Is there Objective Morality?

[zippy2006]

How is that so when the causal sequence is completely reversed?

Everything I said in #594 would also apply to consensus as a necessary condition.

I'm open to other ideas, but given that something that is objective (say, the brightness of the sun at a particular location at a particular time) can be independently measured and all measurements will agree is strong evidence that what is being measured is objective. After all, if we tried to measure something that is subjective (such as what is the best movie ever made), then conclusions are going to have quite a lot of variance.

But not all subjective opinions will be divergent, and some false opinions will be convergent, as geocentrism was for thousands of years.

As for other ideas, I had some late edits to my last post, including this:

Nevertheless, it is incorrect to infer from an absence of consensus an absence of objectivity, for not everything that is objective is obvious. "Results in consensus in principle" is a rather bad definition. I would suggest ditching consensus and picking up something like accessibility, confirmability, or reproducibility. These concepts unearth in a more clear and direct way your claim that objectivity "results in consensus in principle."​

It is an inadequate definition because it is explanatorily remote, whereas those other concepts explain why the consensus-relation is true and they are logically closer to 'objectivity'. For example, everything which is objective is confirmable.

True, it doesn't mean that reproducibility will take place, and it doesn't mean that everyone will reproduce it if it is possible. But it does require that reproducibility is possible in theory at least.

Right.

I also agree with you about using other criteria. I'd point out though that the confirmability and reproducibility that you speak of would lead to consensus. That's what I was trying to say when I was speaking of consensus. I didn't mean for it to be interpreted as consensus being a bunch of guys who are just saying, "Yeah, I guess that sounds okay," or something similar. I was referring to consensus built on reproducible and confirmable results. Sorry if that was unclear.

Okay, fair enough.

The difficulty is that the motive for a consensus model tends to epistemic. That model is epistemically favorable because it offers a simple and empirically verifiable criterion: a poll. So obviously when you move away from that empirical simplicity there is a cost: the litmus test becomes more obscure. In my opinion truth and objectivity are legitimately obscure things, so that doesn't bother me, but it helps to be okay with that.

 

[stevevw]

If morality were objective, there would be an independent measuring stick. The fact that there is not proves it is subjective

That’s a non-sequitur. Just because we happen to not know the objective measuring stick right now for something doesn’t mean there is no objective measuring stick to be found.

I have already given examples of the objective measuring stick and as mentioned several times it doesnt have to be a physical measure based on the scientific method. It can be a logical arguement, a deductive conclusion.

But there can also be scientific facts about morality. We can observe peoples behaviour and see how they respond to moral situations and if there is some independent moral values that apply regardless of peoples subjective views. I gave the example of Honesty and TRuth in debates seeking the truth of a matter.

But we can also see that all people react a certain way despite their subjective views like if someone stole from them. They don't just accept that the perpetrator is justified to steal because thats the way they view morality. They react like its wrong and want justice.

Even atheists have come up with an objective measure of morality like with Sam Harris's Moral Landscape in using Human Wellbeing as the scientific measure. Basically any act that harms human wellbeing is objectively wrong. We can measure how human wellbeing is harmed by science such as by medical examinations and psychological assessments.

Again; the person playing the devils advocate is not being truthful. But this is not wrong because it is not a moral issue, it is a logical issue

BUt the reason the why the person is being the Devils Advocate is to find the truth. They are not being dishonest in a way that is deceptive because they usually ask questions rather than make claims. So therefore if there ios no Truth and Honesty involved then theres no sense in being a Devils advocate.

I disagree! Corporal punishment is not seen as wrong everywhere, there are many places and cultures where it is perfectly acceptable

But you injected corporal punishment into my scenario. I never said someone was disciplining a child or women in the street by corporal punishment. I said they were being abused. Abused means beyond any controlled measure of punishment. Even if corporal punishment becomes abusive its still wrong because its 'abusive'.

 

[Kylie]

Everything I said in #594 would also apply to consensus as a necessary condition.

Care to be more specific? I don't see what part of post 594 could be taken to support the idea consensus is not based on objectivity.

But not all subjective opinions will be divergent, and some false opinions will be convergent, as geocentrism was for thousands of years.

But when the evidence was gathered and presented, it was accepted (not immediately, of course, but that was due to people who let their subjective opinions control their positions, not objective facts, and this is what I mean when I talk about "rational people," specifically those who follow the objective evidence).

