Is morality objective or subjective?

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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henry quirk
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Re: uwot

Post by henry quirk »

RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:30 pm
henry quirk wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:01 pm
uwot wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 7:40 pm
Gotta say, it seems to me that the difference between 'kill' and 'murder' makes fuck all difference to the stiff. But to those of us still shuffling around his mortal coil, to kill another living being has no immediate emotional weight. Lotsa good reasons for killing someone. Murder? Well now, that's killing someone without any good excuse.
I disagree about killing a person havin' no emotional weight. Whether justified on not killin' a person is irrevocable, and shouodn't be taken lightly.

That's what I'm tryin' to communicate to RC: murder, as I use it, means the unjustified killing of another person. The act is a weighty one, irrevocable, emotionally charged; the word is just a placeholder. Substitute it with what you like.
There are around 16,000 homocides (murders) in the United States each year. There are around 700,000 abortions a year in the United States. If one wants to know what their chances of being murdered in this country are it is about a .5% chance. If you add the abortion numbers to the homocide numbers (because you call abortions murder) the chance of being murdered suddenly becomes 4.3%, but it would include your being, "murdered by abortion." Somehow that seems unlikely.
Your point?
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RCSaunders
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Re: Pete

Post by RCSaunders »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:43 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:21 pm
henry quirk wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 7:56 pm Solely from a morally non-realistic position: if consensus over the long-haul (your morality) tells us we ought not kill a man simply cuz he inconveniences us, then we ought not kill a child simply cuz he inconveniences the woman whose actions put him in her womb.
If you get everybody in the whole world to agree to this and a woman still has an abortion, then what? Since it's, "murder," should she be burned at the stake, hanged, given the electric chair, given life in prison, forced to be sterilized, required to wear a giant "A" on her breast for the rest of her life, something else--or nothing?

I'd be interested in IC's answer to this question as well, if he sees it.
What happens today, in America, when a killing occurs: there's an investigation, an arrest, charges are levied, there's a trial.

Sentencing: depends on the circumstances of the killing (and how well the prosecution and defense present their cases).
I'm asking you what you think ought to be done to a woman who has an abortion. I know how America's judicial systems is supposed to work. Suppose the woman is found guilty of have the abortion, what should the sentence be.

I'm really not trying to put you on the spot, Henry. It's really none of my business what you would actually do. I'll truly understand if you want to blow the question off. I just thought, since you consider abortion murder you might like to express what you thought would be the appropriate action toward that murderer, or any murderer.
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RCSaunders
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Re: uwot

Post by RCSaunders »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:47 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:30 pm
henry quirk wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:01 pm

I disagree about killing a person havin' no emotional weight. Whether justified on not killin' a person is irrevocable, and shouodn't be taken lightly.

That's what I'm tryin' to communicate to RC: murder, as I use it, means the unjustified killing of another person. The act is a weighty one, irrevocable, emotionally charged; the word is just a placeholder. Substitute it with what you like.
There are around 16,000 homocides (murders) in the United States each year. There are around 700,000 abortions a year in the United States. If one wants to know what their chances of being murdered in this country are it is about a .5% chance. If you add the abortion numbers to the homocide numbers (because you call abortions murder) the chance of being murdered suddenly becomes 4.3%, but it would include your being, "murdered by abortion." Somehow that seems unlikely.
Your point?
It's like the Corona Virus statistics. If you only count actual murders of human beings your danger of being murdered is only .5%, but if you are going to call abortions murder you have include them in your murder statistics, which increases your danger of being murdered to 2.4% which like Corona Virus statistics is nonsense because abortions aren't murders.
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henry quirk
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RC

Post by henry quirk »

I'm asking you what you think ought to be done to a woman who has an abortion.

All I can say is what I've said many times...

A man belongs to himself. He has a inviolate right to his life, liberty, and property. His life, liberty, or property is only forfeit, in part or whole, when he knowingly, without just cause, deprives, in part or whole, another of his life, liberty, or property.

