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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Lorikeet
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Lorikeet »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:22 pm Kant didn't think so. He thought it was about the process of making the decision. Aristotle didn't think so: he thought it was about the habitual character of the actor. And that's the two major opponents of what you're seeming to plug for, which is utilitarianism of some kind.
First....doesn't matter who said it.
All judgments are evaluated relative to a standard....in my case it is experienced existence.
Second....all is process. Moral is a value-judgement. Thee is no universal morality....there is only a value-judgement relative to an objective, the quality of which is determined by natural order.

My actions relative to my objectives, within a world which determines their effect through the consequences they produce.
"Behaviour" is the act. But "loving" is an emotion or a motivation. "Compassion" is a feeling, but not an intellectual one. And "tolerance" is not a universal good: one can be guilty of "tolerating" evil. So again, this seems far from clear sailing as a case.
Love is a word referring to actions....or in most cases to definitions in books.

There is no 'evil'.
Good/Evil are relative to an ideal, an objective, and by the consequences.
Ideals may be unattainable and entirely ideological.
Like the Abrahamic one-god.

Again...ALL value-judgements, including moral/immoral, good/evil, are triangulations:
Subject---Objective---Effort/Distance between the two.
If the objective is projected "outside space/time, it is unattainable, and used to control those who adopt it.

We can define concepts "out of exitance"...in other words supernaturally, or surreally, or nonsensically.

Love, for example can be defined in ways that explains why it is so necessary for a social species, as ourselves, or it can be defined in nonsensical ways, justified using obscurantism and mysticism, in order to exploit and manipulate.
Love is action....not a word referring to nothing or to something outside existence.
Same for morality.
Then they aren't moral at all...merely pragmatic. And since they "evolve," why couldn't a moral imperative against abortion, or for war, or making prostitution and slavery "moral," also "evolve" out of them in the future? How do we know where this haphazard process of "moral evolution" is leading us, before we get there? :shock:
Even god is pragmatic.[/quote] How could that be so?[/quote]Yuo are infected...you require mysticism to cope.

Acts are moral if they abide by collective norms, promoting collective interests, and fitness.
Some have been so ingrained into us, most of us, that we feel compelled to act in accordance with these rules.
He feel distress or discomfort if we think of acting contrary to these ingrained behavioural norms.

God is a human invention representing everything humans find incomprehensible, but also representing a collective - humanity itself.
The Jews, for example, worship a god which is a representative of their collective. the narrative of them being "chosen" when all other tribes had rejected god, is an allegory of their multiple expulsions.
God of Abraham is man's ideal man.
An ideal he can never attain, relegating him to a perpetual state of shame/guilt - sinfulness. A method of mass mind control.

This si not how the Greeks, or pagans defined the term 'god. for them god represented the incomprehensible forces of nature.
They exp[rienced god daily.

Then it isn't "moral." It's only a "natural process." Nobody calls earthquakes, floods and fires "moral." Likewise, "evolution" is supposed to be just a natural process...and you can be quite sure it has no opinions at all about how morality should go.
Nobody calls earthquakes immoral, either.
morality has to do with living organisms of a particular species.
Morality is how natural selection restricted individual options so as to make cooperative survival and reproductive strategies possible.
They're not moral. If they were, they'd have a moral code of some kind. They don't. All they have is instinct. We may foolishly project our own feelings onto them sometimes, but when a lion kills a gazelle, it's not because lions are immoral. It's just what lions do, and what they have to do.
No...animals have no words......they do act morally.
have you seen dogs saving other dogs?
Have you seen the love they display?
This is moral behaviour, or behaviour we humans have named moral: altruistic, compassion, lover, tolerance.

Morality is our name for all the behaviours we desire and consider necessary for our well-being, as social species with a specific survival and reproductive strategy.

Well, then, does nothing make war immoral? If "nature" or "natural processes," as you said before, lead us to make war, then how can there be anything wrong with war at all -- whether on the international scale or within small groups?
Nothing moral or immoral about anything.
Again.....we name 'moral' those behaviours which are essential for our codependent strategies.
Killing isn't moral nor immoral....
All value judgements are relative to an objective.

Primordial sin is based on the fact that all life must kill to survive.
This goes back to the pagans who honoured their slain enemies and the animals they hunted.
Abrahamism used it to weaponize shame and guilt.

You're speaking like a Social Darwinist, now: applying survival-of-the-fittest to human beings. There's nothing moral about that, obviously, either way.
All actions are either effective or ineffective, relative to an objective.
If the objective is life, then all actions are either advantageous or disadvantageous to the perpetuation of life.