As for other ideas, I had some late edits to my last post, including this:

Nevertheless, it is incorrect to infer from an absence of consensus an absence of objectivity, for not everything that is objective is obvious. "Results in consensus in principle" is a rather bad definition. I would suggest ditching consensus and picking up something like accessibility, confirmability, or reproducibility. These concepts unearth in a more clear and direct way your claim that objectivity "results in consensus in principle."​

It is an inadequate definition because it is explanatorily remote, whereas those other concepts explain why the consensus-relation is true and they are logically closer to 'objectivity'. For example, everything which is objective is confirmable.

I noticed your edit after I posted my original reply to your post, and I edited my post to address your edit as well.

As I said there, I agree with what you've said and I was trying to get to the same thing.

Right.

It's hard to read what you mean here. Is this just a general agreement?

Okay, fair enough.

The difficulty is that the motive for a consensus model tends to epistemic. That model is epistemically favorable because it offers a simple and empirically verifiable criterion: a poll. So obviously when you move away from that empirical simplicity there is a cost: the litmus test becomes more obscure. In my opinion truth and objectivity are legitimately obscure things, so that doesn't bother me, but it helps to be okay with that.

I'm happy to use confirmable instead.

 

[zippy2006]

Care to be more specific? I don't see what part of post 594 could be taken to support the idea consensus is not based on objectivity.

Well, the main point of #594 was that the expert communities (philosophy of science and philosophy of epistemology) do not see objectivity as a function of consensus. The same applies in that they do not see consensus as a necessary condition of objectivity. I am thinking of claims such as these:

I was making the assumption that, given rational people, any fact that is objectively true as defined in post 101 would be held in agreement by all the people. In other words, given rational people, the existence of an objective fact will lead to all people agreeing on that particular issue.

If there is an objectively true solution to these problems, no matter how difficult, then all rational people will agree to it once it is shown.

...so even though the causal sequence is reversed, the effect is still not ineluctable. I think we agree on this at this point.

It's hard to read what you mean here. Is this just a general agreement?

Yes.

 

[Bradskii]

The idea of objective morality is usually associated with the "bindingness" of morality. That is, an objective morality binds whereas a non-objective morality doesn't.

So you say that morality is a set of rules, but is there a reason we are bound by those rules? Since morality always implies normative behavior the question is: how is that normative behavior grounded? What makes it normative? What makes it binding? What makes it obligatory?

Morality is a means to an end. It has evolved as we have evolved. We have gained an ability for self reflection and a sense of empathy with others (not conscience with which it is often confused) and we have then developed protocols by which we have used to live together and survive (got to pass them genes on!). Those protocols we have termed morality. That is, how we should act (in order to survive).

As we have lived together there have been social contracts that have been developed that add to these basic 'moral rules' and these will change over time and as different societies develop. But the basic rules remain.

Some creatures pair for life. We generally do. So a man having sex with multiple women, or vice versa, might seem to be immoral. But it's an accident of the evolutionary process that we feel that way. Some random changes in our dna back in the day and we'd think that monogamy was unnatural and immoral.

We think that sex with a sibling is immoral. But should it have happened that the survival of our species was improved by breeding with close family members then having sex with someone you weren't related to would now seem abhorrent.

Morality isn't some Platonic ideal that is waiting out there for us to discover. Morality is a function of our evolutionary development. How can it be objective if it was effectively brought about by random variations in our genetic make-up?

Now excuse me - I have twenty pages of previous comments to catch up on...

 

[Kylie]

Well, the main point of #594 was that the expert communities (philosophy of science and philosophy of epistemology) do not see objectivity as a function of consensus. The same applies in that they do not see consensus as a necessary condition of objectivity.

To be fair, I was speaking of an ideal of consensus, assuming that objective and confirmable evidence could be detected and shown, and that all people were perfectly rational and would accept such evidence with zero influence from any personal opinions. I know such is unlikely to happen in the real world, but I say it in the same way a mathematician could ask us to assume a spherical cow.

Yes.

Thanks.

 

[Ken-1122]

First how do you know morality is only in your head? Do you have any independent support for this? What about consciousness is that only in your head. See already we have two propositions that we need to consider with independent support that is not inside our head and yet are not physical things.

As I said before, morality is a result of my thoughts. My thoughts exist only in my head. Consciousness is a description of an ability I have (awareness of my surroundings and the ability to think) So consciousness is not in my head

A law in not a physical thing and yet its also not within our heads.