A wrong is committed: the scales need rebalancing. I'm not qualified to address the specifics of that rebalancing in a blanket, one-size-fits-all, kinda way.


if you are going to call abortions murder you have include them in your murder statistics

you include them as a category of killings in the same way beer virus is a category in overall mortality numbers

I won't be off'd by abortion but I might be from a gunshot; I won't be off'd by ovarian cancer but I might be from lung cancer

-----

I feel the to remind: there is abortion as relief from inconvenience and abortion to save at least one life

one is murder: the other, while a killing, is not murder
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:03 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:15 am
Belinda wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:07 am
Done!

A summary of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 4: No one should be held as a slave, and no one has the right to treat anyone else as their slave.

Article 6: We should all have the same level of legal protection whoever we are, and wherever in the world we are.

Article 8: We should all have the right to legal support if we are treated unfairly.

Article 9: Nobody should be arrested, put in prison, or sent away from our country unless there is good reason to do so.

[trial.]
Good points.

It would be an insult to humanity if people like Peter Holmes keep insisting the above are merely opinions.
Actually his insistence those above are merely opinions [not moral facts] reflect the damaging cognitive deficit in his morality.
I agree with all of those UDHR articles.

But 4, 6 , 8 and 9 - those with 'should' - express moral judgements, not factual claims.
I had only highlighted point 4.
4 is a moral fact conditioned upon a Moral Framework and System as I had justified many times.

6, 8, 9 deal with legal matters, thus not morality-proper.

And those that purport to be factual assertions - 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 - are either false, or really express moral aims. For example, '7 the law is the same for everyone' is in reality false, and really means 'the law should be the same for everyone'. Recently, ruling classes worldwide have paid lip-service to equality before the law. But the facts expose their hypocrisy.

I'm wondering why the idea that these (in my opinion) morally excellent principles express value-judgements is so disturbing. Why can't it be true that an organisation aiming to represent the world has settled on moral principles designed for the well-being of everyone equally?

Why is it important to insist, without evidence, that these are not freely-chosen moral principles, but rather facts - true factual assertions - not value-judgements decided on collectively, but rather merely statements of the way things are?

They don't assert the way things are. They assert the way things ought to be.
It depends on the Framework and System of Knowledge you decide upon what you mean by fact and judgment. In your case, you are relying on the common sense, linguistic, neo-LP framework & perspective in defining what you meant by fact and judgment.

If we are referring to moral issues, we have to rely on a Moral Framework and System, this is standard practice. Example, we do not rely primarily on the Economic FSK to derive conclusions on facts of Chemistry, or the mixture of other FSKs.

It is true, the moral-related principles from the UN Declaration of Human Rights are based on a Committee who gathered views from everywhere and they collectively judge which are to be the recommended principles.
What is final is the principles - moral facts - must be accepted by a certain majority of all members of the UN which represent >95% of the world population. Can you see this similarity and its closeness with Science and its Scientific Facts, albeit of different degrees of factuality.

As I had stated the UN Moral Framework and System is rather crude and the supporting evidences and arguments on how they arrive at their justifications are not made public.
Nevertheless I've read the majority did insist on the principles must be UNIVERSAL thus you will note GOD [no evidence] is not in the picture even though the majority of people at that time and now are theists.

In contrast, the Muslims decide to establish their own Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which is grounded upon God - Allah which is an impossibility and illusory. This is basically religious and thus has nothing to do with morality-proper.

In principle, re What is Moral Fact,
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29777
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29486
whichever UN Principles are related to morality [No 4 above re Slavery], they are moral facts which must be qualified, i.e. the degree of factuality is relative to the degree of justifications done to arrive at the conclusion.

In addition, whatever is justified as a moral fact must be represented by its specific referent, physical or otherwise.

Reminder: Open up your mind, just don't be that rigid to view 'fact' as 'fact' by your own definition but 'fact' must be qualified and conditioned by its respective FSK.
Since it is such a sensitive philosophical issue, what we are dealing with are facts of morality, not just common sense or conventional 'facts'.

I believe the UN Committee on Human Rights must have to back their justifications and arguments for all the members and those who voted for the Resolution must be convinced by the justifications presented.
I have not researched, I would like to read those justifications presented then.

As in my case, re the ought-not on slavery, I have already presented the justifications and arguments. Whatever moral ought or ought-not each must be justified to qualify as a Justified True Belief with degrees and gradation of factuality.
Atla
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Atla »

Many people, like VA for example, are incapable of understanding the difference between objective facts and principles, which is a pretty severe cognitive deficit.

