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 (105)
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.
Aren't revealed truths relative or subjective?
"Descartes systematised what Galileo had begun. Taking the measurable world as the paradigm of objective knowledge, he posited a strict ontological division between res extensa—the extended, mechanical substance of nature—and res cogitans—the unextended, thinking substance of the mind. This dualism safeguarded human subjectivity from the reductionism of mechanism, yet it did so at the cost of severing mind from world. Thought was now a private interior realm looking out upon an inert, external nature. The result was a self-conscious spectator of a disenchanted universe: the modern subject—liberated from dogma yet exiled from a cosmos stripped of inherent meaning.'
'Revealed truths' are said to arise from insight into a larger domain which transcends the subject-object division, to put it in modern philosophical terms - not as private psychological states, but as disclosures accessible in principle through shared forms of practice and understanding.
That seems to mean that meaning can only be found in religious dogma. That's not true.
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem with this is that Revealed Truths differ greatly. Or perhaps the revealers access an assortment of 'larger domains'?
That is the way that 'Praxis' will invariably respond any arguments of these kinds. That's your 'dogma'. And I know this from very long experience, so you will forgive me if i decline to pursue the argument.
Quoting praxis
Or in hermeneutic historical life, or phenomenological intentionality, or poststructural becoming.
Then perhaps you can argue it with Joshs?
European philosophy will consider these perspectives, which Anglo philosophy barely does.
Existentialism, by its very nature, is prepared to tackle those very questions of contextuality and transcendence and meaning and so on, in a way that most Anglo philosophy doesn't. And it straddles both theistic and emphatically atheistic perspectives, such as Sarte's.
It's not a matter of religion, per se, but notice that as soon as the presumed soveriegnty of objective fact is called into question, it provokes the question 'is this religious dogma'? That says something about the cultural dynamics.
I hope philosophy is not expected to do any such thing. It would be as if a zookeeper had the job of pushing food into a cage when there was no evidence that there was an animal inside.
I asked about revealed truths being relative or subjective. Then commented on your line about [i]"a disenchanted universe: the modern subject—liberated from dogma yet exiled from a cosmos stripped of inherent meaning."[/I]
You didn't respond to my comment that the problem with Revealed Truths is that they differ greatly, and my speculation that perhaps the revealers access an assortment of 'larger domains'.
My interest isn't the sovereignty of objective fact vs the sovereignty of religious dogma or whatever.
It seems to me that revealed truths are relative or subjective.
Okay, looking at it differently, are not shared forms of practice and understanding private psychological states to the community that shares whatever these forms of practice and understanding are?
They would lack an account of why exactly the moral principles they posit are true -- lacking any further justification behind them -- but since they also lack an account of how the material universe came to be, this shouldn't in theory be any more of a problem for them.
The reason why they don't is because the real practical upshot of atheism is in order to get rid of Christian sexual morality specifically. The other nine commandments are no big deal but, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is the dealbreaker for them. Without the desire to get rid of Christian sexual morality, they'd probably fall in line with some minimalistic, shallow, lax approach to Christianity as being the path of least resistance, which is the historical norm in the Western world.
One does not have a perosnal mathematics misaligned with objective truths about mathematics unless one is simply wrong. One's views on mathematics are personal opinions about what the objective truths on mathematics are -- and are not about anything else. Thus, one cannot accept that the objective truth about mathematics are different from one's own peronsal opinions about mathematics without having changed those opinions.
In order words, everyone thinks their own opinions are correct because otherwise, they wouldn't hold those opinions.
The context of my comment was as a response to someone claiming that moral facts must be dictated by some God. I was asking what he would do if his God were to dictate that everyone is morally obligated to kill blasphemers. Would he obey his God?
For example, some religious traditions morally permit killing and even at times require it under certain conditions. Others treat nonviolence as an absolute or near-absolute moral principle.
I think this suggests that religious revealed truths are subjective, or rather, intersubjective, but I suppose the faithful would simply claim that their truths are truth and all conflicting revelations are false.
And this actually matters for me more than for other religious people because I'm a Latter Day Saint, which means I believe in continuing revelation. New messages from God in the present day are a very real possibility in my worldview -- just hedged against the possibility of inauthentic messages by strict processes.
The result is a worldview that's actually very open-minded -- but never so open that your brains fall out.
His situation is worse than that. If moral facts are dictated by God, then two things follow:
1) In any universe not created by God, there are no moral facts. In such a universe, it is not morally wrong to rape, torture or murder people. That seems to me not to make sense.
