Poll: Is morality objectively real?
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Morals are the general ideas that you place upon yourself for every day life, and as such are able to change with you. They are not set in stone, but morals are commonly shared quite often, and so society can function together. As an objective reality, it depends on how you mean. If you're saying real in the sense that there is a universal moral, then no, because there are some who choose against this. YOU choose how real you make your morals by acting upon them daily. I choose to not hurt others, because my mind chooses to use that moral.
What we consider "moral" today is pretty much relative due to the fact that the world in general don't hold religious ideals to be the ultimate expressions of moriality. Since the rise of atheism, moral relativism, nihilism and similar philosophical ideas, the only real concensus is the fact that religion can sometimes epitomize ONE VERSION of morality. That doesn't mean that religion is the ultimate moral authority on anything really.Fbuh said:
In fact, it's perfectly possible to have an idea of morality where it's okay to steal from other people, and in turn the only "amoral" thing to do in according to such a particular belief system would be to speak out against stealing, or refusing to steal etc.
Quite simply, it's all completely relative. The idea that religion would be some kind of "source" or authority on morality is just a religious fantasy, often invoked by religious people for self-righteous reasons, rather than scientific ones.
But if we'e going to look at the miore historical and scientific facts here, religion was most likely born (in part or in full) out of morality, not the other way around.
Because even before christianity, islam or any of the other widley spread and organized religions existed, there's no historical evidence to suggest that people in general were "okay" with stealing from eachother or killing eachother. And in fact, most people of today aren't okay with that either (despite religious convictions or the lack thereof).
And we need not to look further than ourselves to see why. I mean, it's not a very pleasurable experience to have your property stolen from you. Likewise, it's not a very pleasurable experience to be subjected to lethal violence (although many of us might not have had the misfortune to experience such a situation, most of us can probably imagine why it wouldn't be an attractive prospect).
There's no evidence to suggest that our earliest ancestors would have felt any different, despite the fact that killing and stealing might have occured between different societies more often back then, but that was rather out of necessity than out of people being "okay" with running the risk of being subjected to either.
So regardless of extreme views on killing and stealing, we can, in general probably agree that most people dislike having their property stolen from them and having other people trying to kill them. Thus, when people lived in smaller or larger groups, people had to reach some sort of middleground. Especially during the harsh period during the stone age and it's different periods, since nature would treat most living creatures as her personal bitches pretty much all the time already, if people then tried to make eachothers lives a living hell then no one would be very likely to survive at all.
So it is likely that a simple and more or less effective "quid pro quo" system was employed back then. "I wont steal your possessions, and in turn you keep yourself from stealing mine" or "I won't try to slit your throat in your sleep, regardless of how much I dislike you as a person, and you promise not to slit my throat when I sleep".
This line of thinking also has support in the school of psychology (although to be fair, I don't consider psychology to be a completely proven science, so im not relying too much on any psychologic findings due to the fact that the very discipline itself is mostly based on completely unscientific ideas), where social and empathic people have a useful ability to see themselves in others and be able to consider how it would affect themselves if someone else subjected them to stealing or violence or any other form of destructive behaviour.
So while the ten commandments might be a pretty early work where someone actually bothered to write down certain aspects of a particular system of morality, and also tried to reinforce them by saying that the commandments themselves came directly from an omnipotent God. After all, even if you are a psychopathic masterthief and/or manhunter, you'll probably fear the prospect of attracting the anger of an omnipotent God who's basically ordering you not to steal stuff or kill others, thus making this particular system of morality a pretty reinforced one through religious beliefs.
There's not much to support the idea that religion is actually the source of morality. Because ultimately, religion is created by man, and man evidently existed long before religion. Somehow, moralyt most have come along way before organized religion did, and certainly long before christianity did (because if we consider the historical aspects, christianity is a relatively "new" religion in comparison to many of the older pagan religions and cults).
You might think that wouldn't you.canadamus_prime said:
But if we're to continue this philosophical debate, can we really know for sure that the universe thrives or endures on "balance"?
I mean if we look at the univerese, or heck just look at the chemical reactions of a single star, one could on one hand consider that the chemical reactions of that stare are balanced, ordered and predictable. But at the same time, the raging inferno of a star, and it't eventual and cataclysmic fate in turning into a supernova and maybe eventually a physical law shattering black hole seem somewhat "chaotic".
The more one looks at the universe and tries to deduce the ways it works and how it works in relation to the many results we can see, the more balanced and chaotic it seems at the same time. I mean, just look at the simple, physical principle of cause and effect. Seems ordered, structured and balanced. "You can't have an action withaout a complete and opposite re-action" etc. etc.
BUT try then to consider this unending chain of cause and effect and how it managed to eventually produce human beings from small pools of chemicals being irradiated by the sun here on earth. And then consider the many multitudes of possible things that MIGHT AS WELL have resulted from this long and supposedly "ordered" and "balanced" chain of cause and effect.
It's mind boggling to say the least.
So the ultimate concluscion to all this must be that "chaotic" and "balanced" eventually are just as subjective as morality. These are just concepts that man has invented in order to try and grasp the reality that surrounds her and properly categorize them into the way her brain works in dealing with this task. But "nature" or "the universe" never needed these concepts to exist. It doesn't even show any signs of needing anything to exist, it just does. Regardless of how chaotic/unbalanced or ordered/balanced we as a species might percieve that existence to be.
