Is morality subjective?

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Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:33:59 2014 No.6430936 [DELETED]

Is morality subjective?

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:34:31 2014 No.6430938 File: 36 KB, 281x423, moral-landscape1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] nope it's objective

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:40:12 2014 No.6430950 Morality is philosophy, not science, you dimwit.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:44:12 2014 No.6430953 It's mostly objective but it's not absolute.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:50:42 2014 No.6430966 this is how i would put it: is it scientifically responsible to assign concepts like "good" and "bad" to physical processes?

Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:51:12 2014 No.6430971

>>6430950
Wasn't that pretty much his question?

If morality is objective, why shouldn't it be science?

If morality is not science, doesn't that imply it's subjective?

I guess we could apply evolutionary psychology here to some extent. Couldn't behaviors that reduce both your and someone else's inclusive fitness be considered objectively immoral in a way? (Behaviors that only reduce your inclusive fitness would only be irrational.)

Naturally we'd have to (re)define morality first. But at least it's an attempt at classifying behaviors' morality in an objective manner.

Anonymous Sat Mar 22 16:59:16 2014 No.6430985

>>6430971
well,we can inform our morality because of what science teaches us, but its hard to "prove" objectively that something is good or bad. I can prove that there isn't much wrong with most homosexuals but you can still deny them rights because you think they inherently immoral

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 22 20:36:17 2014 No.6431276 >>6430936 Measurement can only aspire to convention and hence intersubjectivity.

Anonymous Sat Mar 22 21:30:23 2014 No.6431380

>>6430936
Once we define what parameters contribute to a "more ethical" or a "less ethical" state, it becomes a matter of objective science to decide what actions we should take in order to maximize morality.

However, defining what things are "moral" and "immoral" is subjective.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 07:37:34 2014 No.6432054 a soldier that kills people is an hero, a civilian is not

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 08:03:04 2014 No.6432070 No shit it's subjective Every societal thing humanity invented is subjective

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 08:41:04 2014 No.6432102 >>6430936 why would you think morality was objective? very few people are retarded enough to claim that.

Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 08:47:34 2014 No.6432110

>>6430938
>nope it's objective

Interesting.

Then please quantify the morality of a father standing by as his kid is murdered by thugs - even though the father could easily prevent it from happening.

Please quantify the morality of a 35 yr old man engaging a 14 yr old girl to marry him.

Please quantify the morality of female genital mutilation.

Go ahead now...I'll wait.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 08:50:34 2014 No.6432112 >>6432110 >Go ahead now...I'll wait. Thank you, please wait

Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 08:54:35 2014 No.6432115

>>6432102
>why would you think morality was objective? very few people are retarded enough to claim that.

Unfortunately, mental retardation is a commodity in this country, being both solicited and taught by certain groups to the young, the infirm and the weakminded.

They are known as religious fundamentalists, and they think their holy books contain lists of absolute morals.

>>	Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 08:58:04 2014 No.6432120 >>6432112 I'm waiting....

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:02:04 2014 No.6432126 >>6430938 >this is bait.jpg

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:03:04 2014 No.6432127 >>6432120 >I'm waiting.... Thank you, please continue to do so

>>	Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 09:07:34 2014 No.6432130 >>6432127 Still waiting... Gee. I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe you have no fucking clue WTF the word "objective" means. If you did, my questions would have already been answered - morals being "objective" and all that, you know.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:08:04 2014 No.6432131

>>6432130
>Still waiting...
Thank you, please hold on.

>Gee. I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe you have no fucking clue WTF the word "objective" means.
I'm sorry you feel that way

>If you did, my questions would have already been answered - morals being "objective" and all that, you know.
Please elaborate

>>	Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 09:11:34 2014 No.6432132 >>6432131 >Please elaborate You're joking, right? What fucking part of "nope it's objective" confuses you the most?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:13:34 2014 No.6432134 >>6432132 >You're joking, right? This is not a helpful answer >What fucking part of "nope it's objective" confuses you the most? This was not stated previously

Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 09:20:34 2014 No.6432138

>>6432134
>>What fucking part of "nope it's objective" confuses you the most?
>This was not stated previously

Hmmm...I think I now understand your confusion: It's because YOU CAN'T FUCKING READ POSTS LIKE THIS ONE:

>>6430938
>nope it's objective

Run along and play with the other girls now, nancy.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:24:04 2014 No.6432142

>>6430936
Morality is whatever you define it to be. I'd argue the definition is related to some mindset/ethical code that a human wants to have / want others to have / wants to live in a society built upon. This would make it subjective but NOT arbitrary as most religiotards would scream as soon as you even mention subjective and morality in the same sentence.
>b...b...but if it's subjective then you can't say Hitler was wrong
The words right and wrong don't apply, what matters is how you want to treat others, how others treat you and what kind of society you want to live in.
>but why should we be moral
Because we want to actually live a proper life with meaning and purpose, something that's very difficult to do if you're being immoral all the time
>but doesn't that mean if somebody wants to kill your family and does it then there's nothing you can do about it morally?
I would see it as immoral (even if the wrong-doer saw it as moral) and would seek to take action against him/her, and it's likely that others would join me since they would feel sympathy/empathy and not want to live in a society with such a person.

>>6432110
>>6432120
>>6432130
Not the guy you're responding too but if you think that objective is the same as calculable then you have no idea what you're talking about.
Just take some situation in quantum field theory where you can calculate an objective answer to some question, then start adding events all over the place until the problem is so difficult the strongest super computer couldn't calculate an answer before the earth ended, but there still is an answer and it's just as objective as it was before.
>inb4 trolled

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:26:34 2014 No.6432145 >>6432138 >Hmmm...I think I now understand your confusion: It's because YOU CAN'T FUCKING READ POSTS LIKE THIS ONE: This is incorrect >Run along and play with the other girls now, nancy. My name is not nancy.

>>	Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 09:33:34 2014 No.6432148 >>6432145 >My name is not nancy It is now!

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 09:37:34 2014 No.6432152 >>6432148 >It is now! Great argument, how typical of an atheist

>>	Cogito ergo sum Sun Mar 23 09:38:34 2014 No.6432153 >>6432152 >Great argument, how typical of an atheist No argument at all. How typical of a fundie.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:00:04 2014 No.6432190 >>6430938 >naturalistic fallacy laden and sophism sponsored wannabe science garbage

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:01:06 2014 No.6432192 >>6432190 >deciding the books arguments before actaully reading them

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:07:35 2014 No.6432200 >>6432192 I have read that piece of shit and it fits my description perfectly.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:07:35 2014 No.6432201 You can't objectively justify moral values, you can argue that morality is present in all human beings and therefore is objective, but the value of a moral claim is unjustifiable, objectively speaking.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:10:35 2014 No.6432205 Morality is subjective. Ethics is objective.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:15:35 2014 No.6432208 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg This is a good debate on the topic

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:17:35 2014 No.6432209 File: 29 KB, 482x800, 1390580881922.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6430938

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:20:06 2014 No.6432214 File: 992 KB, 500x273, 1366517118333.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6430936 Seriously OP? You could argue that morality doesn't even exist.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:23:06 2014 No.6432219 >>6432200 anybody who's read Sam's argument and thinks there's a naturalistic fallacy either doesn't understand the naturalistic fallacy or the arguments in the book

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:27:08 2014 No.6432224 >>6432219 >doesn't understand the naturalistic fallacy like you, for example

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:28:36 2014 No.6432226 "Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. "

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:30:36 2014 No.6432229 >>6432224 give me a single example of the naturalistic fallacy in any of the Sam's arguments on morality so I can begin to take you seriously

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:33:36 2014 No.6432235 >>6432229 all of them, every argument he makes involves a naturalistic fallacy in some way

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:33:36 2014 No.6432236

>>6430936
I would say subjective, as there isn't an abstract definition of morality that is independant of our own context and point of view, for example :

>Killing and eating a dog
Moral for south eastern asian and not for westerners. How will you decide which one is right?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:34:36 2014 No.6432237 >>6432235 If your next post doesn't actually provide an example then I'm finished with you

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:36:06 2014 No.6432238 >>6432237 >shifting the burden of proof

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:45:09 2014 No.6432253

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
>Sam Harris argues that it is possible to derive "ought" from "is", and even that it has already been done to some extent.[6][7] He sees morality as a budding science. This view is critical of Moore's "simple indefinable terms" (which amount to qualia), arguing instead that such terms actually can be broken down into constituents.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:51:52 2014 No.6432260 >>6432253 >fails to understand basic logic >goes far enough to outright deny it Full fucking retard.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 10:59:08 2014 No.6432268 >>6430938 >NAcc metabolism increases during X oh shit X must be moral! Yep, instinct, good feelings, and desire must always lead to completely moral behavior. Drug addicts are sacrosanct when it comes to morality.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:01:08 2014 No.6432270 File: 497 KB, 617x458, 1253828589692.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] I'm not sure. A little bit of both maybe.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:08:38 2014 No.6432277 >>6432238 The burden of proof lies with the one making the claim. The claim is that Harris falls victim to the Naturalistic Fallacy. Prove it by citing an example.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:13:38 2014 No.6432283 >>6432277 i already did, by citing all of them. Show me one where you are actually retarded enough to believe that he doesn't.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:16:08 2014 No.6432287 >>6432283 >citing all of them Must have been quite a list. I wonder where in this thread I can find it. Are you a wizard?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:21:08 2014 No.6432293 >>6432287 Why would I need to list them? Do you really not understand the meaning of the words "cite" and "all"?

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:22:08 2014 No.6432294

>>6432253
We want to live a healthy lifestyle, we wan't to live in a society where we live in harmony and have control over our lives.
Therefore we (want to) form values conducive to that sort of lifestyle, these are our moral precepts.

>We want to live a certain way
This is where most people say, "we may want to live this way but ought we to live this way?" This is nonsensical response because the ought never comes into the equation, as humans we decide how we want to live our lives and there is no right way to do it. Ought implies there's some right way (or ways) that we should be doing it and some wrong ways, but right and wrong just don't come into the picture, those words don't belong here.
>These morals can help us live our lives that certain way
People also jump in and say, "but ought we to do it this way, ought we to have these certain morals and not other ones?" This is usually followed by some example where the Nazi's were effectively torturing people to gain medical information, or something about a patient having his organs stolen to save a number of people which is the main reason why Sam gives so many counter examples, so that people can start to see how to deal with these kinds of problems.

