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An ethics professor at Cambridge talks about teaching ethics in 2025 (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works

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[–] Makeshift@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago (11 children)

The misunderstanding I see here is in the definition of “subjective”.

Subjective is often used interchangeably with opinion. And people can certainly have different opinions.

But the subjective that is meant is that morals don’t exist without a subject, aka a mind to comprehend them.

A rock exists whether or not a mind perceives the rock. The rock is objective. It is a physical object.

The idea that it is wrong to harm someone for being different is subjective. It is an idea. A thought. The thought does not exist without a mind.

So yes. Morals are all subjective. Morals do not exist in the physical world. Morals are not objects, they do not objectively exist. They exist within a subject. Morals subjectively exist.

That does not mean that any set of morals is okay because it’s just an opinion, bro. Because it’s not just an opinion. Those subjective values effect objective reality.

[–] Anamnesis@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think this is a bit too simple. Suppose I say that moral badness, the property, is any action that causes people pain, in the same way the property of redness is the quality of surfaces that makes people experience the sensation of redness. If this were the case, morality (or at least moral badness) would absolutely not be a subjective property.

Whether morality is objective or subjective depends on what you think morality is about. If it's about things that would exist even if we didn't judge them to be the way they are, it's objective. If it's about things that wouldn't exist unless we judge them to be the way they are, it's subjective.

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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity

This should be the slogan of public social media.

[–] Ethalis@jlai.lu 11 points 3 days ago (7 children)

I don't know, I might intellectually understand that morals are relative to a culture and that even our concept of universal human rights is an heritage of our colonial past and, on some level, trying to push our own values as the only morality that can exist. On a gut level though, I am entirely unable to consider that LGBT rights, gender equality or non-discrimination aren't inherently moral.

I don't think holding these two beliefs is weird, it's a natural contradiction worth debating and that's what I would expect from an ethics teacher

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[–] Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is basically how teaching secular ethics always is, though. Doesn't seem special about 2025. People will always be overconfident in their beliefs, but it's not necessarily a coincidence or even hypocrisy that they can hold both views at the same time.

You can believe that morality is a social construct while simultaneously advocating for society to construct better morals. Morality can be relative and opposing views on morality can still be perceived as monstrous relative to the audience's morality.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But "constructing better morals" is by itself a non-relativist statement. How can you say there are "better morals" when you follow moral relativism, which states that there is no universal set of moral principles? In other words, that morals are not comparable with each-other?

It's not the same thing as accepting that different cultures have different set of morals, but whether some things are simply more moral than others, or not. For example, saying that slavery is always bad, and should never be allowed, is an absolutist moral statement.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

I think they worded this poorly. I believe their argument was more that someone can believe that morals are constructs, and relative, but you can also believe that you should try and move people to construct morals based on your own.

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