Is Objective Morality Even Possible from a Secular Framework?
I don't think you can possibly have objective morality from a secular framework. I think that the liberal, secular framework inherently leads to a sort of moral anarchism. Every person can just make up their own conception of what is right and wrong and the conception that wins is determined by power. This just leads towards humans becoming like animals.
How can there possibly be a secular framework for morality that isn't arbitrary?
I mean... all these secular attempts at creating a moral framework.... I think they're mostly just a thin smokescreen for the interests of the person propounding them.
If I'm wrong and I'm just a dumb, idiot person for thinking this way- where is this objective moral framework that is completely detached from anything religious or spiritual and doesn't seem to mysteriously uphold vested interests of narrow groups?
How can there possibly be a secular framework for morality that isn't arbitrary?
I mean... all these secular attempts at creating a moral framework.... I think they're mostly just a thin smokescreen for the interests of the person propounding them.
If I'm wrong and I'm just a dumb, idiot person for thinking this way- where is this objective moral framework that is completely detached from anything religious or spiritual and doesn't seem to mysteriously uphold vested interests of narrow groups?
Comments (67)
No, because the term Objective is a loaded term. When you ask a religious person what they mean by this term it becomes immediately clear that they are talking about the existence of an Absolute ideal that they cannot substantiate or defend, literally does not exist. Keep in mind, they are bringing up the objection, which means they have the burden of proof to define the term.
Quoting 180 Proof
Secular, naturalistic, this-worldly (an Epicurus, Spinoza & Philippa Foot love-child). Thoughts and critique, please.
In the Middle-eastern religions, morality is based on the Mosaic law, and obviously the life and resurection of Jesus, for Christians, or the supposed divine inspiration of Mohamed.
In Indic religions, the basis is the Vedic tradition (for Hindus) or the enlightenment of the Buddha.
But none of these are based on or require objective validation, in the way that secular or scientific affairs do. They are all supposed to issue from a higher or transcendent dimension.
What you're criticising is moral relativism, which is the notion that moral laws are really a matter of individual opinion or at best an aspect of the social contract. Which is the general attitude in modern secular culture, which by definition will generall bracket out or reject any claims to transcendent truth.
There is no such thing.
You mean they do exist? How do you know this?
That's also the case even if there is some God? The only difference I presume is that if there is some God then people will face some after-life consequence for their actions?
Yes, I fully agree. However, the objectivity you are here referring to is not that posited by the theist in his attempt to negate morality. How convenient that he never applies his negative standard to his own definition. Like I said, they always use a loaded term.
If there is a God then there is a natural law.
But what difference does that make? Is it just that if I break the natural law then I will be punished after I die?
This being a philosophy forum, the argument I would like to pursue for that is philosophical rather than Christian apologetics, or anything of the kind.
I started out in life very drawn to Eastern religion and philosophy through the popular books that were circulating at the time. That lead to a degree in comparative religion which has never been remotely useful from a pragmatic viewpoint, but which I remain very interested in.
In any case, to get to the point, there are universal ideas, themes, motifs, that appear in the guise of religions over many cultures and centuries. And I think they stand for and mean something. The alternative is the mother of all conspiracies, or at least a vast collective delusion. But, as it is, all of the major cultures have a religious element at their foundation.
Now, I can pre-empt where this is going: that there is no evidence of any religious claim or idea (in other words, positivism, which is the de-facto outlook of almost all secular philosophy). It is true that such ideas and traditions don't lend themselves to empirical scrutiny like for instance a drug trial or something of the kind. But in the annals of all of those traditions, there is a vast amount of testimonial and other kinds of evidence for which I think our secular-scientific culture can provide no real account.
First things first. Religious morals don't fare any better than secular ones. There are the moral injunctions and there are the reasons that make them so and while secular morality has failed in ferreting out the ever elusive rationale behind our moral tenets, religion doesn't provide anything by way of logical arguments either. If there is an argument in religious ethics it's the fallacious argumentum ad baculum.
That said, notice one important, dare I say often missed, fact. Morality seems to deeply connected to knowledge especially as it concerns pain. Back in the "good ol' days" vivisection - quite literally cutting open living animals without any anesthesia - was common practice but that was a time when people thought animals didn't feel pain or that animals were incapable of suffering, that they were just automatons. Vivisection, in this day and age, will elicit immediate and loud condemnation. This is because we've learned that animals too can feel pain and suffer just like us. Our moral dimension is coextensive with our knowledge - the more we know, the better, in a moral sense, we become.
Too, the whole idea of philosophers being able to cook up special scenario thought experiments that invalidate existing moral theories is a farce. Ethics or morality is a theory built for a perfect society, in every sense of the word "perfect". Special cases that throw a spanner in the works of a moral theory should be, quite literally, impossible - no trolley problem, no murderer at the door will ever see the light of day in such a society.
