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How about killing them? Is that always wrong?Abusing a child is objectively wrong because it harms the child for no justified reason and we intuitively know that harming children in that way is always wrong.
Abusing a child is objectively wrong because it harms the child for no justified reason and we intuitively know that harming children in that way is always wrong.
How does that equate to morals being subjective.So you are saying morals are subjective, not objective?
The point is this is the only way to determine objective morals. We can be justified in believing that our moral experience is representative of what is real in that we know certain things are always wrong. We can compare this to the physical world. People's lived experience tells them that the reality they live in is what we sense and is not some virtual reality. So we are justified to believe that what we sense about the physical world is real.People acting like morality is objective does not mean it really is.
Yes but that subjective view cannot determine ultimate right and wrong. Objective morals do. We all share certain morals that we know are always the wrong regardless of subjective moral views. You have to pick out those moral wrongs that we know are always wrong to do.So what? People can share the same view even if that view is subjective.
The difference is the moral that unjustified killing is wrong does add up to 1 + 1 = 2. It odes all for a wide variety of views. If it was subjective and did allow for not just a wide variety by any view then it would be OK to kill for fun, kill for profit, kill in anger, kill in order to rob people to survive, kill because of overpopulation, kill to find new life-saving medicines, etc, etc, etc. All these moral views are excluded so surely this cannot be classed as subjective morality.And you'll find that people have a wide variety of views on that, exactly what you said would happen if morality was subjective. If morality was objective, then there would be no disagreement, just as there is no disagreement that 1+1=2.
Its the other way around for objective morals. You have to convince people that unjustified killing is good (all the examples I gave above) to show that there are no objective morals.I suspect you missed the point. You can convince someone of a subjective opinion with a good argument. I can make a good argument as to why Star Trek is better than Star Wars. But that doesn't mean it is objectively true, even if my argument changes someone's mind.
Yes exactly. Look at all the examples we have where politicians and big business make wrong seem like a right and we later find the truth. The UN and the coalition of the willing is one example. But I am sure you could find plenty if you look.And I suppose they can convince people that 1+1=5 if they pay off enough people?
Not most people but all people. I don't think anyone could say it was OK for their child to be abused. Not just that objective morality will also take the position that it is always wrong and won't allow subjective views.How does that prove it is objective though, rather than just a subjective opinion that most people share?
What constitutes a justified reason? If a justified reason exists, then the answer to my question, which I'll refresh your memory was "Is that always wrong?", is NO.Killing a child or anyone for no justified reason is always wrong.
But the person abusing the child will claim his reasons for harming is completely justified. What method do you employ to objectively prove your claim is right and his is wrong?Abusing a child is objectively wrong because it harms the child for no justified reason and we intuitively know that harming children in that way is always wrong.
But we don't know certain things are always wrong. A scenario can be presented to justify nearly any behavior, and if there is at least one instance when such a behavior could be considered "the lesser of two evils" , an argument can be made that it is not always wrong.The point is this is the only way to determine objective morals. We can be justified in believing that our moral experience is representative of what is real in that we know certain things are always wrong.
Subjective morality doesn’t allow for a variety of any view to exist any more than objective morality. The reality is that these views exist regardless of morality being objective or subjective. This shows you don’t understand subjective moralityThe difference is the moral that unjustified killing is wrong does add up to 1 + 1 = 2. It odes all for a wide variety of views. If it was subjective and did allow for not just a wide variety by any view then it would be OK to kill for fun, kill for profit, kill in anger, kill in order to rob people to survive,
McDonald never advertised that eating their food was morally good, they only advertise that their food taste good; which it does.Look at MacDonald's for example as a representative of the process food industry and the resulting health crisis we have with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. This was created because the industry made out that processed food was great with an advertisement. Especially to kids. It is the same process as the tobaccos industry used. This happens all the time and is just a couple of examples. Whoever has the power or money can make the best-case scenario that dictates what is good and bad.
