Where does morality come from?

stevevw

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1. But there are people responsible for controlling what actions the car will take. The only difference is that the person who programs the control software of the car must do so in anticipation of the situation. But the same choice must be made.
As explained above this is irrelevant. A car is still a machine that is directly responding to what's in front of it. It is a long stretch to connect a distant and detached programmer who does not program cars to hit people and blame them for what happens. No programmer has been charged for doing such a thing.

2. And trains have brakes that are set to come on in emergencies as well. Also, brakes can fail. And brakes don't stop the vehicle instantly. The vehicle will move some distance after the brakes are applied before it comes to a stop.
Failing breaks take the blame off the driver as the cause and puts it down to mechanical reasons. Not stopping in time either implies the car is going to fast hence drive should be blamed but that is not a Trolley problem. Or that the pedestrian ran out in front of the car at too short a distance. That also reduces the blame on the driver. But the thing is that would apply to a non-automated car so it is irrelevant. In fact, the research shows automated cars are safer as their breaks respond faster than human reaction.

3. But once the pedestrian was detected, the decision still had to be made.
There is no human decision. Its a machine controlling the car. Here the problem the fact that the pedestrian runs out suddenly from between cars Jaywalking reduces any driver's accountability. This is supported by law. In some cases, it is the pedestrian who is at fault for the accident and the driver can sue the pedestrian. Pedestrians also need to follow the road rules including crossing roads at the proper place. Like I said it is important to take into consideration the mitigating circumstances and determine who is at fault.

drivers and pedestrians are expected to obey traffic laws and the "rules of the road" when using the streets, highways, crosswalks. If Person A fails to act with reasonable care and ends up causing harm to Person B, the law considers Person A negligent, regardless of who was driving and who was walking.
Pedestrian Car Accidents: Could the Pedestrian Be at Fault?

I think Star Trek is better than Star Wars. My preference for Star Trek over Star Wars is subjective, but the fact that I prefer Star Trek is objective.

Star Trek is better than Star Wars = Subjective statement.

Kylie thinks Star Trek is better than Star Wars = Objective statement.
OK, I wasn't talking about that but rather how you could know that every moral situation was not objective. But I guess you can believe that your subjective moral values are objective but only to yourself which I am not sure really makes much sense in what we were talking about. But I don't think you can claim your subjective morals are objective outside yourself when applied to others.

Is there an objective morality that applies to every single moral situation?
Yes, of course, that is what I have said several times now. But that is different to my claim that there is objective morals full stop. I only have to show that once to prove there are objective morals.

Once again you are repeating arguments which I have already disproved.
Your lived experience argument is wrong because lived experiences are SUBJECTIVE, and you can't prove objective fact with subjective opinion.
No lived experience is objective. It is behavior and science often use behavior under observation to verify something. That's why I keep referring to the lived behavior where people act like there is objective morality. I have given ample examples. Remember I only have to prove it once to show there are objective morals.

It is the same if I said that there is such a thing as mental illness. I only have to show that someone has mental illness once to show there is mental illness. This can be observed and verified in people's behavior and there can be degrees of mental illness.

And I can't answer your question because I can only respond from my own subjective view of morality. There are things that I believe are morally wrong and I could never support. But that doesn't mean that they are objectively wrong.
So personally, you cannot comment on the fact that some things are always wrong and evil. I think this is a cope out. people know that certain things are always wrong and to try and make out that just because someone somewhere will have a subjective view that moral evil is OK proves it isn't always wrong is disingenuous I think.

Surely everyone knows that abusing a child sexually or physically and raping is always wrong despite someone saying it is right and good to do under certain situations. Surely, we would look at that person and think there was something wrong with them. Coming up with farfetched scenarios doesn't change that fact.

Irrelevant. You are attempting to cloud the issue by making it about blame. Earlier you said that it was objectively morally right to sacrifice one life to save many. Now you are saying you would rather sacrifice many lives to prevent the abuse of one life.
Different situations. You ensured under the trolley situation that I didn't have a choice. That's why I said it was unreal. Because in real life I would have yelled or blew the horn or even hit the brakes or yell for someone to drive a car across the tracks. Other members of the public would have stepped in and done something to stop the trolley or get the people out of the way.

Unlike the Trolley problem, we have a choice. So we can choose what is best and sexually abusing a child goes against our own psyche as a society. We could not live with ourselves just as much as we could not live with ourselves if 1000 people were blown up. The other difference is if we give in once it will happen again and again because that is how these situations work. We have seen it with the terrorists and that is why the US and allies don't give in to them no matter what.

