Is morality objective or subjective?

[Gary Childress]

Not very satisfying answers, are they?

What do you mean by "not satisfying answers"? What would be an example of a "satisfying answer".

How about, one you could recognize as any answer at all? To say, "that's just the way it is," is to say nothing. It explains nothing, gives you no direction, and would be something anybody could just say if they had no clue.

But more importantly, a satisfying answer would be one that fits with one's worldview, integrates the fact of the existence of evil (or "bad" or "unwanted" or "unfortunate" things) with an explanation of where it comes from and what we are to do about it.

Wouldn't you prefer that to the sort of "que sera sera" response?

What we do with evil is the same either way. We try to do something on our part to mitigate it. what do you do differently from a secularist? Burn incense or something in hopes that the odor will chase away evil demons?

[Immanuel Can]

so they provide no rule, instruction or insight for anybody

No, but that's because I don't tell them it's what God wants.

That's not the point. The point is that they don't help anyone...not even you, since you have no way of knowing if they're right or not, except how you subjectively feel...what your twinges tell you, in other words.

I don't see your point. All I am saying is that I have a sense of right and wrong, I have moral values, and there are moral principles that mean something to me. What anyone else thinks about that is up to them.

Well, there's nothing in them that smacks of the word "principled." Really, all your saying is "I value some stuff," "I can't tell anybody anything about moralitty," and" I have no particular principles to which I'm committed at all."

All plausible, I suppose. But nothing in it has anything at all to do with morality, because morality concerns things like principles and the conduct of others.

But that doesn't apply to me, of course. [God]

I'm afraid it does.

Okay, you say it does, and I say it doesn't. That didn't get us very far, did it?

Well, if I'm right, I'm giving you a heads-up about what's coming. If you're right, you'll never know it. If I'm right, you will.

There are situations when it can be difficult to know what to do, because it is not always clear what all the moral implications of a situation and your response to it might be, but that is a possibility that must be no less likely for you than for me.

In a sense, that's right: but in a sense, it's not.

If a person has a principle, "Thou shalt not murder," then he's got something. But he doesn't have everything. He still needs a much deeper understanding of the nature of that principle to know whether or not "murder" is going to be applied to, say, pre-born children, or combattants in war, or capital punishment cases, so he's still got work to do. But he does have something.

I have considered opinions on abortion, death during the course of military combat, and capital punishment, so it seems I have at least done some of that work.

But all you're really in a position to say, as a result of subjectivism, is that you have the "yes" twinge for some of them, and the "no" twinge for others, and neither is objectively right.

Not so the secularist. He's got nothing. He doesn't even have reason to think that "Thou shalt not murder" is obligatory at all, to any cases. So he doesn't even have the larger principle from which the particulars are to be deduced.

I can only say that I don't find that to be the case.

The difference between a person who says, "I have principles" and one who actually has principles is that the one that has principles can say what they are.

Objective moral truth.

I don't believe there is such a thing. I don't even see how there possibly could be such a thing.

Well, that's the great thing about objective things: it really doesn't matter much whether you believe in them or not: they're there.

You say it, but I don't think you believe it. If your neighbour comes over and stabs your daughter, I do not believe you'll stand by the claim that his desire must be judged by him.

I wouldn't even be interested in his judgement; I would be far too preoccupied with my own. I might hope my neighbour shares my moral values, and I might even try to get him to question his own, but he is ultimately responsible for them, not I.

To whom is he "responsible"? There's nobody for him to be "responsible" to. If he stabs your daughter and likes doing it, who is going to pass judgment?

And I think you'll (rightly) feel that there is a way he ought to be judged, even if your other neighbours hold to your relativistic position. I think you won't just "personally feel" he's wrong. You'll be certain he is.

Of course I'll be certain he is wrong, because that would be a real life situation, of a very extreme nature.

Then suddenly you're a moral objectivist after all.

No. It's designed to point to the actual insubstantiality that you are assigning to them, even though you don't realize you are. And it seems to be working, I'd say. You don't like it, because you know that conscience NEEDS to be more than "twinges." But according to subjectivism, what "more" can they be?

If this is your honest assessment, I can come to no other conclusion than that you are emotionally deficient in some way.