Then, in the same way, we can say that our experience of the physical world is no evidence that it is a real indication of what we experience. That we are living in some matrix that makes us believe that what we see is our physical world.That argument makes no sense.
If all you can offer as evidence for objective morality is a subjective experience, then you have not provided evidence for objective anything.
You don't understand the logic. Your experience tells you how love works and that it exists. The evidence is that you live that way. You would not live that way if you felt it was not real. The testimony is in the way people act and react to love as being real. People will not do that with things that do not think are real or exist. It is the same for objective morals.The show me some way that I can test to see that my husband really loves me and isn't just faking.
But how do you know it is not an objective position we all have. Like I said the difference is no one who agrees that child abuse is wrong will accept someone with an opposing view under subjective morality when they should. That speaks of objective morals rather than subjective ones.The fact that I think it is always wrong to abuse kids does not make it objective. It's simply a subjective opinion that most people share.
Any unjustified harm to the child. That could be many things. Do I have to go into listing them? Physical, emotional, mental, psychological abuse. Verbal abuse, leaving a kid in the hot sun in a car, starving a child, bashing a child, shooting kids as in the school massacres etc.And did you actually pay attention to yourself? "If someone abuses a child then that is abuse." Well of course! But what counts as abuse? Can you objectively define that for me?
This is based on the evolutionary view of socialization. But this cannot explain why we think certain things are always wrong. It only tells us how we know. Like why is it some vital that we treat humans well in evolutionary terms.Because we are social creatures and opinions are instilled in us by our parents and our society. And one of those is our morality. So it's not surprising that we generally have very similar moral views.
Yes, people have subjective views. But the 100% reaction to abusing their kid is wrong is an objective moral position. As mentioned before people and society claim subjective morals but they live like there are objective morals. They impose morals on people and tell them they cannot have their subjective views because they are wrong. They say there is no ultimate right and wrong but then react like there are ultimate right and wrongs.Because it's subjective.
If it was subjective then why can't any view be applied and only that rare one? I thought the true meaning of subjective morality was that as many views as individuals can be applied. Yet here we have one rare exception that is not just for any subjective position but one that also relates to not killing and protecting life as precious.So now you are saying that this objective morality really depends on the situation. That sounds pretty subjective to me!
The idea of the rare exceptions in upholding the objective morality is not to allow grey areas to creep in. Unjustified killing is objectively wrong means just that. It doesn't open the door for other grey areas and keeps things restricted to rare exceptions. If it was truly subjective then the door would already be open for every moral position that individuals had including all the unjustified views.But there are grey areas there as well, aren't there?
I don't think it is hard to determine what is unjustified harm. IE if a person says I think it is justified to starve a child to death, or sexually abuse them we can say this is objectively wrong despite the person claiming that it is justified. The fact that we can say that even these two examples are always wrong supports objectively morality.But the person abusing the child will claim his reasons for harming is completely justified. What method do you employ to objectively prove your claim is right and his is wrong?
How about if an evil person would drop a nuclear bomb on New York city killing 10 million people if you don't starve and sexually abuse the child? Would it then be justified to sacrifice this child in order to save the millions?I don't think it is hard to determine what is unjustified harm. IE if a person says I think it is justified to starve a child to death, or sexually abuse them we can say this is objectively wrong despite the person claiming that it is justified. The fact that we can say that even these two examples are always wrong supports objectively morality.
Abusing a child is objectively wrong because it harms the child for no justified reason and we intuitively know that harming children in that way is always wrong.
How does that equate to morals being subjective.
The point is this is the only way to determine objective morals. We can be justified in believing that our moral experience is representative of what is real in that we know certain things are always wrong. We can compare this to the physical world. People's lived experience tells them that the reality they live in is what we sense and is not some virtual reality. So we are justified to believe that what we sense about the physical world is real.
Any skeptical argument disputing our moral experience a parallel argument can be run why we should be skeptical of the physical world around us. Maybe we live in a hologram world and our brains have tricked us into believing that what we see is real. In the absence of some reason to defeat your experiences of the physical world, you are justified to believe what those experiences teach you. Similarly in the absence of a good defeater of our moral experience, we are justified in believing what that experience tells us. That experience tells us that certain things are always wrong.
