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Why ISN'T morality subjective?

entpersonal

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Good is good. Bad is bad. They exist. They are fundamental. Rocks don't know them, but we do. You can't reason about humans from the standpoint of a rock. The end.

Perhaps you could point to bad in the environment for me. Also, rocks don't know good and evil because rocks don't have brains - good and evil are merely creations of the human mind. Good and evil don't exist IRL. Hitler, as you might have it, is someone whom everyone should feel was evil…except not everyone did feel that way; hence the Nazi party. There are still neo-Nazis who feel perfectly justified in their political stance.
 

zago

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I know that's my opinion, hence me mentioning its subjectivity. You mistake Objectivism for majority approval, when it is not. Objectivism is universal Logos. I'm not arguing about opinionation, I'm arguing about the terms you are using. It's impossible to objectively say one is better than the other morally or emotionally (but you can in terms of logical efficiency and reasoning), it is entirely possible to subjectively say one is better than the other.

First, I do not think objectivism has anything to do with majority opinion. I am saying that fundamentally it has to do with biology. Even if no one on Earth believed in objective morality, even if every single person had different opinions about how they like things to be, there is one common denominator: that they have preference at all.

It’s true whether or not you believe it. It’s true whether or not you have the right answers. People prefer. There is good and bad, inescapably. They aren’t just mental constructs, either. They are physiological states. Pleasure and pain occur in animals, who have no ability to conceptualize.

The fact alone that this dichotomy exists is the basis for morality. In no situation is it actually an opinion what brings about positive feelings in a person and what brings about negative feelings in a person. Exact actions have exact effects – they make us feel good or bad. Hitler decreased the amount of wellbeing in the world, and this could be an objective, quantifiable fact if we knew enough about how to measure people’s happiness – but it can be done and we are beginning to develop ways, especially with our enhanced knowledge and mapping/imaging of the brain.

Good and Bad only exist subjectively. Everyone likes feeling good, but good is a matter of opinion. Morality is subjective. Emotions are subjective. Opinions are the core of subjection.
There is no good or bad. There are only facts. What we do with those facts determines whether or not something is "good" or "bad".

If good and bad only exist subjectively, the same could be said of any object. But good and bad have physical manifestations. You can measure someone’s sense of wellbeing, just like you can measure the weight of an apple or its diameter.

Not sure what you mean when you say ‘good is a matter of opinion.’ Do you mean ‘what is considered good is a matter of opinion’? Because if that is the case, it still doesn’t get rid of right and wrong – it just gives different sets of circumstances for the same rules to apply within. If Bob gets physically ill at the sight of red and Alice has orgasms when she sees it, it is morally wrong to show Bob red without some reason for doing so that outweighs the pain he will feel. Basically it amounts to torture.

What else could morality possibly mean? Morality is “doing good.” If you show Alice red, she has orgasms, which she considers good. If you find Alice starving and dying of thirst on the side of the road, you have a choice between turning Alice into a slave or giving her help. The difference is clear; on one hand you will cause her much quantifiable suffering and illbeing, on the other you will make her happy, in a similarly quantifiable way. It’s not just someone’s opinion of whether or not you have done good – you literally, objectively have increased wellbeing.

lol, alrighty then. Good debate by the way. I'm going to go check out that thread now.
I appreciate it as well. Certainly better than gender wars.

I didn't say worth defending. A random person might just oppose Hitler because it disrupted his routine and not really care about the ethical issues.

Someone who defends something finds it worth defending, by definition. Well, then what is valuable about it? Does the person’s routine bring him wellbeing? There’s 2 levels to this. The first level IS his opinion. He likes his routine. The second level is the fact that BECAUSE he likes his routine, it is valuable. Objectively. By the only possible metric – how it makes him feel, what happiness it brings him. So, because he subjectively values something, it becomes objectively wrong to disrupt that or withhold it from him without some reason whose benefits outweigh that cost. Hitler is going to cause this person suffering if he disrupts his routine – that is a fact.

Perhaps you could point to bad in the environment for me. Also, rocks don't know good and evil because rocks don't have brains - good and evil are merely creations of the human mind. Good and evil don't exist IRL. Hitler, as you might have it, is someone whom everyone should feel was evil…except not everyone did feel that way; hence the Nazi party. There are still neo-Nazis who feel perfectly justified in their political stance.