Ah. So when it supports your position, you only need one example. But when I present one example to support my position, all of a sudden I need to prove it for every single possible situation in the universe.

What a horrific double standard you have.
It's not a double standard. It is a basic rule of logical arguments based on deductive thinking. You cannot prove a negative claim. You are saying there is no objective morality. That is a negative claim to prove something. Negative assertions cannot be supported as you would have to know every situation was not objective to support that negative claim.

But as I have done in saying there is objective morality this is a positive claim which is different and I only need to show this once. I showed this with the example in a previous post remember. Then I applied it to morality.

The fallacy of proving the nonexistence of something.
Demanding that one proves the non-existence of something in place of providing adequate evidence for the existence of that something.
Proving Non-Existence
 
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Belk

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More like unwilling to admit an obvious defeat.

Defeat? You believe this to be a contest of some sort?

Maybe the problem is that a christian has no aversion to the word faith and having experienced this, knows that faith is the same and only the objects change. Those who have an aversion to christ don’t want to touch faith of any kind with a ten foot pole. So all faith in anything or anyone is removed from their vocabulary. They don’t understand what the word means but think the object of faith defines what faith is. It doesn’t.

Your mind reading skills do not appear to be working. Perhaps you should stick to presenting your own views and let others represent theirs?
 
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stevevw

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What scientific theory are you aware of that says before the expansion of the singularity (big bang) time, space, and matter did not exist?
If the Big Bang Theory mentions that time, space and matter were created by the Big Bang event then why would they say that if these things were already existing.
 
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Ken-1122

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If the Big Bang Theory mentions that time, space and matter were created by the Big Bang event then why would they say that if these things were already existing.

The Big Bang theory does not claim time, space, and matter were created by the Big Bang event.
Big Bang - Wikipedia
(Under misconceptions) One of the common misconceptions about the Big Bang model is that it fully explains the origin of the universe. However, the Big Bang model does not describe how energy, time, and space was caused, but rather it describes the emergence of the present universe from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state
 
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Moral Orel

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Nonsense. I’m 100 % certain the sun is shining. I can name a hundred things I’m 100 % certain of.

Sorry but I work in science, not metaphysics.
You're here in this thread talking about epistemology, so I hate to break it to you, but you're dealing in metaphysics now. And you can never say with 100% certainty that you aren't dreaming, so you can never say basically anything with 100% certainty.

Because defining something by what it lacks or is not tells us nothing. Faith is accepting the evidence for something that cannot yet be completely seen but will be at some point.
So then if something can't ever be completely seen, then it isn't faith? That's a strange defining feature.
 
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Kylie

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Shall I respond that have mortal fear of writing that scientists believe? It’s a word and you seem to be in deep angst over using it in any way, shape or form. You won’t suddenly (horror or horrors) believe in God be suse you type out f a i t h, you know.
You have. You’re scared to death to type out faith.

I have found that atheists do tend to be more fearful on the whole, but fear of a word is a new one.

Wow, whatever you want to justify your position.
 
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Kylie

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As the trolley problem has the trolley heading for the track towards the 5 people in the first place those who do nothing are really saying I will kill the 5 people. What I am saying is for any other option besides going down the track with the one person on it can be shown to be morally wrong.

So though people may choose to do nothing or choose to go down the track with 5 people they are taking the morally wrong option. It may be OK for them but it is not the morally best thing to do as killing 1 is better than mass murder. This can be logically established IE killing more people has worse outcomes with more lives lost, more grief and sorrow, more parentless families, more partners lost, more sons and daughters lost, more of everything negative.


But if the person does nothing, it's exactly the same as if they had not been there in the first place. I'm not saying that's what I'd do, I'm not saying that's how I'd think, but it does show that people can have differing opinions.

The point isn't that most people would do the same thing doesn't prove objective morality. The point is it can be shown that going down the track with 1 person is the objectively best thing to do as logically argued above. Someone who chooses to kill the 5 cannot justify that it is a better thing to do than killing the one.

So it's better to kill a five year old than 5 ninety year olds? Because, call me crazy, if we are trying to maximise the amount of life that is preserved, the five year old seems to have a lot more of it ahead of him than all the ninety year olds combined.


