Objective morality revisited

[TooCurious]

Here are my thoughts on the idea of objective morality.

If any such thing as objective morality exists, we can still never directly access it. "Objective" physical forces, such as the aforementioned gravity, have physical, measurable, observable effects outside of our minds. Gravity is not merely an abstract concept, but a physical force. Morality, however, is an abstract concept. As such, it is contained in the human mind, and the human mind is inherently subjective. Even if there were a God, and he were to visit every human being individually and explain the codes of objective morality, each human would perceive, understand, and interpret those codes subjectively, because that is the nature of cognition. As such, we would only end up with subjective understandings of objective morality, not objective morality itself. Since we have not each had individual divine visitations to explain objective morality to us personally, our attempts to understand it have even more room for subjectivity. Therefore, if "objective morality" does exist, we humans can never directly access it, and all we really have to deal with are our subjective ideas about morality.

 

[TheBellman]

I deem cold-blooded murder to be a murder which is conducted for no other purpose than to murder someone - they had no ulterior motive such as revenge, duty, etc.

In that case, there have been a number of societies which accepted cold-blooded murder. A couple of hundred years ago in both North America and Australia it was just fine to go out on a hunting trip to hunt and kill the indigenous people. So it appears that there's no 'objective' morality against cold-blooded murder.

 

[ReverendDG]

Because, if morals are objective in the same way that gravity is objective, we must define its objectivity in the same manner. Gravity is affected by nothing humans can do, whether subjective or objective, and so morality must be the same.
hmm are you sure you know what objective means? it means they exist outside the mind, morals can never be objective, because they are effected by things in our brains that are abstract


Okay, fair point. I deem cold-blooded murder to be a murder which is conducted for no other purpose than to murder someone - they had no ulterior motive such as revenge, duty, etc.
I believe killing in a war is different from other killing - if the person you kill is a soldier of the opposing force, and he (for the sake of the argument) is obstructing you, then that is certainly not cold-blooded, and I personally would not even class it as murder (since murder has legal connotations that would not apply in this instance).

socialpaths do this, they sometimes kill for no reason, other than to kill someone
what about civillians? what about terrorists? they aren't soldiers but they are out to kill you, is it not murder?
killing a soldier after a war though? would that be murder? how about during peace times?

the problem people don't seem to get is there are things that effect the reasons behind the things, nothing is black and white