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This is a bit meta, but I believe morality is objective. Actions have objective moral worth; epistemological disagreements about how we know the moral value of an action are irrelevant to the objectivity of goodness/badness itself.
Don't just tease me like this, what's the objective standard? And like I'm totally following along, but i still want to know what the disagreements are.
I just like ethics and want to hear what you think.
Personally I go for deontological ethics. Actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences. So if it's immoral to lie, then it is even wrong to lie for good reasons. This contrasts with consequentialist ethics (i.e., the consequences of the action determine its moral worth) and virtue ethics (i.e., good actions are what the morally virtuous agent would do).
Kant's deontological procedure for determining the moral worth of an action is what he calls the Categorical Imperative. The procedure can roughly be summarized as follows: ask yourself if I willed that everyone did the action I'm considering whether it would be logically consistent. To return to the previous example, if everybody lied all the time, then lies would lose their effectiveness. Hence, lying must be morally bad, because it is self-contradictory. Mutatis mutandis for murder, stealing, etc.
The classic argument against Kantian deontology is "if the nazis come searching for the jews at your house, is it still wrong to lie?"
And if we use your procedure: "if everyone always lies, then the nazis will know who is hiding jews," the lies won't be effective, and therefore the action is self-contradictory. Thus it is wrong to lie about harboring jews from the nazis.
But if we reword it to "if everyone always denies hiding jews, the nazis will not know who is or is not hiding jews," thus it is not self-contradictory, therefore it isn't wrong to lie about harboring jews.
Yes, there are problems with the categorical imperative. Another problem: what if two moral duties are in conflict? A third: can't we phrase the same action under different descriptions in a way that yields different results?
There are objections to every moral theory because this is philosophy and we rarely reach a consensus on topics this large. These problems are indicators of epistemological grey areas. They do not, in my opinion, entail moral nihilism.
Can you talk me through the experiment setup to measure or observe that morality? I'd like to confirm it.
Reposting my response from above:
Personally I go for deontological ethics. Actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences. So if it’s immoral to lie, then it is even wrong to lie for good reasons. This contrasts with consequentialist ethics (i.e., the consequences of the action determine its moral worth) and virtue ethics (i.e., good actions are what the morally virtuous agent would do).
Kant’s deontological procedure for determining the moral worth of an action is what he calls the Categorical Imperative. The procedure can roughly be summarized as follows: ask yourself if I willed that everyone did the action I’m considering whether it would be logically consistent. To return to the previous example, if everybody lied all the time, then lies would lose their effectiveness. Hence, lying must be morally bad, because it is self-contradictory. Mutatis mutandis for murder, stealing, etc.
How does effectiveness of lying have anything to do with the morality of lying?
If I am ineffective at providing for my family (disability/sicknese/other means for which I cannot control), is that immoral?
I'm leaving some philosophical details out for the sake of space. Kant thought that the moral law is a duty that is imposed upon the self by reason. But we cannot place a duty on ourselves that is logically inconsistent. Since the moral law should be the same for everyone, if everyone doing something leads to a logical contradiction, then that must not be an action prescribable to ourselves by reason.
The notion that we (morally) ought to do something implies that we could do it; conversely, if we could not do the action, then this implies that we are not morally obligated to do it.
So how do you evidence that this value is objective?
I'm not sure I understand your question
What is the evidence that this thought is true? How do you objectively prove this?
Ah I see. In a nutshell, if morality were dictated to rational agents through an external source, we could not be sure of its objectivity (i.e., universal and necessary validity). Moreover, the notion of an external source that dictates morality conflicts with our being free moral agents. Hence we must legislate ourselves through our own faculty of reason such that the moral law holds objectively for rational agents such as us. From this the Categorical Imperative, a procedure for determining moral worth through logical consistency, is supposed to follow.
He gives different philosophical arguments for these positions in The Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals and The Critique of Practical Reason. Unlike science, where we can appreciate the result without combing through the evidence, the philosophical arguments have to be understood in their entirety to see the salience of the conclusion. I'm willing to give a sense of the view (see the foregoing), but I'd rather not recapitulate the entire work. If you're interested, I would read the following entry page on the issue. You might find Kant's arguments convincing: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
I agree with everything here until the "must" of the last sentence, as it seems to be based on the implication that said free agents care. There are people who do not care for their own wellbeing, or the wellbeing of others. On a subjective basis, they lack the values that objective reasoning would be built on.
