So you think morality means that every single animal must be looking to help out every single other animal?
No, just explaining that being moral isn't contingent on someone being moral to you. What you are talking about is more likely group survival behaviour.
But nevertheless you keep missing the point that regardless of whether animals have morality or not evolution
"only explains how we got morality and it doesn’t account for why something is morally right or wrong".
What I've said is entirely consistent with subjective morality between members of the same social group.
Why you take that to mean that it must prove objective morality between members outside the same social group is beyond me.
OK so basically the subjective morality examples you use within a social group don't truly explain morality because it is not about moral behaviour/claims when it’s subjective. It’s just personal opinion or preferences about the subject and the subject’s personal views are not moral truths for others outside them.
Morality becomes objective when the subject turns their moral view into a truth beyond them whether it’s another social group or their own social group. They do that when they push their moral view into the world outside themselves into lived moral situations that affect others. People do it all the time, they can't help it.
I think it was quite clear I was saying there are no objective oughts.
My point is you can only have objective "oughts". You cannot have subjective oughts beyond the subject. You can say "I ought to do that" or "in my opinion you "ought to do that" to another person. But you cannot say "you ought to do that" full stop as now you are making a moral claim outside yourself.
I am saying that people do this all the time and it’s understandable because they want to make morality a truth outside themselves to give it the value it deserves and carry some weight. Otherwise it means nothing as a personal opinion because it has no truth value in real world situations outside the subject.
Ah yes. Kylie doesn't think there is objective morality, so she isn't allowed to make any objective statements at all! She isn't allowed to believe that it's an objective truth that she is married!
You can make the objective claim and hold the belief truth that you are married because you have independent evidence (a marriage certificate).
But this still doesn’t explain that you claimed there were no objective morals which are an objective claim. You would have to come up with some independent evidence for that like your marriage certificate showing you are married.
You don't expect me to find the "God works in mysterious ways" argument to be convincing, do you?
But I am not using that to support God or any god or transcendental being as the ultimate moral stoppage point. That argument doesn’t need to prove a particular god. All I need to do is argue the type of god needed to be the ultimate stoppage point i.e. all knowing, perfectly good by nature, rational, necessary.
Because the grounding for objective morality has to be beyond humans but also rational and necessary it logically follows that this has to be some sort of transcendent being like God. There is a good argument for this here. It covers all the objections like the Euthyphro dilemma etc.
The moral argument
Premise 1. Morality is a rational enterprise
Premise 2. Moral realism is true, meaning moral facts and duties exist
Premise 3. The moral problems and disagreements among humans are too much for us to assume moral facts and duties are grounded in a human source of rationality.
Premise 4. Moral facts and duties are grounded in a necessary, rational source (from 1,2,3)
Premise 5. This source is what we call God or a god or transcendent being.
Where in the world do you get such a harsh black and white view of this? You need to learn to see the subtleties of all the shades of grey.
Rats help each other out. This is morality for them. That does not mean that the python must say, "I won't eat the rat because it is immoral." The python is not part of the social group the rats are a part of.
So by what basis do you determine that the rat behaviour is moral besides your personal opinion? If you say there is no objective morality then isn’t the rat behaviour just an expression of subjective morality which isn’t really about morality but preferences.
[ quote] Actually, the issue of morality in animals has been investigated. Here's a book by a philosopher who argues that animals do have morality. And this is just from a quick search on Google. there were lots of other results that supported this.
https://www.livescience.com/24802-animals-have-morals-book.html [/quote] Can you see the irony though. If animals do have morality and know right from wrong can they be held accountable like humans. If so why are we not arresting or being outrages at animal behaviour. If a primate kills another primates baby to gain a selection advantage is that murder. It’s a very murky area.
Where do you draw the line? When a grasshopper eats another grasshopper is that cannibalism. Do we include insect or worms having moral behaviour.
But once again it’s all irrelevant as evolutionary explanations for morality don't account for why something is wrong (the ought). And just remember subjective morality doesnt help because thats not about morality but preferences.
There are no OBJECTIVE oughts. But there are plenty of subjective ones that apply to individuals in social groups.
Yes and they are not about morality but preferences. They only explain the subject’s psychological state and not any truth or anything including morality outside them.