This only supports the view that humanity as a whole is unfit to exist on this planet, and the longer we are around, the more damage we will do. We are simply not an intelligent species. So the morally right thing to do would be to eliminate humanity as fast as possible.

That's another way how moral objectivists shoot themselves in the foot.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:51 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:03 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:15 am
Good points.

It would be an insult to humanity if people like Peter Holmes keep insisting the above are merely opinions.
Actually his insistence those above are merely opinions [not moral facts] reflect the damaging cognitive deficit in his morality.
I agree with all of those UDHR articles.

But 4, 6 , 8 and 9 - those with 'should' - express moral judgements, not factual claims.
I had only highlighted point 4.
4 is a moral fact conditioned upon a Moral Framework and System as I had justified many times.

6, 8, 9 deal with legal matters, thus not morality-proper.

And those that purport to be factual assertions - 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 - are either false, or really express moral aims. For example, '7 the law is the same for everyone' is in reality false, and really means 'the law should be the same for everyone'. Recently, ruling classes worldwide have paid lip-service to equality before the law. But the facts expose their hypocrisy.

I'm wondering why the idea that these (in my opinion) morally excellent principles express value-judgements is so disturbing. Why can't it be true that an organisation aiming to represent the world has settled on moral principles designed for the well-being of everyone equally?

Why is it important to insist, without evidence, that these are not freely-chosen moral principles, but rather facts - true factual assertions - not value-judgements decided on collectively, but rather merely statements of the way things are?

They don't assert the way things are. They assert the way things ought to be.
It depends on the Framework and System of Knowledge you decide upon what you mean by fact and judgment. In your case, you are relying on the common sense, linguistic, neo-LP framework & perspective in defining what you meant by fact and judgment.

If we are referring to moral issues, we have to rely on a Moral Framework and System, this is standard practice. Example, we do not rely primarily on the Economic FSK to derive conclusions on facts of Chemistry, or the mixture of other FSKs.

It is true, the moral-related principles from the UN Declaration of Human Rights are based on a Committee who gathered views from everywhere and they collectively judge which are to be the recommended principles.
What is final is the principles - moral facts - must be accepted by a certain majority of all members of the UN which represent >95% of the world population. Can you see this similarity and its closeness with Science and its Scientific Facts, albeit of different degrees of factuality.

As I had stated the UN Moral Framework and System is rather crude and the supporting evidences and arguments on how they arrive at their justifications are not made public.
Nevertheless I've read the majority did insist on the principles must be UNIVERSAL thus you will note GOD [no evidence] is not in the picture even though the majority of people at that time and now are theists.

In contrast, the Muslims decide to establish their own Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which is grounded upon God - Allah which is an impossibility and illusory. This is basically religious and thus has nothing to do with morality-proper.

In principle, re What is Moral Fact,
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29777
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29486
whichever UN Principles are related to morality [No 4 above re Slavery], they are moral facts which must be qualified, i.e. the degree of factuality is relative to the degree of justifications done to arrive at the conclusion.

In addition, whatever is justified as a moral fact must be represented by its specific referent, physical or otherwise.

Reminder: Open up your mind, just don't be that rigid to view 'fact' as 'fact' by your own definition but 'fact' must be qualified and conditioned by its respective FSK.
Since it is such a sensitive philosophical issue, what we are dealing with are facts of morality, not just common sense or conventional 'facts'.

I believe the UN Committee on Human Rights must have to back their justifications and arguments for all the members and those who voted for the Resolution must be convinced by the justifications presented.
I have not researched, I would like to read those justifications presented then.

As in my case, re the ought-not on slavery, I have already presented the justifications and arguments. Whatever moral ought or ought-not each must be justified to qualify as a Justified True Belief with degrees and gradation of factuality.
So, to clarify our argument.

1 We agree that a fact - a true factual assertion - exists within a descriptive context, of which there are many.

2 We agree that a factual assertion, in any context, requires empirical evidence, in order to count as a fact.

3 You claim that what we call morality constitutes a descriptive context capable of producing factual assertions for which there is empirical evidence - and that therefore there can be moral facts.