2) If God has the ability to dictate moral facts, then he could have made our universe such that all the natural facts are as they are now, but rape, torture and murder are morally good or right, and feeding the hungry is morally bad or wrong. Again, I don’t think this makes sense.
I think it is much more reasonable to hold that moral facts, if there are any, are entailed by natural facts, so that you cannot have a universe in which there are such things as rape, torture and murder without those things being morally bad or wrong.
1. I'm unsure what doesn't make sense about that? If God was real, and was the source of moral fact, it would be implicit in that fact that a non-God universe has no moral facts. As it is, I don't believe there are moral facts besides facts about what people want/don't want to see/hear/be around/experience. I am unique in this on the forum apparently, so I take that.
2. He could have. But he didn't. So where's the lack of sense? You're using a counterfactual to reduce th sense-making of a supposed factual?
Quoting Herg
I do not think this makes sense. Natural facts are not moral facts, by definition. Morality exists within human minds, as far as we know, solely. So it is for humans to dictate morals. That's why the invocation of God had been so strong in the past. People can justify their behaviour without having to justify their emotions. I think.
Thanks for replying to my post. I’ve been on this forum before, but it was a while ago, and I wasn’t here for long.
Quoting AmadeusD
I’m an ethical naturalist, so I disagree.
I think moral facts are a type of natural fact. I think that it is both a moral and a natural fact that torturing people is morally bad. This is because I think it is a natural fact that pain is intrinsically bad, and therefore it is a natural fact that an action which causes pain is to that extent instrumentally bad, and therefore it is a natural and moral fact that torturing people is morally bad. (One slight caveat: I am assuming that we have free will, and that we therefore have moral responsibility; if we don’t have free will, then no-one is morally to blame for anything. Without free will, torture is still bad, but it isn’t morally bad.)
You would find it hard to convince me that pain is not intrinsically bad. My wife broke her thigh bone a few years ago, and when they were doing scans on her broken leg in the hospital, I had to listen to her screaming every time they moved the leg. I think she would have said the pain was bad, and I think it would be ridiculous to claim that this was just her subjective opinion, or that the badness was just in her mind. Pain is bad because of what pain is like.
This is why I don’t think it makes sense to say that God creates moral facts. The moral fact that torturing people is bad follows from the fact that pain is bad, and pain would be bad in any universe, whether created by God or not, because that is just the nature of pain.
Over to you.
The example I gave involved physical pain, but as I believe is usual in philosophy I was using ‘pain’ to mean either physical or emotional pain (e.g. grief or depression). I think emotional pain, like physical pain, is intrinsically bad. I don’t think one can say that emotional pain is always worse than physical pain, they can both vary in intensity, so sometimes one would be worse and sometimes the other.
Or did you have something else in mind as the worst negative?
Quoting LuckyR
If you have two negative numbers, say minus 2 and minus 4, minus 2 doesn’t become positive just because minus 4 is further into the negative; minus 2 is still negative. So I think it’s a bit misleading to say that pain can be relatively positive — it’s always negative, i.e. bad.
Quoting Herg
Can you give me a 1:1 between a moral, and a natural fact? Bear in mind heavily that simply stating one of each, that you associate in your mind, isn't a respond to this particular query.
I shall show my hand slightly: This appears incoherent to me. They are of a totally different kind of "fact" if there even are any in either camp.
Quoting Herg
Can you say why? I know plenty of kinds of pain which are beneficial, or indicia of positive outcomes. This seems to falter here, already (this applies to physical and emotional pain, such as they are different).
Quoting Herg
However, I can understand this statement IFF I saw a basis for the earlier claims.
The rest of this is a bit difficult to respond to in whole, so forgive the piecemeal nature..
Quoting Herg
You are giving me your personal discomfort. Not a reason something is inherently bad.
Quoting Herg
I agree. That doesn't make it intrinsically bad. It means, on that occasion, your wife saw it as bad.
Quoting Herg
Where is it?
Quoting Herg
That doesn't make sense. You then need to run this same exercise for whatever you decide "pain is like". If you're going to rely on a deeper fact, that also has to be supported in terms of the claim, I think. I'm not quite seeing the depth that could get you there, or more than opinion.