There is no IRL, either then. IRL is also, equally a creation of the human mind. This is what the paper I posted earlier in the thread was talking about. Reality seems to be mind-dependent. If good and evil exist in our minds, they exist. People suffering isn’t just some concept. People really suffer, it is real. Those who spent years in concentration camps suffered immensely. That is inherently bad, because reality is mind-dependent and we don’t like to suffer, by definition.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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First, I do not think objectivism has anything to do with majority opinion. I am saying that fundamentally it has to do with biology. Even if no one on Earth believed in objective morality, even if every single person had different opinions about how they like things to be, there is one common denominator: that they have preference at all.

It’s true whether or not you believe it. It’s true whether or not you have the right answers. People prefer. There is good and bad, inescapably. They aren’t just mental constructs, either. They are physiological states. Pleasure and pain occur in animals, who have no ability to conceptualize.

The fact alone that this dichotomy exists is the basis for morality. In no situation is it actually an opinion what brings about positive feelings in people and what brings about negative feelings in people. Exact actions have exact effects – they make us feel good or bad. Hitler decreased the amount of wellbeing in the world, and this could be an objective, quantifiable fact if we knew enough about how to measure people’s happiness – but it can be done and we are beginning to develop ways, especially with our enhanced knowledge and mapping/imaging of the brain.



If good and bad only exist subjectively, the same could be said of any object. But good and bad have physical manifestations. You can measure someone’s sense of wellbeing, just like you can measure the weight of an apple or its diameter.

Not sure what you mean when you say ‘good is a matter of opinion.’ Do you mean ‘what is considered good is a matter of opinion’? Because if that is the case, it still doesn’t get rid of right and wrong – it just gives a different set of circumstances for the same rules to apply within. If Bob gets physically ill at the sight of red and Alice has orgasms when she sees it, it is morally wrong to show Bob red without some reason for doing so that outweighs the pain he will feel. Basically it amounts to torture.

What else could morality possibly mean? Morality is “doing good.” If you show Alice red, she has orgasms, which she considers good. If you find Alice starving and dying of thirst on the side of the road, you have a choice between turning Alice into a slave or giving her help. The difference is clear; on one hand you will cause her much quantifiable suffering and illbeing, on the other you will make her happy, in a similarly quantifiable way. It’s not just someone’s opinion of whether or not you have done good – you literally, objectively have increased wellbeing.

I do realize that people prefer options, but that preference is still subjective. Objectivism can only be factual statistics. In the case of helping the woman, you did actually objective help her because it can be cited from evidence via the witness and receiver of the help, and thus becomes a fact, but the means to reach this objective state was entirely subjective, as you chose to follow your super-ego with its subjective reasoning of morality rather than succumb to the id and its subjective reasoning of momentary pleasure.

Advanced concepts of good and bad arise out of the super-ego, which is not always present in some animal species and some humans. In the case of the animal, good and bad is a manifestation of pleasure vs pain rather than morality vs amorality, which both pairings are still subjective. An interesting example would be a person with Self-Defeating Personality Disorder and Sadistic Personality Disorder, which causes biochemical pleasure when the person fails/hurts something (respectively). If good and bad were completely objective, then these two disorders wouldn't exist (as the sadist sees doing bad as good/pleasurable since it causes pleasure, and the masochist sees failing as pleasurable, and society sees failure as bad and doing bad as bad).

What I am trying to get at is that Right and Wrong are entirely subjective. Objectivism is only constituted by facts, and as soon as those facts are interpreted, it becomes subjective, and that is where we apply the titles right or wrong to something. To be objective, it must be unanimously true because as soon as someone denies it, it is subjective.

I do agree that certain acts can objectively make people feel certain ways, but whenever someone takes an actual stance on the fact that poses an argument, it is subjective. It is like the body of an essay, the beginning provides the subjective argument, and the body provides the objective data from which the argument was drawn.
 

zago

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I do realize that people prefer options, but that preference is still subjective.