We have no moral duty to perpetuation "the flux of existence," and "objective reality" is quite able to take care of itself. So we can't derive any moral duty from either.
But we can....if you understand what Flux implies.
We are in a perpetual war against increasing chaos - experienced as linear time.
we struggle to maintain our own order, first...our organization - we are organisms.
In truth conservatives are the true rebels for they resist change.
Suredering to what occurs naturally is not rebellion....the left is confused.
What they really believe is that change leads to a "better world", one that benefits them.

But it can't provide any justification for morality. Even if we take it for a fact that human cognition is "evolving" in some particular direction, we have no way of judging whether that direction is "moral" or not. It might be merely pragmatic. It might lead us to do something evil that was still "useful" to us in some way. It might actually be leading us to extinction, too. We'd never know where it was leading us. To know that, we'd need a meta-moral system, something above the particular "morality" we happened to be believing in, something objective that would enable us to assess whether our "moral" beliefs were genuinely moral at all, or amoral, or immoral, or even morally suicidal. And what would that meta-moral basis for that judgment be?
The "direction you speak of is manmade. We call it our objectives., and our ideals.

Existence has no objectives and no ends.
It is a process of cycles - a movement from near-absolute order (big bang) towards near-absolute chaos - linear time.

We living organism prefer order, obviously, soi we idealize it.....we sanctify it. We even imagine it to be absolute.
But it isn't nor can it ever be so...for this would be an end of existence.

But we are entering metaphysics...and you have problems with simpler concepts like 'love' and 'morality'.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:00 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:24 pm
Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:11 pm
I see no justification for supposing any existent state of the soul.
Sure you do. You have one yourself. It's the locus of your intelligence and personality. And you have a fair bit of both. :wink:
Thank you, but seriously, why is there any reason to think there is any more than just brain plus consciousness? Not that I actually know what consciousness really is.
Right. You can call it "soul," or "consciousness," or "intelligence," or "reason," or "mind," or "Harbal," or any other thing you want. What's obvious is that in your noggin is something that is more than meat. The brain itself is just a piece of meat, of course. It looks like hamburger, and is a physical item. But within that brain, stuff happens...electrical and chemical stuff...still physical, of course.

But here's where the problem gets philosophical: those electrical impulses don't turn out to be random. They turn out to be "about" things. How is it possible for a hunk of meat with an electrical shock in it to be "about" toothbrushing, or the age of the universe, or the Mona Lisa?

This is called the "aboutness" problem. Your mind thinks "about" things. How is that possible in a purely physical universe? How can physical processes "signify" things? Where is the "ghost" inside that "machine"?

Harbal, meet your soul. Soul, meet Harbal. :wink:
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lorikeet wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:03 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:22 pm Kant didn't think so. He thought it was about the process of making the decision. Aristotle didn't think so: he thought it was about the habitual character of the actor. And that's the two major opponents of what you're seeming to plug for, which is utilitarianism of some kind.
First....doesn't matter who said it.
No, it doesn't, of course: but it does matter that it was said, and defended, and believed by many people, including great thinkers like Kant and Aristotle, because what it means is that you don't get your case without proof. Far from being a clear case, it's obviously a debated and contentious one.
Moral is a value-judgement. Thee is no universal morality.
Then there is nothing actually "moral" at all. The fact that you "value" some things and not another is another contentious fact. Others "value" differently, and you now have no means to arbitrate the difference.
My actions relative to my objectives, within a world which determines their effect through the consequences they produce.
That's called "Consequentialism." It's an old school of ethics, and it's highly problematic.
"Behaviour" is the act. But "loving" is an emotion or a motivation. "Compassion" is a feeling, but not an intellectual one. And "tolerance" is not a universal good: one can be guilty of "tolerating" evil. So again, this seems far from clear sailing as a case.
Love is a word referring to actions....or in most cases to definitions in books.
Well, you said "It doesn't matter who says it," so it doesn't matter that it's in a book. But books are often wrong, too. Most people think love is a feeling. Agape is different, but eros certainly implicates feelings, as do philia and storge.
There is no 'evil'.
Well, that explains your advocacy for war, then.
...a word referring to nothing or to something outside existence. Same for morality.
Then it doesn't "refer" to anything. There's no longer any use for the word. But I think you must think that love refers to at least a delusion held in the mind, and possibly, that morality is the same. But both would only be delusions, then.
Then they aren't moral at all...merely pragmatic. And since they "evolve," why couldn't a moral imperative against abortion, or for war, or making prostitution and slavery "moral," also "evolve" out of them in the future? How do we know where this haphazard process of "moral evolution" is leading us, before we get there? :shock:
Even god is pragmatic.
How could that be so?[/quote]Yuo are infected...you require mysticism to cope.[/quote] Cheap shot, and untrue. But even if it were true, it wouldn't help your argument.