So in the end, it's a logical impossibility for anything "unnatural" to occur. "Unnatural" doesn't exist in this physical universe, it only exists in the mind of man.
Perhaps that's a thought worth considering the next time we find ourselves appalled by phenomena and inventions such as abortions, the building of nuclear weapons and blowing ourselves to pieces with them, homosexuality and the like, wouldn't you agree?
If it ain't then paedophillia, genocide, rape, murder and child abuse are all A-OK.
I'd rather live with a little metaphysical ambiguity then embrace a world where raping a child is no different to eating an apple.
I'd rather live with a little metaphysical ambiguity then embrace a world where raping a child is no different to eating an apple.
Oh shut up. Rolling out logical terms doesn't win you an arugment any more than shouting "stupid stupid!" at the top of your lungs. I'm quite aquainted with the arguments surrounding ethics, so can the patronizing tone.Dags90 said:
It wasn't an argument to emotion, it was one to humanity. Like free will, objective moral standards are a necessary presupposion to actually live a life, regardless of their ontological status. And, if you're so deeply entrenched in your nihilism(and never, ever mistake yourself for anything else if you're going to argue against moral realism), here's a workable if not perfect model I cooked up a while ago.
Premise A:I am rationally self interested, in this case meaning I value my own life. I need make no justification for this.
Premise B: I am not special. I am, in all salient respects, identical to other human beings
Conclusion: I can not thus expect special treatment. As a creature of rational self interest, I must extend this sense of self worth to others, or reject my own life.
You can disgard my arguments all you like, but they happen to be right. If there are no objective moral standards, nothing is objectively wrong. Ergo, paedophilla is not morally wrong. You can't be a nihilist and not bite that bullet pal.
I'm not a nihilist. You don't win an argument, an argument is good or bad. Your arguments were bad.
I'm most certainly not a nihilist. I believe in morality. When you get rid of objective morality, something doesn't have to be objectively wrong in order to be immoral. That's sort of the point of moral subjectivism.
While your current argument is valid, I find premise B has problems. Identical is an absolute term, you can't be "sort of identical" or even "mostly identical". You are special, discrete, unique even.
I'm most certainly not a nihilist. I believe in morality. When you get rid of objective morality, something doesn't have to be objectively wrong in order to be immoral. That's sort of the point of moral subjectivism.
While your current argument is valid, I find premise B has problems. Identical is an absolute term, you can't be "sort of identical" or even "mostly identical". You are special, discrete, unique even.
Right and Wrong are words that have no explicit meaning. They exist in opposition to one another, nothing more. Thus, if one is vague enough about what is being argued (right and wrong as a concept) you'll generally find that people are willing to assert that said concepts exist objectively. As you get more specific you find that given situations will lead to different answers.
The problem is simple enough I suppose. It is all a matter of arbitration. If there is no higher power than man (the nihilist and often post-modern assertion) then applied morality is inherently subjective as a particular question may have different "right" or "wrong" answers in different cultures and settings. If there is a higher power of arbitration than man however then it ceases being a subjective question. While such higher power may not lead to consensus among the disparate groups of mankind, the simple fact that final accounting is done outside the bounds of humanity would make it objective.
In short, if there is a god and this god has both the interest required to dictate right and wrong in a circumstance and the power to enforce its decision on the subject then morality in this and any similar circumstance becomes objective. If this is not true, then it is utterly subjective.
The problem is simple enough I suppose. It is all a matter of arbitration. If there is no higher power than man (the nihilist and often post-modern assertion) then applied morality is inherently subjective as a particular question may have different "right" or "wrong" answers in different cultures and settings. If there is a higher power of arbitration than man however then it ceases being a subjective question. While such higher power may not lead to consensus among the disparate groups of mankind, the simple fact that final accounting is done outside the bounds of humanity would make it objective.
In short, if there is a god and this god has both the interest required to dictate right and wrong in a circumstance and the power to enforce its decision on the subject then morality in this and any similar circumstance becomes objective. If this is not true, then it is utterly subjective.
I'm really tired of this kind of stuff. The fact of the matter is, most of humanity bases morality off of entirely correct instinct, with only a few stupid people who lack this. So basically, it is not subjective, everyone knows right from wrong, it's just that some people either choose to go against it, or are idiots.
There are forms of secular objective morality, utilitarianism for example.
Evolutionary theories of moral development actually favor subjective morality. The nature of evolution would mean that our universal standards of morality were shaped by our environment, and its ability to increase our fitness. They are not objectively right, as a change in our early environment would have lead to an equally grounded, but different moral code. It also means that differing populations in vastly different environments, would reach different moral standards based on the above over time.
As a "religious nutbar", I obviously believe that there is an overarching morality standard that applies to everyone.
It is this: If your actions negatively affect someone beyond minor discomfort (allowing for good-natured friendly insults) without consent (allowing for dentistry, acupuncture and such), it is immoral.
It is this: If your actions negatively affect someone beyond minor discomfort (allowing for good-natured friendly insults) without consent (allowing for dentistry, acupuncture and such), it is immoral.
