Is morality objective or subjective?

[Belinda]

Peter Holmes and Immanuel Can have in common as most of us do that the basic criterion for evaluating the nature of morality is life as opposed to death.

Peter thinks that morality is consensus within societies. Immanuel thinks that morality is law as created by God and revealed to men.

God as the maker and revealer of the moral law legitimises the view that morality is objective; but this legitimation pertains only to persons who have not matured further than the insight that law and morality are the same. There is the same level of legitimation, that the law is absolutely right, among total communists.

I say "level of legitimation" because there is a more mature level of morality and that level's legitimation which is putting others before self and before one's ideology, interests, beliefs, and professed faith. Compassion trumps the law including God's law.

[Peter Holmes]

God as the maker and revealer of the moral law legitimises the view that morality is objective; but this legitimation pertains only to persons who have not matured further than the insight that law and morality are the same. There is the same level of legitimation, that the law is absolutely right, among total communists.

I say "level of legitimation" because there is a more mature level of morality and that level's legitimation which is putting others before self and before one's ideology, interests, beliefs, and professed faith. Compassion trumps the law including God's law.

1 I disagree that, if a god (or anyone) makes and reveals morality, that makes it objective. This is to misunderstand what it is that makes an assertion objective - which is that it's true or false regardless of what anyone (including a god) thinks or believes. The source of a moral - as of a factual - assertion is irrelevant.

2 Your claim that 'putting others before self and before one's ideology, interests, beliefs, and professed faith' amounts to a more mature and legitimate level of morality is itself a moral assertion, expressing a judgement. Moral maturity and legitimacy aren't inherent properties of actions - they express judgements about those actions. We're stuck with the subjectivity of our moral judgements. That's just the way it is.

[Peter Holmes]

Belinda

By the definitions of 'subjective' and 'objective', moral judgements must be subjective and can't be objective.

So a theistic argument from objective morality must be unsound, because the premise morality is objective is false.

That so far no one has shown the existence of a god - or anything else supernatural - means that a theistic account of morality doesn't even make it to the starting post anyway. And this applies to both divine command and divine emanation theories.

[Belinda]

Peter, your original question is important and I question you not because I am a believer in objective morality, God etc., but because I have to try to falsify.

You wrote:

Your claim that 'putting others before self and before one's ideology, interests, beliefs, and professed faith' amounts to a more mature and legitimate level of morality is itself a moral assertion, expressing a judgement. Moral maturity and legitimacy aren't inherent properties of actions - they express judgements about those actions. We're stuck with the subjectivity of our moral judgements. That's just the way it is.

What I wrote about levels of maturity was backed by scientific evidence at the time when I learned it about thirty forty years ago, and may now be superseded. I think that this theory was from Piaget and that there was ample linguistic evidence from children of different ages. Piaget's judgement is the judgement of a scientist , as objective as it gets.Whether or not the maturation theory of morality , including your objection as in the quote from you,is backed by good enough objective evidence is discussed in the article I linked to below.

If it's true that morality is a matter of maturation then we have an objective fact about human nature. If human nature were a fixture, like for instance wild golden eagle nature is a fixture, then we have objective morality when the moral system harmonises with what is the case. Human nature can never be entirely at the top of its evolutionary process because unlike wild golden eagles we aren't wild animals but on the contrary we are animals that in order to negotiate life mostly learn and adapt. However the fact that all human children when given the opportunity do progress through immature to mature morality is at least one objective fact about inherent human nature.

http://www.healthofchildren.com/M/Moral ... pment.html is a clear and balanced discussion of moral development issues.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can

I've tried to include other examples of subjectivity to demonstrate that something being subjective doesn't make it meaningless, which is really the centre point of your argument.

No, actually you've missed it, I'm afraid. Maybe I can reframe.

Subjective morals have a "meaning" in a very weak sense. (Just as the word "unicorn" has meaning: it just has no reality.) They even have social utility -- although lamentably, they are only effective when they're backed by force or deception.