I was asking you a serious question: what do you mean when you say, "Even god is pragmatic." That doesn't make obvious sense to me.
Acts are moral if they abide by collective norms, promoting collective interests, and fitness.
So if Hitler had won WW2, abiding by the collective norms of his National Socialism, promoting the interests of the Volk and of the Reich, and had thus proved Nazism more "fit" than other views, then he would have been moral, regardless of what he did? :shock:
Some have been so ingrained into us, most of us, that we feel compelled to act in accordance with these rules.
He feel distress or discomfort if we think of acting contrary to these ingrained behavioural norms.
That's only to say people are programmed with irrational things, and then are afraid to depart from their programming. Is that what you mean?
God is a human invention representing everything humans find incomprehensible, but also representing a collective - humanity itself.
God is the human collective? :shock: Or is this 'god' you mention nothing more than everything human beings get confused about? What's your evidence for this 'god' of yours being a "human invention"?
Then it isn't "moral." It's only a "natural process." Nobody calls earthquakes, floods and fires "moral." Likewise, "evolution" is supposed to be just a natural process...and you can be quite sure it has no opinions at all about how morality should go.
Nobody calls earthquakes immoral, either.
morality has to do with living organisms of a particular species.
Paramecia? Mosquitoes? Frogs? Bullfinches? Lions and tigers? What's your evidence for any of these having "morality"?
They're not moral. If they were, they'd have a moral code of some kind. They don't. All they have is instinct. We may foolishly project our own feelings onto them sometimes, but when a lion kills a gazelle, it's not because lions are immoral. It's just what lions do, and what they have to do.
No...animals have no words......they do act morally.
have you seen dogs saving other dogs?
Pack loyalty? They're pack animals. That's instinct. Where's their code?
Well, then, does nothing make war immoral? If "nature" or "natural processes," as you said before, lead us to make war, then how can there be anything wrong with war at all -- whether on the international scale or within small groups?
Nothing moral or immoral about anything.
That's moral nihilism.
All value judgements are relative to an objective.
That's mere pragmatism, not morality.
If the objective is life, then all actions are either advantageous or disadvantageous to the perpetuation of life.
From where do you get the moral command, "Thou shalt perpetuate life?" That's no kind of moral obligation. Species go extinct all the time. Why shouldn't we? It's all "natural processes."
We have no moral duty to perpetuation "the flux of existence," and "objective reality" is quite able to take care of itself. So we can't derive any moral duty from either.
But we can....if you understand what Flux implies.
We can't, actually. "Better" is a moral term. We can't know what is "better" without reference to an ideal. And we can't be obligated to an ideal without appealing to a moral code that's higher than mere pragmatics.
But it can't provide any justification for morality. Even if we take it for a fact that human cognition is "evolving" in some particular direction, we have no way of judging whether that direction is "moral" or not. It might be merely pragmatic. It might lead us to do something evil that was still "useful" to us in some way. It might actually be leading us to extinction, too. We'd never know where it was leading us. To know that, we'd need a meta-moral system, something above the particular "morality" we happened to be believing in, something objective that would enable us to assess whether our "moral" beliefs were genuinely moral at all, or amoral, or immoral, or even morally suicidal. And what would that meta-moral basis for that judgment be?
The "direction you speak of is manmade. We call it our objectives., and our ideals.
We can't know which objectives are "best" or even "right for us," far less what is "ideal," without reference to this meta-code.

So from where do you get your meta-code that enables you to believe that we owe it to the universe to "survive" or to aim for our "ideals," or whatever it is you suppose human beings are supposed to do?
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:18 pm
Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:00 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:24 pm
Sure you do. You have one yourself. It's the locus of your intelligence and personality. And you have a fair bit of both. :wink:
Thank you, but seriously, why is there any reason to think there is any more than just brain plus consciousness? Not that I actually know what consciousness really is.
Right. You can call it "soul," or "consciousness," or "intelligence," or "reason," or "mind," or "Harbal," or any other thing you want. What's obvious is that in your noggin is something that is more than meat. The brain itself is just a piece of meat, of course. It looks like hamburger, and is a physical item. But within that brain, stuff happens...electrical and chemical stuff...still physical, of course.