Yes but that subjective view cannot determine ultimate right and wrong. Objective morals do. We all share certain morals that we know are always the wrong regardless of subjective moral views. You have to pick out those moral wrongs that we know are always wrong to do.
The difference is the moral that unjustified killing is wrong does add up to 1 + 1 = 2. It odes all for a wide variety of views. If it was subjective and did allow for not just a wide variety by any view then it would be OK to kill for fun, kill for profit, kill in anger, kill in order to rob people to survive, kill because of overpopulation, kill to find new life-saving medicines, etc, etc, etc. All these moral views are excluded so surely this cannot be classed as subjective morality.
Its the other way around for objective morals. You have to convince people that unjustified killing is good (all the examples I gave above) to show that there are no objective morals.
Yes exactly. Look at all the examples we have where politicians and big business make wrong seem like a right and we later find the truth. The UN and the coalition of the willing is one example. But I am sure you could find plenty if you look.
Look at MacDonald's for example as a representative of the process food industry and the resulting health crisis we have with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. This was created because the industry made out that processed food was great with an advertisement. Especially to kids. It is the same process as the tobaccos industry used. This happens all the time and is just a couple of examples. Whoever has the power or money can make the best-case scenario that dictates what is good and bad.
Not most people but all people. I don't think anyone could say it was OK for their child to be abused. Not just that objective morality will also take the position that it is always wrong and won't allow subjective views.
The difference is among all those people taking a subjective position who agree that abusing a child is wrong if someone said I think it is OK to abuse a child they would all condemn the person and say that they were objectively wrong. They would not say that it was OK and even good for that person to have that view.
Yet under subjective morality system, they should be acknowledging that it is OK for that person to have that view because under the subjective moral system there is no objective right and wrong and they have no way of really measuring what is right and wrong. It is just differing evolved states of mind.
Therefore any person with an opposing view is not really wrong but rather just expressing an unfashionable and different view. Whereas under objective morality abusing a child is always wrong and therefore the view of the person claiming it is OK to abuse children can be justified as always wrong and has no place in that system.
Then, in the same way, we can say that our experience of the physical world is no evidence that it is a real indication of what we experience. That we are living in some matrix that makes us believe that what we see is our physical world.
You don't understand the logic. Your experience tells you how love works and that it exists. The evidence is that you live that way. You would not live that way if you felt it was not real. The testimony is in the way people act and react to love as being real. People will not do that with things that do not think are real or exist. It is the same for objective morals.
It is the only way we can measure them as they are immaterial. We measure immaterial things this way in our lives and live by this. The evidence that there is love in that a person will give their life for another is evidenced in the act. Science and biology cannot equate for this. So lived experience is the evidence.
But how do you know it is not an objective position we all have. Like I said the difference is no one who agrees that child abuse is wrong will accept someone with an opposing view under subjective morality when they should. That speaks of objective morals rather than subjective ones.
Any unjustified harm to the child. That could be many things. Do I have to go into listing them? Physical, emotional, mental, psychological abuse. Verbal abuse, leaving a kid in the hot sun in a car, starving a child, bashing a child, shooting kids as in the school massacres etc.
This is based on the evolutionary view of socialization. But this cannot explain why we think certain things are always wrong. It only tells us how we know. Like why is it some vital that we treat humans well in evolutionary terms.
Yes, people have subjective views. But the 100% reaction to abusing their kid is wrong is an objective moral position. As mentioned before people and society claim subjective morals but they live like there are objective morals. They impose morals on people and tell them they cannot have their subjective views because they are wrong. They say there is no ultimate right and wrong but then react like there are ultimate right and wrongs.
If it was subjective then why can't any view be applied and only that rare one? I thought the true meaning of subjective morality was that as many views as individuals can be applied. Yet here we have one rare exception that is not just for any subjective position but one that also relates to not killing and protecting life as precious.