Laws are in our heads. We write them down so there can be a consistency from person to person.

You have to let go of this idea that morality is measured the same a science and if its not then it must be in your head as a subjective idea.

I’m not the one in this conversation trying to equate morality with science. Science is objective, morality is subjective; I’ve been consistent with this view.

That is not the case with many things. Look at math equations. They are not physical things and they are not just within our heads. We can write them on a blackboard or apply them to the world outside our heads.

The rules of Mathematics are agreed upon by everyone; morality is not.

But empirical evidence isn't the only way to determine facts or the truth especially when morality is a philosophical issue. Are you saying there is not way to tell facts or truth in philosophy? Of course there is.

Philosophy is the study of knowledge and questions; it is not a means to ascertain the truth.

Have they, I haven’t seen anyone refute them. Someone said they disagreed with proposition 1 but didn’t give any reason. No one has shown we can have debates/discussions seeking the truth without Honesty and Truth as moral values.

As I said before, debates are not about a search for the truth; so your proposition 1 is about something that never happens
Proposition 2 is the claim that everybody will object at the sight of a man beating his wife or child. This is not true! In many cultures this is perfectly acceptable. You have Western values where this may not be acceptable, so you assume everybody shares your values; but not everybody does. Honor killings are perfectly acceptable in many cultures when a woman brings shame on her family. Whether you admit it or not, these people do exist.

You haven’t refuted human intuition as a self-evidence measure of objective morality when we see a child being abused and we know it is wrong regardless of knowing why the child is being abuse. WE just know that any abuse is wrong and needs to be stopped.

See above.

That is not how debates/discussions work. I don't think I know the truth of every matter I debate. I go and do research to find the facts/truth and then offer that.

That’s what you do before you disagree with someone and get into a debate. If you don’t know have an opinion on the issue, why are you arguing with someone else’s opinion?

It’s an independent moral truth like a law. It’s self-evident like gravity. Just try and have a debate seeking the truth of a matter without Honesty. Because Honesty is about Truth you will never be able to have a meaningful debate seeking the truth of a matter without Honesty. So Honesty is a necessary moral value in these debates regardless of your or my personal opinions that Honesty is irrelevant.

That’s nice. Now care to answer my question? Again; (in case you forgot) what proof do you have that a dishonest debate will always end up in a incoherent discussion, and honest will never lead to incoherency?

First you have just acknowledged my point when you said "we may not accomplish anything" without Honesty in a debate seeking the truth. So therefore Honesty is a necessary required moral value for debates seeking the truth.

Second being purposely dishonest or lying in a debate seeking the truth is immoral.

You said it always leads to a waste of time; I only acknowledge it may happen, but doesn’t always. You also said being honest always leads to a coherent discussion, I disagree; honesty isn’t enough for a discussion to remain coherent.

But epistemic facts do exist. They are another self-evident value in knowledge seeking.

Even the guy who wrote the article knew better than to claim epistemic facts exist. That’s why he phased it “epistemic facts have been ARGUED to exist” He knew there is no proof it exists. Of course this isn’t gonna stop you from making such an empty claim now is it.

 

[Kylie]

Consciousness is a description of an ability I have (awareness of my surroundings and the ability to think) So consciousness is not in my head

While I agree with pretty much everything else you said here, I disagree with this. Awareness is caused by brain activity, as is thinking. Since both of these take place within the brain, I would argue that consciousness is indeed within your head.

But this is getting off topic...

 

[Bradskii]

Yes thats more or less a correct understanding. We can know morality is objective by our intuition of lived moral experience and observing how morality works in real life situations rather than what people verbally express.

And if you and I were brought up in a different place and a different time where standards of behaviour varied significantly? Good grief, even my own personal socially developed sense of morality has changed drastically over the years.

 

[Bradskii]

You claimed that evolution was a viable account for morality when you claimed that there were other reasons why humans are morally good such as we don’t steal and kill to ensure society is stable.

I am saying that evolution can only explain how morality came about but it doesn’t explain why the moral behaviours we have are right or wrong. Thus there is no ‘ought’ in the evolutionary explanation for morality so therefore it’s not a valid account for morality.

What we call 'right' is what works. What we call 'wrong' is what doesn't. In that sense, we ought to do what's right. And we ought not to do what's wrong.

So 'we ought not to steal' and 'we ought not to swim with sharks' have the same basis.

