of a moral precept with which that person does not happen to agree. That's why we don't ask prisoners if they feel agreement about our sending them to jail if they've committed a crime. We recognize that their agreement is not the issue: the rightness/wrongness of their action is.
Your second fallacy is to think truth and consensus are related. That's easy to disprove. At one time in history, 100% of the world, including the best and brightest, all believed the world was flat. And every last one of them was wrong. If objective morality exists, it would not matter how many people decided they disagreed with it.
It is not necessary for people to accept that, for example, rape is wrong for rape to be wrong. It is objectively wrong. And if you say it's only subjectively wrong, then you are giving permission to every other person but yourself to do it. If that's a consequence you accept, then fine. If not, you've got a problem.
Actually, I can, but logically you can't. You just don't know why you can't. "Advocate" has no meaning if you don't have any moral standards to defend. And you can't tell me why "pluralism" and "tolerance" ought to be values, because you insist they're subjective.some of us can advocate pluralism and tolerance and support laws that promote those things.
Meanwhile, by insisting that I ought to believe in them, you've invoked yet another universal moral judgment. You should be more consistent: if moral judgments are all relative, nothing I can say to you can be 'wrong" or "bad" -- at least, not in any sense that a rational person is bound to accept.
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
IC. How can one know this universal moral position which you claim must bind us all? If you say that a particular action is good and I say that it is bad then by what objective standard would a third party be able to judge which of us is right?
For instance I reckon that brainwashing children into believing in the supernatural is the single greatest harm which our species can inflict on subsequent generations, and can offer billions of corpses and countless other devastated lives as supportive evidence. No doubt you would take a different view and attempt to argue your case but would our hypothetical third party not be right to weigh your arguments against mine and determine for himself which case is the stronger one? Surely ethics is all about making reasoned choices?
For instance I reckon that brainwashing children into believing in the supernatural is the single greatest harm which our species can inflict on subsequent generations, and can offer billions of corpses and countless other devastated lives as supportive evidence. No doubt you would take a different view and attempt to argue your case but would our hypothetical third party not be right to weigh your arguments against mine and determine for himself which case is the stronger one? Surely ethics is all about making reasoned choices?
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
Good question...but hold it for a minute, because how we know which universal moral position is moot if we are not convinced such a thing can even exist. And I see I haven't yet convinced everyone that such a thing is even possible. Let's see if I can do anything about that first.Obvious Leo wrote:IC. How can one know this universal moral position which you claim must bind us all?
If you say that a particular action is good and I say that it is bad then by what objective standard would a third party be able to judge which of us is right?
The answer to that wouldn't be hard IF such a thing as an objective moral standard existed. Then it would be very easy, wouldn't it? But you're right to realize that if such a standard did not exist, it would be impossible to know.
An aside, though: that is the very state that moral relativists claim exists. They hold that there is simply no way to know who is right...about any moral situation.
You'd state that case, perhaps; but would you put the up against the 148 million killed by self-declared secular ideologues in the last century? Or would you brush those deaths aside, and pretend that they never happened?For instance I reckon that brainwashing children into believing in the supernatural is the single greatest harm which our species can inflict on subsequent generations, and can offer billions of corpses and countless other devastated lives as supportive evidence.
Just wondering...
Well, first I'd have to show that brainwashing or killing people were actually wrong . That might seem too obvious to you and me, because perhaps we intuitively agree on that; but a relativist is in no position to be able to do it. That third party would surely wish to know what standard to use in order to make his judgment: and part of that standard would surely be the belief in a universal axiom against brainwashing and killing. Absent that, the third party could make no judgment at all.No doubt you would take a different view and attempt to argue your case but would our hypothetical third party not be right to weigh your arguments against mine and determine for himself which case is the stronger one?
Yes: but both "reason" and "choice" entail that we are not in a moral vacuum. If we don't have any solid ethical precept, then whatever "reasons" we find cannot bind anyone...not even ourselves. And if we have no criteria of right and wrong, then how on earth would we ever know how to make an ethical "choice"?Surely ethics is all about making reasoned choices?
So I would argue that ethics IS about those things, yes; but not ONLY about those things. "Choices" are not good in themselves -- some can be "bad," no? And "reason" is only ever as good as the premises upon which it draws: there can be "bad" reasons, no?
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
In that case please answer the question.Immanuel Can wrote:The answer to that wouldn't be hard IF such a thing as an objective moral standard existed. Then it would be very easy, wouldn't it?
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
GretaGreta wrote: The Golden Rule...can't do everything but it can cover for many situations in a pinch. One of the few things I truly believe in is the intrinsic value of love and kindness. As with any belief, there is no valid rational explanation for it ... underpinning the simple fact that I am attracted to love and kindness.