The problem is they have no LEGITIMACY. That's the problem. They cannot rationally motivate, because when we peek beneath them rationally, all we ever find are the contingent preferences of some individual or some group of people. Nobody can say why, on a strictly rational basis, we owe it to adhere to them. (That's what the word "ought" actually means: it's derived from a contraction of "owe-it"). Rather, we are always able to depart from them at whim, and only force or manipulation of some kind can compel us back -- reason doesn't.

That's why you find that when slavery is raised as an issue, you're powerless to account for the strong antipathy you have to it. You feel as if it's objectively wrong -- and you want to say subjectively that it really, really is -- but you can't find the reasons to say "A person can't do that, even if he really wants to."

Subjective morality thus is not "meaningless"; it's just impotent. It is grounded in nothing. And when we need it most, it abandons us.

Maybe because they all believe they are objectively right and that nobody treats their views as being subjective.

I think this is quite true. People say one thing, but do another, when it comes to subjective morality. They have to, because subjective morality cannot rationally compel agreement or inform us of any objective truth.

Could someone do these things, knowing that their ideas about morality are just their own - or their cultures? Absolutely yes. We've seen that tenfold with political ideas or due to an emotional temperament and many people who believe morality is subjective, still operate under moral precepts.

Well, yes; but for two obvious reasons. One is that societies themselves have a lot of widely different ideas about what is "moral." A second is that even within as society that believes in objective morality, people have to be rationally convinced. If someone refuses to believe in the morality in question, and is willing to risk the encounter of force that his society puts behind it, he may choose to contravene it.

Where society has a lack of firm belief and a weakened will to enforce its subjective moral preferences, immorality and even criminality become very alluring. But who wants to live in a society in which arbitrary, subjective moral commands are compelled by the masses through force? Nobody sane, I think.

You aren't even really talking about objective morality anymore, but whether people believe their views are objectively true or not.

No, I wouldn't do that. That would be to confuse ethics with epistemology. Ethical subjectivism is one problem, but epistemological subjectivism is a different one.

The only reason objective truth is such a hotly debated thing is because of competing subjective ideas, fighting for supremacy.

You're right, I think.

If you think about it, ethics are always about what subjectively, I don't want to do. That sounds shocking, at first, but think further and I think you'll see it's really true.

For example, if we have a law that says, "No stealing," it's only because some people might well want to steal. In contrast, we've never needed a law that says, "You must collect your winnings from the lottery," because that's something that subjectively, nobody sane neglects to do. They're already motivated to do it, so who needs an ethic telling them to do it?

Because our wishes often say one thing, and our morality says another, the subjective is often at war with morality. And ethics are supposed to give us guidance when the conflict between our desires and "the right" becomes too vexed for us. But it's just at that moment that subjective ethics provide us nothing: we could choose, subjectively, to ignore them and follow our desires, and nobody could rationally explain why we shouldn't...for there are no objective reasons why we shouldn't.

And there's the problem.

[Immanuel Can]

Compassion trumps the law including God's law.

This is incorrect. It sounds good, but it's not.

Psychopathic murderers in jail receive lots of fan mail. The people who send it are full of compassion and empathy. It's just very badly directed compassion and empathy. And that's far from an irregular example.

When the mental-health facilities in my area were emptied of tenants, it was done in the name of "compassion." Mental health facilities, it was said, de-nomalize the mentally ill; they need to be "mainstreamed," and return to a situation in which they are regular parts of normal society. But nowadays, most of those same folks are street people, drug abusers, and alcoholics. Many even killed themselves. They had no place to go, and no help. (They'd been "normalized," you see.) So much for the compassion of our government.

A book worth reading on the subject is Paul Bloom's "Against Empathy." He's very reasonable; but he gives many instances in which people's admirable desire to be compassionate goes horribly, horribly wrong, and produces very bad things. That's worth considering, in an age in which compassion and right are so often confused.