Ah. No answer...resort to an ad hominem. That's when I know you've got no answer.

Well, maybe you should tell yourself what you're really implying. If conscience is strictly personal, then "twinge" is all it amounts to.

Okay, if that is the level on which you want to conduct your argument,

That level is called "logical consistency." I'm just pointing out that it's a good thing to stay rationally consistent with what you, yourself, claim is true.

Okay. Why is "malice" also "evil," then?

Are you asking me why malice is a bad thing? [/quote]
Yes.

I suppose I consider malice to be a bad thing because it usually results in someone suffering pointlessly.

So? Are you saying that "pointless suffering" is also "bad"?

Who told you it was? Or was that just the twinges, again?

Then the point is well-taken. You do think some things are "wrong." That's one of them.

So why is it "wrong"?

well it goes against one of the principles I described earlier; although you said they weren't actually principles. I don't think it is right to do something that could potentially change someone's life in a negative way.

Too vague to say anything. What's "a negative way"? And why is it their life? Who assigned it to their control and their 'right'? And "change"? Everything is a "change." So I can't find any principle in that, either.

I regard religious proselytising as such an act.

Again, why? It seems a remarkably tame act, compared to ripping babies out of the womb, say...Funny that you would regard proselytising to get people out of Hell as a cardinal sin, and then butchering children as business-as-usual. Are you sure your twinges are telling you the truth?

[Immanuel Can]

What do you mean by "not satisfying answers"? What would be an example of a "satisfying answer".

How about, one you could recognize as any answer at all? To say, "that's just the way it is," is to say nothing. It explains nothing, gives you no direction, and would be something anybody could just say if they had no clue.

But more importantly, a satisfying answer would be one that fits with one's worldview, integrates the fact of the existence of evil (or "bad" or "unwanted" or "unfortunate" things) with an explanation of where it comes from and what we are to do about it.

Wouldn't you prefer that to the sort of "que sera sera" response?

What we do with evil is the same either way. We try to do something on our part to mitigate it. what do you do differently from a secularist? Burn incense or something in hopes that the odor will chase away evil demons?

Well, for example, when I know that I'm not supposed to murder, I don't encourage the killing of babies, the elderly or the mentally ill. But secularism does. So that's rather different.

When I know adultery is wrong, I make the effort not to commit it. But secularism says that whatever you want to do, you can do...ideally with a willing partner, but maybe not even that. So that also is different.

Want more examples?

[Gary Childress]

Well that isn't a thought that I would have just put out there because people need to know it. It was a response to a specific comment.

All animals behave according to their nature, and that seems to be a principle that most people accept, except when it comes to human beings. Take wasps, for example, they frequently tend to sting people, but not many of us would say there is something wrong with wasps. We might say that wasps are a nuisance, or we need to do something about wasps, but we don't seem to regard the fact that wasps sting us as being some kind of malfunction in wasps. Neither would anyone other than a complete crackpot say that God created wasps to be friendly towards human beings, but they took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. If we want to avoid being stung by wasps, we have to find a way of getting round whatever it is in their nature that makes them tend to sting us. It's no good just saying, "there's something wrong with wasps".

Does that make my meaning any clearer, or is it as I suspect, and it just makes it more confusing?

I don't know. Maybe, IC is right. If there's no God then there's no morality or no "right" and "wrong". And if there is a God then whatever God thinks is right is right by virtue of being the Alpha being or something.

Yes, Gary, maybe he is, but if it matters to you, you are going to have to work it out for yourself, unless, of course, you actually enjoy being in this no-man's-land of constant anxiety that you seem to inhabit.

What is either believing in a God or not believing in a God going to do about clinical depression and anxiety? It's not like a belief is going to change brain chemistry or 30 years being on crappy meds. Those are facts. Whether or not there's a God is pretty much superfluous to such things. Either the world sucks and there's no God or the world sucks and there is a God. Really, it more or less comes down to who or what is to blame. Not that it will do anything to blame either of them, but it is a matter of idle curiosity to me which force is responsible for this screwed up world, divine providence or impersonal forces of nature. But no, there's nothing I can do about it either way.