Back to you
Part of the problem in your posting is your use of numerals. Numerals have intrinsic negativity and positivity in relation to an objective constant at zero. The human condition, OTOH as far as subjective interpretations (such as beauty, pleasure, pain etc) exists on personal/individual spectrums without objective constants, thus descriptors such as "negative", or "worse" only have meaning when compared to another event on that spectrum. Thus compared to a particular event, everything on one side of it is relatively positive and on the other side relatively negative, regardless of the intrinsic qualities of that second event.
I already did this, in a generalised way. I connected the natural fact of (let us say) A’s action T being a torturing of B, to the moral fact of A’s action T being morally bad. I did it by arguing that torturing B is painful for B, that pain is intrinsically bad, that T is therefore instrumentally bad, and that if A is exercising free will when he performs T, then T is morally bad. I am not simply associating the facts in my mind, I have argued that they are connected in fact. By all means attack the connection I have made, but please don’t imply that I haven’t attempted to make one.
Quoting AmadeusD
My claim is that pain is intrinsically bad. Where pain is beneficial, it is instrumentally good, which does not contradict my claim.
Quoting AmadeusD
I was not giving my discomfort as a reason for something being bad, I was offering the fact that she screamed as evidence that (a) she was in a great deal of pain and (b) she had a strong negative response to the pain, which supports my contention that pain is intrinsically bad.
Quoting AmadeusD
But why did she see it as bad? If you don’t think it is because it was intrinsically bad, then what was her reason?
That would mean that if you put a dog in a cage at birth and beat it every day and gave it no pleasures, the least severe beating would be a positive experience. That is simply not correct.
While I appreciate your elucidation, with respect this is not what I asked for. You made a connection between two conceptions of one assumed fact (which falls back on the previous objection).
What I want is something like:
Kicking puppies causes them harm =
It is wrong to kick puppies.
I cannot conceive of this, other than just claiming (as ethical naturalists often do) supervenience. That's fine if so, I just wanted that clarified. Please do not feel attacked. These are discussions about ethics and its best we stay away from taking things personally. I feel you havent clarified yourself or provided the baove. That's all.
Quoting Herg
Fwiw, it wasn't sufficiently clear to me that this was your fundamental form of claim. Apologies I missed it.
I can see that you're trying to make that connection, but the second bold collapses into my prior objection. Why is pain intrinsically bad? I think, unfortunately, this is just wrong. There are plenty of counter-examples. Enough to make it a little silly, don't you think?
Quoting Herg
That's fine and i fully take the point. There's no logical incoherence in that. What i'm claiming is incoherent is making the claim that pain is intrinsically bad. But that's somewhat for another time, tbh.
The issue is that instrumental value is basically all we can actually assess. "intrinsically bad" begs a question. That means there is a basic, fundamental disconnect between what you'd call a natural fact "pain is bad" and the moral claim "it is wrong to cause pain". Far too much contingency in that for it to be a fact in any sense, imo.
Quoting Herg
It absolutely does not. It supports the facts that a) she was in pain, and b) she had a strong negative response to the pain. This is personal discomfort, writ large. It does not follow, in any way, that pain is intrinsically bad. You've illustrated a single instance which cannot be extrapolated to every other instance. It says a lot more about your wife, than it does about the intrinsic nature of pain.
Quoting Herg
Because she didn't enjoy it. People get the same feeling from eating food they don't like.
There is genuinely no connection in your posts between the claimed natural fact, and the moral claim such that
A. Pain is intrinsically bad; can be supported through to;
B. Therefore, do not pain.
This seems to be the central theme of this entire forum—to deduce "ought" from "is," thereby overcoming Hume's guillotine.
What if we try through the "other"? In other words, the other is the one who confirms the fact of our existence. Without the "other," this would turn into a fusion into unity. The single, monolithic "I" is the center and essence of everything. Does being itself exist, then, without a true other?
None of this proves that kicking a dog = bad. However, killing a dog = depriving yourself of otherness, provided that you yourself became through it and with it: in contact with it, you yourself acquired form? It follows that kicking a dog is not equal to evil. But destroying its otherness (including through kicking) is equal to evil, since it harms you (in the long term).
This approach is taking egoism to the extreme, which could explain "ought" through "is." Namely: the destruction of another is the erasure of one’s own limits; limits whose essence constitutes your own form.
Quoting Astorre
This doesn't seem to be something one can respond to intelligibly. I do not mean at all to be rude, but I can't understand this.
Yes, I apologize. This really does seem like a random comment, taken out of context and out of the previous discussion. It was too harsh and too off-topic.