Unfortunately most people have taken a beginners course in philosophy (or follow to their favorite pop-philosophers opinion podcast's/vlogs/blogs/debates etc) and get stuck in this mindset that all problems fit into certain categories like is/ought or that there are words that apply to every situation like right/wrong and mistakenly think that objective = calculable or subective = arbitrary etc...

I don't agree with all of Sam's arguments but I do get annoyed at a lot of his criticism, most of which is poorly thought out and seem as though their authors have only started paying attention in the last 3 pages of the book or last 5 minutes of a lecture/debate.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:25:08 2014 No.6432299

>>6432293
>Why would I need to list them?
Because that is what citation means?
>Do you really not understand the meaning of the words "cite" and "all"?
Of course. You listed all of them, and the list is emtpy. There is nothing to list. It's so obvious now.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:32:38 2014 No.6432308

>>6432299
>Because that is what citation means?
No, retard. Go learn English.

>Of course.
Clearly not. Anosignosia must be very hard to deal with on top of your mental handicap.

>There is nothing to list.
Exactly, all of his arguments are a complete waste of time to read if your goal is not to lose massive quantities of brain cells.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:34:38 2014 No.6432311 >>6430950 philosophy is a social science

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:35:08 2014 No.6432314 >>6432308 >all of his arguments are a complete waste of time to read if your goal is not to lose massive quantities of brain cells. How do you know that?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:36:08 2014 No.6432318 >>6432311 [ftestable hypthesis needed]

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:37:08 2014 No.6432319 >>6432318 it uses the scientific method

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:45:08 2014 No.6432332 Subjectivity is a social construct.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:48:38 2014 No.6432336 >>6432319 Explain to me how this works.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 11:58:08 2014 No.6432358 >>6432336 explain the scientific method to you? wikipedia can do that

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:01:08 2014 No.6432363 >>6432358 Explain to me how philosophy makes hypotheses based on observation, then devises experiments to test them, then rejects or refines these hypotheses. Philosophy invented the scientific method. That doesn't make it a science.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:02:08 2014 No.6432367 >>6432070 Science?

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:06:08 2014 No.6432374

>>6430936

Isn't everything? The process of discovering science itself is subjective, so how could it not produce subjective science?

It's one of the basic dilemmas of any human process. Whether it's about education, project funding, research visibility and credibility or anything else, there's a number of political and social asslicking involved to get your theories out there where they matter. Those against the mainstream are barred from even being heard because the authorities refuse to take them or anyone associated with them seriously.

Ask Cantor or Bose for instance, whether their science was enough by itself.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:07:08 2014 No.6432378 >>6432363 >hypotheses based on observation observation based on the mind's eye >experiments to test them thought experiments >then rejects or refines these hypotheses logic and rationality

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:10:38 2014 No.6432381

>>6432374
>Isn't everything?
Objective reality is that which doesn't go away when you ignore it.
There is a lot of good science that was not accepted originally, but no amount of ignoring it or attemting to prove it wrong only confirmed it.

Ironically your own examples prove that the answer to your question is no.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:13:39 2014 No.6432382 >>6432311 philosophy encompasses more than just that

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:15:08 2014 No.6432385

>>6432367
"Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge"[1]) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."

science is just an explanation. it's a way of explaining things and a way to get information about things that are real. it's a way to test things to figure out truth, because our senses lie to us

we invented science, but not the cosmos, the sun, cells, etc. we just study those things and use tools to be more accurate

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:16:08 2014 No.6432387 >>6432115 wouldn't that be subjective-- just chosen by God-- in a way?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:16:08 2014 No.6432388 >>6432378 If those thought experiments yield reproducable results, you have a point.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:23:08 2014 No.6432396

>>6432381

Yet we're not talking about objective reality. If it was that, then no, morality wouldn't exist. Not unless we could prove the existence of your run of the mill god or some other kind of will, with a motive, running things here.

As it is, we're talking about science. Science is a human process attempting to discover with mathematical and physical proof, what the hell is going on. And since it is a human process, it's affected by human weaknesses. Now I'm not saying I support some fundie's thoughts about how science can just be dismissed because it's just a bunch of "theories". That's not the case at all. But it's not infallible, and it's most definitely not objective. It tries to be, it should be, but it's not.

If it was, then social powerplays, economy, or ethics and morality would have no bearing on how science was researched or carried out.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:28:08 2014 No.6432398

>>6432387
The argument is that there is no natural law, so morality needs to be based on a fundament of universal rules, and what could be more universal than the word of the one true god or other?
Of course, if it turns out that there is a natural law, then that must obviously come from the one true god and no other.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:31:09 2014 No.6432403 >>6432396 >Yet we're not talking about objective reality. As soon as the question was how science could produce anything other than subjective science, it became the topic.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:33:08 2014 No.6432405 >>6432311 WTF phil is the prime science. phil is man's urge to commit himself to science. but it isn't a social science!

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 12:52:08 2014 No.6432443

>>6432268
Drug addicts are always bad people. It's easy as hell to fall into the trap. Most are only harming themselves, not out robbing people. The most common way of it harming others is when the drug addict is spending the majority or all of the money that could be going to help his or her family.

Source: I've been is a family where addiction is common

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 13:00:21 2014 No.6432462

>>6432294
He's just trying to latch on to the same crowd that Rand targeted. The criticism that Moore leveraged with the so-called naturalistic fallacy is of a different kind than the is/ought gap criticism leveraged by Hume.

Moore wanted to demonstrate that identifying "the good" with natural properties fails to capture the semantics appropriately. That is, when we say things are good we may *sometimes* mean "conducive to pleasure" but we may mean at other times something else.

Hume's criticism is straightforward: moralists slip from statements of fact to statements of duty, and he wonders sarcastically what logical principle is at play. He knows there is no such principle. But idiots ever since have taken it as a challenge rather than the admonition that it was.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 13:14:21 2014 No.6432494

Harris combines statements of fact and duty* which excludes him from Hume's criticism (which specifically targets the relating of two statements). I'm not sure whether you were agreeing or disagreeing since you didn't explicitly address Harris's arguments but I thought I'd clear that up either way.

>*duty isn't an effective word for reasons i stated earlier and I'm not entirely sure what word to use, but it would have to describe taking action to achieve a goal that is based on a persons moral values. Duty implies that it's owed to somebody or something and to not do so would be inherently wrong, which doesn't make sense.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 13:20:52 2014 No.6432513 >>6432494 I haven't read him since the End of Faith because he was quite a poor read once he moved outside of criticism of religion.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 15:07:08 2014 No.6432759

>>6432443

False. While using your own subjective experiences to judge an entire group of people without ever knowing all of them is a better excuse than using nothing but prejudice to do the same... it's still wrong.

I know several drug addicts who are genuinely good people, and don't hurt others through any means at all. Kind of what you'd expect, since whatever gets defined as a an illegal "drug" depends entirely on where you are. Still, to a lot of people it's just entertainment no different from cigarettes and alcohol, or videogames, and I do feel it's wrong that they get condemned based on the actions of others who can't handle their shit. Or worse, based on laws that are anything but just. Laws that prevent all officially impartial and objective discussion about the subject at all, for fear of legal and social retribution.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 15:49:08 2014 No.6432866 With a sufficiently large computer and a sufficiently good understanding of the human brain, it should be possible to obtain a complete and objective analysis of one person's morality. Moreover, morality in broader terms is well explained by evolution.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 16:02:38 2014 No.6432894 >>6432866 >Moreover, morality in broader terms is well explained by evolution. Not particularly.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 16:05:08 2014 No.6432899 >>6432894 Yes particularly. I hope to fuck that you're some edgy reddit libertarian who thinks evolution only acts on the level of the individual.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 16:11:08 2014 No.6432909 No, but morals definitely increase the likelihood of progression

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 17:36:39 2014 No.6433067 >>6430936 The quanta of morality isn't "Good" and "Bad" It's free will. Meditate upon this wisdom.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 17:39:39 2014 No.6433075 >>6432899 Evolution has nothing to say on morality. It is neither a feature nor a consequence of the theory.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 17:45:49 2014 No.6433087 Morals are beneficial to intelligent species. Thoughts?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 17:55:51 2014 No.6433111 >>6433087 That's true. Feeling bad about killing other members of the species is obviously beneficial. The question is, is ethics only a man-made, social construct?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 17:59:22 2014 No.6433118 >>6433111 Yes, just like gravity

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:04:52 2014 No.6433134

Morality is a classification of a code of behaviors that necessarily revolves around how free willed individuals behave towards other free willed individuals.

For example:

If someone kills someone else.... it is BAD if the murdered person didn't want to die.

However, what if the murdered person DID want to die?

If someone takes something from someone else, it is theft....

Unless the person who lost the item GAVE it to them, or agreed that they could take it... which makes it a gift, as opposed to theft.

If two people have sex, if one of them didn't want to have the sex, it is bad...

However, if both people wanted to have sex, it is good.

In essence, Morality can be easily defined (Objectively, for that matter) as that which harms someones person, possessions, or freedom... in violation of their free will.

Person, because your body belongs to you alone, which is the essence of being a free willed individual.

Freedom, because your body belongs to you alone, which is the essence of being a free willed individual.

Property, because your freedom of action belongs to you alone, which is the essence of being a free willed individual.

A violation of one of these fundamental rights, against your consent, is a crime, and by definition, morally "bad"

What you do to yourself is "Amoral" because morality does not describe what you choose to do to yourself... if you are doing it to yourself, by definition, you agree that it should be done, else you wouldn't be doing it to yourself.

Morality is quite simple to define in black and white terms.

The tricky part is that humans are not BORN as free willed individuals, we have to grow into it.