"Fascism denies the equation: well-being = happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and simple."
-The Doctrine of Fascism
I agree with the Doctrine of Fascism on that point. I think the proposed warrior ethos is a lot more noble and fulfilling for human beings than the "mere animals" alternative that is criticized.
I'm neither endorsing nor attacking fascism. Fascism is a completely different discussion. But I agree with the above-quoted point.
If science and math have a monopoly on truth then this forum has no business existing and all of us should stop being interested in philosophy and get on with mechanical drudgery. For philosophers to deny the transcendent is like for a chicken to support KFC.
Well I guess if you look at it from a very immoral perspective. If you want to be a moral person than morality has to be an end in itself.
It is like for a chicken to support me? Chickens have little to worry about from me. I prefer beef.
Ok. Seems arbitrary, or merely subjective.
Quoting Ram Elaborate. I don't see how this follows. Careful reading of my initial post shows that my position on ethics/morality is naturalistic, which doesn't negate or deny "the transcendent" but simply suggests that "transcendence" lacks any practical or explanatory role in any lived exercise-experience of moral agency.
so in other words you admit that secular objective morality is impossible but you say objective morality isn't even possible anyways and so we should just give up on morals being anything other than objective?
What definition would you give for nihilism?
Without a basis in natural law, it may be subjective or arbitrary- but as arbitrary or subjective as what you proposed.
What the people here seem to be proposing is simply "well yes but objective morality isn't even possible". If that's so why not just say it directly instead of covering it up to hide the inherent dangers of secularism?
You cannot possibly prove that there is no such thing as an underlying natural law that exists. For you to deny its existence is just an assertion without proof. You cannot disprove its existence anymore than a theist can prove it's existence.
I think you mean, you're not going to step into the arena with a person who can call you out on your nonsense. Like all good apologists you prey on the ignorant. Not in my house playa.
I believe in an underlying natural law. It's not something specific to Abrahamic or Eastern religion. I've studied both.
Whether you're Christian, Taoist, Muslim, Hindu, etc.- all these groups believe in an underlying natural law. The only dispute is over the details but the existence of an inherent natural law is a premise that is common to all of them.
Yes.
It is? So you've found the Holy Grail? Well show it then. Spill the beans on your discovery.
Sure, though a lot of that is just other people's much older thoughts polished up and fitted together.
I mean I guess I could also send you a giant series of texts too long for you to read and claim I won an argument. It wouldn't prove anything, though, and neither have you.
See my first post in this thread. Now to prove it. What do you mean by Objective Morality?
What is there for us to argue about? I claimed objective secular morality is impossible. You agreed. Unless you want to change that position, we both agree.
Yes, I said it was impossible based on an Absolute definition. As soon as you define what you mean by Objective Morality you will see why you are able to claim that it doesn't exist: because you are using a loaded term, it is purely an exercise in idealism. What you mean by Objective Morality is very close to the same kind of term as what you mean by God. Define the term and all will be made clear.
Suffering is "subjective or arbitrary"?
That living things (species) with complex nervous systems involuntarily react to-recoil from and adaptively avoid suffering is "subjective or arbitrary"?
And that codifying a natural regularity (e.g homeostatic fail-states/stressor-events) in logic, like codifying other natural regularities (e.g. thermodynamics, inertia) in mathematics, is "subjective and arbitrary"?
How so?
Why? What's the point in being moral?
If I found out that I had a moral obligation to kill blasphemers then I would choose to be immoral and not kill blasphemers. What about you? Were Leviticus 24:16 to be an objective moral fact, would you comply?
You didn't argue that. You just asserted it. Why must there be some God (or gods) for there to be objective moral facts? Is something like Kant's categorical imperative impossible without a supernatural intelligence commanding us to follow it?
Why?
What do you mean by "I believe in"? An 'article of faith'?
In the sense that you "believe in", how does "an underlying natural law" differ from fundamental physical laws?
Dang. He didn't last long. So much for Objective Morality Apologetic Technique 101.
It appears that the entire edifice of rational morality in the sense that there are good reasons to be moral rests on the assumption that such reasons exist.
Do they?
To discover whether morality is a rational enterprise or not I suggest we put the matter in the context of animals, lesser beings and what I will here refer to as higher beings, beings that are of superior intellect than us and animals naturally.
Animals don't have a moral system - in their world anything goes, nothing is either mandatory or prohibited.
On the other hand, we have a theory/system of morality albeit imperfect in the sense it breaks down when we have what I will refer to as special cases e.g. the trolley problem or the axe murderer at the door. As I mentioned in my previous post, morality is deeply connected to knowledge - the more we know, the better we become, ethically. Isn't that why we, humans, have a moral system and animals don't.