This is an attempt to justify what is due through ontology, to derive it from the self itself.
At the moment, it's a long, unnecessary 50 pages of text that even my friends struggle with. I'm disappointed in it. I think it's neither interesting nor necessary.
I, for one, can see where you get that idea from. I too have been exploring it, although from a different perspective.
At one stage on my spiritual-philosophical path, I came up with the catchy term 'the illusion of otherness'. It was meant to convey a quality which is fundamental to our sense of felt existence - the idea that reality or Being is something that we're outside of, or 'other' to. This manifests as the sense of alienation or separateness which is the source of the pervading anxiety of life as the self is aware of its own eventual mortality whereby it is once again absorbed by what is other to it, in the form of death.
The over-arching theme was that, to overcome this 'illusion of otherness' was to experience that state of union with the All, which yogic and some mystical teachings point to. (It's not specifically Christian, in that such union in Christianity is always in terms of union with God, and I didn't necessarily understand it in theistic terms)
As life went on, and the effects of youthful optimism fell from my eyes, it turned out that transcending this 'illusion of otherness' and realising that unitive state was impossibly remote for an ordinary person such as myself. This is why, after all, most of the teachings about this state assume a kind of reclusive or ascetic way of life, practically the opposite of modern middle-class existence with all its many attachments and habits.
Later in life, I've come to look at the question from a more philosophical, and less mystical, perspective. I have been exploring an idea found in the pioneering book by Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophy of Biology. I won't try and summarise it, as it is a profound and weighty book. But one central idea in it, is that the appearance of even the most rudimentary life-forms is the appearance of intentionality as a mode of existence. Even a primitive organism has to navigate its environment, ward off threats, seek sustenance, and so on, even though they are not possessed of anything lilke sentient awareness. Likewise, here you see the most rudimentary sense of 'self-and-other', in that the organism has to maintain itself distinct from the environment. Its enclosing membrane comprises the boundary between it and the sorrounding nature. That is the ancient origin of the sense of 'otherness' that I had previously thought was a kind of illusion or false consciousness.
So to address your question, perhaps it could be said that existence always entails that sense of otherness or separateness, as it is fundamental to the phenomenon of life. I still feel like the 'illusion of otherness' or separateness is always a kind of existential state or spiritual lack, and that transcending that sense of separateness is what the 'unitive vision' seeks. But note that this also entails dying, in some fundamental sense. From which perspective, embodied existence is itself a plight or a malaise. So I suppose this must always end up being a kind of religious intuition, although again not necessarily Christian.
Yes, we've discussed this before. And thanks to the works you shared with me, I understood your approach more deeply.
In my case, when I was working on this, I realized that contemporary people, by and large, strive more for alienation from mysticism or the Divine (be it Christian or Eastern tradition). It seems that contemporary people often try to avoid this.
Even looking through the correspondence, it's clear that the thought is trying to substantiate what is given: without some absolute or limit to everything (God, the Gods, the cosmos), it's difficult to prove ethics, difficult to prove good or evil.
So I took a risk and imagined that if we place the measure of things in the subject itself, in its own finitude (both in space and time), the idea lies precisely in this: you exist because you are limited, and your limitation constitutes your form. This limitation is what constitutes the true other. Which becomes not only your confirmation but also your "creator" alongside you. By erasing your limitation, you dissolve into the absence of limits. This is the ultimate egoism: you shouldn't kick a dog because you erase yourself in the act.
But there's one point that this approach doesn't address: Why does the fact of your existence mean you must necessarily be in the next moment? To rephrase it into plain language: "Why do you even need to live, rather than die?"
And my approach doesn't address cases of extreme nihilism. So, if someone no longer wants to exist, then they have the right to kick a dog? I truly have no answer to that.
Quite. So there is a connection between badness and not enjoying something. What do you think that connection is?
The licking after beating is a response to the pain the dog is still feeling from the injuries caused by the beating. The licking creates a positive experience, but the residual pain is still negative.
Quoting LuckyR
The zero is the dog experiencing neither pleasure nor pain. There may actually be times during which the dog experiences neither, but even if there are no such times, it is conceivable that there could be, and that conceivability is all we need to set a zero point and thereby establish that pain is always negative.
One question for clarification. If a masochist enjoys "pain" is that above or below zero?
The link is personal discomfort. Seems to capture all that's needed for, anyway.
Quoting Herg
Nothing you've said even does this if entirely true and fool-proof.