To them that "must" is meaningless. Or worse, they view statements such as that as being dictated to them from an external source.
On top of that, we aren't completely rational, or able to make completely rational conclusions at all times. We can make attempts, sure. But we have biases, we fall into fallacies without realizing, and like I said some of us just don't care.
Morality can't be objective if we can't be objective.
I understand not wanting to do that, so all good.
Though. I'm more interested in a discussion than anything else.
I agree that some things can be objectively immoral, but I think there's a lot of grey/subjective areas too.
Is it objectively immoral to not spend 100% of your free time helping others?
What about choosing to have kids instead of adopting?
Turning someone's life support machine off after they've been declared braindead?
Killing a serial killer in an act of self defense?
I can see your perspective, but I would argue that these are epistemological grey areas, not moral ones. Again, just because we don't know whether something is true/false or good/bad doesn't change the objective value of the fact.
Of course, for non-normative facts about the world, we have the scientific method to help us to move toward the truth. (Note here that the epistemological problem reappears, albeit in a lesser form, as we cannot be sure whether science has reached the truth; the scientific method is always open to new and contradictory empirical evidence.) Recall, however, that most of human history lies before science. Left to our own observations, we believed in such theories as geocentrism and the four humors. Hopefully ethics and aesthetics will reach a science for determining the objective value of normative facts.
So you kinda agree that even if morals objectively exists that we can't measure them with reasonable precision?
We'd have to have a strong grasp on the hard problem of consciousness. So there is no good reason to espouse objective morality in this day in age.
Except that the objective morality of things is completely meaningless if we have no way of knowing it, so it is at least relevant.
I wouldn't say we have no way of knowing, just that we disagree (often on edge cases). But people way smarter than me spend their lives thinking about these things and form convincing arguments is support of definitive answers.
To draw a parallel, most of human history we observed the world and reached conclusions. Mostly we were wrong but sometimes we came pretty close. Then we discovered the scientific method, which allows us to move closer to the truth over time. (Note, though, that the epistemological worry reappears, albeit in lesser form, as the scientific method must always be amendable to new empirical evidence that contradicts highly confirmed theories.) My hope is that philosophy will discover a science of normative facts, giving us an agreed upon method for determining moral and aesthetic value.
The way I see things, there is nothing objective about morality because it is based on cultural principles, and these vary from place to place and through time as well.
This position is called Cultural Relativism and it has a number of damning consequences:
I don't know the term you mentioned so I'll be talking about the points you made, not the term itself.
So, I don't need morality to condemn the human suffering that slavery, female genital mutilation, or genocide creates. I don't need a moral lens for this, just a practical one -- out of solidarity, for freedom, equity, equality etc, for everyone on this planet. This is why it's easy for me to justify any fight for social justice. These fights are by default systemic so against the status quo. I hope it is clear why I don't need an objective moral truth.
I would like to ask you, when you say morality is objective who defines it and what is it?
So your suggestion is that we can keep our moral judgments out of practical considerations without espousing the objective truth of moral facts? This would lead one to act as though they believed in objective moral truths. Which is fine! It would be like thinking numbers don't exist (perhaps because you don't believe non-physical/abstract entities exist) but acting as though numbers exist because it is useful to do so. I don't hold that view, but I can see your perspective.
The question of who defines morality is potentially a category error. We don't ask who defines descriptive facts about the world. The Earth is round, that is a fact, and its truth does not depend on anyone's opinion. It is our job to develop ways to figure out whether it is true. Similarly, there are normative facts about morality and aesthetics. Some things are morally or aesthetically good, and it is our job to determine whether it is good.
Admittedly, we have had more success with descriptive facts than with normative facts.
I was not satisfied by my previous answer, so I thought of deleting it and giving it another try.
Not at all. I would be extremely hesitant to suggest something on this topic, for all people. In a way, this is the reason why I talked about how I see things on a personal level, specifically.
About the category error, once more I don't know the terms you use, so I will answer from what I understand by the way you describe them.