The relative position has nothing to do with subjective and objective morality. There can still be objective morals with relative situations. Relativity is different from subjective morality. The person defending their family against a killer would be guilty of culpable murder and not protecting life if they did not protect their family.
The idea of the rare exceptions in upholding the objective morality is not to allow grey areas to creep in. Unjustified killing is objectively wrong means just that. It doesn't open the door for other grey areas and keeps things restricted to rare exceptions. If it was truly subjective then the door would already be open for every moral position that individuals had including all the unjustified views.
I don't think people intuitively knew the earth was flat. They deduced this from the limited knowledge they had at that time. Intuition is more than just a blind guess or some sort of ESP. It is a deep-seated knowledge that we have about what is right and wrong in our conscience. We don't have to be taught it and unless we are not right in the mind we will sense it and can either acknowledge or reject it.Knowing things intuitively isn’t a characteristic of objectivity, so that’s immaterial. People intuitively knew the earth was flat. It didn’t make it objectively true that the earth was flat.
Why is it objectively wrong to hurt children?
But we are not talking about subjective morality. I am saying that you would have to come up with a defeater that our moral experience doesn't point to there being objective morals to the point that it doesn't just show that our moral experience is fallible or worthless but that it is completely unreliable, that we may recognize no objective moral values or duties whatsoever. Your defeater would have to be equivalent to showing that our reality is not what it is and that we are a brain in a jar being fed that the reality we experience.I can provide some explanation on why I have the moral positions that I have, so there's a big difference there. Unless, of course, you can provide some reason for believing that you're a brain in a jar.
As mentioned before the measure is in the lived experience (how people act/react). How a person reacts to being wronged rather than the subjective moral view they claim. How society imposes certain morals on people and tells them they have to conform and that their subjective views don't matter.Okay, and how do you measure them? What units do you use?
And just because they think child abuse is OK are they objectively right. Should we not say there is something evil in them thinking that. Or just say that's OK for you to have that view and not declare it immoral. We can claim it is objectively wrong to think child abuse is good.Because we don't all have it! There are people out there who do not share the opinion that child abuse is wrong.
First, we have to agree that child abuse is objectively morally wrong. Any compromise to this based on a justified moral reason doesn't change the fact that child abuse is objectively morally wrong. A relative situation doesn't change the objective moral. It just changes the situation relative to the circumstances.And what counts as justified. There have been people who have beat their children for not eating all their dinner. They believed their punishment was justified, even if most people would see it as unjustified.
Please explain then.You don't seem to understand evolution very well then.
So you're saying there are people who would not react to their child being sexually abused as being wrong and would think it is good.You keep saying 100% of people think it's wrong to abuse children. But that just isn't true.
Yes, not only that but your view would be just as valid and right as the person saying it is not OK to abuse children with justification.Do you think that subjective morality means I should be able to present a convincing argument as to why abusing a child should sometimes be okay?
You can present your subjective moral view as your opinion only. What I am saying is that people act and react like morals are objective. They don't just present morals as their view but insist that their view is right for others. That is how people and society live (lived experience).Why do you demand that I present a subjective opinion as an objective fact? I think you just don't understand what subjective and objective actually mean.
I did before. Say the objective moral is it is wrong to go into someone's house and eat from a pantry. The relative situation is that for the homeowner it is OK to enter their house and eat from the pantry. But it is wrong for a stranger to do that at my house. So things change according to the relative situation but it doesn't change the fact that it is objectively wrong to go into someone's house and eat from a pantry.Okay,m then give me an example of something relative in an area that we agree is objective. It's an objective fact that 1+1=2 in base ten. Show me how that is altered with this relative stuff you speak of.
How can it be subjective when it only allows a rare exception which is also a moral objective. I thought subjective morality allowed all views. This example denies may view except a rare one. That surely cannot be classed as subjective. You are getting the relative situation mixed up with subjectiveness.So now you admit to rare exceptions, but don't see how allowing this wiggle room means it is subjective, to begin with?