Because people are expressing their subjective views. But is two people both have an objective view of the moral situation then they will come to the same conclusion. That is why Christians agree that abortion is wrong except if the mother's life is at risk. They all agree on the fundamental laws of God.

I can't believe I have to say this again, because I've already said it so many times and you just don't seem to listen to me. The fact that many people agree on something does not make it objective!

Because in the overall system of subjective morality both options are equal and one is not more right than the other because you have no independent reference point to determine that apart from the personal opinion which cannot determine if one option is better than the other overall.

Put it this way whatever option you choose which you think is the more moral one to you do you think if a person next to you choose the other option you think is worse morally that he is wrong. That he should not have that moral position even though you think its wrong.

No.

Subjective morality does NOT mean both options are equal. And I don't need an external point of reference to make it a difficult choice.

You really seem to be arguing against something you don't understand.

I guess if this was like God speaking directly to the prophets then I guess I would have to kill as part of God's command. The same as God commanded Joshua to kill in the battle of Jericho.

That's actually kinda scary.

I intuitively felt there wasn't something right about the Trolley problem and especially applied to automated cars as they are automated and no human drives them so how can a machine be moral in deciding what to do in a real-life situation on the road.

Ah, so it doesn't apply because a human isn't deciding on what the car does.

It's the car's programming, isn't it?

Now tell me, who programmed the car? Who wrote the program that controls the way the car drives and what it will do in different situations? And who wrote the programming that will determine if the car tries to avoid hitting a pedestrian who steps out, even if it could cause a big accident?

Could it be A HUMAN who wrote that programming?

That skepticism seems to be backed up by most of the articles I have read and your position that it is a realistic example seems to be in the minority where many ethical experts say automated cars ios not a good example of the Trolley problem. For example

Why the Trolley Dilemma is a terrible model for trying to make self-driving cars safer
The Trolley Dilemma has also been applied to autonomous vehicles, since in the face of a potential accident, the software may be required to decide between several courses of action. That’s despite the fact that it’s considered an extremely flawed way to think about a complicated problem by prominent ethicists and researchers. (In addition to the most obvious problems with the paradigm, which are clear to any sentient being: Outside of cartoons, who is tying people to train tracks? And why wouldn’t you go untie them, instead of redirecting the oncoming train?).

Or maybe there are just track workers who don't know the train is coming...? You do realise there could be lots of ways there could be people on the tracks who are in danger, right?

In 2014, in an article for Social and Personality Psychology Compass, researchers wrote that such sacrificial dilemmas as the Trolley Dilemma are unrealistic and “unrepresentative of the moral situations people encounter in the real world.” They warned that the absurdity and artificial settings of such paradigms may “affect the way people approach the situation and decide what to do.” In other words, someone influenced by the Trolley Dilemma may make some dangerous choices when faced with a real-world scenario.

In the real world, you almost never get these types of “forced-choice dilemmas,” explains Anthony. “The trolley dilemma can be useful when you’re picking apart people’s intuitions, where you can isolate one or two factors, but it’s a mistake to think that you can really apply that to the real world in all its complexity.”

And if you read the article, they were saying that it wasn't real because asking people what they would do in a traumatic situation isn't the same as them actually being in that traumatic situation. That I agree with. But the issue we are using the trolley problem to discuss isn't what you would do. I am asking you to apply your objective morality to it to tell me what the objectively right moral choice is.

As illustrated in my driving anecdote, the Trolley Dilemma doesn’t apply because it requires a “perfect 50-50 chance of killing each individual in the same amount of time, with no other location to steer the vehicle, and no other possible steering maneuver but driving head-on to a death,”
Why the Trolley Dilemma is a terrible model for trying to make self-driving cars safer

Doesn't change the fact that there are situations where the cars may have to choose between causing a small amount of damage to avoid a larger amount.

And
The problem with the trolley problem
As this article points out the Trolley thought experiment is irrelevant for self-driving cars as they don’t have emotions. Intentions are important in moral choices through our free will. But machines like automated cars don’t have free will.

The Trolley problem specifically disregards just about every aspect of ethical behavior that is relevant to self-driving cars. For example, the trolley runs on tracks so the driver knows for sure they will hit 1 or 5 people on those tracks. Whereas the automated car must navigate the environment with uncertainty continually guessing how others will react. Humans are good at anticipating what will happen like unpredictable driver and pedestrian behavior. Machines cannot do this.