[Peter Holmes]

What I wrote about levels of maturity was backed by scientific evidence at the time when I learned it about thirty forty years ago, and may now be superseded. I think that this theory was from Piaget and that there was ample linguistic evidence from children of different ages. Piaget's judgement is the judgement of a scientist , as objective as it gets.Whether or not the maturation theory of morality , including your objection as in the quote from you,is backed by good enough objective evidence is discussed in the article I linked to below.

If it's true that morality is a matter of maturation then we have an objective fact about human nature. If human nature were a fixture, like for instance wild golden eagle nature is a fixture, then we have objective morality when the moral system harmonises with what is the case. Human nature can never be entirely at the top of its evolutionary process because unlike wild golden eagles we aren't wild animals but on the contrary we are animals that in order to negotiate life mostly learn and adapt. However the fact that all human children when given the opportunity do progress through immature to mature morality is at least one objective fact about inherent human nature.

Thanks for this, Belinda. I have a few thoughts about what you say - and apologies if I'm missing the mark.

1 That most of us change physically, mentally - and linguistically - from birth to adulthood is true. We can observe and measure the process objectively. We can call the process maturation, but there's often a value judgement (at least implicitly) in our uses of the words mature and immature - particularly when applied to human behaviour.

2 Our moral [maturation] seems likely to be part of that process. We can observe and measure growing awareness of others as separate agents with interests, a growing capacity to empathise with others, make independent moral judgements, and so on. And part of that seems to be related to brain development: teenagers don't have completely developed brains (I gather). And elements of what's been called (I think misleadingly) proto-morality are evident in other social species - and not just the higher primates. All of this is objective.

3 But there's a difference between why we develop moral awareness and judgement - for example, to be acceptable to others in the family and wider community - and the actual moral judgements we make. I'm reminded of the Danish Faroe islanders, who (at least used to) take their children to - and encourage them to participate in - an absolutely disgusting communal, ritual mass slaughter of dolphins and other mammals corralled in shallow water off the beach. In other words, our moral judgements are strongly socially conditioned and by no means universal.

4 So I think it wise to be wary of claims about human nature. Such claims can be (and have been) used to justify all kinds of moral judgements and behaviour: we're 'naturally' aggressive, selfish, competitive and war-like; we're 'naturally' docile, altruistic, co-operative and peace-loving - and so on. I think an objectively fixed human nature is a convenient but misleading fiction. So the attempt to ground an objective morality on or in human nature can't succeed.

5 The distinction between falsifiable factual assertions and unfalsifiable moral assertions remains unaffected by factual assertions about the origin and nature of our moral judgements and values.

[Belinda]

What I wrote about levels of maturity was backed by scientific evidence at the time when I learned it about thirty forty years ago, and may now be superseded. I think that this theory was from Piaget and that there was ample linguistic evidence from children of different ages. Piaget's judgement is the judgement of a scientist , as objective as it gets.Whether or not the maturation theory of morality , including your objection as in the quote from you,is backed by good enough objective evidence is discussed in the article I linked to below.

If it's true that morality is a matter of maturation then we have an objective fact about human nature. If human nature were a fixture, like for instance wild golden eagle nature is a fixture, then we have objective morality when the moral system harmonises with what is the case. Human nature can never be entirely at the top of its evolutionary process because unlike wild golden eagles we aren't wild animals but on the contrary we are animals that in order to negotiate life mostly learn and adapt. However the fact that all human children when given the opportunity do progress through immature to mature morality is at least one objective fact about inherent human nature.

Thanks for this, Belinda. I have a few thoughts about what you say - and apologies if I'm missing the mark.

1 That most of us change physically, mentally - and linguistically - from birth to adulthood is true. We can observe and measure the process objectively. We can call the process maturation, but there's often a value judgement (at least implicitly) in our uses of the words mature and immature - particularly when applied to human behaviour.

I
Piaget's idea stands without the trendy evaluative connotation of 'mature', although he may well have thought it.This possible bias is discussed in the article I linked to.