Lemme hit pause right here—yes, I agree, the preference is subjective. But the fact that there is a preference itself is what is important. Preference exists. From there, right and wrong are realities. Of course, circumstances and individual preferences differ wildly. Every person in the world indeed has slightly different preferences. Nonetheless, it is possible to do right and it is possible to do wrong by a person.

Objectivism can only be factual statistics. In the case of helping the woman, you did actually objective help her because it can be cited from evidence via the witness and receiver of the help, and thus becomes a fact, but the means to reach this objective state was entirely subjective, as you chose to follow your super-ego with its subjective reasoning of morality rather than succumb to the id and its subjective reasoning of momentary pleasure.

Advanced concepts of good and bad arise out of the super-ego, which is not always present in some animal species and some humans. In the case of the animal, good and bad is a manifestation of pleasure vs pain rather than morality vs amorality, which both pairings are still subjective. An interesting example would be a person with Self-Defeating Personality Disorder and Sadistic Personality Disorder, which causes biochemical pleasure when the person fails/hurts something (respectively). If good and bad were completely objective, then these two disorders wouldn't exist (as the sadist sees doing bad as good/pleasurable since it causes pleasure, and the masochist sees failing as pleasurable, and society sees failure as bad and doing bad as bad).

This is still no different than smoking crack being pleasurable, but wrong. That is why they are disorders. The people who have them have a problem. In the worst case scenario, they may have to be separated from society to prevent harming others. While they may not get their needs fulfilled, a greater number of others will not get theirs denied.

What I am trying to get at is that Right and Wrong are entirely subjective. Objectivism is only constituted by facts, and as soon as those facts are interpreted, it becomes subjective, and that is where we apply the titles right or wrong to something. To be objective, it must be unanimously true because as soon as someone denies it, it is subjective.

People can be wrong. I can say Hitler did a lot of good for the Jews he put in Auschwitz. I’m wrong though. It simply isn’t an opinion that he made them suffer tremendously. There is no other standard by which it can be looked at.

I do agree that certain acts can objectively make people feel certain ways, but whenever someone takes an actual stance on the fact that poses an argument, it is subjective. It is like the body of an essay, the beginning provides the subjective argument, and the body provides the objective data from which the argument was drawn.

Then the question becomes, what argument is there to make?
 

entpersonal

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There is no IRL, either then. IRL is also, equally a creation of the human mind. This is what the paper I posted earlier in the thread was talking about. Reality seems to be mind-dependent. If good and evil exist in our minds, they exist. People suffering isn’t just some concept. People really suffer, it is real. Those who spent years in concentration camps suffered immensely. That is inherently bad, because reality is mind-dependent and we don’t like to suffer, by definition.

I don't agree that the existence of the universe is mind dependent, as the universe is about ten billion years older than cellular life on this planet, let alone the minds of modern humans. It's flattering to think that the universe hinges on our conception; I don't believe this view is tenable, however. Humanity could perish tomorrow and stars would still exist.
 

zago

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I don't agree that the existence of the universe is mind dependent, as the universe is about ten billion years older than cellular life on this planet, let alone the minds of modern humans. It's flattering to think that the universe hinges on our conception; I don't believe this view is tenable, however. Humanity could perish tomorrow and stars would still exist.

I think those things existed before us, that's not the point. The point is that we will never know them outside of our perception.
 

entpersonal

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I think those things existed before us, that's not the point. The point is that we will never know them outside of our perception.

Those tangible things exist outside of our conception, unlike good and evil. That's my overarching point in this thread.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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Lemme hit pause right here—yes, I agree, the preference is subjective. But the fact that there is a preference itself is what is important. Preference exists. From there, right and wrong are realities. Of course, circumstances and individual preferences differ wildly. Every person in the world indeed has slightly different preferences. Nonetheless, it is possible to do right and it is possible to do wrong by a person.



This is still no different than smoking crack being pleasurable, but wrong. That is why they are disorders. The people who have them have a problem. In the worst case scenario, they may have to be separated from society to prevent harming others. While they may not get their needs fulfilled, a greater number of others will not get theirs denied.



People can be wrong. I can say Hitler did a lot of good for the Jews he put in Auschwitz. I’m wrong though. It simply isn’t an opinion that he made them suffer tremendously. There is no other standard by which it can be looked at.