 

[Bradskii]

But all too often it is. We see vampire bats sharing food to aid in the survival of others - others who, in the future, may return the favour and share food back when it is needed. And given that we humans live in complex social groups and require the efforts of others (how many people could live a solitary, self-sufficient lifestyle, after all?), developing a system of morality to make living in those social groups easier is certainly going to make survival easier, isn't it?

A classic case of evolutionary driven reciprocal altruism. It's the 'Bat Golden Rule'. Nice to see that you brought up the evolutionary basis of morality earlier (I hadn't got to it when I wrote my post a little upstream or I would have referenced your input).

 

[Ken-1122]

First morality cannot be grounded in humans as they are fallible and subject to many influences that can cause them to skew what is the truth when it comes to morality. Morality has to be grounded in something outside humans.

Thats why a transcendent being like God is a good source.

How do you know God isn’t fallible and subject to many influences that can cause him to skew what is the truth when it comes to morality?

But we can also ground morality in truths like laws or realism which is about how humans live morality outside their personal views. This can be evidenced by logical arguements which are also a form of grounding.

You said
Truth is what is aligned with reality.
I am saying that a persons reality is not always a good way to determine the truth as reality can be affected by many things.

Reality does not vary from person to person. What you are describing is a perception of reality which may be close but not 100% accurate.

That doesnt make sense. If a religion forbids drugs, or sexual prominsquity then this must have an influence on behaviour compared to people who think these things are OK to do.

Does the Christian religion forbid molesting alter boys? Because there were an awful lot of Priests guilty of this. How is this possible if the religion forbids it?

I never said there was 1 moral law that everyone has agreed to follow. I said there was an objective moral law that we all know of.

When you say “an objective moral law,” an means 1, not multiple.

If thats the case then you can never learn anything new. You may be convinced that you already know the truth but how do you know you are not wrong and need to be open to learning new information. You cannot know everything there is to know about every topic.

I never said I was not open to the possibility I could be wrong, I’m saying I’m convinced I already know the truth, and will continue to be convinced until proven otherwise.

Are you sure. You have asked questions like you don't know the answer or want to learn about something. You have made statements like you don't know the truth ie
Ken said
What kind of an outside source could morality be grounded in, that is not a sentient being?

I was asking a question in the context of what you believe in order to prove you wrong.

You have made statements that I can challenge and show are wrong so despite you claiming you already know the truth the other person can say you are wrong and even support that with facts. So if thats the case it opens the door for people to make up stuff, lie and misrepresent others thus be dishonest because they want to win the debate.

Here you make a claim that can be proven wrong, how do I know you just made this wrong claim on purpose to discredit my arguemnet.
Ken said

People who believe in God are no more righteous in their behavior than those who do not.

Here is an article that confirms what I said
Atheists are no less moral: The sad delusion of the Christian Evangelical movement

This happens all the time. I could go back through our debate and find dozens of examples where you act like you don't know the truth even of your own position.

Find one.

There you go again. Its like a bait and switch. I just mention that moral facts are different to scientific facts and you say if facts are not involved then it cannot be objective. What facts are you talking about.

As you can see from the below definition, if facts are not involved, it is not objective
Definition of OBJECTIVE

 

[Moral Orel]

If we can't show that either one is false, then both of them are going to have to accurately describe what happens, aren't they?

No. Each of them describes something happening that we cannot confirm whether it happens or not. But it either does, or does not. There is an objective fact that experts in the field disagree on. Your argument fails.

Remember, I specified that it was "an invisible, intangible, silent elephant in your living room that produces no smell or any other indication of its existence."

So the two options are:

1. There is no elephant.
2. There is an invisible, intangible, silent elephant in your living room that produces no smell or any other indication of its existence.

It is not possible to show that either one of them is false, and we can assume either is true and use that to get results that are in complete agreement with reality.

So what? There is an objective fact to the matter and there is no evidence pointing to one fact or the other for rational people to come to a consensus on. Your argument fails.

Well, I suppose that since thoughts can be detected, it's possible that a sufficiently sensitive measurement and a sufficiently detailed understanding of the brain could allow an outside observer to measure your thought processes and reconstruct what you were thinking of, so it is, at least in principle, demonstrable. The following are some links to studies done on reconstructing images from brain scans.

Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity
Reconstructing faces from fMRI patterns using deep generative neural networks | Communications Biology

So what? There is a fact you can't demonstrate. Imagining that someday maybe you might be able to does not change that.

I've already presented my reasoning for concluding that morality is subjective, not objective.