[Gary Childress]

How about, one you could recognize as any answer at all? To say, "that's just the way it is," is to say nothing. It explains nothing, gives you no direction, and would be something anybody could just say if they had no clue.

But more importantly, a satisfying answer would be one that fits with one's worldview, integrates the fact of the existence of evil (or "bad" or "unwanted" or "unfortunate" things) with an explanation of where it comes from and what we are to do about it.

Wouldn't you prefer that to the sort of "que sera sera" response?

What we do with evil is the same either way. We try to do something on our part to mitigate it. what do you do differently from a secularist? Burn incense or something in hopes that the odor will chase away evil demons?

Well, for example, when I know that I'm not supposed to murder, I don't encourage the killing of babies, the elderly or the mentally ill. But secularism does. So that's rather different.

When I know adultery is wrong, I make the effort not to commit it. But secularism says that whatever you want to do, you can do...ideally with a willing partner, but maybe not even that. So that also is different.

Want more examples?

I don't murder or run around breaking up families either. So what's the difference. You believe this mess called the world was created by a God. Harbal believes this mess more resembles something created by impersonal forces of nature. And, for whatever it's worth, I'm undecided.

[iambiguous]

...I know that I'm not supposed to murder, I don't encourage the killing of babies, the elderly or the mentally ill. But secularism does.

But then the part where his loving, just and merciful God is wholly responsible for the simply staggering amount of human pain and suffering that pummels mere mortals over and over again given these "acts of God":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

When I know adultery is wrong, I make the effort not to commit it. But secularism says that whatever you want to do, you can do...ideally with a willing partner, but maybe not even that. So that also is different.

Over and over again, he comes back to this. And I basically agree with him. I believe as well that only the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God can account for actual moral commandments. Commandments that, if not followed, can result in eternal damnation.

It's just that any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...will tell you the same thing.

But what distinguishes them from Mr. Cant is that IC insists his God has in fact been demonstrated to exist. Both scientifically and historically.

Just don't press him to defend that.

[Harbal]

so they provide no rule, instruction or insight for anybody

No, but that's because I don't tell them it's what God wants.

That's not the point. The point is that they don't help anyone...not even you, since you have no way of knowing if they're right or not, except how you subjectively feel...what your twinges tell you, in other words.

If that's what you really think, I suppose I will just have to accept it.

I don't see your point. All I am saying is that I have a sense of right and wrong, I have moral values, and there are moral principles that mean something to me. What anyone else thinks about that is up to them.

Well, there's nothing in them that smacks of the word "principled." Really, all your saying is "I value some stuff," "I can't tell anybody anything about moralitty," and" I have no particular principles to which I'm committed at all."

But I can tell anybody what I think about morality, and I do have particular principles that I am committed to.

Okay, you say it does, and I say it doesn't. That didn't get us very far, did it?

Well, if I'm right, I'm giving you a heads-up about what's coming. If you're right, you'll never know it. If I'm right, you will.

That's okay; I'm fine with never knowing.

I have considered opinions on abortion, death during the course of military combat, and capital punishment, so it seems I have at least done some of that work.

But all you're really in a position to say, as a result of subjectivism, is that you have the "yes" twinge for some of them, and the "no" twinge for others, and neither is objectively right.

Well I think my twinges are a bit more substantial and nuanced than that.

The difference between a person who says, "I have principles" and one who actually has principles is that the one that has principles can say what they are.

I've said what some of mine are, but you said they weren't even principles. I can't do much about that.

I wouldn't even be interested in his judgement; I would be far too preoccupied with my own. I might hope my neighbour shares my moral values, and I might even try to get him to question his own, but he is ultimately responsible for them, not I.

To whom is he "responsible"? There's nobody for him to be "responsible" to. If he stabs your daughter and likes doing it, who is going to pass judgment?

I said he was responsible for his own moral conduct. Do you not think we are all responsible for our own behaviour?

Objective moral truth.

I don't believe there is such a thing. I don't even see how there possibly could be such a thing.

Well, that's the great thing about objective things: it really doesn't matter much whether you believe in them or not: they're there.

That's how I know that objective morality isn't a thing; it isn't there. I'm afraid saying that it is there doesn't make it so.