Knowledge is critical to the development of a moral theory that can hold its own against attacks with what I've referred to as special cases. If that's the case then it must be that higher beings have access to a moral theory, based on their greater knowledge, that's perfect in that they've figured out why on earth should people be good and not bad.
Doesn't this [s]imply[/s] suggest that to get to the bottom of what morality is all about, we need a higher intellect than what we possess right now? In other words, morality is actually well-grounded, it's just that we haven't figured it out. As a sneak preview of this possibility I'd like to ask you a simple question: Doesn't it make sense to be good rather than bad? If you say "yes" then you've caught a glimpse of the "hidden logic" of morality and if you say "no" then consider what I've said up till this point.
Uh, yeah. I'm not on a forum all day. And which religion exactly am I promoting on this thread?
You don't need that many paragraphs to say objective secular morality doesn't exist.
I don't believe in Leviticus. I'm simply arguing that secular objective morality isn't possible. You say I asserted rather than argued. Okay, we can suppose I just asserted then. It doesn't make a difference. Either way I'm not seeing any disproof of my claim.
"Yes, I said it was impossible based on an Absolute definition."
Okay, wonderful. We agree. We don't need walls of text rather than just stating the truth bluntly.
What do I mean by believe in? I don't know, I'm not a dictionary. I'm not webster.
I believe there is a natural law. Do you believe there isn't one? Whether we do or we don't- neither of us can prove our position with a test tube or whatever other scientific instruments. It's weird that people on a philosophy forum are so into scientism. If you go all the way with that, you shouldn't even be interested in philosophy. Probably 90% of philosophy isn't based on empirical science. If we really followed that logic, we would throw philosophy out entirely. Philosophy is based on abstract arguments, not on empiricism.
As for definition of "believe", I don't know, I don't care. Either natural law objectively exists or it objectively doesn't- independently of what anyone believes.
Well, I wasn't saying objective morality doesn't exist. I was offering a theory that it could and that it's just that we haven't understood it. I think it can be likened to someone who's opened up a portal into the future. As he gazes through it, he sees wondrous things- futuristic stuff like teleportation, laser guns, simulated realities, etc - but for the life of him he can't comprehend what he sees. Morality, if you give it some consideration, is futuristic; after all, current technology can't support it - all moral theories have loopholes that have more to do with existing technology than the theories themselves in my humble opinion. A Peter Wessel Zapffe thought that the human brain had over-evolved.
Existence of God (as in God with capital G) would entail natural law.
You cite "gods" and there being alleged evil "gods".
God with capital G is different than these alleged "gods".
Your argument is not really this big "checkmate" argument. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, even Yoruba religion all recognize one God who would be roughly analogous to the Abrahamic God. Islam uses the term "Allah," Hinduism uses "Brahman" or something like that. Taoism refers to the Tao. Is that news to you?
I didn't say that you did. I asked you if you would obey if it were it true.
You're shifting the burden of proof. You made a claim. It's your job to show it to be true, not my job to show it to be false.
But I did allude to an example of an objective, secular morality: Kant's categorical imperative.
What is the difference between a "capital G" God and other kinds of deities? How does the existence of such a thing entail "natural law"?
"I didn't say that you did. I asked you if you would obey if it were it true.
You say I asserted rather than argued. Okay, we can suppose I just asserted then. It doesn't make a difference. Either way I'm not seeing any disproof of my claim.
You're shifting the burden of proof. You made a claim. It's your job to show it to be true, not my job to show it to be false.
But I did allude to an example of an objective, secular morality: Kant's categorical imperative."
look, the claim of this thread is there is no secular objective morality. thus far, no one has disproved that claim because to do so is impossible. Kantianism is not objective. No more so than utilitarianism, fascism, whatever arbitrary ideology
You need to prove your claim. We don't need to disprove it.
What, exactly, does "objective" mean to you? Kantian morality is an objective morality as most people understand the meaning of "objective morality".
"now if God.... THE God told me to follow OT laws...... you are arguing whether it would be right to follow even though supposedly God says to do something immoral...... well.... the Euthyphro Dilemma is another topic. I'm not interested in debating it. I haven't really looked into the Euthyphro Dilemma and I'm not looking to debate it
How can you prove I need to prove my claim? Do you have any science experiments to prove that I need to prove my claim?
No, Kantianism is not objective. It's what some person named Kant came up with.
I'm referring to a conception of God that pretty much every major religion is familiar with. If you don't know what I'm talking about, so be it.
No, I'm asking you what you would do if killing blasphemers isn't immoral. If you had an objective moral obligation to kill blasphemers, as established by God's natural law, would you kill blasphemers?