Wouldn't you say that the writings of Dr. Katz offer some rational explanation for why you find these values attractive? N'est pas?
See - if you have a program named 'Dropbox' - Ethics As Science (2000)
f[color=#0040FF][u]ile:///C:/Users/Marv ... u][/color]
ETHICS FOR THE 21st CENTURY: Keys to the good life (2015)
http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/ET ... ENTURY.pdf
and, especially: SUCCESSFUL LIVING: How to have a quality life (2016)
http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/Su ... 20life.pdf
LIVING THE GOOD LIFE (2007)
http://wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ ... _Lifef.pdf
LIVING WELL: How ethics helps us flourish (Nov. 2015)
http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/LI ... ourish.pdf
After you check these out, and give them a fair perusing, let me know your impressions. Did it explain? Was it helpful? Did you pick up any tools for discussing ethics with your friends and acquaintances? Did you get any notions as to how to get good ideas together with good teachers? Etc.
- Immanuel Can
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
I thought I had. The answer is obvious: IF there actually is such a standard, then if two people disagree you just use whatever the actual objective moral standard is, and judge the case by that, of course. The "third man" then has his answer.Obvious Leo wrote:In that case please answer the question.Immanuel Can wrote:The answer to that wouldn't be hard IF such a thing as an objective moral standard existed. Then it would be very easy, wouldn't it?
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
Non monsieur. J'ai seulement une heure à perdre - et vous me ai donné 133 pages de devoirs!!prof wrote:GretaGreta wrote: The Golden Rule...can't do everything but it can cover for many situations in a pinch. One of the few things I truly believe in is the intrinsic value of love and kindness. As with any belief, there is no valid rational explanation for it ... underpinning the simple fact that I am attracted to love and kindness.
Wouldn't you say that the writings of Dr. Katz offer some rational explanation for why you find these values attractive? N'est pas?
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
If you can't see the circularity of this argument then we have a problem.Immanuel Can wrote: IF there actually is such a standard, then if two people disagree you just use whatever the actual objective moral standard is, and judge the case by that, of course.
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
Can you justify that, or is it just an opinion?Immanuel Can wrote:[
Actually, it's called "justification." You need to justify your confidence by reference to a universal truth that binds other people to accept your argument.
.
Or to put it more bluntly, that is complete nonsense.
Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
The world simply doesn't work like that. I have made the point that there deontological and consequential theories of ethics. Deontologists, like you, insist there is an authority, or a set of rules, that we simply have to obey. Consequentialists, like myself, start with some definition of 'moral' along the lines of 'not causing unnecessary distress or harm'. It doesn't matter what god thinks, there is no Platonic 'form' of 'moral', any more than there is for 'blue', it is simply what the word means.Immanuel Can wrote:You need to justify your confidence by reference to a universal truth that binds other people to accept your argument.
Several times.Immanuel Can wrote:You've already admitted you don't think law= right...
You are tripping over yourself. I don't have say why I believe something I don't think.Immanuel Can wrote:...but you can't say why you believe it either.
What planet are you on? Nobody owes me anything, if I can't convince them, I either accept defeat or I keep fighting; that is what happens in the real world.Immanuel Can wrote:All you're saying is essentially, "I, uwot, like X," or "I, uwot, do not like Y." You're not capable of convincing anyone else they owe it to join you in your assessment. And you can't show that the laws you "like" are good ones.
The point I was making is that even if there is a set of god given laws, because of our 'free will', some people will not believe it. Even god knows that.Immanuel Can wrote:Universally moral does not imply universally accepted. You've made a category error there, an unwarranted amphiboly.
Prisoners run afoul of the law. As I keep saying, the law and morality are not the same thing, and it is absurb to suggest that criminals are not familiar with the law, even if that is what Socrates argued.Immanuel Can wrote:Everybody realizes that a person may run afoul of a moral precept with which that person does not happen to agree. That's why we don't ask prisoners if they feel agreement about our sending them to jail if they've committed a crime.
I have not said anything that you can attribute that to. It is just your poor logic that makes you think otherwise. You are bearing false witness again.Immanuel Can wrote:Your second fallacy is to think truth and consensus are related.
- Immanuel Can
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
Perhaps the problem is that you may have overlooked the emphatic hypothetical "IF." I was not asking you to believe it (yet), and I wasn't asking you to concede my hypothetical condition to be true (yet): it's sufficient if you realize what would be the case IF I could make such a case.Obvious Leo wrote:If you can't see the circularity of this argument then we have a problem.
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Re: A Critique on Objective Morality
It's straightforward and definitional. A "justification" is quite different from an "opinion," even at the conceptual level. See the dictionary...I'll let you choose the volume.A_Seagull wrote:Can you justify that, or is it just an opinion?