You did not. You made a claim that is integral to your argument and offered no reasoning to support it at all.

 

[Kylie]

No. Each of them describes something happening that we cannot confirm whether it happens or not. But it either does, or does not. There is an objective fact that experts in the field disagree on. Your argument fails.

Where does this come from?

Youi said that we couldn't show that either one was false, and now you say we can't show that what they describe actually happened?

So what? There is an objective fact to the matter and there is no evidence pointing to one fact or the other for rational people to come to a consensus on. Your argument fails.

Again, irrelevant. You cannot determine which one of them is false. If you use the ideas to make a prediction about the future, which one is going to match with reality?

So what? There is a fact you can't demonstrate. Imagining that someday maybe you might be able to does not change that.

You know, I'm starting to think you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

You did not. You made a claim that is integral to your argument and offered no reasoning to support it at all.

Then you haven't been paying attention.

 

[Moral Orel]

Where does this come from?

Youi said that we couldn't show that either one was false, and now you say we can't show that what they describe actually happened?

Correct. You can't prove it false, and you can't prove it true. Did you think there was a contradiction? Failing to prove something false doesn't prove it true. Failing to prove something true doesn't prove it false.

Again, irrelevant. You cannot determine which one of them is false.

Your claim is that consensus means something, I show you how consensus is impossible, and you call that irrelevant?? You said that something is objective if consensus can be reached. Consensus can't be reached here, and yet there is an objective fact. Consensus is irrelevant to objectivity.

If you use the ideas to make a prediction about the future, which one is going to match with reality?

You don't seem to get that we aren't capable of knowing every objective fact. Some objective facts will always be unknown. We don't know which one is going to "match with reality" because we can't have a complete picture of reality.

Then you haven't been paying attention.

I have. You made a claim, I said to support it, you asked if I wanted you to prove a negative, I said yep, now you say you already did. Support this claim:

Things that are objective have these properties. Morality does not have those properties

That property morality lacks specifically being described as your position here:

I think it's quite clear that I also have the position that there can't possibly be an expert in morality.

You have shown zero reasoning to support this claim as you've described it. Sure, you posted your argument, and it's even a valid one. But that's not good enough. You need to prove it's sound too by proving all your premises.

 

[stevevw]

I think you missed the bit where I said that you got a different answer from everyone. If the eyewitness accounts were inconsistent with each other, they will not lead to a conviction.

So therefore the eye witness accounts are measured against other evidence to see how consistent they are with that evidence. IE another witness saw the witness being questioned to support what they said, a gun was found like the witness said, the time the witness claimed the incident happened was consistent with the time of death the coroner determined. They are all objective facts.

This is not to dissimilar to peoples view that the earth is flat, evolution is false etc. We can use science to determine the facts. But the point is that even though there are scientific facts people will still have subjective views that disagree. Just like morality. Just because there may be objective morality doesn’t mean people won't have subjective moral views.

Irrelevant. If a person has an opinion about something and real world evidence contradicts their opinion, then they need to change their opinion. If they do not, then they are not a rational person.

It’s not that black and white as the Flat earth example. There are scientific theories where even scientists have different views like gravity for example which is based on certain a different assumption and supported by scientific measures so the alternative view is not irrational but just a different possibility.

But look at the eye witness account, the different views are not irrational, just a different perspective of what factually happened. There are many reasons why people have different views and it’s not just because they are irrational.

Citation required.

You havent heard of Nick Bostroms Simulation Theory.
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation
Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-physics-reality-doesnt.html

Yeah, if. IF. That's a pretty big IF there.

Doesn't mean I'm going to assume God exists and is the source of morality for all my arguments about morality.
Just because I entertain the possibility of God in some as a hypothetical exercise, doesn't mean I'm going to take the existence of God as a premise in every argument for or against a certain view of morality.

No but for our debate it applies because you you went along with the idea of God as the moral lawgiver. The 'If' is just your way of buying in. Its a hypothetical.

You seem to misunderstand my position.
Since I take morality to be subjective, there is no "right" or "wrong" as you speak of them.

OK so the evolutionary explanation is consistent with your view as it doesn’t account for moral right and wrong in any ultimate way beyond humans views (the subject being you). All I am saying is when people use evolution as an explanation for morality it’s not really explaining anything about moral right and wrong but survival.

The fact that honesty makes a debate like this easier to conduct does not mean honesty has some moral value. Efficiency, yes. Morality, no.