4 I claim that what we call morality constitutes principles that express value-judgements; that these principles are not factual claims with truth-value at all; and that there is and can be no empirical evidence for them.

Now, I suggest we leave our discussion there, because we can only repeat our arguments and fail to persuade each other ad nauseam.
Atla
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Atla »

Would be simpler if they would actually justify a moral fact with empirical evidence. Just one example. :) Come on it's not that hard.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Atla wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:00 am Would be simpler if they would actually justify a moral fact with empirical evidence. Just one example. :) Come on it's not that hard.
Agreed. But 'moral fact' is an oxymoron, so it can't be done. Hence the endless run-around. Until the penny drops.
Belinda
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Belinda »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:10 am
Atla wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:00 am Would be simpler if they would actually justify a moral fact with empirical evidence. Just one example. :) Come on it's not that hard.
Agreed. But 'moral fact' is an oxymoron, so it can't be done. Hence the endless run-around. Until the penny drops.
What do you call ' a fact'? Is it social fact, personal affective fact, scientific fact, hueristic, ontic fact, or statistical fact?

By 'morality' are you talking about particular moral codes, the function of morality in society, morality as part of man's past, the moral component in religious behaviour and belief, or morality as a biological trait?
Peter Holmes
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Belinda wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:51 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:10 am
Atla wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 11:00 am Would be simpler if they would actually justify a moral fact with empirical evidence. Just one example. :) Come on it's not that hard.
Agreed. But 'moral fact' is an oxymoron, so it can't be done. Hence the endless run-around. Until the penny drops.
What do you call ' a fact'? Is it social fact, personal affective fact, scientific fact, hueristic, ontic fact, or statistical fact?

By 'morality' are you talking about particular moral codes, the function of morality in society, morality as part of man's past, the moral component in religious behaviour and belief, or morality as a biological trait?
I refer you to the previous 680 or so posts, which are about the nature and function of moral assertions, and why they're different from what we call factual assertions of any kind.
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RCSaunders
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Re: RC

Post by RCSaunders »

henry quirk wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 2:53 am there is abortion as relief from inconvenience and abortion to save at least one life

one is murder: the other, while a killing, is not murder
Like so-called, "hate crimes," doesn't one have to be a mind-reader to tell the difference?

For the record, a human being, like all other organisms, begins when its life is independent of any other organism, biologically. Everything before that is preparatory.
surreptitious57
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Re: Pete

Post by surreptitious57 »

RCSaunders wrote:
Suppose the woman is found guilty of have the abortion what should the sentence be
Looking at this from a purely practical perspective the guilt should rest more with the doctor performing the abortion
than with the woman but if abortion is murder no doctor would actually perform them and so the question is academic

However any abortion performed after the legal time limit is classed as murder where no justifiable reason for it exists
And a doctor found guilty in such a case would almost certainly have a prison sentence as well as their licence revoked

Anti abortionists have never given serious thought as to what to do with women who have abortions
They prefer to campaign outside abortion clinics trying to persuade those going in not to have them
Because they would much rather that abortion did not exist rather than have women prosecuted for having them
There is a video on You Tube where some are asked this question and none of them had ever considered it before
surreptitious57
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by surreptitious57 »

Belinda wrote:
Peter Holmes wrote:
moral fact is an oxymoron
What do you call a fact ?

By morality are you talking about particular moral codes - the function of morality in society - morality as
part of mans past - the moral component in religious behaviour and belief or morality as a biological trait ?
A fact is a truth statement that can be demonstrated with logic or evidence

Morality as in the morality of that particular society at that particular time
So majority consensus based upon the values of a particular belief system if society is religious or secular values if society is non religious
But not morality as a function of society because that is sociology or mans past [ history ] or as biological trait [ evolutionary psychology ]
surreptitious57
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by surreptitious57 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote:
Open up your mind just dont be that rigid to view fact as fact by your own definition
There is no rigidity in the definition that I have provided
Since facts change whenever new evidence is discovered

Scientific facts in particular are not absolute but provisional because of the problem of induction
But the framework for determining them is more rigorous than the one for determining morality
Last edited by surreptitious57 on Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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