Of course I'll be certain he is wrong, because that would be a real life situation, of a very extreme nature.

Then suddenly you're a moral objectivist after all.

If someone who does not believe in God, or objective moral truth, is an "objectivist", then perhaps I am one.

If this is your honest assessment, I can come to no other conclusion than that you are emotionally deficient in some way.

Ah. No answer...resort to an ad hominem. That's when I know you've got no answer.

It wasn't an insult, just a logical conclusion. And you didn't quote my reason for not giving you an answer, which was that you appear to have no means of understanding my answer, because I would be describing an experience that you seem to be completely unfamiliar with.

Okay, if that is the level on which you want to conduct your argument,

That level is called "logical consistency." I'm just pointing out that it's a good thing to stay rationally consistent with what you, yourself, claim is true.

But this is a case of my not staying rationally consistent with what you claim is true, not what I claim is true. I never claimed that morality was based on twinges.

I suppose I consider malice to be a bad thing because it usually results in someone suffering pointlessly.

So? Are you saying that "pointless suffering" is also "bad"?

Who told you it was? Or was that just the twinges, again?

Yes, my twinges tell me it is bad. Do you think pointless suffering is okay, or something?

well it goes against one of the principles I described earlier; although you said they weren't actually principles. I don't think it is right to do something that could potentially change someone's life in a negative way.

Too vague to say anything. What's "a negative way"? And why is it their life? Who assigned it to their control and their 'right'? And "change"? Everything is a "change." So I can't find any principle in that, either.

That's okay; I am the one who is required to find the principle in it, not you.

I regard religious proselytising as such an act.

Again, why? It seems a remarkably tame act, compared to ripping babies out of the womb, say...Funny that you would regard proselytising to get people out of Hell as a cardinal sin, and then butchering children as business-as-usual. Are you sure your twinges are telling you the truth?

Let's make a deal. I'll stop ripping babies out of wombs if you stop proselytising.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't murder or run around breaking up families either. So what's the difference.

The problem is that your not doing so isn't based on you having any reason to believe it's objectively wrong, or that you'd be any better of a person if you did those things. So your conformity to conventional morality is, perhaps, convenient for you at the moment: it's not capable of informing a society, creating a law code, rationalizing a criminal justice system, making a policy, or even teaching your own children what's right, if you had them. So it doesn't do any of the work for which we look to a moral viewpoint.

And there are plenty of people who don't share your sunny, natural disposition toward good behaviour.

[Immanuel Can]

No, but that's because I don't tell them it's what God wants.

That's not the point. The point is that they don't help anyone...not even you, since you have no way of knowing if they're right or not, except how you subjectively feel...what your twinges tell you, in other words.

If that's what you really think, I suppose I will just have to accept it.

It's actually not what I think; it's what subjectivism entails. I think subjectivism is wrong, of course.

I don't see your point. All I am saying is that I have a sense of right and wrong, I have moral values, and there are moral principles that mean something to me. What anyone else thinks about that is up to them.

Well, there's nothing in them that smacks of the word "principled." Really, all your saying is "I value some stuff," "I can't tell anybody anything about morality," and" I have no particular principles to which I'm committed at all."

But I can tell anybody what I think about morality, and I do have particular principles that I am committed to.

You call them "principles," but subjectivism makes of them mere twinges.

I have considered opinions on abortion, death during the course of military combat, and capital punishment, so it seems I have at least done some of that work.

But all you're really in a position to say, as a result of subjectivism, is that you have the "yes" twinge for some of them, and the "no" twinge for others, and neither is objectively right.

Well I think my twinges are a bit more substantial and nuanced than that.

"Substantial"? "Nuanced"? Okay...give me one of your principles, and show that it's substantial. I don't even know what you could mean by "nuanced" there, but maybe I will when you give me at least a "substantial principle."

The difference between a person who says, "I have principles" and one who actually has principles is that the one that has principles can say what they are.

I've said what some of mine are, but you said they weren't even principles. I can't do much about that.

Well, to rise to the level of a "principle," an axiom has to be informative to somebody else. But you say all your so-called "principles" only ever apply to you.