So that doesn't mean it is OK. It is usually the kid who comes out for the worst. The ironic thing is those same parents would react if someone else abused their child or any child in the same way.Actually, many children are abused by their parents and/or close family members.
The point is they are acting against what they have claimed and believed which is strong support as this usually indicates the truth. The point is the only way you can provide evidence for objective morality is in how people really believe (lived experience). If objective morality is real and they are in everyone then sooner or later people will express them.People can say it is objectively wrong, but that doesn't mean that it is actually objective.
OK, I agree. But do you think that the view that the other person holds that child abuse is good is an equal and legitimate view to have and something the person can also act on under a subjective moral system?Okay, I've had to point this out a few times now, and if you don't get it this time I'm just going to have to conclude that you are deliberately not getting it.
Accepting that a person holds an opinion does not mean you have to think that their opinion is acceptable.
I accept that there are people out there who think it's okay to abuse children. I know such people exist, and I'd be a fool to say that such people don't exist.
That doesn't change the fact that I find child abuse of any kind to be reprehensible.
WhySubjective morality does NOT mean we should allow people to do whatever they want. I do not understand how you reach this conclusion.
Man, that is a crazy scenario and one I don't think would ever happen. But if it did it would be a very hard situation to work out. Nevertheless, I think that all parties would be morally wrong in whatever they do and it is a catch 22 situation. I mean who would volunteer to abuse the child as they would never be able to live with themselves. Whose child would be used? Do they draw sticks or find some child who has no family. You can see how there are ethical dilemmas whichever way you look at it.How about if an evil person would drop a nuclear bomb on New York city killing 10 million people if you don't starve and sexually abuse the child? Would it then be justified to sacrifice this child in order to save the millions?
No our perception of our experiences is subjective. The actual experience itself is objective. It is fact how we act/react. That's why I said people can claim (verbalize) that they have subjective morals and for example have the view that child But when their own child is abused their action/reaction will be that it is wrong. There is no subjective view here just a physical reaction that can be observed.Because you said that morals are based on our experience of them. Experiences are subjective.
Once again you have to come up with more than just saying that we are not justified to believe there are moral objectives based on this. If people's sense of the physical world is what they experience which tells them it is real then likewise peoples experience of morality is what tells them what is real. You would have to come up with a defeater that proved objective morality is totally unreliable and humans can not realize any objective morals whatsoever. Just like proving our physical world is a totally unreliable representation of reality.The fact that it is the only way we can experience morals does not mean that way is objective.
No, refer to the above logical argument. Like I said my grammar is not very good and I may not have explained it properly.What? Now you are arguing that since there may not be an objective reality there must be objective morality?
Sorry, I understand that you believe that. I was speaking generally again. But if there is no ultimate right and wrong then how do people with subjective views measure what is right and wrong ultimately to see if what they say is correct.Have you not been following my argument? I've been saying all along that there is no ultimate right and wrong!
Yes, I agree. That is under subjective morality because there is no measure for telling what is objectively good or bad. Their views are just different and not really morally bad or good for that matter. So a mental case can say he believes killing people for fun is OK and no one can say they are objectively morally wrong. There is no distinction that they are mad and maybe wrong.And yet there are plenty of people who DO believe that it is okay to kill other people for fun.
No, I am not shifting the burden of proof but rather trying to show you that you cannot convince anyone that your moral position is right under the subjective system. That's because there is no objective basis for measuring right and wrong in the first place. The whole exercise is trying to build a moral case out of nothing. It amounts to a salesperson trying to convince someone to buy their product.Look at you, trying to shift the burden of proof away from yourself there.
Yes but some situations are more tricky than others and require more thought. But we shouldn't get relativity confused with subjectivity. As explained earlier objective morality can accommodate relative situations without changing the status of objective morality.How about we stick to situations that don't have as many variables? I mean, a situation like the one you suggested is just too easy to muddy the water. Surely if there is an objective morality as you suggested, that objective morality works in all cases where there is an issue of morality, right?
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