Which is why pretty much all civilizations have something simmilar to "Age of Majority", "Age of Consent", or "Age of Contract"... the age at which the individual is legally recognized as being capable of free willed behavior, as opposed to just blindly following the instincts they were born with, like an animal.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:08:02 2014 No.6433147 >>6433134 Good start but you lost me at "person" "freedom" "property". These are all human concepts, how can they contribute to a discussion on whether morality is relative or universal?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:20:32 2014 No.6433172 >>6433134 That isn't objective morality. That is subjective morality. You can tell because the morality of an action is contextualized in terms of subjects.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:20:32 2014 No.6433173

>>6433147
>Good start but you lost me at "person" "freedom" "property".

"Person" is your body, the physical vessel that your consciousness and free will resides in.

Fairly universal, I would think... unless you can think of some counterexamples?

"Freedom" is one's freedom of action, your ability to move, act, and behave as you see fit, without being constrained by an outside free willed agency, or agent.

"Property" in this sense refers to not being a slave.

You own what you work for, what you earn... because if you DIDN'T own what you work for, then your actions and behaviors have obviously been taken by some outside free willed agency, which violates your freedom of action and behavior.

They have essentially made you a slave, whose product of labor are taken from them without compensation, against their will.

Questions?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:21:02 2014 No.6433176 >>6433111 >ethics only a man-made, social construct? Yes, and I don't see whats wrong with that. In fact it would be more meaningful if we made it up then if you were "given" it by a god or a higher power imo.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:23:32 2014 No.6433179

>>6433172
>That isn't objective morality. That is subjective morality. You can tell because the morality of an action is contextualized in terms of subjects.

No, you are incorrect.

It is objective in the truest sense... it only refers to free willed beings, because it doesn't make sense to say that you can be evil to a rock.

Morality by definition must only apply to free willed individuals...

Hurricanes cannot commit crimes, as they are acts of nature, and not free willed, shit just happens.

Therefore, Morality is an objective determination of the "Correctness" of a behavior as it relates to other free willed individuals.

If it harms them and violates their free will, it is "Wrong"

If it doesn't, then it's "Not"

See what I mean?

It's not subjective at all, it's universal.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:24:32 2014 No.6433181 >>6433173 You cannot 'own' your body or material items. You do not have a 'right' to freedom.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:26:32 2014 No.6433190

>>6433181
>You cannot 'own' your body or material items. You do not have a 'right' to freedom.

So you would be okay with me killing you, and taking all of your shit, then?

You would say that this is "Moral"?

You moral relativists make me sick, you think you can justify any attrocity in the universe by claiming "It's all relative", but you balk at the same thing being done to you.

You, and people like you, are the reason that we have punishments for crimes.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:27:32 2014 No.6433193

Yes it is, but that doesn't mean you can go murder and rape and claim moral subjectivity like some religionfags assume. You still have to answer to your peers and your society.

Also it does not follow that cultural relativism has to be an accepted thing. It's still part of your culture to think another one is messed up.
Most people already agree to disapprove of those sorts of things but agree that it isn't really worth going to war over.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:28:02 2014 No.6433197

>>6433181
Let me put it to you this way:

>You cannot 'own' your body

My body is my own.

>or material items.

My freedom my own, and what I do with my body is my own buisiness.

>You do not have a 'right' to freedom.

The only thing that would prevent me from having freedom, is if you used force to imprison me.... and you don't have the right.

Bitch.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:30:03 2014 No.6433207 >>6433181 >You cannot 'own' your body Are you claiming that someone other than me can own my body? But that I cannot? Bitch?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:31:33 2014 No.6433209 >>6433207 No, no one 'owns' anything. It is a human concept

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:32:03 2014 No.6433214 >>6433181 >You cannot 'own' your body As the sole free willed consciousness that inhabits my body, I reserve the sovereign right of ownership over my body.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:35:33 2014 No.6433222

>>6433209
>No, no one 'owns' anything. It is a human concept

Ownership: the act, state, or right of possessing something.

Possession: the state of having, owning, or controlling something.

I own my body because I inhabit my body, therefore I have the sovereign right to control my body.

Stop trying to state that I belong to the state, you raging jackass.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:36:33 2014 No.6433231 >>6433190 No, why would I be okay with you killing me? Of course it's immoral, at least to me. Do you think animals consider hunters immoral?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:36:33 2014 No.6433232 >>6433222 He's not saying that you belong to the state. He's saying that the concept of "ownership" itself is entirely a man-made construct.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:37:33 2014 No.6433234 >>6433231 >Do you think animals consider hunters immoral? Do you think that animals can consider?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:38:03 2014 No.6433240 >>6433234 Now we're getting somewhere. I'm sure they can to an extent, but not morally. So morals are not universal.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:38:33 2014 No.6433237

>>6433232
>He's saying that the concept of "ownership" itself is entirely a man-made construct.

No, the word is manmade, but the concept is not.

Ownership the the sole ability to control something.

Are you saying that your ability to control your own body is a social construct?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:40:33 2014 No.6433243 >>6433237 You cannot control your body while sleeping or unconscious.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:41:03 2014 No.6433247

>>6433240
>So morals are not universal.

No, morals ARE universal, they just don't apply to non-sentient beings, because morals are a determination of free willed behavior.

You cannot call the actions of a storm "Moral" or "Immoral", it does not have conciousness, sentience, etc...

It's a fallacious argument to claim that just because morals don't apply to rocks, means that morals aren't universal.

It's like saying that 1+1=2 isn't universal, because not all numbers are 1.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:41:33 2014 No.6433244 >>6433237 >Ownership the the sole ability to control something. Yes, of course; that's different from what I was talking about. I'm talking about ownership as an ethical concept, or an inalienable right. In this sense, it's a man-made construct.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:42:03 2014 No.6433250

>>6433240
>animals don't have morality, so it's not real.
What? No.

Animals can't conceive of mathematics and physics. Does that make it "not universal?"

Of course morality is not universal in the sense that non-intelligent beings can't conceive of it. That doesn't make it "not universal."

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:43:04 2014 No.6433253

>>6433243
>You cannot control your body while sleeping or unconscious.

So if I murder you in your sleep, that is moral?

If I knock you out before I kill you, that's alright?

The split second that you become unconcious, all of your rights end, eh?

Is that what you are saying?

My right of ownership over my body remains as long as my conciousness inhabits my body... whether I am asleep or not, my conciousness remains, it is just inactive for a period of time, it's not "Gone"

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:44:03 2014 No.6433258

>>6433250
>Of course morality is not universal in the sense that non-intelligent beings can't conceive of it. That doesn't make it "not universal."

Exactly, Morality applies to free willed individuals, no matter where they are in the universe.

Hence, Morality is objective and universal.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:45:03 2014 No.6433260 >>6433179 >It is objective in the truest sense... it only refers to free willed beings, because it doesn't make sense to say that you can be evil to a rock. That is word salad.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:46:03 2014 No.6433265 >>6433260 >That is word salad. Nice rebuttal... I guess responding to what I said is just too damn hard, and ad homenims are easier, eh?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:46:33 2014 No.6433261 Can we just agree that some moral laws are just absolute truth? Harm should not befall those who have not done anything immoral. There. From that, all of ethics can be derived.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:49:03 2014 No.6433276

>>6433261
>Harm should not befall those who have not done anything immoral.

You should differentiate between harm caused by free willed actions, and harm caused by natural occurances.

An innocent being murdered is a crime...

An innocent being killed by lightning isn't a crime, because weather is Amoral.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:51:04 2014 No.6433287

>>6433261
Oh for fuck's sake. Morals are a man made concept which are influenced by emotion. If there happens to be an advanced technological species somewhere in the universe, can you be certain that they have emotion? Of course not. However, they might feel that murder and theft are wrong, because it puts the species as a whole at a disadvantage. How are you going to get anything done when people are killing each other and looting? They would find it wrong because it is harmful to progression, not because it is inherently right or wrong

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:52:03 2014 No.6433291 >>6433287 >Morals are a man made concept which are influenced by emotion. Strawman.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:52:33 2014 No.6433289

>>6433276
We can still call it immoral,
in the sense that if we ever gain the technology to stop lightning from killing innocent people it would be immoral not to implement it.
Or if we find a way to cure cancer, it would be immoral not to make sure everyone who has cancer receives the cure.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:53:03 2014 No.6433295 >>6433287 >we can't be sure they have emotion >however, they might FEEL that murder and theft are wrong wut? Contradiction.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:54:03 2014 No.6433299 >>6433295 Switch 'feel' with 'view'

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:55:03 2014 No.6433302

>>6433289
>We can still call it immoral,

No, we can't call it immoral, because weather doesn't have agency, it doesn't make choices...

Are you going to take the clouds to court, and put them in jail for flooding a town?

That would be silly.

>in the sense that if we ever gain the technology to stop lightning from killing innocent people it would be immoral not to implement it.

No, it would be impractical not to implement it, not immoral.

This is like saying that:

"Because using bows and arrows make it easier to hunt than using spears, not using bows and arrows is immoral."

It's not immoral to not use bows and arrows, it's just impractical.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:56:03 2014 No.6433306 >>6433299 >Switch 'feel' with 'view' Editing your bullshit argument until someone buys it, eh?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:57:03 2014 No.6433308 >>6433306 No, just changing a word so autists like you can get past semantics

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 18:58:03 2014 No.6433310

>>6433308
>No, just changing a word so autists like you can get past semantics

It's not semantics, it's bullshit.

Your entire argument is bullshit...

You are postulating that a hypothetical alien lifeform wouldn't mind being killed against it's will.

You are being retarded.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:00:04 2014 No.6433316 >>6433310 Where did I say it wouldn't mind being killed? It would mind because survival is the goal, not because murder is wrong.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:01:03 2014 No.6433319 >>6433308 You moral relativists are all the same, you are trying to use pseudo-philosophical sounding words, and bullshit logical fallacies to attempt to justify the immoral actions that you want to do.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:02:03 2014 No.6433323 >>6433316 >Where did I say it wouldn't mind being killed? It would mind because survival is the goal, not because murder is wrong. Then you are saying that harming someone by violating free will isn't wrong?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:03:03 2014 No.6433324 >>6433319 >>>/pol/ Your type are hilariously easy to spot.