2

Our moral [maturation] seems likely to be part of that process. We can observe and measure growing awareness of others as separate agents with interests, a growing capacity to empathise with others, make independent moral judgements, and so on. And part of that seems to be related to brain development: teenagers don't have completely developed brains (I gather). And elements of what's been called (I think misleadingly) proto-morality are evident in other social species - and not just the higher primates. All of this is objective.

Yes.

3

But there's a difference between why we develop moral awareness and judgement - for example, to be acceptable to others in the family and wider community - and the actual moral judgements we make. I'm reminded of the Danish Faroe islanders, who (at least used to) take their children to - and encourage them to participate in - an absolutely disgusting communal, ritual mass slaughter of dolphins and other mammals corralled in shallow water off the beach. In other words, our moral judgements are strongly socially conditioned and by no means universa

l.

That disgusts me too.i'd say that those children, and by extension, children who are socialised with indoctrination into cruelty , have lacked exposure to conditions that would allow altruism to develop.

4

So I think it wise to be wary of claims about human nature. Such claims can be (and have been) used to justify all kinds of moral judgements and behaviour: we're 'naturally' aggressive, selfish, competitive and war-like; we're 'naturally' docile, altruistic, co-operative and peace-loving - and so on. I think an objectively fixed human nature is a convenient but misleading fiction. So the attempt to ground an objective morality on or in human nature can't succeed.

I am wary of claims about human nature. I don't believe in God as provider of revealed moral law but I do believe in St Augustine's dictum that good is the default, so that lack of altruism such as ritualistic killing, or Nazism, or colour prejudice and other forms of ignorant cruelty are absence of good.

5

The distinction between falsifiable factual assertions and unfalsifiable moral assertions remains unaffected by factual assertions about the origin and nature of our moral judgements and values.

But human nature is at least partly determined by natural selection .Or at least there is a genetic component in human nature albeit that culture also shapes and shaped our evolution. The noble savage (Rousseau)is true insofar as the savage nature is exposed during childhood to altruistic influence. If the maturation theory is true, and there is a case to be made for it, it's a heuristic which is quite fertile as it leads to a definition of how man progresses. A wild animal would be perverted and degraded if it were deprived of its naturally selected parenting . Human children would be similarly deprived if they missed out on opportunities to learn altruism.I say "Rousseau" not to refer to a blessed state of nature, but to refer to man's potential .It's not that we need to be protected from learning the wrong things but that we should be exposed to the right things.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Psychopathic murderers in jail receive lots of fan mail. The people who send it are full of compassion and empathy. It's just very badly directed compassion and empathy. And that's far from an irregular example.

Altruism is better when it's sharpened by reason and knowledge. Reason and altruism are mutually inclusive. Good intentions are more likely to bear fruit when they are informed by facts.

[Judaka]

That's why you find that when slavery is raised as an issue, you're powerless to account for the strong antipathy you have to it. You feel as if it's objectively wrong -- and you want to say subjectively that it really, really is -- but you can't find the reasons to say "A person can't do that, even if he really wants to."

Why would you even consider writing this? You actually just gave examples of southern slave owners believing that their ownership of slaves was justified to them, now suggesting that everyone always knew slavery was wrong even if they can't justify it subjectively?

The idea here is so stupid that I am losing my will to argue, if you would once again look at other subjective distinctions - you will see people have absolutely no problem dictating how others should behave even if their ideas are entirely subjective. Dictators, managers, parents, policemen, judges and many officials in corrupt countries have absolutely no problems telling you what they think is right and that you MUST do what they say or face the consequences.

It has taken over a thousand years for the concept of slavery is wrong to mature in the west and then hundreds more for that idea to be imposed by the west on the rest of the world. Now in schools across the world, children are taught that slavery is wrong and as a result, most people think it is wrong. The question of "is slavery wrong" is socially unacceptable to say yes to, I think you'd find that if you took us back in time to a world without plenty and asked people "should we take slaves to do this back-breakingly hard work for us?" you won't simply get people who think it's immoral but say yes anyway, people will adjust their views and they will get just as carried away with it as they did in the past.