But because Honesty is a moral value and seeking the truth of a matter depends on people being Honest then Honesty becomes an important value in that debate. In fact one the debate is dependent on to have meaning considering its about seeking truth.

[/quote] So your argument is that morality isn't subjective if we can show that it's not subjective? [/quote] No I am saying that in certain situations there are moral values that stand as objective facts regardless of peoples subjective moral views. They are like laws that no one can dispute.

So if that is the case then my argument is because in certain situations moral values are objective this trumps people subjective moral views and they cannot engage in that situation with any meaning or coherence without that objective moral value.

because intuition is an inherently unreliable way of making determinations about the real world. It's intuition that had people thinking that a heavy object falls faster than a light one. It was intuition that had people believing a heliocentric universe.

Not sure about that. Scientific research shows that Intuition is not some unreliable way to determine things but a good initial way to tell what is real and what is not as shown below. Otherwise how else can we trust what we see is real and not some simulation. Science cannot tell us. It is our intuition which tells us which comes from our experience of that reality.

No, that's not true. Just because I know my morality is subjective doesn't mean I wouldn't step in to prevent the abuser from causing harm. Why do you think that people who hold to a subjective view of morality will say, "I think that person abusing the child is wrong, but it would be wrong of me to stop them because they obviously believe that committing the abuse is morally good"? I see someone being abused, I will try to stop it because I know that I would want someone to stop the abuser if they were abusing me.

What that's crazy. So your seeing some child being bashed around the head and the child is screaming and bleeding and you think "oh well thats just the perpetrators moral views being played out and they are doing absolutely nothing wrong so I will not worry about doing anything. What planet is that on.

If your argument consists of just, "But it's OBVIOUS," then you don't have much of an argument

Being obvious is only one part of it. Like I said intuition of something is self-evident not because it’s just obvious but because we have good reason to trust our senses that they are telling us that what we see and experience is real because of assessing and testing reality through our experiences. We use this way of determining things every day. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed and function.

So just like we trust and rely on our intuition of our physical world so to can our intuition of the moral world work in the same way. When we see some behaviour that tells us that something is wrong it can be relied upon as a true representation that the behaviour is morally wrong without having to use any other evidence.

So what? I've said many times now that just because people act like their subjective opinion is objective fact, it doesn't actually make it an objective fact.

You don’t seem to understand moral realism. I suggest you check out the video I linked. It’s the fact they act like the moral is objective in contradiction to their own subjective views and that there is no way to allow subjective morality into the situation is what supports the moral value being objective. It’s like we have no choice but to allow Honesty and Truth into debates that seek the truth of a matter.

If you believe morality was subjective and that Honesty was not a necessary value in that debate it can be verified you are objectively wrong. So you or no one can claim morality is subjective in that situation because it is self-evident that Honesty is a required moral law that has to be applied to have a coherent and meaningful debate. There is no moral choice apart from making Honesty and Truth objective.

In fact people misunderstand intuition. It is actually a process of subconsciously calling upon our lived experiences that gives us evidence of what we can trust as real because we have already tested it through our experiences.

Exactly so therefrore intuition is a good first basis for determining what is real and true and is not something unreliable because it has already been tested.

No. It's because humans generally have this thing called "empathy" which means we can imagine ourselves in the place of another person. And since I know I would want someone to step and help me if I was being tortured, I reach the conclusion that the person I see being tortured would hold a similar wish.

Actually studies have shown empathy is actually a very poor and unreliable moral guide. Its based on feelings which can be biased against some than others depending on our personal alliances, and even cause people to single out certain identity groups deserving of harm over others

Paul Bloom argues that empathy is actually a very poor moral guide. He compiles evidence from a range of sources to show that empathy can be innumerate, biased, parochial and inconsistent and can push us towards inaction at best and racism and violence at worst.
Empathy is crucial to being a good person, right? Think again

We have a huge amount of evidence that our senses are unreliable.

That seems strange as science is also based on our senses. We cannot do science without sense observations. Luckily intuition is not just about our senses but as you mention above also our experience and testing what we observe with past experiences.

 

[Kylie]

Correct. You can't prove it false, and you can't prove it true. Did you think there was a contradiction? Failing to prove something false doesn't prove it true. Failing to prove something true doesn't prove it false.

But if we could prove that we can never prove it false, that must mean that everything it tells us will be consistent with reality, since anything that it tells us that is not consistent with reality would indeed prove it false, and we've already established that's impossible.