That's what subjectivism does: it vacates all axioms of any moral force. It's just a resting point on the road to moral nihilism, and nothing more substantial than that. Because anybody who really understands it, as Nietzsche understood it, understands that he/she is "beyond good and evil," and no longer can feel bound by any morality.

I wouldn't even be interested in his judgement; I would be far too preoccupied with my own. I might hope my neighbour shares my moral values, and I might even try to get him to question his own, but he is ultimately responsible for them, not I.

To whom is he "responsible"? There's nobody for him to be "responsible" to. If he stabs your daughter and likes doing it, who is going to pass judgment?

I said he was responsible for his own moral conduct. Do you not think we are all responsible for our own behaviour?

It depends what you mean by "responsible." If all you mean is "the neighbour did it," then sure, he "responded" in that way. But that's a trivial characterization, and has no moral implication in it. What needs to be arbitrated is whether or not, when your neighbour did it, he was guilty of something evil or culpable. If not, he's not going to be "responsible" to anybody, or for anything he did.

Of course I'll be certain he is wrong, because that would be a real life situation, of a very extreme nature.

Then suddenly you're a moral objectivist after all.

If someone who does not believe in God, or objective moral truth, is an "objectivist", then perhaps I am one.

Now you're onto my indictment of secular moralizing. Somebody who claims to be a subjectivst, and then who condemns any action...even the most hideous and unjust...is guilty of abandoning his position and becoming irrational. For Subjectivism entails, you remember, that no moral injunction is ever objective. So there is no legitimate way to condemn the neighbour's action, no matter how much you may approve or disapprove of it.

If this is your honest assessment, I can come to no other conclusion than that you are emotionally deficient in some way.

Ah. No answer...resort to an ad hominem. That's when I know you've got no answer.

It wasn't an insult, just a logical conclusion. And you didn't quote my reason for not giving you an answer,[/quote]
Yes I did. It was ad hominem, which means it's logically irrelevant. It was just a personal dig, intended to distract. It had nothing to do with the issue in hand.

I never claimed that morality was based on twinges.

You said it's based on conscience. Conscience, if it refers to nothing objective, is a mere twinge at best. At worst, it might even be a delusion or mistake. It certainly doesn't give anyone...even the experiencer of the twinge...any justification for thinking he's felt something "moral."

I suppose I consider malice to be a bad thing because it usually results in someone suffering pointlessly.

So? Are you saying that "pointless suffering" is also "bad"?

Who told you it was? Or was that just the twinges, again?

Yes, my twinges tell me it is bad. Do you think pointless suffering is okay, or something?

No, but Subjectivists can't rationally explain why they do. They could just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others, and subjectively, they'd be no worse as people, allegedly.

I regard religious proselytising as such an act.

Again, why? It seems a remarkably tame act, compared to ripping babies out of the womb, say...Funny that you would regard proselytising to get people out of Hell as a cardinal sin, and then butchering children as business-as-usual. Are you sure your twinges are telling you the truth?

Let's make a deal. I'll stop ripping babies out of wombs if you stop proselytising.

And yet, one is an act of mercy, and the other of murder. So no, because in that case you'd be doing right, but you'd be making me do wrong.

[Gary Childress]

I don't murder or run around breaking up families either. So what's the difference.

The problem is that your not doing so isn't based on you having any reason to believe it's objectively wrong, or that you'd be any better of a person if you did those things. So your conformity to conventional morality is, perhaps, convenient for you at the moment: it's not capable of informing a society, creating a law code, rationalizing a criminal justice system, making a policy, or even teaching your own children what's right, if you had them. So it doesn't do any of the work for which we look to a moral viewpoint.

And there are plenty of people who don't share your sunny, natural disposition toward good behaviour.

I'm in no worse shape than you are in saying why something is wrong. All you can do for a reason is to cite the Bible and there are some commandments in the Bible that are pretty hideous by today's standards, Deuteronomy 13 for example:

If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely,both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt, 17 and none of the condemned things[c] are to be found in your hands.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=NIV

I would say that not murdering is pretty universally condemned in human societies and, therefore, I suspect it is a good solid rule to obey. I also wouldn't want to be murdered and I suspect hardly anyone else would either. So I see pretty solid reason for that to be a universal rule. If I murder someone, then I lose my unique ability to condemn it myself. No. Murder is wrong. Would you agree?