You say I've missed your point but once again you've argued that subjectivity is mindlessly simple and meaningless, unable to answer even basic questions about morality while still functioning as morality.

No, I wouldn't do that. That would be to confuse ethics with epistemology. Ethical subjectivism is one problem, but epistemological subjectivism is a different one.

You've yet to make an argument for objective morality, Immanuel Can, you've only talked about how people must think their ideas are objectively true lest they be powerless to assert their ideas over others.

f you think about it, ethics are always about what subjectively, I don't want to do. That sounds shocking, at first, but think further and I think you'll see it's really true.

This is not true, ethics is about holding people to a certain standard and applying that standard fairly across groups. For example. doctors may or may not behave in an ethical manner of their own will and they may or may not agree with the ethical framework forced on them but the idea isn't "we know you don't want to do this but we're forcing you to" the idea is "this is the basic way we agree everyone should be treated and you need to comply".

Because our wishes often say one thing, and our morality says another, the subjective is often at war with morality

I've tried my best to expand your idea of what subjectivity is but you are adamant about using it as being synonymous with preferences. It may be impossible for us to continue to debate this idea with your definitions. I agree with your sentiments that a "preference-based morality" wouldn't work but that's not what I'm saying and that's not how it is. There's no point debating if we will only be talking past each other.

[Peter Holmes]

Thanks, Belinda. I still you're making unjustified claims.

I am wary of claims about human nature. I don't believe in God as provider of revealed moral law but I do believe in St Augustine's dictum that good is the default, so that lack of altruism such as ritualistic killing, or Nazism, or colour prejudice and other forms of ignorant cruelty are absence of good.

But this a claim about human nature: that 'good' is our default setting. Augustine had a strong theistic motive for making that claim, but that's Rousseau's position too. If, as I believe, there's no such thing as a unitary human nature - that it's a convenient but misleading fiction - we can have no moral default setting. And the evidence of people's cruelty and wickedness in certain circumstances demonstrates that.

The 'maturation theory' tries to explain an individual's moral development from birth to adulthood - but our adult moral values have varied and vary widely through time and space. And anyway, to say that 'goodness' is the default is to inject a moral judgement. What makes a moral value 'good'? There's no independent, objective criterion. Or - let me ask: do you have such a criterion?

I agree that, if we collectively value altruism (for example), we'll try to pass that value on to our children. But then, if we value competitive aggression, we'll try to pass that on as well or instead. Altruism - and more generally 'goodness' - isn't the necessary default, any more than competitive aggression is.

[Peter Holmes]

The problem with moral objectivism is very deep. It claims that there is such a thing as the 'Good' or 'Goodness'. And that's a metaphysical claim, which, like all such claims, mistakes an abstract noun for a thing which, therefore, does or doesn't exist. So we're already down the rabbit hole, furkling with confused metaphysicians and other fantasists.

Out in the fresh air - in real life - we use the words 'good', 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' to express judgements about actions and behaviour. We can usually justify our judgements, in moral discussion, by appealing to selected facts. But they remain value judgements, and so, by definition, subjective. But because our collective judgements matter deeply to us, we come to think of them as facts - and therefore objective.

[Belinda]

Thanks, Belinda. I still you're making unjustified claims.

I am wary of claims about human nature. I don't believe in God as provider of revealed moral law but I do believe in St Augustine's dictum that good is the default, so that lack of altruism such as ritualistic killing, or Nazism, or colour prejudice and other forms of ignorant cruelty are absence of good.

But this a claim about human nature: that 'good' is our default setting. Augustine had a strong theistic motive for making that claim, but that's Rousseau's position too. If, as I believe, there's no such thing as a unitary human nature - that it's a convenient but misleading fiction - we can have no moral default setting. And the evidence of people's cruelty and wickedness in certain circumstances demonstrates that.