Then the question becomes, what argument is there to make?

The fact that those people still play a part in society and are unhindered socially states that their opinions do have some, though small, weight. Another thing to add is that there is no measurement of good or bad. Some might say that while Hitler's holocaust was bad, Stalin's purges were worse, while another might say vice versa, meaning that not everyone accepts the holocaust as bad on the same level as others, which is required for an objective position. If good and bad were measured on scientific scales and could not be refuted, such as 1.7 bad (statistical data), then it would be objective.

People reserve the right to be wrong though, and while they are wrong, they see themselves as right in their own eyes, a testament to subjectivity. You are right, it isn't an opinion that the people there suffered, that is an objective fact (though you can't ascertain exactly how much suffering was imposed). But some supremacists say that the means justify the end, that the Jews wouldn't control the world and cause "evil" wars, and that juxtaposes the majority viewpoint that the means don't justify the end because both the means and the end are "evil".

Almost all arguments are technically subjective, as arguments are designed to persuade the denier to see the idea from the arguer's point of view, which is a subjective viewpoint. The only time an argument isn't truly subjective is when the denier is clearly denying raw, statistical data that is irrefutable, in which case the arguer is trying to make the denier view the situation objectively and open their eyes.
 

Mole

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That's already been violated nine ways to Sunday. Also, a bunch of people agreeing on something doesn't make it objectively valid. A lot of people thought the earth was flat at one point. That consensus didn't make it so.

We put our blood and treasure behind it. You will have to walk over us before we abandon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
 

zago

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The fact that those people still play a part in society and are unhindered socially states that their opinions do have some, though small, weight. Another thing to add is that there is no measurement of good or bad. Some might say that while Hitler's holocaust was bad, Stalin's purges were worse, while another might say vice versa, meaning that not everyone accepts the holocaust as bad on the same level as others, which is required for an objective position. If good and bad were measured on scientific scales and could not be refuted, such as 1.7 bad (statistical data), then it would be objective.

People reserve the right to be wrong though, and while they are wrong, they see themselves as right in their own eyes, a testament to subjectivity. You are right, it isn't an opinion that the people there suffered, that is an objective fact (though you can't ascertain exactly how much suffering was imposed). But some supremacists say that the means justify the end, that the Jews wouldn't control the world and cause "evil" wars, and that juxtaposes the majority viewpoint that the means don't justify the end because both the means and the end are "evil".

Almost all arguments are technically subjective, as arguments are designed to persuade the denier to see the idea from the arguer's point of view, which is a subjective viewpoint. The only time an argument isn't truly subjective is when the denier is clearly denying raw, statistical data that is irrefutable, in which case the arguer is trying to make the denier view the situation objectively and open their eyes.

Even the most objective of all sciences can be looked at that way. People can see the entire body of evidence for evolution and claim that God put the fossils there to trick us, etc. Someone could say God made us find what appeared to be a higgs boson at the LHC last year because he wanted to fool us into wasting lots of resources.

I would say suffering is ultimately fully quantifiable, but we merely lack the technology or even close to do that. In terms of actual data, we know virtually nothing that happens. Everything can be collected, though. I could have ALL, I mean 100% of the physiological data from every person who even remotely experienced World War II and I can give you an answer to your question of who was worse, Stalin or Hitler. We just lack that ability today.

Bed time. Until tomorrow.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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Even the most objective of all sciences can be looked at that way. People can see the entire body of evidence for evolution and claim that God put the fossils there to trick us, etc. Someone could say God made us find what appeared to be a higgs boson at the LHC last year because he wanted to fool us into wasting lots of resources.

I would say suffering is ultimately fully quantifiable, but we merely lack the technology or even close to do that. In terms of actual data, we know virtually nothing that happens. Everything can be collected, though. I could have ALL, I mean 100% of the physiological data from every person who even remotely experienced World War II and I can give you an answer to your question of who was worse, Stalin or Hitler. We just lack that ability today.

Bed time. Until tomorrow.

We do actually have the technology, it's just that we didn't have it back then. This one deals with heat tolerance and pain levels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolorimeter

Polling people to figure out which is worse still doesn't make it objective, as there is still controversy no matter how small, and to be objective it must be unanimously true and exact.