Murdering everyone in a town that doesn't worship the same God, OTOH, I'm pretty sure is wrong too.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm in no worse shape than you are in saying why something is wrong.

Oh, you certainly are.

Subjectivism insists that nothing is wrong. At least if you were some kind of objectivist, you might have a chance of saying why you think something is wrong. But Subjectivism has no hope.

But as it is, I have a very good chance. I'm siding with a revelation from the Creator Himself. You may doubt that, but we'll see if I'm right.

...today's standards...

Subjectivism does not have any "standards." So "today's standards" mean nothing at all. And you can see it: we live in a culture that is so morally lost it can't even say what a "woman" is, or why children should not be castrated, or why killing Ukrainians to fund American elites is wrong.

Murder is wrong. Would you agree?

Yes indeed. But let's be precise: "murder" does not include all killing. For example, self-defense is not "murder." Arguably, to kill a combatant in a just war, especially when he is attacking you, falls into the same category. To kill someone accidentally isn't "murder." Nor is the killing of an animal or plant. And as for the status of executing a violent criminal -- say a mass murder -- it is much debated whether or not the state has the right to do it, without implicating itself in "murder." Moreover, if God is the Giver of life, which He is, then it is He alone that can say what the right destiny of any particular life is. So the term "murder" is hedged with certain caveats; and while the actual act of "murder" is wrong, sometimes killing is not "murder."

This is why the detractors of objective moralities of various kinds are misguided when they think that having a firm principle like "thou shalt not commit murder," obviates people from having to use ethics and reason. In truth, Objectivists may have the broad moral principles lacked by the Subjectivists, but they still have to work out the implications of those to particular situations. The problem for the Subjectivists is that they don't even have the first moral principles from which to deduce anything.

[Gary Childress]

Moreover, if God is the Giver of life, which He is, then it is He alone that can say what the right destiny of any particular life is. So the term "murder" is hedged with certain caveats; and while the actual act of "murder" is wrong, sometimes killing is not "murder."

Oh well. Sucks to be that town in Deuteronomy I guess.

[Harbal]

That's not the point. The point is that they don't help anyone...not even you, since you have no way of knowing if they're right or not, except how you subjectively feel...what your twinges tell you, in other words.

If that's what you really think, I suppose I will just have to accept it.

It's actually not what I think; it's what subjectivism entails. I think subjectivism is wrong, of course.

But the fact is that I have moral opinions (opinions about moral issues), and they influence my behaviour. All you have to guide you, it seems, is a work of fiction.

But I can tell anybody what I think about morality, and I do have particular principles that I am committed to.

You call them "principles," but subjectivism makes of them mere twinges.

That's not correct. I have both principles and twinges, they are separate things. All you have is a book full of other people's twinges, woven into a made up story.

Well I think my twinges are a bit more substantial and nuanced than that.

"Substantial"? "Nuanced"? Okay...give me one of your principles, and show that it's substantial. I don't even know what you could mean by "nuanced" there, but maybe I will when you give me at least a "substantial principle."

You are rejecting everything I say, and I have nothing new to add, so it seems pointless to just keep repeating myself when I know you will just continue to dismiss it on principle. I suppose it is an understandable strategy; attacking my argument is a far easier task than successfully presenting a case for objective moral truth. I don't wonder that you avoid even trying.

If someone who does not believe in God, or objective moral truth, is an "objectivist", then perhaps I am one.

Now you're onto my indictment of secular moralizing. Somebody who claims to be a subjectivst, and then who condemns any action...even the most hideous and unjust...is guilty of abandoning his position and becoming irrational. For Subjectivism entails, you remember, that no moral injunction is ever objective. So there is no legitimate way to condemn the neighbour's action, no matter how much you may approve or disapprove of it.

But I don't claim to be a "subjectivist". I don't believe in God, I don't believe in objective moral truth, but I do believe that morality is important. I also believe that morality is a purely human concept, and there is no other source of morality outside of human minds. What label you want to stick on that is up to you, and is of no interest to me.