The 'maturation theory' tries to explain an individual's moral development from birth to adulthood - but our adult moral values have varied and vary widely through time and space. And anyway, to say that 'goodness' is the default is to inject a moral judgement. What makes a moral value 'good'? There's no independent, objective criterion. Or - let me ask: do you have such a criterion?

I agree that, if we collectively value altruism (for example), we'll try to pass that value on to our children. But then, if we value competitive aggression, we'll try to pass that on as well or instead. Altruism - and more generally 'goodness' - isn't the necessary default, any more than competitive aggression is.

Thanks for rebutting my objections, Peter. I feel that I am sharpening my focus due to the way we progress this discussion.
"Unitary human nature" is exactly the case I am arguing for. And I do have a criterion for what makes a moral value' good'. The criterion that I like is what favours life as opposed to death. I favour this criterion because in all its variations it is universal to all living species that individuals or societies aim to maintain life.

Practically, as regards the upbringing of children , if they are permitted to be small savages in gangs of small savages, they will emerge triumphantly as altruistic adults. By small savages I mean that if the kids are not cut off by societal or religious pressures from their inherent natures their altruistic tendencies will thrive even if the altruistic input from parents or teachers is sketchy.

[Peter Holmes]

Hi, Belinda.

So, if I've got it right, your argument is as follows.

1 All humans have the same nature, because it's innate to our species.
2 That nature is inherently altruistic. We naturally have a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.
3 Immorality is something we may learn from our environment, upbringing and social influences.
4 There is an objective criterion for moral goodness: that which favours life over death.

Do these need tweaking or adding to?

[Immanuel Can]

Why would you even consider writing this? You actually just gave examples of southern slave owners believing that their ownership of slaves was justified to them, now suggesting that everyone always knew slavery was wrong even if they can't justify it subjectively?

Of course not. Quite the opposite. They genuinely believed (at least, so it seems, if we can believe what they said and wrote) that slavery was right. The point is that even today, subjectivists are rationally forced to conclude that slavery was also right, on the basis that the slave owners believed it was right. Indeed, since their whole society and whole half of the US thought it was right, even the subjectivist who tries to appeal to group-belief has to think slavery was right.

I don't, of course. But did you realize that that is exactly what moral subjectivism implies?

...if you would once again look at other subjective distinctions - you will see people have absolutely no problem dictating how others should behave even if their ideas are entirely subjective.

They have zero rational warrant for doing it. As you say, these people are "dictators," to use your word. They "dictate" to others what they can and cannot do, without one hint of actual rational authority for doing it.

That's moral subjectivism. Power rules. Rationality in moral matters is framed by them as impossible because, as they say, there are no facts about morality.

It has taken over a thousand years for the concept of slavery is wrong to mature

You don't know if it's wrong. You think it's wrong, maybe. And you want it to be wrong, maybe. But you have no way of knowing for sure that you're right, if you're a moral subjectivist.

For a subjectivist, the "mature" view might still be that slavery is right. Who defines "mature," in a subjectivist world?

That's a good reason for questioning moral subjectivism, isn't it?

You say I've missed your point but once again you've argued that subjectivity is mindlessly simple and meaningless, unable to answer even basic questions about morality while still functioning as morality.

It doesn't actually function morally at all. It functions amorally. It functions on power -- individual power and group power -- but when all we have to fall back on is power, we're not at all guaranteed of being moral. The chances are very good that morality is out the window.

You've yet to make an argument for objective morality, Immanuel Can,

I don't owe that, because the OP doesn't frame the question that way. Nevertheless, I've promised to do so...the very second that somebody gives me the justification for believing subjective morality is legitimate morality. But nobody's given me anything.

f you think about it, ethics are always about what subjectively, I don't want to do. That sounds shocking, at first, but think further and I think you'll see it's really true.

This is not true, ethics is about holding people to a certain standard

You're actually agreeing, but don't know it. You don't even need "hold" people to "a certain standard" if they already want to hold to it. You just let them do what they want, and it happens anyway. But it's when they actually are tempted not to hold to it that you find you are obliged to refer to ethics. No other time. At every other time, ethics is moot.