>>	BioMed !!1JEgcrDzIzk Sun Mar 23 19:03:03 2014 No.6433326 it's pretty simple, don't do to others what you wouldn't want others to do to you after that it's subjective

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:04:03 2014 No.6433330

>>6433324
>Your type are hilariously easy to spot.

Are you implying that I'm having a political argument, as opposed to a logical discussion about morality?

Is this just another ad homenim because you can't provide a valid argument against my position?

You're type are hilariously easy to sopt.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:05:04 2014 No.6433337 >>6433331 >It is neither wrong or right. You are why we have jails, to remove from society people who think that murder isn't wrong.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:05:33 2014 No.6433331 >>6433323 It is neither wrong or right.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:06:33 2014 No.6433341 >>6433265 There's nothing to rebut. I called you a subjectivist and you got mad, then doubled down on subjectivism.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:07:33 2014 No.6433344 >>6433337 I DO think murder is wrong, because I am a human driven by emotion. You are fucking retarded, I'm not going to reply anymore.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:08:03 2014 No.6433351
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>>6430936
Yes
However, it is also a kinda collective.

Meaning, if society thinks something is inmoral, then most people think it is.

For example, being gay. Today, society is making the transition between thinking being gay is bad, to something not viewed as bad

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:09:33 2014 No.6433356

>>6433341
>There's nothing to rebut. I called you a subjectivist and you got mad

Sure there is something to rebut.

First of all, rebut my position that morality is objective.

Then, explain why you think I am a subjectivist, when I am espousing objective morality.

Because so far, you haven't actually said anything of substance, you are just hurling insults in a vain and childish grab for attention, and to distract attention away from the actual discussion.

Post something other than name calling, for fuck sakes...

I can't take you seriously until you do.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:17:03 2014 No.6433366

>>6433356
You are calling it objective, but a rose by any other name.

Check wikipedia:
>Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
>1 Ethical sentences express propositions.
>2 Some such propositions are true.
>3 Those propositions are about the attitudes of people.

See also:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/moral-subjectivism-versus-relativism.html

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:18:33 2014 No.6433370 >>6433366 >You are calling it objective, but a rose by any other name. please explain how any of that bullshit applies to what I am saying. Go ahead, i'll wait, bitch.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:22:35 2014 No.6433381

>>6433370
You said, quite plainly:
>In essence, Morality can be easily defined (Objectively, for that matter) as that which harms someones person, possessions, or freedom... in violation of their free will.
This is subjective, not objective, because, quite clearly, it is about the attitudes of subjects.

You can see here:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism
>Subjectivism (as it will be called here) allows that moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be specified, constituted by our mental activity.
Enjoy.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:29:08 2014 No.6433408

>>6433381
>This is subjective, not objective, because, quite clearly, it is about the attitudes of subjects.

It is not about attitudes, it is about choice.

Choice is not an emotion.

Choice is a choice, you fuck.

>>Subjectivism (as it will be called here) allows that moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be specified, constituted by our mental activity.

That doesn't apply, because the moral facts exist independantly of our cognition, they are catagories of objective actions, based on whether or not those actions cause harm against the free will of the victim.

Are you claiming that free will is subjective?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:35:08 2014 No.6433424 >>6433408 No one brought up emotions. I really don't understand what the problem is. You simply have confused your terminology and I am correcting it.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:42:38 2014 No.6433438

>>6433424
>No one brought up emotions.

From your source:

"Subjectivism (as it will be called here) allows that moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be specified, constituted by our mental activity. The slogan version comes from Hamlet: 'there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'"

>"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

This is a summarized definition of subjectivity, you are posing that (What I am saying is: the reason that something is immoral is because we THINK that it is immoral.

And this is fallacious, because I said no such thing, and this is a misrepresentation of my position.

My position is that the Actions which violate free will and cause harm are immoral.

There is no perception element about the objective nature of this moral judgment.

Free will is an objective truth, we are humans, and we are capable of acting contrary to our instincts by conscious choice.

Thus, we are free willed.

If we do not WANT to be murderded, and someone murders us anyway, they have violated our free will...

Every part of this is objective, nothing about it is subjective.

The immorality of murder isn't dependent upon a mind state.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:43:08 2014 No.6433442 >>6433438 Cont: IT's not Immoral because we BELIEVE that it is immoral It is immoral because it violates our free will.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:52:39 2014 No.6433454

>>6433438
You are very stubbornly resisting being called a subjectivist for reasons which I simply am unable to fathom. Do you consider it an insult or something?

>My position is that the Actions which violate free will and cause harm are immoral.
Free will is something that subjects exercise. The website I gave above stated:
> Subjectivism (as it will be called here) allows that moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be specified, constituted by our mental activity.
It seems you just specified it.

I don't see what your problem is. It's a perfectly straightforward classification, lots of people are subjectivists of some sort, including myself; it's a pretty innocuous position. I assume that you don't gouge out your own "emotional" eyes because all they offer you is a subjective view of the world, eh?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 19:57:08 2014 No.6433465 >>6433442 You are either a troll or suffer from a mental deficiency.

sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:01:08 2014 No.6433474

>>6430936
>Is morality subjective?
Yes.
>>6430938
He defined morality as that which results in maximum human flourishing and then said there was a landscape of "right answers." I don't think he really argues for a one, true, objective morality.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:01:08 2014 No.6433476 >>6433474 so he's just a virtue ethicist.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:05:08 2014 No.6433484

>>6433454
>Do you consider it an insult or something?

You are trying to call objectivism, subjectivism...

I will not abide this orwellian newspeak bullshit.

I really won't.

>Free will is something that subjects exercise.

And breathing is something that subjects exercise.

Explain how this is subjective, as opposed to objective.

>I don't see what your problem is.

Your label doesn't apply.

We are not talking about what someone who has free will perceives subjectivly..

we are talking about the objective fact that they have free will, and that it was violated.

IT's not subjective at all, in any way, shape or form.

Furthermore, the definition of "Subjectivism" you have cited is far too vague to be used in any meaningful sense.

The webpage itself calls a car a subjective object.

"Something may be mind-independent in one sense and mind-dependent in another. Cars, for example, are designed and constructed by creatures with minds, and yet in another sense cars are clearly concrete, non-subjective entities."

So, you see now why your label doesn't apply, because it's a useless classification that includes everything that can possible exist.

Technically speaking, this definition of "subjective" includes objective facts, like that 1+1=2, Or the existence of hydrogen atoms.... because they are perceived by a mind.

It's pointless bullshit.

sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:06:38 2014 No.6433486
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>>6433476
>virtue ethicist
No I think he's more of a utilitarian than a virtue ethicist. He's also a brilliant atheist who has done much to show the evils of religion and gOD.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:07:08 2014 No.6433487 >>6433465 >You are either a troll or suffer from a mental deficiency. Nice addition to the discussion, would you like to try debating now? as opposed to just hurling insults?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:08:38 2014 No.6433492 >>6433486 But utilitarianism is fucking rubbish.

>>	sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:09:09 2014 No.6433496 >>6433492 Whatever. It's been a few years since I read his book. His moral framework is certainly better than some skyfundie's KKKommandments.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:10:09 2014 No.6433497 >>6433486 >If a person doesnt value god, what possible god could you show them that would show the importance of a creator

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:11:08 2014 No.6433506 >>6433487 No, because this has no definitive right or wrong answer. This debate is just a pissing contest that will cause us both to lose hours of time for 0 gain. Peace

>>	sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:11:38 2014 No.6433505 >>6433497 gOD doesn't exist fundie! It's not a good analogy.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:15:08 2014 No.6433519 >>6433506 >No, because this has no definitive right or wrong answer. It does, in fact. Do you want to be murdered?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:17:38 2014 No.6433526 >>6433519 I worded that wrong. It has an answer, but no one on Earth knows what it is.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:18:08 2014 No.6433534

>>6433484
You are clearly operating under some preconceived notions of what "subjectivism" means which are at odds with how the word is actually used in the context of morality. You seem to also be confusing objectivism with absolutism. I also can't tell if your position is normative or meta-ethical, so maybe you're confusing it not with absolutism but with universalism, though frankly I don't really care to discover what your opinion is if it requires me to slog through your posts and replace all the words you use incorrectly for the words that actually make sense in this context.

But please do understand that moral subjectivism is not, as you suggest here >>6433442, hinged on beliefs. Some subjectivists may indeed think so, but it isn't a bijection. It only requires, quite plainly, a dependence on subjects. In your case, subjects which exhibit free will.

Your problem with the car example is truly pointless. The classification of "subjectivism" is very broad and because of that particular subjectivists have the burden of defining or otherwise selecting what are "subjects" and what aren't, and how morality is "about" them. This is characteristic of all formulations of philosophical positions. Far from being meaningless, it allows abstracting over various subjectivisms in order to describe features they have in common, much like using a variable instead of a number.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:20:08 2014 No.6433537 >>6433526 >but no one on Earth knows what it is. Of course they do, Hell, I KNOW what the correct answer is, and I'm trying to enlighten you. DO YOU WANT TO BE MURDERED. Just answer the question.

>>	sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:20:38 2014 No.6433538 File: 17 KB, 240x210, now that's what i call edgy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6433519 >Do you want to be murdered?

>>	sweboo !q0qn6sagek Sun Mar 23 20:21:39 2014 No.6433544 File: 64 KB, 404x342, le edgy face.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6433537 >DO YOU WANT TO BE MURDERED.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:23:08 2014 No.6433554 >>6433537 Why are you thinking in terms of only humans? Why don't you think morals are relative?

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:23:38 2014 No.6433556

>>6433534
>It only requires, quite plainly, a dependence on subjects. In your case, subjects which exhibit free will.

And the existance of stars is also subjective because it depends upon subjects, in this case, subjects over a certain mass whose gravitational pressure is large enough for sustained fusion to occur within them.

Therefore, the existence of stars is subjective.