Your claim is that consensus means something, I show you how consensus is impossible, and you call that irrelevant?? You said that something is objective if consensus can be reached. Consensus can't be reached here, and yet there is an objective fact. Consensus is irrelevant to objectivity.

Perhaps you should bother to read my replies to other people.

You don't seem to get that we aren't capable of knowing every objective fact. Some objective facts will always be unknown. We don't know which one is going to "match with reality" because we can't have a complete picture of reality.

I wasn't talking about knowing every objective fact, was I?

I have. You made a claim, I said to support it, you asked if I wanted you to prove a negative, I said yep, now you say you already did. Support this claim:

Do you understand that it's impossible to prove a negative? It's unreasonable for you to demand that I do so.

That property morality lacks specifically being described as your position here:


You have shown zero reasoning to support this claim as you've described it. Sure, you posted your argument, and it's even a valid one. But that's not good enough. You need to prove it's sound too by proving all your premises.

It is impossible to have an expert on a subjective issue because expertise requires objectivity. You can't be an expert on the fact that chocolate is the best flavour of icecream.

 

[Kylie]

So therefore the eye witness accounts are measured against other evidence to see how consistent they are with that evidence. IE another witness saw the witness being questioned to support what they said, a gun was found like the witness said, the time the witness claimed the incident happened was consistent with the time of death the coroner determined. They are all objective facts.

Perhaps I should have been clearer: When I said all the eyewitnesses gave different answers, I meant in the sense that they were contradictory.

This is not to dissimilar to peoples view that the earth is flat, evolution is false etc. We can use science to determine the facts. But the point is that even though there are scientific facts people will still have subjective views that disagree. Just like morality. Just because there may be objective morality doesn’t mean people won't have subjective moral views.

Yes it is dissimilar. In the examples you gave, they were not contradicting each other. Climate change denialism, anti-evolution, etc, they all clearly contradict measurable and confirmable scientific facts.

It’s not that black and white as the Flat earth example. There are scientific theories where even scientists have different views like gravity for example which is based on certain a different assumption and supported by scientific measures so the alternative view is not irrational but just a different possibility.

This only applies to situations where we do not have confirmable evidence. Once such confirmable evidence is found and presented, any rational person (that is, a person who will accept the evidence from reality as accurate) will accept it, and the alternate views which are not supported by the confirmed evidence will be discarded.

But look at the eye witness account, the different views are not irrational, just a different perspective of what factually happened. There are many reasons why people have different views and it’s not just because they are irrational.

They are irrational if they contradict the confirmable evidence.

You havent heard of Nick Bostroms Simulation Theory.
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation
Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-physics-reality-doesnt.html

I've heard of it, but I was not aware that there was confirmed evidence to show it is accurate.

No but for our debate it applies because you you went along with the idea of God as the moral lawgiver. The 'If' is just your way of buying in. Its a hypothetical.

However, since we are discussing whether morality is objective or not, NOT whether morality comes from God, I am not obligated to assume a God as a provider of morality for the entire discussion.

OK so the evolutionary explanation is consistent with your view as it doesn’t account for moral right and wrong in any ultimate way beyond humans views (the subject being you). All I am saying is when people use evolution as an explanation for morality it’s not really explaining anything about moral right and wrong but survival.

Which is not a problem if there is no such thing as an objective moral right/wrong.

But because Honesty is a moral value and seeking the truth of a matter depends on people being Honest then Honesty becomes an important value in that debate. In fact one the debate is dependent on to have meaning considering its about seeking truth.

You can't keep talking about honesty as though you've proved that it's a moral quality when you haven't proved that.

No I am saying that in certain situations there are moral values that stand as objective facts regardless of peoples subjective moral views. They are like laws that no one can dispute

So if that is the case then my argument is because in certain situations moral values are objective this trumps people subjective moral views and they cannot engage in that situation with any meaning or coherence without that objective moral value..

I disagree. There are no situations where moral values stand as objective facts.

Not sure about that. Scientific research shows that Intuition is not some unreliable way to determine things but a good initial way to tell what is real and what is not as shown below. Otherwise how else can we trust what we see is real and not some simulation. Science cannot tell us. It is our intuition which tells us which comes from our experience of that reality.

I literally gave you two examples of how human intuition led to a wrong conclusion.

What that's crazy. So your seeing some child being bashed around the head and the child is screaming and bleeding and you think "oh well thats just the perpetrators moral views being played out and they are doing absolutely nothing wrong so I will not worry about doing anything. What planet is that on.