To the first paragraph, that's why almost everything is subjective, as people always find ways of denying truths they don't want to hear.
 

Mole

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It's already been abandoned numerous times over the decades since its inception.

It has only been abandoned by the OIC (the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation), consisting of 57 Islamic nations who want to continue to violate human rights.

The OIC partlcularly hates the USA because the USA has enshrined the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States of America.

No wonder they hate America because the Constitution of the USA stands four square in the path of Sharia.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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We put our blood and treasure behind it. You will have to walk over us before we abandon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ironically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it was adopted actually only had 48 countries vote in favor of it, had 8 abstentions (which was the CCCP, Ukraine SSR, Belarus SSR, Yugoslavia, Poland, South Africa, Czechslovakia, and Saudi Arabia) and also had 2 countries not even offer their favor, disfavor, or abstention of the declaration, and those were Yemen and Honduras.
 

Mole

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Ironically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it was adopted actually only had 48 countries vote in favor of it, had 8 abstentions (which was the CCCP, Ukraine SSR, Belarus SSR, Yugoslavia, Poland, South Africa, Czechslovakia, and Saudi Arabia) and also had 2 countries not even offer their favor, disfavor, or abstention of the declaration, and those were Yemen and Honduras.

The Declaration of Human Rights was signed by all members of the general assembly in the United Nations in 1948. The signing of this document was obligatory for every nation which desired to participate and be represented in the world body.

Human Rights are first of all a moral issue, then secondly they are a political issue.

All civilized countries have settled the moral issue in favour of human rights, and it now falls to us to defend human rights against those who violate them.

It is such a clear cut moral issue, it is only fair to ask, are you with us or or you against us?
 

Alea_iacta_est

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The Declaration of Human Rights was signed by all members of the general assembly in the United Nation in 1948. The signing of this document was obligatory for every nation which desired to participate and be represented in the world body.

Human Rights are first of all a moral issue, then secondly they are a political issue.

All civilized countries have settled the moral issue in favour of human rights, and it now falls to us to defend human rights against those who violate them.

It is such a clear cut moral issue, it is only fair to ask, are you with us or or you against us?

I'm for it entirely, but to technically be an objective document it needs to be recognized by every country and possibly even every person on the planet.
 

tkae.

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My boyfriend is a moral objectivist, and we've had some rough arguments about it.

From his point of view, morality is a moot point if it's subjective. He considers the very concept of morality to be a black and white, good and evil, right or wrong system that judges a person's actions as either moral or immoral without regard for context. That morality is almost like an idealistic kind of justice where only facts matter, and that to ignore the facts in favor of emotions or extenuating circumstances is a violation of the entire purpose for a morality in the first place.

For the record, I don't agree. I believe (and was taught in my humanities classes) that morality is influenced more by culture than by any universal kind of right or wrong. That where pedophilia is immoral today, it was totally moral two hundred years ago, or two thousand years ago where you had Greek men sleeping with older boys and it being considered a moral, educational experience. And with samurai. And Chinese nobles... and so forth.

At the same time, there is a degree of objectiveness to morality. Some things are universally wrong by way of them being disruptive to humanity at the most basic, fundamental level.

For example, murder. There's never been a single culture where murder of a fellow citizen/tribesman/clanmember has ever been morally acceptable. Rape has never moral. And so forth. Typically they're things that are extremely traumatic and cause a major impact on a number of peoples' lives. The only time murder has ever been "moral" is in revenge murders (Hamlet and Duncan's son in Macbeth, for instance), but those are only considered moral because the initial act of murder was highly immoral, thus alleviating the revenge murderer of moral repercussions by acting as an agent of moral justice rather than an immoral infringer of morality.

So I think neither objective nor subjective morality is completely right. There's a degree of both. It's all about how you spin the argument. As far as my boyfriend's concerned, subjective morality is too busy with historical apologetics and not focused enough on what is or isn't moral, where I think we have to look at the malleability of morality to understand why we consider things now immoral that weren't immoral before.

And if you were to ask me that question I'd say it's because the Puritans were fucking lunatics. But I digress.
 
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