Your argument is pedantic, and puerile.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:24:38 2014 No.6433561 >>6433554 >Why are you thinking in terms of only humans? I'm thinking in terms of sentient, free willed individuals. >Why don't you think morals are relative? because they are clearly objective.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:25:38 2014 No.6433567 >>6433556 >I can create a trivial theory >therefore all theories are trivial How did you even end up on this board? You don't seem to have a grasp of anything.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:26:08 2014 No.6433570 >>6433567 >How did you even end up on this board? You don't seem to have a grasp of anything. Are you denying that the existance of stars depends upon subjects?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:26:08 2014 No.6433573 >>6433561 >moral (noun) >a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do. Debate over

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:29:09 2014 No.6433586 >>6433567 I'm sorry, but whenever talk, all I hear is: "Objective things are social constructs" IT's sad.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:30:08 2014 No.6433592 >>6433586 >but whenever YOU talk FTFM

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:36:08 2014 No.6433617 Wow,this thread about "objectivism"even for /sci/ has too much "muh feels".

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:40:39 2014 No.6433632

>>6433570
You really are quite peculiar.

Here's an example of a very simple, non-subjective moral system: everything is permissible, except killing another living thing. Of course there are still subjects because this is part of the grammar of human languages. But, with respect to the moral system in question, applying the rule does NOT depend on whether or not something is a subject. Indeed, we could even posit that for the purposes of cognition, salmonella bacteria are immoral even though they don't have a subjective experience. Supernovas are immoral, if they happen near life. I make no claims that this is a suitable moral system. But it is not going to fall under subjectivism.

Here's an example of a very simple, subjective moral system: everything is permissible, except killing living things that don't want to be killed. Here an action at one time can be moral, and another time that same action immoral, based on the attitudes of a subject. It doesn't matter that the subject with the disposition isn't the moral agent. The moral agent's disposition can be totally irrelevant. Intentions of the actor don't have to matter.

I hope this clarifies things.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:45:48 2014 No.6433646 >>6433632 >everything is permissible, except killing another living thing. Causing harm to a sentient being against their will is not permissible. And yet mine is subjective, and yours isn't for some reason... figure that one out, eh?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:45:48 2014 No.6433647 Define "morality".

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:46:48 2014 No.6433653 >>6433646 What?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:49:45 2014 No.6433662 >>6433647 >Define "morality". >>6433134

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 20:59:16 2014 No.6433695
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>>6430936
Maybe.
Are you going to use that as an excuse to abstain from subscribing to any moral guidelines whatsoever?
The whole point is that you believe it out of your own sovereign will.
You fucks think that if everybody doesn't believe the same thing then they must all be wrong to an equal extent.
Quit considering the world from an imaginary standpoint.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 21:56:15 2014 No.6433883

>>6433075
morality is required to sustain a society and societies survive better than individuals/disorganised groups meaning that evolution does predict morality.
>>6433134
This is too simplistic, you shouldn't presuppose free will, especially without carefully defining it first. Furthermore your morality is by definition subjective.
>If someone takes something from someone else, it is theft....
>Unless the person who lost the item GAVE it to them, or agreed that they could take it... which makes it a gift, as opposed to theft.
It could be entirely subjective whether the item was given or stolen, making the good/bad judgement built upon opinion and this applies to most of your examples.

If you'd be willing to get rid of the words good, bad and objective you could quite easily define a morality which isn't based on unjustified presuppositions but people are too scared of being compared to Hitler or some other dictator. Just think about why we have morality and how you could derive without utilising god/s, freewill, objectivity, consciousness etc...

>>6433190
>>6433181
>>6433214
>>6433214
The lack of thinking on the part of you and your intellectual cohort really gets on my nerves, you could avoid retarded posts like this if you either educated yourself more or just thought about the subject for more than 10 seconds.
What good are your rights if there's nobody that agrees / nobody around to uphold them? Sorry pal universal rights don't exist, only human made ones. (If you don't believe me to north Korea and get yourself locked up, I'm sure they'd be willing to listen to you when you talk about your right for freedom).
And before you sob out the "my rights still exist even if you don't recognise them" bullshit, then having rights is a completely meaningless phrase, since I could claim I have a right to rape your family before killing them in-front of your bounded body and there'd be nothing you could say or do to prove me wrong.

This thread is full of retards

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:01:45 2014 No.6433897

>>6433883
>morality is required to sustain a society
Which one?
>evolution does predict morality
If god came down from heaven and said that he set the universe in motion and then never interfered again, and oh by the way this is what's moral and that isn't and so on, would evolution be disproved?

No, it wouldn't.

Ergo, hence, and therefore, etc

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:01:45 2014 No.6433899

>>6433883
> you shouldn't presuppose free will, especially without carefully defining it first.

I already did... the capacity to choose to act contrary to our instincts.

>It could be entirely subjective whether the item was given or stolen

lol

Does the person who it belonged to want it back?

>The lack of thinking on the part of you and your intellectual cohort really gets on my nerves

Coming from someone who thinks that theft is subjective, this means absolutely nothing.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:24:54 2014 No.6433982

>>6433899
Do you honestly think theft can't be subjective or are you trolling me?
If you give me something and i sincerely think it's a gift and 5 of the 10 people watching thinks its a gift, then the person giving it didn't intend it to be a gift and 5 of the 10 onlookers also thought it wasn't meant to be a gift, is it a theft if he doesn't give it back? What if there are 100 people looking on who think it's a gift and so does the reciever, but it wasn't the intention of the giver, is that a theft? If you can't construct scenarios like this that would test your black and white views then you don't belong here.

>>6433897
>two non-exclusive hypothesis predict one outcome
>therefore if we know one is true the other must be false
you're a genius m8
what if we found out one of the fossils used as evolution was planted, would that make the theory wrong too?
>>>/pol/

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:25:24 2014 No.6433985 >>6433982 >is it a theft if he doesn't give it back? Does the guy who it belonged to think it was a gift? You moron?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:28:24 2014 No.6433991 >>6433982 >non-exclusive hypothesis Oh, you mean evolution doesn't have anything to do with morality, except when you want it to, and is cool even if it doesn't, except when I want it to? SWEET SCIENCE BRO

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:37:54 2014 No.6434016

>>6433985
So if i give you a car and say "here you go", you think it's a gift and so do 100000 people onlooking, then I come back years later and say I want the car back because I didn't intend it to be as a gift, you're forced to give it back to me? What about something like a house which has more sentimental value which you've come to cherish over the last few years of living in it, moved all your possessions into and it would be difficult for you to move into a new place since the pricing in your neighborhood is too high, you'd need to move to a different city, take your kids out of their school all because I decided I want the house back which you were utterly convinced was a gift, and so were the hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed the "giving". Does that make you a thief for not wanting to move? Just think for yourself and stop being a fucking idiot, I shouldn't have to point out these scenarios. And if your next post is like your last few then I won't respond because you're probably a troll.

>>6433991
Can't tell if trolling or serious. You have two hypothesis that can co-exist, A and B. Both hypothesis predict X. X is observed and so is B. According to you that means A is not true. It takes about half a week in a first year logic course to see how retarded you are, pick up a book or something.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:48:24 2014 No.6434038 >>6434016 Please explain how some empirical fact about morality would falsify evolution.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 22:57:55 2014 No.6434058 >>6434016 >So if i give you a car and say "here you go", you think it's a gift and so do 100000 people onlooking So, you are saying that you didn't want it back? Moron?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:03:54 2014 No.6434070 >>6434038 By itself it wouldn't completely falsify evolution but it would be evidence against it if "morality" was not accommodative to humans living in groups

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:08:24 2014 No.6434080 >>6434070 That sounds suspiciously like an empty statement.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:08:24 2014 No.6434081

>>6434058
>So if i give you a car and say "here you go", you think it's a gift and so do 100000 people onlooking
>So, you are saying that you didn't want it back?
implying the person that says "here you go" doesn't mean "have this for a while" and as you stated earlier
>Does the person who it belonged to want it back?
Which unless you're saying the person who gave it can want it back at any time, means that it's the intention of whether the person gives expecting to get it back some day or whether he's giving it for keeps that really matters.

Don't bother responding because none of your posts here have had any worth while content and I certainly won't bother responding to you again.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:09:24 2014 No.6434082 >>6434080 evidence is not empty, evidence builds up to make a case

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:10:08 2014 No.6434084

>>6434081
>Adding in additional context that wasn't previously mentioned to justify his stupidity.

Seriously dude, just fuck off... you are wrong, deal with it.

>and I certainly won't bother responding to you again.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Yes you will.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:11:08 2014 No.6434086

>>6434082
What I mean is I know how a scientific theory can make predictions and therefore be shown to be false in light of evidence, and if your position is still that the theory of evolution entails some kind of theory of morality, I should like to know what that is; or, if you cannot do this, I should like to know what kind of moral fact would falsify it.

Otherwise I would ask that you please realize that evolution doesn't have anything at all to say about morality but some people have tried to leverage the theme of evolution and paste it onto philosophy in some non-scientific fashion.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:23:01 2014 No.6434104

>>6434086
Evolution is the theory that describes how we mould over time to survive best our environment, humans survive best in groups and groups survive best when certain guidelines are followed, such as not stealing from/killing other group members for no good reason, such as not doing to other people what you wouldn't want them to do to you, since it would cause conflict within the group and make it more difficult to survive. Therefore over time the groups who have these values survive better and reproduce, causing these group values/general guidelines to pass on.

There's an example of how morality follows from evolution, whether evolution entails morality I don't know, but I do know it seems like a coherent product of evolution and thus evidence for it.

Anonymous Sun Mar 23 23:46:01 2014 No.6434134

>>6434104
That's a nice story. Here's a story: your moral system can only work in hindsight, and only when you have enough information to distinguish between all the selection pressures that are conflated in the process. If an asteroid falls tomorrow and wipes out all of North America, what morality is selected for? If several asteroids come and just happen to land exactly on democratic countries, killing everyone in them, does this mean that the principle of self-administration is immoral?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 00:09:31 2014 No.6434157 >>6434134 what the hell are you talking about

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 00:12:01 2014 No.6434163 >>6434157 That there is no moral content in the theory of evolution, just like evolution isn't "leading somewhere" or evolution does not say that any two species are "more evolved" than another.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 00:41:13 2014 No.6434216 >>6434163 please address a point i brought up and argue against that

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 00:46:13 2014 No.6434222 Of course morality is subjective. It's the most subjective thing there is.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 00:59:00 2014 No.6434240

>>6434216
Your grasp of evolution is already very poor so it's hard to even know where to begin to say something that might make you reconsider your wicked ways. For instance,

>Evolution is the theory that describes how we mould over time to survive best our environment
It isn't. There is no "best."

