OK so if it’s not objectively wrong then we have no basis or right to tell people it’s wrong to murder. But yet we do tell them its objectively wrong to murder.
If someone said to you "it’s ok to murder" I think lie most people you will say "no its not" regardless of your subjective views. That applies “you cannot murder" beyond your subjective view and into the world onto others. That’s talking an objective position.
Perhaps you've missed the countless times I've pointed out that pretty much everyone in our society has a shared moral viewpoint because we live in the same society, and our morality has developed to be what helps that society survive?
Yes so I would only have to show you once that an alien is living here and not have to show you every alien. It’s the same for objective morality. If I show there are objective morals for one situation I have then proved objective morality. Showing you additional situations is only repeating the same thing.
First of all, you haven't shown any moral situation is objective. All you've done is show a situation where just about everyone has a shared subjective view. And lots of people agreeing on something subjective doesn't make it objective.
And your logic here is flawed. You are presenting ALL morality as objective. Or are you actually saying that maybe just one or two moral situations are objective and the rest can be subjective?
Its self-evident that’s what logic is. So if you make a logical fallacy that doesn’t follow then its self-evident because its faulty thinking ie you say having common morals is because of social conditioning and that discounts objective morality being a possible cause.
But you are only assuming this and have not provided evidence that this is really the case. You need to show and argue the evidence that shows social conditioning is the only reason we have common morals. You haven’t done that. So therefore your argument is refuted because it has no support only an assumption that this is the case.
it's a bit rich that you try to wriggle out of backing up your claim by saying, "It's self evident," and then have a go at me for not providing evidence.
I don’t think you understand what the objection is saying. It’s saying people still have the same core morals even when they live in different societies/cultures. Different cultures should condition different moral values. But research has found there are common moral values everyone uses. That doesn’t fit the social conditioning argument.
And there are plenty of moral values that people do not share. We've been over this several times now. You can't just ignore things that you find inconvenient. If you want to present you "objective morality" idea as an accurate description of reality, then it must be able to explain ALL morality, not just some of it.
That’s unless you want to say a giant coincident happened and everyone regardless of culture just happened to be conditioned the same. A simpler and more logical answer would be they all have a common knowledge of morals that’s been there from birth and culture or social conditioning only adds different ways to live out these truths. This also fits the evidence that babies have the same moral knowledge regardless of culture.
No, as I've said many times now, the morality of a person living in a particular society is going to stem from how that society has formed and continued. Most societies do not thrive when people go around killing all the time, and so most societies have developed moralities that disapprove of murder.
Except the research shows that even 6 month olds have this moral knowledge and that the moral knowledge was the same regardless of the culture and beliefs of the parents or society they lived on. So we would expect the baby of atheist parents to not have these beliefs but that is not the case. We are born with the beliefs.
Psychologists say babies know right from wrong even at six months
“some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-05-psychologists-babies-wrong-months.html
At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. It is from these beginnings, he argues in his new book Just Babies, that adults develop their sense of right and wrong.
But we have found that even 3-month-olds respond differently to a character who helps another than to a character who hinders another person.
The Moral Life of Babies
Again, I have addressed this. I've already linked you to the post where I addressed this. Are you going to keep bringing up the same refuted claims again and again?
Actually I did reply to that post soon after here
#1995. I address your objections. The one done 2 years later was a different study so it wasn’t contradicting anything. But this is just a distraction from the point I was supporting for which the evidence shows.
Your reply in that post did not actually address my response.
Actually I just spotted a mistake I made. It should have said "doesn't explain" instead of "does explain".
4) Social conditioning does'nt explain moral disagreement and moral progress.
It shows your position is wrong because if people are socially conditions to live by common morals then anyone who disputes those common morals such as moral reformist are disputing and disrupting those agreed moral values.
Yet moral disagreement and progress requires disputing the existing agreed morals. That can only happen if there is an objective moral basis that we can use to measure moral progress moving from something bad to something better or good. So social conditioning cannot explain moral progress and disagreement.
I disagree. Disagreement about morality does not require some objective standard. If there was an objective standard, how could there be any disagreement? The very fact that there can be disagreement is evidence that there is no objective measure of morality.
Then you have just used an objective basis for morality "Suffering". By relying on "Suffering" you are appealing to some measure. Yet again because suffering is subjective another group of people like in China may see suffering as good to keep people in line. Under relative morality we cannot say they are wrong because that’s how China sees things.
What makes you think the concept of suffering is objective? Two people when face with the same pressures may suffer differently. And how do you measure suffering? How do you make an objective determination about how much someone is suffering?
So now we have this divided system where different cultures have different and opposing morals relative to their situation and nobody is wrong or cannot be wrong. Yet western nations live like morality is absolute when they condemn other countries like China and Africa for being morally wrong. Thats a contradiction and shows the system doesn’t work.
How do you figure that?
It's just one group of people saying, "That other group of people lives their lives in a way I find strange and unusual, and I do not like it due to its unfamiliarity. Therefore they are wrong!"
I see it all the time in the Star Trek/Star Wars arguments.
But chimps aren’t moral creatures otherwise we should arrest and jail the chimps who are murdering other chimps" But we don't because we know that animals cannot know they have done something wrong morally and take responsibility for that. They kill as instinct, such as to be the dominate male, to kill an infant to gain a mate etc.
Do you actually think that's a valid argument?
Do American's arrest and jail Australian citizens for crimes committed against other Australians while in Australia?
Humm you seem to be slipping morality into animal thinking. Even so once again you make a logical fallacy that because chimps act a certain way then it proves subjective morality.
You objected to me using this argument with objective morality. Evolution only describes how we come to know morality. It doesn’t account for why something is right or wrong.
This example fits in perfectly with the view of morality that I've been talking about.
But when you talk about slavery changing for the better that cannot happen under subjective morality because nothing is better or worse morally. Just like preferences for ice cream no preference or view is right or wrong. So first subjective morality doesn’t fit how morals work. You seem to find this concept hard to accept.
It is only under objective morality that we can make changes for the better. William Wilberforce protested against slavery saying all men are equal. Dr King did the same for civil rights. But they were objecting to the current consensus and you can't do this under subjective morality because the current consensus that slavery was OK wasn’t right or wrong but just a subjective view.
Objective morality is about moral truths and they can accommodate change when the facts of the matter are understood. Wilberforce proclaimed the moral truth that all humans are equal as a moral truth which did not allow for subjective views. So as we come to understand the facts morla truths become more clear.
Because we are working towards some standard or truth that can only happen if there is an objective basis. For slavery it is human "Life" is valuable and with that all people have a right to a valuable "Life".
You only hold this view because you are trying to treat morality as though it is objective.
A person who is held as a slave and then freed will certainly tend to hold the subjective idea that freedom is better than slavery.
And don't tell me that "Human life" is some objective basis that we can use to measure morality. it fails in many ways. Is the life of a child equal to the life of a 95 year old? And what about moral situations where life is not in danger?