I never claimed that morality was based on twinges.

You said it's based on conscience. Conscience, if it refers to nothing objective, is a mere twinge at best.

I can't say I'm happy about having my entire moral outlook being described as something that is based on a mere twinge, especially when yours is simply based on a lie. You haven't even got the twinge to fall back on.

Yes, my twinges tell me it is bad. Do you think pointless suffering is okay, or something?

No, but Subjectivists can't rationally explain why they do.

I could explain, but you wouldn't accept the explanation as valid. You can't explain why anything is morally bad, other than to say God doesn't like it, and that explains nothing.

They could just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others, and subjectively, they'd be no worse as people, allegedly.

So could you just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others. As long as you condemn it on behalf of God, that's your moral obligation fulfilled. That would be meaningless enough, but as God also seems to quite enjoy the pointless suffering of others, it just seems rather worthless.

Let's make a deal. I'll stop ripping babies out of wombs if you stop proselytising.

And yet, one is an act of mercy, and the other of murder. So no, because in that case you'd be doing right, but you'd be making me do wrong.

You've got 24 hours to change your mind, or the next baby gets ripped.

[Immanuel Can]

If that's what you really think, I suppose I will just have to accept it.

It's actually not what I think; it's what subjectivism entails. I think subjectivism is wrong, of course.

But the fact is that I have moral opinions (opinions about moral issues), and they influence my behaviour.

This is exactly the same thing as saying no more than "I follow my whims." If the "moral opinions" you hold are just personal and contingent, they aren't principles at all, and they aren't binding on anybody -- including you. You could change your mind in the next five minutes, and your "principle" would go right out the window.

Or is there anything more than your twinges holding you to any principle? If there is, I'd be interested in understanding what that would be.

I have both principles and twinges, they are separate things.

Okay, then maybe you can clarify that for me. What is the substantive difference between what you call a "principle" and a mere twinge? What does the "principle" have, that the twinge doesn't?

If someone who does not believe in God, or objective moral truth, is an "objectivist", then perhaps I am one.

Now you're onto my indictment of secular moralizing. Somebody who claims to be a subjectivst, and then who condemns any action...even the most hideous and unjust...is guilty of abandoning his position and becoming irrational. For Subjectivism entails, you remember, that no moral injunction is ever objective. So there is no legitimate way to condemn the neighbour's action, no matter how much you may approve or disapprove of it.

But I don't claim to be a "subjectivist".

Oh? That's interesting. How can any feeling of conscience, or something that is merely personal, and creates no duty for anybody else, or even for yourself, be called "objective"? That seems self-contradictory, at the moment.

I never claimed that morality was based on twinges.

You said it's based on conscience. Conscience, if it refers to nothing objective, is a mere twinge at best.

I can't say I'm happy about having my entire moral outlook being described as something that is based on a mere twinge...

Maybe. But if you think about it, I think you'll see that that is all it is, if it's subjective.

Yes, my twinges tell me it is bad. Do you think pointless suffering is okay, or something?

No, but Subjectivists can't rationally explain why they do.

I could explain, but you wouldn't accept the explanation as valid.

Try me.

They could just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others, and subjectively, they'd be no worse as people, allegedly.

So could you just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others.

Not and be moral. I would be objectively a bad person, if I did that. I can freely recognize that, because that's what the objective moral fact is: those who cause "pointless suffering" are cruel.

But why is it wrong for Subjectivists?

[Harbal]

So could you just as easily enjoy the pointless suffering of others.

Not and be moral. I would be objectively a bad person, if I did that. I can freely recognize that, because that's what the objective moral fact is: those who cause "pointless suffering" are cruel.

Well I can easily arrive at the subjective opinion that cruelty is morally wrong; in fact, I can't avoid arriving at it. You, on the other hand, having no subjective sense of morality, have no way of determining that cruelty is morally wrong other than by looking to someone else to inform you of it. If you do actually think that cruelty is morally wrong, it must be because someone told you it was wrong, or you read it in a book. I can think of no other possible source of that information. Where on earth would one begin to look for objective moral truths? It's an utterly absurd idea.