>humans survive best in groups and groups survive best when certain guidelines are followed
Non sequitur, even if it is true, which it might be, at this time and place in our evolutionary history, but since we're always evolving this kind of observation is at best just of historical interest.

>such as not stealing from/killing other group members for no good reason, such as not doing to other people what you wouldn't want them to do to you, since it would cause conflict within the group and make it more difficult to survive.
What about killing other people? That's been a fairly historically successful form of action. You know, actions, things people do based on some kind of moral outlook.

>Therefore over time the groups who have these values survive better and reproduce, causing these group values/general guidelines to pass on.
Unless they get the plague, I guess then they just had bad morals and we should look to the other moral systems other societies had. Oh wait, then there was the huge explosion after the plague. So I guess we should actually all get sick?

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 01:13:30 2014 No.6434259

>>6434240
>It isn't. There is no "best."
There my be no "best" but I was making the point that we evolve over time to survive in our environment, so rather than call out a technicality next time how about actually making a point

>Non sequitur, even if it is true, which it might be, at this time and place in our evolutionary history, but since we're always evolving this kind of observation is at best just of historical interest.
It's a non-sequitar because I figured people would be able to join the dots.
Working in a group is more efficient and effective than working individually
Working in a group requires cohesion/teamwork
Teamwork requires a set of basic principles by which each team member operates, usually unspoken guidlines (or if you like a subconscious understanding) such as I won't randomly decide to stab you in the spine as soon as you look away from me. A team can only work efficiently with these understandings in place.
Therefore groups survive best (through teamwork/cohesion) when there are underlying guidelines in place. Without these guidelines you could barely even call it a group.

>What about killing other people? That's been a fairly historically successful form of action. You know, actions, things people do based on some kind of moral outlook.
Occasionally killing other people is required for survival, this does absolutely nothing to counter what I've said

>Unless they get the plague, I guess then they just had bad morals and we should look to the other moral systems other societies had. Oh wait, then there was the huge explosion after the plague. So I guess we should actually all get sick?
This seems completely irrelevant, occasionally natural disasters happen and people get wiped out, it doesn't change the fact that you're so much more likely to survive if you work in groups.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 01:20:00 2014 No.6434272

>>6434259
>There my be no "best" but I was making the point that we evolve over time to survive in our environment
But this doesn't happen, either.

>It's a non-sequitar because I figured people would be able to join the dots.
Why would they, when, if they have any understanding of evolution whatsoever, know that evolution has created creatures which, essentially, do not form "packs." Many of which have been around a lot longer than us.

Maybe you should look into their moral systems, which they must have, because they evolved, right?

>Occasionally killing other people is required for survival, this does absolutely nothing to counter what I've said
It does because the fucking point of a moral system is to decide what to do before you do it, not to figure out what maybe you sort of should have done after the fact in some weird giant historical contrapositive.

>This seems completely irrelevant, occasionally natural disasters happen and people get wiped out, it doesn't change the fact that you're so much more likely to survive if you work in groups.
It seems that way now but that doesn't prove anything. And that is the point. It can't. Evolution doesn't have anything to do with morality.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 01:26:46 2014 No.6434280 Yes, morality has an objective existence just like laws or holidays or other cultural traditions.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 02:26:39 2014 No.6434346
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nobody here has defined morality.

>"The differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" or "bad"

Problem: good and bad are words based on morality, we have entered a roundabout, what direction are we traveling?
what is Good is subjective, fact.
what is Bad is subjective, fact.
the sum of morality is therefor is the dualistic paradigm of human behavior that allows us to select a viable path for progress.

the irony here is that progress is subjective. In the context of a universe where all things are causal and life does not exist, there is no morality. Subjectivity is an *ineptitude
subjectivity is the deciphering of data without the use of quantifiable units
with no mind, all things are objective
with a perfect mind, all things are objective
with a human mind, all things are subjective, but progress is succeeded by the exploitation of objective.
there is no reason to live, we provide ourselves with reasons, and we *Feel compelled to continue to live, but unless you are theistic, there is no quantifiable, universal, reason to live, or to not kill ones self.
the reason 1+1=2 is because the quantities have names and proof is provided in the instance of their sum by the names we give them. This is subjective objectivity. We SUBJECT things to names, and we give them objectives like Sum.
I choose to not kill myself is because my mind is afraid of death and stimulated by life.
MORALITY is the substantiation of that which we like and that which we don’t like, whether its rape or marshmallows, by how we feel about it.
like any formula, whether morality is assigned a negative or a positive value is dependent on the values that we SUBJECT IT TO.
and like a math, we can give objective to the subjects. Sorry that IS math.
there is just as much of a reason for Reason itself as there is a reason for morality, morality is subjective but with enough data and a system can be viewed objectively, just like everything else we calculate.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 02:31:38 2014 No.6434352

>>6434272
>But this doesn't happen, either.
I'm not sure if you're trying to pick up on my equivocation of evolution and evolution by natural selection or you just have no idea what you're talking about

>Why would they, when, if they have any understanding of evolution whatsoever, know that evolution has created creatures which, essentially, do not form "packs." Many of which have been around a lot longer than us.
>Maybe you should look into their moral systems, which they must have, because they evolved, right?
I don't know what you're trying to say here

>It does because the fucking point of a moral system is to decide what to do before you do it, not to figure out what maybe you sort of should have done after the fact in some weird giant historical contrapositive.
Not sure what you're trying to say here either. Survival is the key, we've developed certain mindsets/guidelines for survival and some we've called our morality. These guidelines are useful for many situations but they don't apply everywhere and we aren't forced to follow them.

To be clear I'm NOT arguing we should follow our instinct morals and I'm NOT arguing what morals we should have. I'm arguing that groups/societies that have what we would call "morals" (some of which likely comes from genetic predisposition) are more likely to survive than those who do not, thus passing those morals on (or at least a gene pool more favored to them) in the same sense that other beneficial evolutionary traits like a bigger beak, stronger legs, smaller body etc... might pass on.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 02:50:39 2014 No.6434370

>>6434352
>To be clear I'm NOT arguing we should follow our instinct morals and I'm NOT arguing what morals we should have. I'm arguing that groups/societies that have what we would call "morals" (some of which likely comes from genetic predisposition)

there is zero proof that good and bad choices within the genome
I mean, are you even thinking about what you're typing? how old are you?
are you implying that our genome carries within it the mental fitness to quantify good and bad scenarios and choices?

like.......................... Like........

theft rape murder wrath war jealousy lying public nudity vandalism cursing smoking drinking exploitation

No, our brains are susceptible to Feeling an emotion that makes us want to do something, or not want to do something. this is a neuro-chemical response
The framework of this neuro-chemical response is learned
the learning comes from how others react to what you do
society generates moral memes based on what is most commonly distinguished as disliked and what is most commonly distinguished as liked

example: murder is distinguished as bad because the framework of our mind as a socially stimulated system has learned from society that those who murder have been victims are treated poorly
our chemistry recognizes the conditions of murder within society, we reflect on it as something that is bad, and react chemically when we murder, or when we witness murder, or when we are in the presence of somebody who may murder, or has murdered.

There is no genome that tells us that murder is bad, the only thing that we can do is understand the pain of the victim(s) of murder and reflect upon it over and over to stimulate a chemical response that denotes murder as bad.

that's why homosexuality is so 'immoral' because being gay has been looked down on so frequently we have adapted a negative chemical response when we witness it.

>>6434346

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 03:01:08 2014 No.6434380 >>6434370 >reading comprehension = level 0

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 03:06:38 2014 No.6434385 >>6434380 >I'm arguing that groups/societies that have what we would call "morals" (some of which likely comes from genetic predisposition) >genetic predisposition no you fucking moron, no. keep believing that

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 03:22:30 2014 No.6434407
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Morality is a largely objective concept, however it does allow for certain deviations.
Though people may diverge on their opinions of certain ideas and beliefs, there is a large consensus among people that certain things fall into the category of "good", while others are labeled as being "bad", such as criminal acts of murder and rape.
No matter which country is in question, heinous criminals are always frowned upon, while the generous and caring are applauded for their
actions.This is a result of human mind's being relatively the same as seen in the form of a socially stimulated construct. Through the ages,humans have evolved into highly social creatures, and a key aspect of our ability to form cohesive groups is to work well with others.
Individuals who do not possess the social abilities to work with others, or who are detrimental to the group, are rejected and ostrocized.
With time, humans have evolved to recognize the distinguishing traits of these undesirable individuals, such as behaviour and actions,
and label them as negative indicators for a person who is not fit for society. As a result, acts of violence, such as killing another person, have been instilled with a negative conotation that is then applied into society in the form of "Morals".
Morals are not subjective because they are not based upon opinion. Instead, they are a static manifestations of human sociological traits,
objective in the way that they do not change drastically from person to person.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 04:16:37 2014 No.6434450 >>6434385 >reading comprehension = level 0

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 04:47:38 2014 No.6434484 Of course it's subjective, it mostly depends on what group you feel a part of, meaning that it's okay to exploit anything outside this group to aid it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 05:01:08 2014 No.6434506 File: 44 KB, 235x236, 1392607238713.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6432153 >2011 >getting trolled this hard

Cogito ergo sum Mon Mar 24 06:15:01 2014 No.6434596

>>6434407
>Morality is a largely objective concept

Wrong.

Wide acceptance and/or general affirmation does not imply objectivity.

Proscriptions against killing other humans may appear to be an objective morality - until you come upon some guy attacking your child. In this case, the ALSO apparently objectively moral response is to toss the other objectively moral beliefe out the window and kill the motherfucker.