But here's where the problem gets philosophical: those electrical impulses don't turn out to be random. They turn out to be "about" things. How is it possible for a hunk of meat with an electrical shock in it to be "about" toothbrushing, or the age of the universe, or the Mona Lisa?

This is called the "aboutness" problem. Your mind thinks "about" things. How is that possible in a purely physical universe? How can physical processes "signify" things? Where is the "ghost" inside that "machine"?

Harbal, meet your soul. Soul, meet Harbal. :wink:
Although I would never use the word, "soul", myself, except very rarely metaphorically, I get what people mean when they are referring to what might be called "self", but people quite often mean a lot more than that. I think there are various concepts of what a soul is, but I'm not really "spiritual" enough to have need of one myself. 🙂
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:59 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:18 pm
Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:00 pm
Thank you, but seriously, why is there any reason to think there is any more than just brain plus consciousness? Not that I actually know what consciousness really is.
Right. You can call it "soul," or "consciousness," or "intelligence," or "reason," or "mind," or "Harbal," or any other thing you want. What's obvious is that in your noggin is something that is more than meat. The brain itself is just a piece of meat, of course. It looks like hamburger, and is a physical item. But within that brain, stuff happens...electrical and chemical stuff...still physical, of course.

But here's where the problem gets philosophical: those electrical impulses don't turn out to be random. They turn out to be "about" things. How is it possible for a hunk of meat with an electrical shock in it to be "about" toothbrushing, or the age of the universe, or the Mona Lisa?

This is called the "aboutness" problem. Your mind thinks "about" things. How is that possible in a purely physical universe? How can physical processes "signify" things? Where is the "ghost" inside that "machine"?

Harbal, meet your soul. Soul, meet Harbal. :wink:
Although I would never use the word, "soul", myself, except very rarely metaphorically, I get what people mean when they are referring to what might be called "self", but people quite often mean a lot more than that. I think there are various concepts of what a soul is, but I'm not really "spiritual" enough to have need of one myself. 🙂
Who's speaking? :wink:

If there's a "person" behind the voice...meaning that you're not a machine or ChatGPT, then let's not call it a soul. Let's call it "personhood." Let's call it, "consciousness." In fact, let's call it "Harbal."
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Harbal »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 5:07 pm
Harbal wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:59 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:18 pm
Right. You can call it "soul," or "consciousness," or "intelligence," or "reason," or "mind," or "Harbal," or any other thing you want. What's obvious is that in your noggin is something that is more than meat. The brain itself is just a piece of meat, of course. It looks like hamburger, and is a physical item. But within that brain, stuff happens...electrical and chemical stuff...still physical, of course.

But here's where the problem gets philosophical: those electrical impulses don't turn out to be random. They turn out to be "about" things. How is it possible for a hunk of meat with an electrical shock in it to be "about" toothbrushing, or the age of the universe, or the Mona Lisa?

This is called the "aboutness" problem. Your mind thinks "about" things. How is that possible in a purely physical universe? How can physical processes "signify" things? Where is the "ghost" inside that "machine"?

Harbal, meet your soul. Soul, meet Harbal. :wink:
Although I would never use the word, "soul", myself, except very rarely metaphorically, I get what people mean when they are referring to what might be called "self", but people quite often mean a lot more than that. I think there are various concepts of what a soul is, but I'm not really "spiritual" enough to have need of one myself. 🙂
Who's speaking? :wink:

If there's a "person" behind the voice...meaning that you're not a machine or ChatGPT, then let's not call it a soul. Let's call it "personhood." Let's call it, "consciousness." In fact, let's call it "Harbal."
Okay. 🙂
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Age »

phyllo wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 11:45 am
Age wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 11:49 pm
phyllo wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:43 pm Then you a created a bunch of exceptions.
A so-called 'bunch of exceptions' to 'what', exactly?

Other'# 'bunches of exceptions'? Or, something else?
phyllo wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:43 pm So you no longer have one unbeatable argument.
Why, what is needed, exactly, for a so-called 'unbeatable argument'?
phyllo wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:43 pm And you can always claim that nobody can argue against your "sound argument" because only you know when the word "when" applies and when it doesn't. You can't lose. Congrats.
See how simple and easy finding and revealing actual irrefutable Truths and facts is?
If you're satisfied with some trivial finding or if you're satisfied with an argument based on your particular definition of words, then you have an unbeatable argument.

That's not what I find interesting.