In this situation it would be immoral to not kill blashphemers.
Kant (and those who support his view) would say that Kant discovered the categorical imperative. He didn't make it. In the same way that we discover rather than create mathematical truths.
An all-powerful, all-knowing, creator deity? How does that entail a "natural law" (i.e. objective moral facts)?
Quoting Ram
You need to study up on philosophy before you start trying to engage us in philosophy.
"No, I'm asking you what you would do if killing blasphemers isn't immoral. If you had an objective moral obligation to kill blasphemers, as established by God's natural law, would you kill blasphemers?
In this situation it would be immoral to not kill blashphemers."
The whole basis of what you're saying here is the Euthyphro Dilemma.
"Kant (and those who support his view) would say that Kant discovered the categorical imperative."
well they'd be wrong. if I say Alaska is in Africa, Alaska is still not in Africa.
"An all-powerful, all-knowing, creator deity? How does that entail a "natural law" (i.e. objective moral facts)?"
Don't worry about it. If you don't understand the conception of God that I'm referring to and that the majority of the world's population is familiar with then don't worry about it. Or is it that you do understand that conception and you are rehashing the Euthyphro Dilemma? I already said I'm not looking to debate Euthyphro Dilemma.
"You need to study up on philosophy before you start trying to engage us in philosophy."
Well if you've studied up on philosophy then you know this is ad hominem.
No it isn't. The Euthyphro dilemma is "Is the good loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?". I'm not asking that. I'm asking you what you would do if killing blasphemers is good.
So you're saying that an objective morality is inconsistent with secularism because a proposed secular objective morality is false? That's a non sequitur. It may be a fact that Kantianism is false, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a secular objective morality.
Quoting Ram
No, I'm still not talking about the Euthyphro Dilemma. I'm asking you how it is that the existence of God entails objective moral facts.
"The whole basis of what you're saying here is the Euthyphro Dilemma.
— Ram
No it isn't. The Euthyphro dilemma is "Is the good loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?". I'm not asking that. I'm asking you what you would do if killing blasphemers is good.
well they'd be wrong. if I say Alaska is in Africa, Alaska is still not in Africa.
So you're saying that an objective morality is inconsistent with secularism because a proposed secular objective morality is false? That's a non sequitur. It may be a fact that Kantianism is false, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a secular objective morality.
Or is it that you do understand that conception and you are rehashing the Euthyphro Dilemma? I already said I'm not looking to debate Euthyphro Dilemma.
— Ram
No, I'm still not talking about the Euthyphro Dilemma. I'm asking you how it is that the existence of God entails objective moral facts."
Most of your post is just rehashing the Euthyphro Dilemma.
None of my post is. Now prove me wrong.
Okay, you got me. It's a slight variation of the Euthyphro Dilemma.
Prove me wrong by actually discussing the topic and refuting the thread's claim rather than going on about a weird version of the Euthyphro Dilemma where it's basically the exact same thing as the Euthyphro Dilemma but you pretend it isn't
It has nothing to do with the Euthyphro Dilemma.
What would you do if pre-martial sex is immoral?
What would you do if charity is a moral obligation?
What would you do if watching TV is immoral?
What would you do if killing blasphemers is a moral obligation?
I'm asking you if you will commit to being moral regardless of what the moral facts actually are. It has nothing to do with asking about the relationship between being good and being liked by the gods.
I would happily break the moral rules if I find them distasteful. I wouldn't kill blasphemers even if I had a moral obligation to do so. I would continue to have pre-marital sex even if it's immoral. What about you?
I've provided an example of an objective secular morality. Kant's categorical imperative isn't some "arbitrary" framework. It's arrived at by reason, much like logic and maths.
This is rich. You refuse to support your own assertion and insist that it's our responsibility to prove you wrong. If you have no intention of arguing in good faith by actually providing an argument then what is it you're doing here?
Ram, Michael is trying to reason with you but you are evading his discourse. It is obvious that you're afraid to answer his questions, and this is dishonest. It's difficult but thinkers have to go in the direction of refutation, it's one of the ways we grow. He has in fact pulled your card. If you're serious and you honestly think you have a strong position then you shouldn't be trying to evade him.
As per my claim about Objective Morality, what you don't understand is that there is nothing in the universe like your definition of Objective Morality. The way you define Objective Morality ends up excluding it from existence. So, by all means, prove that Object Morality exists as you define the term.
Quoting Ram
Neither do I. Won't waste any more of your time, Ram, or my own.
Quoting Ram
You're onto something here. If all these groups would simply get together and work out their differences - that would be an amazing event that could change the course of world history.
I suggest that instead of engaging in pointless on-line debates you do something to make this happen. Start a GoFundMe to - I would enthusiastically donate to that worthy cause.