The trolley problem also suffers a catastrophic brake failure, so that its driver faces no blame for the deaths that would result from his inaction. However, self-driving cars must continuously monitor their performance and decide what risk of suffering such a failure would be acceptable. As there is a driver in the Trolley experiment, they will struggle with their choice no matter whether they hit the 1 or 5 people and feel guilt and distress. Self-driving cars have no emotion and in human terms would seem like emotionless monsters.
The problem with the trolley problem

And this also ignores much of the self driving car situation. What about the people in the car? And who gets the lawsuit? The manufacturer of the self driving car is going to be the one slapped with a lawsuit, so the manufacturer is motivated to program the car properly. What should they have the programming do?

Yes on the bases that mass murder regardless of age and status is still wrong. The entire idea that we should start discriminating about who lives and dies is a dangerous slippery slope to acting immoral. Should we take out 5 sick and disabled people over 1 healthy one? This opens the door for personal bias to come in where people will be saying I don't like certain ethnic races so it's better if they are wiped out or because the 5 have criminal histories they don't deserve to live etc.

So you are saying that the lives of five 90 year olds are more valuable than the life of one 5 year old? Even though the five year old has another 60 or 70 years at least, and the ninety year olds would be lucky to have 20 years between them?

But they were not blamed alone for the injuries caused, the outcome of the inquiry found it was a joint responsibility and no one person was to blame. Therefore we cannot hold the track controller guilty for the final outcome. Whereas in the Trolley problem there is only one person to blame and there is a direct link between their actions and the killing of someone.

Why is one person to blame in the trolley problem? Do you think the driver in the trolley problem deliberately took the brakes off?

But here's the other difference from the Trolley problem. In the Trolley problem, the person controlling the track knows for sure that there are people on the track and that someone will be killed for sure as a result of their choice. In a real-life example, there are no certainties. As far as the track controller believes its a 50/50 chance at the very least and maybe a very good chance that no one will be even hurt let alone killed. So he is not sending a carriage to anyone certain death.

Doesn't change the fact that he knows it could happen.
 
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Kylie

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As explained above this is irrelevant. A car is still a machine that is directly responding to what's in front of it. It is a long stretch to connect a distant and detached programmer who does not program cars to hit people and blame them for what happens. No programmer has been charged for doing such a thing.

Nah, it's not a stretch.

If a person programs a thing to behave in a certain way, and then that results in some damage, then the person who programmed it is responsible for that.

Failing breaks take the blame off the driver as the cause and puts it down to mechanical reasons. Not stopping in time either implies the car is going to fast hence drive should be blamed but that is not a Trolley problem. Or that the pedestrian ran out in front of the car at too short a distance. That also reduces the blame on the driver. But the thing is that would apply to a non-automated car so it is irrelevant. In fact, the research shows automated cars are safer as their breaks respond faster than human reaction.

You don't get it.

It's not about who is responsible for the situation in the first place. It's about what a person can do in response to it.

There is no human decision. Its a machine controlling the car. Here the problem the fact that the pedestrian runs out suddenly from between cars Jaywalking reduces any driver's accountability. This is supported by law. In some cases, it is the pedestrian who is at fault for the accident and the driver can sue the pedestrian. Pedestrians also need to follow the road rules including crossing roads at the proper place. Like I said it is important to take into consideration the mitigating circumstances and determine who is at fault.

drivers and pedestrians are expected to obey traffic laws and the "rules of the road" when using the streets, highways, crosswalks. If Person A fails to act with reasonable care and ends up causing harm to Person B, the law considers Person A negligent, regardless of who was driving and who was walking.
Pedestrian Car Accidents: Could the Pedestrian Be at Fault?

Again, you are more concerned with who is at fault. Just goes to show you don't understand the point I am trying to make. Either that, or you are deliberately trying to muddy the issue.

OK, I wasn't talking about that but rather how you could know that every moral situation was not objective. But I guess you can believe that your subjective moral values are objective but only to yourself which I am not sure really makes much sense in what we were talking about. But I don't think you can claim your subjective morals are objective outside yourself when applied to others.

You're moving the goalposts.

You asked how I can have an objective viewpoint that morality is subjective. I answered that question.

And what are you talking about, my own personal morals being applied to others? Are you saying that other's should be made to have the same morals as me?

Yes, of course, that is what I have said several times now. But that is different to my claim that there is objective morals full stop. I only have to show that once to prove there are objective morals.