Carry on.
What do you find interesting here, exactly?

you asked me for something, I just provided it.
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Lorikeet »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:48 pm Well, that explains your advocacy for war, then.
Where did I advocate for war?
Stating the truth does not mean I like it.

It is.
War is.
All life is at war....constantly - Agon.
Struggle.

Then it doesn't "refer" to anything. There's no longer any use for the word. But I think you must think that love refers to at least a delusion held in the mind, and possibly, that morality is the same. But both would only be delusions, then.
Erotic love, lust, is a state of paroxysm.
It is "blind" metaphorically implies madness.
Taken over by pathos.....or selfish genes.

Cheap shot, and untrue. But even if it were true, it wouldn't help your argument.
Your psychology exposes your underlying motives.
It helps identify the source of your desire for mysticism.

I was asking you a serious question: what do you mean when you say, "Even god is pragmatic." That doesn't make obvious sense to me.

God is the human collective? :shock: Or is this 'god' you mention nothing more than everything human beings get confused about? What's your evidence for this 'god' of yours being a "human invention"?
Would you ask for such proof for ghosts, or Leprechauns?
The burden of proof is on the one making an outlandish claim, not on the one denying it and attempting to explain where it came from.

Centaurs, and Frankenstein, and Zombies...all human creations based on the corruption of experienced reality.
No need for a god, as defined in Abrahamism - no necessity. No evidence. All human declarations that invert experienced existence, motivated by anxiety and a need to explain what remains incomprehensible.
Paramecia? Mosquitoes? Frogs? Bullfinches? Lions and tigers? What's your evidence for any of these having "morality"?
Once you define morality as an act - an act of sympathy, love, tolerance etc., then you see it in many other species.
Especially those practicing heterosexual reproduction, and those practicing cooperative survival.

Pack loyalty? They're pack animals. That's instinct. Where's their code?
As it is for humans.
Humans encoded their natural impulses. Mystified them to explain them.

That's moral nihilism.
Moral nihilism denies morality altogether. It claims it is nothing but a human construct.
Plenty of those on this forum.
I don't deny morality.
I actually say it is essential to social living.

That's mere pragmatism, not morality.
Your desire to mystify and anchor reality in some magical realm, prevents you from objectively seeing what it is.
Like exposing what 'love' is to a romantic. He needs to live in its magic.
Describing it objectively demystifies it....and minds like yours need this "magic" to cope.

From where do you get the moral command, "Thou shalt perpetuate life?" That's no kind of moral obligation. Species go extinct all the time. Why shouldn't we? It's all "natural processes."
It is naturally selected.
That which did not perpetuate is no longer here with us. That which did contemplates from where it came from.

Advantage is reproduced.
This 'will to life' is essential to the desire to reproduce.
Animals feel it as lust, or rut - a seasonal or periodic state of hormonally induced madness.
Humans mystify it to claim it has divine origins.

We can't, actually. "Better" is a moral term. We can't know what is "better" without reference to an ideal. And we can't be obligated to an ideal without appealing to a moral code that's higher than mere pragmatics.
All value judgments are a triangulation between a living subject, its objectives, and its judgments, evaluations, estimations, approximations of the effort, distances it requires for subject/object to meet.
Morality/Ethics only applies to living organisms that have evolved cooperative survival and reproductive strategies.
Humans project this to the entire cosmos. Thy expand their social circle to include everything, just as they once also, and many still do, projected their consciousness into everything: rocks, rivers, planets, the moon, the sun, the earth...

We can't know which objectives are "best" or even "right for us," far less what is "ideal," without reference to this meta-code.
Adaptation....trial and eerror.
Some learn form the consequences of their judgments/choices.
Some juxtapose their expectations with the consequences and find fault in their own judgments.
The majority try to blame others so as to maintain their comforting judgments, leading to the same choices with the same consequences.
Then they demand that others are morally obligated to share the burden of these negative consequences, so that they will never change their judgments.
Some even deny free-will implying that the negative consequences and their judgements were inevitable....
A way of escaping regret and their personal participations in their own fate.

So from where do you get your meta-code that enables you to believe that we owe it to the universe to "survive" or to aim for our "ideals," or whatever it is you suppose human beings are supposed to do?
I never said we ow anything to the universe.
The universe is not a thing .....nor do we own anything to it.

If we own anything it is to our genes, that have been naturally selected to compel us to reproduce them.

Those that had this genetic impulse survived....those that did not, or do not, perish.
No need for an external agency commanding us to do what we do.
Natural selection suffices.

