GrowingSmaller
Muslm Humanist
Its objective in the sense that morality is based in real ontology. So I am arguing for an aspect of moral realism. There are good actions, and good mental states, just as there is good soil and good fruit not only in the Bible, but also in agriculture. "Goodness" and "evil" are properties which stem from life and biological needs.I can understand how ethics can be subjective for me, but how is it possible for ethics to be objective for you?(or anyone else) How are you defining objective/subjective in reference to morality?
Okay; here it sounds like you are describing morality as subjective; not objective. If you believe morality can be objective, how?
Ken
All those so called moral laws (which are in fact just contingent regulations) are derived from or based in actual grounds in the human psyche. Those grounds may be subjective in one sense (they are mind dependent, and relate to feelings) but in another sense they are ontologically independent of my wishes and therefore objective. Just as I feel hungry when I need food, it is said blessed (prosperous, happy etc) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We seem to need morality to survive as subjective agents.
I am personally forced to prefer not being traumatised, not by mere whim or wish, but by the nature of trauma as I experienced it. There is a similar force acting on most people, inferred because morality tends to centre on causing pleasure, happiness, well being, rather than pain, sadness and illness. Its part of the way we are wired psychologically. Normally speaking.
Just as a plant strives towards light, or a fish cannot survive out of water. So also we strive for the "good" (an abstraction relating to well being), albeit imperfectly, and aggregate or lives around its causes.
I conclude that therefore there are causes of opinions about good and evil, just as there are causes of opinions about the sun and the moon. So they are caused, and forced to some degree or other - whatever my subjective "opinion" may be on the matter, the sun still rises and the moon still sets.
If opinion is "mere opinion" on the other hand, that seems to indicate groundlessness and even randomness, in the sense of not being caused in an orderly or scientifically understandable fashion. Yet we can understand that people are in general averse to torture, to starvation, to being burnt alive - and the Red Cross, Amnersty International, and other charities etc are there to promote morally fitting "memes". How many mass murderers have been canonised by the Catholic Church?
Just as the seed of the "kingdom" grows on good soil in Christianity, likewise moral systems grow in a feedback loop similar to coral growth or plant growth. Its a matter of mind striving towards those goods (well being, happiness, health etc) and we taste the fruits in the availability of medicine, food, solicitude etc. We're not exactly compelled to prefer health etc., but there is a degree of impulse, drive. There are real forces at work. Its basically a survival mechanism, and mechanisms are based in reality even if its perceptual realities like feelings and pains and memory related social organisation stemming from these.
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