My question was related to a notion (objective morality), and not a physical object (i.e. a rock). Notions exist - to my understanding - because we use language, so we should be able to define them. An object like a rock, is there even if language is not used. So I don't see where the category error could be.
Finally, I will rephrase my 2-part question for clarity, because only half of it got kind of answered:
Since you claim that morality is objective I would assume that you would be capable of tracing where this objectivity comes from, how it emerged, and how it stays that way. I'm not too sure how to phrase this as a question, but it's something along those lines.
Also, if it were objective for all people, I imagine we would all know its content. But, for example, the terms morally good & morally bad even tho they are commonly used in modern languages, they often have different content. So, it seems clear to me that the terms morally good and bad are not objective. So which morality is objective? Please, describe the content of this notion you claim to be objective.
I'm having a hard time understanding your view. Do you think that morality is relative to each person's view point or do you think that moral facts do not exist at all?
To recapitulate: If you condemn an action or practice, slavery for example, then this is typically understood as a moral judgment. You have judged that the practice of slavery is bad rather than good. But you said you do not believe in objective facts about morality. So, in order to understand your view, I took you to be substituting moral reasons for practical reasons. So instead of saying slavery is bad for moral reasons, you're saying that it has consequences that are undesirable. Hence, I argued above that this is to act as though morality is objective even though you do not think it is. The analogy with numbers was meant to illustrate the salience of such a view, but it seems this is not your position.
Now on to my view. For someone who thinks that facts about the moral goodness/badness of actions are as objective as facts about the physical world the question "who decides the facts?" is erroneous. "The Earth is a sphere ." = true. "One person murdering another." = morally bad. Even if everyone gets together to decide that the Earth is flat, this would not change the descriptive fact about the world. Even if everyone gets together to decide that murder is okay, this would not change the normative fact about the world.
I have my own philosophical views about why morality is objective and how we can make moral judgments. I wrote this in other comments, so I will paste them here:
"Personally I go for Kantian deontological ethics. Actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences. So if it’s immoral to lie, then it is even wrong to lie for good reasons. This contrasts with consequentialist ethics (i.e., the consequences of the action determine its moral worth) and virtue ethics (i.e., good actions are what the morally virtuous agent would do)."
"Immanuel Kant’s deontological procedure for determining the moral worth of an action is what he calls the Categorical Imperative. The procedure can roughly be summarized as follows: ask yourself if I willed that everyone did the action I’m considering whether it would be logically consistent. To return to the previous example, if everybody lied all the time, then lies would lose their effectiveness. Hence, lying must be morally bad, because it is self-contradictory. Mutatis mutandis, for murder, stealing, etc."
"Why should we think that morality comes from our own reason? In a nutshell, if morality were dictated to rational agents through an external source, we could not be sure of its objectivity (i.e., universal and necessary validity). Moreover, the notion of an external source that dictates morality conflicts with our being free moral agents. Hence we must legislate ourselves through our own faculty of reason such that the moral law holds objectively for rational agents such as us. From this the Categorical Imperative, a procedure for determining moral worth through logical consistency, is supposed to follow."
Not necessarily. I personally think that we can know right and wrong, but our epistemological access to moral facts is not required in order to think that the moral facts are objective. Again, consider the analogy with objective facts about the physical world. The Higgs Boson is an elementary particle that we did not know about for most of human history. It is only recently, in conjunction with discovering the scientific method, that we have gained access to facts about the Higgs Boson. The point is, objective facts about the world are not dependent on our ability to know them. The same is true about normative facts. Morality can exist objectively without our yet having a method to determine what the moral facts are.
I think that morality is relative to each person and in the same time it is shaped from social and cultural norms.
In relation to your answer to my question, I came to realise that I don't think that I will get a satisfactory one, because of our different backgrounds. What I mean is that you talk with philosophical terms to a commoner. For example (and to my understanding) you talk about moral facts as a given term, and for me this notion doesn't even exist. Don't get me wrong, good for you!
Also, taking into consideration that our answers are getting longer and longer, maybe this could be a good exit point. So, I would like to thank you for the time you spent on this conversation, because I enjoy thinking and you gave me food for thought.