So you claim it applies to ALL moral situations? Then why do you think you only need to show it once? Even if there is some objective morality that applies to one situation, that does not mean it applies to ALL situations! If you want to show that objective morality applies to ALL situations, you must SHOW it for all situations!

No lived experience is objective. It is behavior and science often use behavior under observation to verify something. That's why I keep referring to the lived behavior where people act like there is objective morality. I have given ample examples. Remember I only have to prove it once to show there are objective morals.

No, lived experience is SUBJECTIVE.

It is the same if I said that there is such a thing as mental illness. I only have to show that someone has mental illness once to show there is mental illness. This can be observed and verified in people's behavior and there can be degrees of mental illness.

But that doesn't show that all illness is mental illness. If you say something applies to ALL cases, you must prove that it applies to all cases. You can't just show it applies to one case and then assume it therefore applies to all cases.

So personally, you cannot comment on the fact that some things are always wrong and evil. I think this is a cope out. people know that certain things are always wrong and to try and make out that just because someone somewhere will have a subjective view that moral evil is OK proves it isn't always wrong is disingenuous I think.

This just shows once more that you do not understand the issue I am trying to talk about.

I can't comment because you are demanding that I use my subjective opinion to comment on whether or not something is objective.

Surely everyone knows that abusing a child sexually or physically and raping is always wrong despite someone saying it is right and good to do under certain situations. Surely, we would look at that person and think there was something wrong with them. Coming up with farfetched scenarios doesn't change that fact.

Once again, the fact that most people agree with a moral position does not mean that the moral position is objectively true.

I keep saying this and you refuse to listen. Am I wasting my time with you?

Different situations. You ensured under the trolley situation that I didn't have a choice. That's why I said it was unreal. Because in real life I would have yelled or blew the horn or even hit the brakes or yell for someone to drive a car across the tracks. Other members of the public would have stepped in and done something to stop the trolley or get the people out of the way.

You know there are plenty of situations where those things don't work, right?

Unlike the Trolley problem, we have a choice. So we can choose what is best and sexually abusing a child goes against our own psyche as a society. We could not live with ourselves just as much as we could not live with ourselves if 1000 people were blown up. The other difference is if we give in once it will happen again and again because that is how these situations work. We have seen it with the terrorists and that is why the US and allies don't give in to them no matter what.

Again, just because most people share the view that it is wrong does not make it objectively wrong.

It's not a double standard. It is a basic rule of logical arguments based on deductive thinking. You cannot prove a negative claim. You are saying there is no objective morality. That is a negative claim to prove something. Negative assertions cannot be supported as you would have to know every situation was not objective to support that negative claim.

But as I have done in saying there is objective morality this is a positive claim which is different and I only need to show this once. I showed this with the example in a previous post remember. Then I applied it to morality.

The fallacy of proving the nonexistence of something.
Demanding that one proves the non-existence of something in place of providing adequate evidence for the existence of that something.
Proving Non-Existence

Yeah, it's a double standard. You give a single example and then assume that it applies to all possible examples.

That's like me saying that 2 is an even prime number, therefore all prime numbers are even.
 
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stevevw

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The Big Bang theory does not claim time, space, and matter were created by the Big Bang event.
Big Bang - Wikipedia
(Under misconceptions) One of the common misconceptions about the Big Bang model is that it fully explains the origin of the universe. However, the Big Bang model does not describe how energy, time, and space was caused, but rather it describes the emergence of the present universe from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state
There is no guarantee that the universe emerged from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state as this is based on the theory of General Relativity which doesn't take into account Quantum Physics.

But if you read that section under misconceptions properly you will see that it is saying that the Big Bang model doesn't describe how matter, time, and space was caused. It is not saying that energy, time, and space were already there. In fact, in saying it doesn't account for how these were caused is acknowledging that they must have been caused another way therefore also acknowledging they were not present in the beginning of our universe.
 
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stevevw

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I'd like to talk specifically about this for a bit. But first, to clarify:

Are you saying that killing one person to save five people is the objectively right thing to do? If that one person's death will save five people who would have otherwise died, we should let the one person die.
Yes, it would be the objectively right thing to do in the situation you have created.
 