Morals can only be objective if they are ALWAYS true, not USUALLY true. It is the rare and unusual instances which show that morals are subjective.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 06:33:11 2014 No.6434612 >>6434596 pretty much this is correct objectivity requires quantifiable values human values are not strict enough

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 06:39:11 2014 No.6434616 >>6430936 Is morality science or math? Is this thread somehow different than every other bullshit thread that has ever popped up on /sci/ about this? No and no. >>>/somewhereelse/

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 06:43:11 2014 No.6434623 >>6434616 ⇒Is morality science or math? Yes, it is. Morality is being researched in neuroscience.

Cogito ergo sum Mon Mar 24 06:50:11 2014 No.6434632

>>6434370
>that's why homosexuality is so 'immoral' because being gay has been looked down on so frequently we have adapted a negative chemical response when we witness it.

Christ. Another fucking fundie parroting the "new and improved world history" that his church teaches him to say.

His church doesn't bother mentioning that the christian church used to perform union ceremonies for male/male pairs as much as they did for male/female pairs.

His church also leaves out the part where nobody gave two shits about gays until the word "homosexual" was invented in the 19th century, and gave the church a label with which to play "holier than thou".

I've got news for you new-age abrahamic fucking jerkoffs: religious fundamentalism sucks FAR more than a stadium full of gays.

Now go pray to your god and tell him to beat me up for you after I'm dead.

Useless assed fucking religious cunts!

Cogito ergo sum Mon Mar 24 06:56:11 2014 No.6434638

>>6434616
>Is this thread somehow different than every other bullshit thread that has ever popped up on /sci/ about this?

Nope. No different.

Look, you morons have your jerry springer, entertainment tonight, soap operas and video games to waste your fucking life away with.

We cranky old mother fuckers have 4chan.

Deal with it. :-)

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 07:19:11 2014 No.6434675

>>6434632
who are you even talking to?
I'm talking about social info affects on neurochemistry you fucking dimwit

I don't give a shit about gays or church, I'm referring to what is seemingly benign (guys fucking other guys) being labeled excessively as immoral.

you idiots don't even know what you're arguing about anymore.

>>	Cogito ergo sum Mon Mar 24 07:47:11 2014 No.6434722 >>6434675 >I'm referring to what is seemingly benign (guys fucking other guys) being labeled excessively as immoral. My sincere apologies, I misunderstood you. I tried to delete my comment, but the chan won't let me.

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 11:08:15 2014 No.6434912

>>6430936
What makes something good and bad?

You will call something good or bad according to some criteria. Why did you pick these criteria? Either you postulated those were the right criteria to decide good from bad, or you picked these criteria according to other criteria. Then either you postulated those other criteria to be the right criteria to pick the right criteria to decide good from bad, or you picked these criteria according to yet other criteria. Rinse and repeat.

Deep down your whole reasoning will be based on postulates, and by definitions postulates are not something you can prove to be right or wrong. What's good or bad will depend on your postulates. Morality is subjective.

>>	Cogito ergo sum Mon Mar 24 15:21:09 2014 No.6435498 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26715516

Anonymous Mon Mar 24 15:24:09 2014 No.6435503

>>6434352
>I'm not sure if you're trying to pick up on my equivocation of evolution and evolution by natural selection or you just have no idea what you're talking about
I'm talking about your entire conception of evolution is flawed. We undergo mutation; the environment kills or fails to kill us. We don't evolve to solve the problem of best living in the environment. We can't stop mutating. There's no teleology.
>I'm arguing that groups/societies that have what we would call "morals" (some of which likely comes from genetic predisposition) are more likely to survive than those who do not, thus passing those morals on (or at least a gene pool more favored to them) in the same sense that other beneficial evolutionary traits like a bigger beak, stronger legs, smaller body etc... might pass on.
Which is a meta-ethical theory, like meta-ethical relativism, and again as I said: evolution has no moral content and has no meta-moral content. You want there to be an evolutionary theory of morality (frankly this is just memetics); but the theory of evolution is not about morality.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 19:56:49 2014 No.6436042 >>6432110 Simple. example 1: 0 example 2: 0 example 3: 0 The "morality" of a thing is a binary question. The thing is good or it's not. Doesn't have anything to do with what you like.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 20:03:20 2014 No.6436063 File: 77 KB, 402x402, 19744761378241.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6432311 <<

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 20:05:19 2014 No.6436068 >>6432070 Just like the multiplication tables. Fucking subjective bullshit

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 24 20:08:49 2014 No.6436076 File: 4 KB, 259x194, 45691735637.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6432388 You just got served

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 07:48:16 2014 No.6436909 >>6432311 >>6432405 Philosophy is the opposite of science. Science is about explaining observations. Philosophy is about making up shit without any basis.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 08:05:16 2014 No.6436919 So I have a degree in Religious Philosophy... what do I do now?

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 08:15:46 2014 No.6436921

Morality is dependent on the evaluative systems housed in the neurology of primates.

It's very much structured by the power that any one primate or a group of primate can have in tandem with their appetites. The morality of a narcissistic sociopath primate could be indefinitely justified provided they have enough power to ward off other evaluative systems. Thankfully, a lot of us have capacities for empathy and such systems of morality deriving from those intuitions of fairness and reciprocity have had a greater hold (at least amongst peer groups if not towards "other" groups).

I'd characterize "morality" as a form of technology that allows us to deal with a social reality as opposed to existing in primarily predatory or antisocial roles. There are people who would be perfectly fine with being completely "immoral", immoral being the sense they violate our own sense of valuation, our own sense of the just and ought and right. The real conflict then is the war of valuation. And on that, I don't think the weird "objective/subjective" distinction has any usage.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:29:41 2014 No.6436958

>>6436919
become a key contributor to threads and join the other hundreds of people who think they have brilliant insights to add after listening to a couple of religion vs atheism debates, passing a freshman philosophy course or thinking about the morality for 10-20 minutes and coming to a steadfast conclusion about how morality is formed, what it is, what it should be and why everybody else is wrong about it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:31:40 2014 No.6436959 >>6436909 Science is 'natural philosophy', dingus.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:35:41 2014 No.6436965 >>6430936 I think morality does not need to be subjective for perception of it to be, and that it is amoral to not be forgiving of those who lack perception when one can afford to.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:45:10 2014 No.6436970 >>6436959 >appeal to tradition

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:48:11 2014 No.6436972

>>6430936

Morality exists in the same way countries and and languages exist, because a lot of people agree it does. They are all agreed upon abstractions, collections of arbitrary distinctions that allow us to organize the world in a common way. Would you say a country's borders are subjective? How about the spelling of a word?

I would say all these things are objective. They are patterns and ideas, information that has an observable impact on the world.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:53:14 2014 No.6436979 >>6436970 >tradition >definition >wuts the difference

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 09:57:44 2014 No.6436983 >>6434912 So is math subjective? It is also based on postulates.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 10:05:44 2014 No.6436990 >>6436959 >appeal to tradition

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 10:07:44 2014 No.6436992 >>6436972 >arbitrary Morals and countries are not arbitrary, except those countries decided by colonial powers perhaps.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 10:09:44 2014 No.6436994 >>6434912 Often postulates come from principles that may not be man made, so not arbitrary choices.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 10:29:45 2014 No.6437021

>>6430936
Morality is based on the wellbeing of concious beings.

As long as you grant: being sublimly happy > being tortured in the worst possible way.

you have an objective morality.

if you dont grant that, you can conclude everything is meaningless.

(morality as defined:what we should do/care about)

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 12:50:45 2014 No.6437179

Morality is just a word used to define what society deems as right and wrong. It's completely subjective due to the fact that many societies have differing views on several things, like abortion, gays, minorities, etc.
The only reason anyone would think is objective is because humans are a social creature, so things like murder are usually considered wrong. However, that simply makes it subjective on a larger level.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 13:19:43 2014 No.6437208 >>6437021 Everybody with any sort of Philosophical education wants to murder you right now gr8 b8 m8

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 13:52:45 2014 No.6437261 >>6437208 tell me why im wrong, i dont have a philosophical education

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 13:56:15 2014 No.6437263 >>6436983 He's wrong. It would make it relative, not subjective. There is no necessary relation between relativism and subjectivism.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 13:57:45 2014 No.6437264 >>6437261 Obviously Go educate yourself, i'm not wasting my time

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 13:58:45 2014 No.6437266

>>6437179
>Morality is just a word used to define what society deems as right and wrong.
Not really. Usually this is ethics, not morality. For instance, it is ethically wrong for a lawyer to betray the confidence of a client, but it may be morally right for him to do so.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 14:01:15 2014 No.6437272 >>6437264 i really want to know why im wrong, a link would do

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 14:08:45 2014 No.6437279

>>6436994
It doesn't matter whether something is man-made or not if we are wondering about arbitrariness. We don't define the speed of light in a vacuum (assuming it is, in fact, constant), so in some sense this is not "man-made", but electing to use it as a standard is still arbitrary (we could have used other things as standards).

Measurement systems in general are essentially arbitrary, though their bases need not be man-made in any particular way.

>>6437021
>if you dont grant that, you can conclude everything is meaningless.
I would be interested in seeing the derivation of this but I suspect there is not enough straw available on this planet to construct the proof.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 14:58:15 2014 No.6437343

>>6436983
>So is math subjective?
What does that even mean? The results you get in maths depend on the postulates you started from. Same thing with good and bad, you will consider something good and bad depending on the postulates you started from (which most of the time you aren't even aware of). The difference is math doesn't claim to say anything about reality

>>6437263
In this case yes there is.

>>6436994
What principles are you refering to? Give me one example of a postulate used to determine whether something is good and bad that is not man made.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 14:59:45 2014 No.6437347 >>6437343 >In this case yes there is. Please describe this necessary relation.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 15:05:45 2014 No.6437363 >>6437347 Please describe why there is no necessary relation between relativism and subjectivism, whatever the fuck that means.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 15:31:15 2014 No.6437429

>>6437363
If you didn't know what it means, then why did you deny it?
It means that there are subjective things that aren't relative and there are relative things that aren't subjective and there are relative things that are subjective and there are subjective things that are relative. There is no necessary relation between them: every combination is permissible. They are independent.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 16:20:16 2014 No.6437552

Yes it is. Morality develops over time according to the social ethos of a society. That being said morality is still interchangeable and shifts and develops according to different countries and societies.

