Do objective moral values exist?

[Thwingly]

Hey Marz Blak,

Well, I am really happy that you understand my argument!

Now, yes I do believe some things really are beautiful and some things ugly. For example, the setting sun really is beautiful, apart from whether think it is or not. If we did not have some initial innate understanding of what actually is beautiful, we could not form judgments about beauty, since the entire concept of beauty would not exist, either in our minds or in reality.

Also, aesthetics are a lot different in the sense that there really is not an issue about thinking one way or another, that is, usually no one is going to stop me from thinking something beautiful or ugly. Apart from our innate understanding of what actually is and is not beautiful, there is not much acting on us to believe a certain way (there is culture of course... meh).

Perhaps though, the case here is the source of objective aesthetics, and of course for an atheist there would be none since (and thus no objective aesthetics) since you would not have an ultimate authority. However in the Christian view, God appreciates beauty and is the source of all beauty.

I hope that makes some sense, we can discuss this further however.

Sincerely,
Thwingly.

 

[Marz Blak]

Thwingly,

Your argument does make sense; I just don't agree with it.

You say:

...
the setting sun really is beautiful, apart from whether think it is or not. If we did not have some initial innate understanding of what actually is beautiful, we could not form judgments about beauty, since the entire concept of beauty would not exist, either in our minds or in reality....

Is the setting sun beautiful to a blind man?

I think you are looking at this backwards. You are asserting that beauty exists as an abstract concept, and we look at things and find them beautiful in part because they exemplify that abstract concept. I would argue that we each individually have things that we find to be personally agreeable for any number of reasons, some conscious, some subconscious so that we can't really express why; and 'beauty' is a word we collectively use to describe them. It's not a very well-defined word; in my way of thinking, that makes sense, given that we use it as a sort of communicative shorthand to communicate feelings we don't understand very well.

So perhaps what we have here is simply a difference of opinion on a matter that is too abstract to be settled by logical argumentation. Except....

If there are objective aesthetics or objective ethics, how do we know what they are? You cite examples of things that are beautiful; but I'm sure that for anything you name, I could find someone who did not feel it was beautiful. Similarly, though the general range of consensus on ethics across individual people and cultures seems to be relatively narrower, perhaps, there is still a great deal of variability, even with regard to serious transgressions like murder.

Now--you may say that the objective ethics are those defined by God; but I would contend that, since God has never spoken to me personally, all I have to go on is some other people's interpretations of God's word, and they don't always agree; so there is no reasonable way for me to accept that assertion.

So even if there is an objective ethics or an objective aesthetic, I have no way of knowing what it is, and so as a practical matter, for me, it might as well not be.

Pretty much the same thing for aesthetics, only less so, in that from what I've been able to gather, there seems to be much less literature proposing to explain what God's aesthetics are, and what there is of it is less authoritative (that is, it assert's God's views with less certainty).

No, it seems to me that we--human societies--define both aesthetics and ethics by consensus, and there is always both variation in what people hold to be the standards at any given time AND movement of those consensus standards as time progresses. This is what one would expect if aesthetics and ethics were personally subjective and intersubjective constructs, not objective realities; so I would contend that the observable data fits my model much better than yours.

We don't have the same ethics as a culture now, obviously, that we had a century ago, even a couple of decades ago. Were those people who thought slavery and, later, anti-miscegeny laws (just to name a couple) just right or wrong? If you say they are wrong, objectively, aren't you doing so from benefit of hindsight only? And how do you your ethics won't be 'proven' wrong in the same manner a century from now?

 

[funyun]

Nevermind

 

[Dfwells]

Um, no. The "foundation of subjective morality" is at most an existential fact. It makes no claim about the rightness or wrongness of its existence.

Subjective morals are an existential FACT? I would like to ask how you can account for relevant factuality in your worldview. Actually, morality is tied into one's view of epistemology and metaphysics.

Well, it probably destroys utterly libertarian free will and absolute morality. Neither one of which is sensical, IMO. Your narrow definitions amount to mere equivocation, really.

I never said I believed in LIBERTARIAN free will. There is a difference between free will and "libertarian" free will. Any study in theology would reveal such a distinction. I don't believe in libertarian free will either. My point was that a worldview which is materialistic in nature destroys man's will and moral absolutes. Why is this important? I would challenge the person who holds such a worldview to think of the implications of such a philosophy. If the universe is just a bunch of atoms banging around, then morality on ANY LEVEL (even subjective morality) can't exist. Man does not think, the words that come from his mouth are no derived from a logical thought process, but just a bunch of random atoms and chemical reactions which ammount to meaninglessness. Therefore, intellectual discourse, logic, reason, science, math are impossible.

What authority do we need to issue a condemnation? We judge by our internal moral senses. Hitler was wrong because my sensibilities are egregiously offended. I can't alter my sensibilities simply because I don't posit a God to authenticate them.

Internal moral senses? I would ask you how internal moral senses exist in your view of reality. Are you a materialist? Dualist? What is your worldview? That would better help me answer you responses to my post. One problem I see right away, are you moral sensibilities the same as everybody elses? How do you know if they are or aren't?

You have far overstepped the bounds of this argument. It doesn't even make sense as you phrase it - how can a particular "view of... ethics" entail the absence of moral sense?

In my post, I was critiquing the ethic system of moral relativity. I said earlier how subjective morality doesn't really exist. My point was that subjective morality lacks any objective standard for moral judgment. You obviously believe in an objective moral standard (moral sensibilities), you you seem to embrace this idea of moral subjectivity. Which is it?

You just go ahead and drag out the TAG. We ought to dedicate a new thread to that anachronism.

You know about the TAG huh? I am an advocate of the apologetic system of Greg Bahnsen and Cornelius Van Til (Presupppositional Apologetics). You seem to be familiar with this. Would you like to start a thread on this topic?

 

[Arikereba]

1. If objective moral values do not exist, then subjective moral values do not exist.

Here's why, for people to form their own moral values (which are subjective) they must understand what morals are and what it means for something to be right or something to be wrong. If there were no morals in fact, people could not recognize them, and would not understand or be able to conceptualize of right and wrong. Therefore they could not possibly form their own beliefs about what actually is right and what is wrong.

I think it matters what the semantic content of "wrong" is. That is, what are we really saying when we say that murder is wrong?
-"There is some objective moral authority that disapproves of murder."
-"I disapprove of murder."
-"I don't want you to commit murder."
-"Boo for murder!"

I think that the Christian view would be "There is some objective moral authority (ie God) that disapproves of murder." But when I say, "Peanut butter and sardine sandwiches? Sorry, that's just wrong!", I don't believe that God has anything against peanut butter and sardine sandwiches. I disapprove of peanut butter and sardine sandwiches; that's all.

The question is, can you say "I disapprove of murder" or "I don't want you to commit murder" (subjective morals) without saying there is some objective moral authority that disapproves of murder? I think there is, or I couldn't say that peanut butter and sardine sandwiches were wrong.