Mutations arise with every replicaiton.
Some are neutral, some are advantageous, some are disadvantageous.
Those that are advantageous survive long enough to reproduce.
Those that are disadvantageous do not.
Those that are neutral await more mutations to trigger an advantage or a disadvantage.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lorikeet wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 10:41 am I never said we ow anything to the universe.
Well, okay.

Thanks for your time. I think I've got what I can out of your view.
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Will Bouwman »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:54 pm
Will Bouwman wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:41 am From your reading, when do you imagine souls are created?
We are not told.
I'm not as distracted by the bible as you, so I'm happy to concede that I know of few biblical passages about the creation of souls. Off the top of my head, I can only think of your god breathing the breath of life into Adam's nostrils. Does your god do that for all of us?
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:54 pmBut I see no justification in presupposing any pre-existent state of the soul, in Pantheist fashion or any other way.
We have that in common.
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Will Bouwman wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 8:08 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:54 pm
Will Bouwman wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:41 am From your reading, when do you imagine souls are created?
We are not told.
I'm not as distracted by the bible as you,...
"Distracted"? You asked me a question of Biblical import, one that only God could answer. So if you've got a better source of information, what is it?
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 8:29 pm
Will Bouwman wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 8:08 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:54 pm
We are not told.
I'm not as distracted by the bible as you,...
"Distracted"? You asked me a question of Biblical import, one that only God could answer.
There are many interpretations of the divine. So which interpretation should we all utilize when we talk about what is moral and what isn't and why should we use that interpretation and not another? I think that's one of the problems we are all dealing with in this conversation.

Or what if there is no God at all? Then what? Are there still acts that we can universalize as immoral and put sanctions against those acts into our laws to ensure that society doesn't turn into something horrible?

For one example, (perhaps the most fundamental one) could we all agree that all humans are moral entities and all moral entities should be restricted from knowingly and purposely killing other moral entities? And if a moral entity violates that law, then the moral entity that violated it ought to be sanctioned in some way, shape or form, however, not to the point where it violates that universal law against one moral entity killing another?

Thoughts?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

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Gary Childress wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 10:12 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 8:29 pm
Will Bouwman wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 8:08 pm I'm not as distracted by the bible as you,...
"Distracted"? You asked me a question of Biblical import, one that only God could answer.
There are many interpretations of the divine.
There might be many imaginings of who Gary Childress is. But only one will still be right.
Or what if there is no God at all? Then what?
Easy. Then all morality is fake. Nihilism follows.
For one example, (perhaps the most fundamental one) could we all agree that all humans are moral entities
Apparently not. I think they are, but lots of people think they're just things that rose by time and chance from the primordial ooze by way of time plus chance, and happen now to walk on two legs. If that's all they are, then again, morality's a fake, and Nihilism is all that follows.
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Harbal
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 10:20 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 10:12 pm Or what if there is no God at all? Then what?
Easy. Then all morality is fake. Nihilism follows.
I don't see what meaning God gives to anything.
Gary Childress
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 10:20 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 10:12 pm There are many interpretations of the divine.
There might be many imaginings of who Gary Childress is. But only one will still be right.
Are you sure only one interpretation of who I am is "right"? I mean someone might think I'm a jerk and someone else might think I'm wonderful. Going back to my original question, which interpretation is the "right" one and by what criteria" do we make that distinction? Your answer doesn't whisk away the problem of many interpretations. It simply says that there are many interpretations, which was my original point.
Or what if there is no God at all? Then what?
Easy. Then all morality is fake. Nihilism follows.
Why does it follow that if there is no God, then all morality is "fake"? Obviously, there are laws that societies implement in order to improve or maintain those societies. Are those laws not really laws if there isn't a God? If you get pulled over for speeding will you not get a ticket if there is no God? If there is no God ought we allow people to drive 100 mph through a school zone?
For one example, (perhaps the most fundamental one) could we all agree that all humans are moral entities
Apparently not. I think they are, but lots of people think they're just things that rose by time and chance from the primordial ooze by way of time plus chance, and happen now to walk on two legs. If that's all they are, then again, morality's a fake, and Nihilism is all that follows.
What is it about "rose by time and chance" from "primordial ooze" that negates the possibility for a person to agree that humans are moral entities?

I don't see where your conclusions follow logically from the premises you are giving. God doesn't exist, ergo morality is fake? Could you put that into a sound argument so we can see the steps by which you get from God's potential nonexistence to all morality being "fake"? And what is meant by "fake"?
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