In America, it would be wrong to stone someone to death for denouncing god or for having an affair but likewise, it would be perfectly fine to do so in a Middle Eastern countries.

Also, I might add, some people are born with no morality as far as the accepted consensus goes. For most, raping and murdering someone is wrong and 'evil' but there are people out there who have done and will gain pleasure from it and see no problem with it.

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 17:43:45 2014 No.6437773 [DELETED]

>>6437552
morals exist in your mind, they disappear when you die

otherwise, morals are objectively defined by neural processes in your brain which prohibit you, with or without your knowledge, from doing certain things, processes which developed from your environment and basic human emotions
however even though they would be objective, they are subject to constant change, and also differ from individual to individual.
''objective'' does not have to mean ''there is a single set of morals that all should follow''. this statement is never true, and is a product of your personal morals

if you're a spiritual weirdo who says true free will exists, then i guess morals are subjective (and have no connection to the physical world, as free will doesn't)

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 17:44:15 2014 No.6437779

morals exist in your mind, they disappear when you die

morals are objectively defined by neural processes in your brain which prohibit you, with or without your knowledge, from doing certain things, processes which developed from your environment and basic human emotions
however even though they would be objective, they are subject to constant change, and also differ from individual to individual.
''objective'' does not have to mean ''there is a single set of morals that all should follow''. this statement is never true, and is a product of your personal morals

if you're a spiritual weirdo who says true free will exists, then i guess morals are subjective (and have no connection to the physical world, as free will doesn't)

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 17:56:16 2014 No.6437809 >>6436909 would you, by that basis, claim that theoretical physics is not a science as it doesn't involve the use of empirical evidence?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 25 19:49:45 2014 No.6438097 >>6437429 >there are subjective things that aren't relative >there are relative things that aren't subjective >there are relative things that are subjective >there are subjective things that are relative Can you give examples?

Anonymous Tue Mar 25 20:20:45 2014 No.6438202

>>6438097
I am sure you are capable of coming up with your own examples, since there is no need that x being relative to y means x or y are "a subject". For instance, special relativity does not depend on subjects, only reference frames. On the other hand divine command theory in moral philosophy is subjective but not relative (there is just one "frame", but morality is what god says it is). Enjoy trying to fill out the rest on your own.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 12:18:01 2014 No.6439732

>>6433486
I don't think that's how you're supposed to use quotes. It's not the most brilliant piece of wisdom. The idea he conveyed is understood by most people, but he said it slightly more eloquently, and that's what earned him the quote. Save quotes for real crispy pieces of genius.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 13:38:00 2014 No.6439889 >>6439732 He's quite late, Wittgenstein already elaborated on that, and much more, in a more detailed manner. Sam Harris is a hack. Pop philosophy at best. At best.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 13:51:06 2014 No.6439907 morality is subjectively objective.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 14:21:36 2014 No.6439948

>>6430936
Yes in the strictest sense, but there are recurring conditions which have historically been deemed optimal or near optimal and can be supported by other sciences. So if you use that then we can make an empirical morality which is for the most part not subjective.

So in this way we can make it functionally non-subjective.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 14:36:36 2014 No.6439970 >>6439948 Morality-in-hindsight is useless as fuck and utilitarians are the worst of the worst.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 15:31:06 2014 No.6440051

>>6438202
What the fuck do you mean by this
>special relativity does not depend on subjects, only reference frames

and by that
>divine command theory in moral philosophy is subjective but not relative (there is just one "frame", but morality is what god says it is)

And how the fuck does that pertain to my initial demonstration that what you consider as morally right or wrong will depend on the things you postulate to be true, such as "it is wrong to harm others", or "it makes me sad to see people hurting" and "it is wrong to do things that make me sad".

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 15:36:36 2014 No.6440062 >>6440051 honestly we've gone over this already several times in the thread and I don't feel particularly motivated to teach you when you can just fucking read the thread

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 17:12:37 2014 No.6440311
File: 19 KB, 650x366, 1395868346552.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6439970
What makes you have such a strong stance?

Morality-in-hindsight is very useful, that is how we learn from our errors. Admittedly the past events do not insure future results, but it far better then just making things up and is a commonly accepted idea in science.

As for utilitarian morality, it depends greatly on your parameters. While meeting everyone's version of morality is impossible given at least two people will likely have conflicting options. A compromised version based on the people effected is the best way I know of.

If you know of a better way to calibrate morality, then I would love to hear it.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 17:24:06 2014 No.6440345

>>6440311
>Morality-in-hindsight is very useful, that is how we learn from our errors.
No, learning from our errors is very useful. Morality in hindsight is utterly useless since the point of morality is to guide future action. If your morality only works in hindsight then it doesn't work at all.

>As for utilitarian morality, it depends greatly on your parameters.
I don't have time for a personal dissertation on why utilitarian morality is really trashy but as a brief outline, it suffers from two enormous measurement problems, one being the direct measurement of individuals' states (which we wish to maximize happiness / minimize suffering / whatever the particular utilitarian thinks makes sense) and the other being the measurement of how these states are brought about by the actions we're questioning the morality of. As far as I can tell, no one but God could possibly be a utilitarian in any practical sense.

>If you know of a better way to calibrate morality, then I would love to hear it.
I don't know exactly what this means. Do you mean how we would adjust a moral system? It'd depend on the system, I guess.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 18:21:16 2014 No.6440453

>>6440345
I think there is some miscommunication here. What I meant by morality in hindsight, is we use hindsight to make morals for the past and then apply them to the future. This does assume that the lessons from the past can be applied to the future and I am not so foolish as to not take into account modifications to better fit the future. In that sense we can agree we learn from our mistakes. The way you morality in hindsight sounds more like trying to retroactively apply morels to actions which doesn't work due to causality and stuff.

As for metrics of a utilitarian system, it is true you will never get pure metrics as we are dealing with people and emotions. However just because the system is not perfect doesn't necessarily make it bad. I get that there have been some nasty cases of utilitarian systems, but I argue they failed because they used too much metrics and didn't consider that some things can't be measured. So in the strict sense only God can do it, but we already did all the time with fairly decent success in the broader sense. See: Functional approximations and qualitative analysis.

Correct, it does depend on both the system and how it is adjusted. And every system has a failure condition. But I was more asking what other system is there other then Divine law and Anything goes?

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 19:27:47 2014 No.6440594

>>6440453
>The way you morality in hindsight sounds more like trying to retroactively apply morels to actions which doesn't work due to causality and stuff.
Because it is all I can imagine would apply. The idea of moral feedback, if I may coin a term, that you seem to be suggesting has its own problem that is considerably worse: what counts as relevant? In other words, we have the facts that I/we/they chose A and then B happened as an apparent consequence.

It is easy to not burn your hand on the stove again, because the cause and effect are easily linked. But think about something like [pick a mean society]. How do we move from the general ("society killed millions") to the specific (don't do X)? How do we move from the specific to the general? The map is a mess. I believe you picture the feedback in a rather idealized sense that lulls you into thinking it is more applicable than it actually is. While it isn't a measurement problem a la utilitarianism, it is a qualification problem (what counts).

>However just because the system is not perfect doesn't necessarily make it bad.
I don't bring up the measurement problem to discuss imperfections, I bring it up to discuss impossibility. When we discuss things like maximizing pleasure we are often drawn in by the siren song of the first person: we know our own happiness and know that others experience happiness so the thing seems to take care of itself. But consider any particular action that would be judged in a moral context and then use utilitarianism to justify your choice. Since the time of Bentham, what has anyone measured? I will give you hundreds of years of history for feedback and give you unrestricted means to solve the relevance problem however you like and ask you: you see a person being mugged at knifepoint across the street, what is the moral action? How do you know which person's happiness weighs more right now? My guess is you will use decidedly non-utilitarian principles in order to decide.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 20:09:16 2014 No.6440714

>>6440062
I just don't understand what you say, how hard can it be to speak clearly. What the fuck does "special relativity does not depend on subjects, only reference frames" mean. I can look up the definitions for all the words you use and still not understand the fuck you're trying to say

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 20:40:15 2014 No.6440778 >>6440714 Do you not even remember the question that was asked?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 26 20:42:15 2014 No.6440787 some morality is objective.

Anonymous Wed Mar 26 21:05:13 2014 No.6440817
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>>6440594
The idea of specific linkage is something I did not think enough about. I just do lots of research and get it right so often I take it for common sense. But if we are applying it to a larger system it could be a real problem which I did not give enough attention to. However given enough time I can see it working things out to a functional level we can agree on.

You ask. Sit down with the "thief" and "victim" and talk things out. While one can laugh at the need for a large amount of rational thinking that is asked of the public, the odd thing is people have risen to such levels and can do it again under the right conditions. So one would use a utilitarian system where the utilitarian system is the answer. Sure it is circular, but that is why it works so well once it gets going. It not just how to change the situation to make the people happy, but we can also change the people to make them happy. Take an extreme case of human sacrifice. If the sacrifice is happy to die for the village and the village is happy to sacrifice them then there is no conflict, despite someone getting killed. It a mind set. Back to the mugging you can act in a utilitarian fashion based in assumptions and limited data, while that is not ideal there are larger tends one can use to be right in a majority of cases. Like the dude waving the knife demanding money is the bad guy. Sure it may be better to give him the money, but there is limited data and one can make a good case that he had other options then resorting to robbery, so such setups often favor some kind of social safety net.

Anonymous Thu Mar 27 04:19:01 2014 No.6441480

Morality can be used for Objective purposes and can also be non nonsensical and subjective. It just depends on the certain case and situation, if we decided it was moral to not have children then objectively the future of science would be at stake, basically this is a good trolling topic.

Anonymous Thu Mar 27 04:23:20 2014 No.6441490

>>6439889
Yeah i don't really see the buzz of Sam Harris still trying to decide how i feel feel about Hitchens as he is confounded in the whole "New Atheist" movement. He said some really stand out things i enjoyed but his religious discussions i found to be boring and catatonic.

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