How in the world do you figure I was saying that? I said nothing of the sort. I was saying that was the idea you seem to have about people who take morality as subjective, and I was asking why you hold that view.

Being obvious is only one part of it. Like I said intuition of something is self-evident not because it’s just obvious but because we have good reason to trust our senses that they are telling us that what we see and experience is real because of assessing and testing reality through our experiences. We use this way of determining things every day. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed and function.

So just like we trust and rely on our intuition of our physical world so to can our intuition of the moral world work in the same way. When we see some behaviour that tells us that something is wrong it can be relied upon as a true representation that the behaviour is morally wrong without having to use any other evidence.

You say it's only one part of it, but you don't actually provide any other reasoning.

You don’t seem to understand moral realism. I suggest you check out the video I linked. It’s the fact they act like the moral is objective in contradiction to their own subjective views and that there is no way to allow subjective morality into the situation is what supports the moral value being objective. It’s like we have no choice but to allow Honesty and Truth into debates that seek the truth of a matter.

If you believe morality was subjective and that Honesty was not a necessary value in that debate it can be verified you are objectively wrong. So you or no one can claim morality is subjective in that situation because it is self-evident that Honesty is a required moral law that has to be applied to have a coherent and meaningful debate. There is no moral choice apart from making Honesty and Truth objective.

Once again I will point out that acting like an opinion is objective does not make it objective. Sometimes we just act like that because it's easier. That's why we speak of the sun setting, because it's easier to communicate the idea like that rather than saying that the rotation of the earth is carrying us away from the side facing the sun.

Exactly so therefrore intuition is a good first basis for determining what is real and true and is not something unreliable because it has already been tested.

it can still be wrong though, and it can be easily fooled.

Actually studies have shown empathy is actually a very poor and unreliable moral guide. Its based on feelings which can be biased against some than others depending on our personal alliances, and even cause people to single out certain identity groups deserving of harm over others

Paul Bloom argues that empathy is actually a very poor moral guide. He compiles evidence from a range of sources to show that empathy can be innumerate, biased, parochial and inconsistent and can push us towards inaction at best and racism and violence at worst.
Empathy is crucial to being a good person, right? Think again

There's a difference between a single person that we know personally (even if it is just knowing them by seeing them up close) and faceless crowds. I'm not saying it's perfect, but when humans started living in small groups, it worked well for us to make sure that we'd look after others in our tribe. Large societies where we don't actually know everyone are actually relatively recent in human history.

That seems strange as science is also based on our senses. We cannot do science without sense observations. Luckily intuition is not just about our senses but as you mention above also our experience and testing what we observe with past experiences.

Of course, science has methods built in to make sure that any unreliability that is suffered by one person's perception is caught and removed.

 

[Moral Orel]

But if we could prove that we can never prove it false, that must mean that everything it tells us will be consistent with reality, since anything that it tells us that is not consistent with reality would indeed prove it false, and we've already established that's impossible.

We don't know if these things are consistent with reality because we are incapable of having a complete picture of reality.

Do you understand that it's impossible to prove a negative?

No, it's not. Allow me to demonstrate:

Negative claim: The next sentence I write will not contain the letter 'Q'.
Proof: Here is a sentence without that letter.

Look at that sentence and note the absence of the letter 'Q'. I just proved a negative.

There is nothing special about negative claims. The burden of proof is for all claims, positive or negative.

It is impossible to have an expert on a subjective issue...

Begging the question fallacy. You're trying to prove that morality is subjective, you can't just assume it is as part of your argument.

Perhaps you should bother to read my replies to other people.

Ditto.

 

[Kylie]

We don't know if these things are consistent with reality because we are incapable of having a complete picture of reality.

However, we can easily tell if they are INCONSISTENT with reality - which you've said they could never be.

No, it's not. Allow me to demonstrate:

Negative claim: The next sentence I write will not contain the letter 'Q'.
Proof: Here is a sentence without that letter.

Look at that sentence and note the absence of the letter 'Q'. I just proved a negative.

There is nothing special about negative claims. The burden of proof is for all claims, positive or negative.

Just because it is true for that particular case, it does not mean it is true for every case. For example, when a believer says to an atheist, "Prove God doesn't exist."

Begging the question fallacy. You're trying to prove that morality is subjective, you can't just assume it is as part of your argument.

Again, you are asking me to prove a negative.