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stevevw

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But if the person does nothing, it's exactly the same as if they had not been there in the first place.
No it's not. The Trolley problem specifically says you see a trolley coming along a track and it's going to run down 5 people. Do you change the track so that it misses those 5 people and hits 1 person instead? So not changing the track you are saying you will allow the trolley to hit the 5 people. That is the idea of the Trolley thought experiment to see if someone will take action to avoid something worse happening.
I'm not saying that's what I'd do, I'm not saying that's how I'd think, but it does show that people can have differing opinions.
Therefore in the Trolly problem there are only 2 choices. What I am saying is that as you and I have indicated that choosing to avoid mass murder and more misery, loss is the right option. That's because it is always the right option. Any other option is objectively wrong regardless of what a person's subjective opinion is.

So it's better to kill a five-year-old than 5 ninety-year-olds? Because call me crazy, if we are trying to maximize the amount of life that is preserved, the five-year-old seems to have a lot more of it ahead of him than all the ninety-year-olds combined.
First the trolley problem does not specify that. You are adding further criteria to the equation. Then you open the door to add other stuff when you were insistent that I could not change anything in the trolley problem like there were brakes on the trolley or I could beep the trolley horn to warn the people. Otherwise, I could say what if the 5-year old was had a severe disability or was a diagnosed psycho maniac.

But the other factor about why it is right to kill 1 rather than 5 is that you are multiplying the killing and doing mass murder (more of a bad thing) is always seen as a greater wrong regardless of the circumstances of the age and background.

I can't believe I have to say this again, because I've already said it so many times and you just don't seem to listen to me. The fact that many people agree on something does not make it objective!
I think we have misunderstood each other. I was stating that two people who both support objective morality IE two Christians will come to the same objective moral position. I wasn't trying to prove objective morality but to show how people who support objective morality will have the same morals.

No. Subjective morality does NOT mean both options are equal. And I don't need an external point of reference to make it a difficult choice. You really seem to be arguing against something you don't understand.
Actually I think you are not understanding the true implications of subjective views when it comes to morality. If subjective morality is similar to a persons "likes and dislikes" for food for example (choc icecream v vanilla) then how is there a distinction.

Applied to morality it doesn't matter if one chooses choc as opposed to vanilla (moral view A or B) as "likes and dislikes" don't say anything about what is correct or right. You cannot say that your moral option (personal like) is more correct than someone else no more than you can say you're like for Vanilla icecream is correct as opposed to someone else's like for choc. So whether applied to like or dislikes or morality the subjective choices are equal in the overall scheme of things IE ultimately.

That's actually kinda scary.
Why is it scary.

Ah, so it doesn't apply because a human isn't deciding on what the car does. It's the car's programming, isn't it?
Therefore it is not the same as the Trolley Problem. The Trolley problem only allows for the person operating the trolley to make the decision to switch tracks not some detached person who cannot see what is happening.

Now tell me, who programmed the car? Who wrote the program that controls the way the car drives and what it will do in different situations? And who wrote the programming that will determine if the car tries to avoid hitting a pedestrian who steps out, even if it could cause a big accident? Could it be A HUMAN who wrote that programming?
Yes, the same person who designed the brakes which will stop the car and avoid knocking down the pedestrian faster than any human reaction.

But if you read the article I linked it states that machines are not human and cannot think like humans as far as how other drivers and pedestrians act no matter how you program them. That is what the experts are saying is why it is a wrong comparison to the Trolley problem because the Trolley problem is about the person at the scene (a human) seeing what is happening and changing the tracks accordingly. IE

The Trolley Dilemma has also been applied to autonomous vehicles, since in the face of a potential accident, the software may be required to decide between several courses of action. That’s despite the fact that it’s considered an extremely flawed way to think about a complicated problem by prominent ethicists and researchers.

Humans are not robots and can anticipate unpredictable situations, do other people's thinking to anticipate something happening. A robot (automated car) can never be programmed to do that, therefore, using it in a trolley thought experiment is as they say a terrible model for the Trolley problem.

Or maybe there are just track workers who don't know the train is coming...? You do realize there could be lots of ways there could be people on the tracks who are in danger, right?
Now you're adding new additions to the Trolley problem which you said we cant do. You said the people were workers on the Trolley lines. If they are just workers then they would be more aware of looking for something coming. After all, they are working on a trolley line where Trolley comes along.

And if you read the article, they were saying that it wasn't real because asking people what they would do in a traumatic situation isn't the same as them actually being in that traumatic situation. That I agree with. But the issue we are using the trolley problem to discuss isn't what you would do. I am asking you to apply your objective morality to it to tell me what the objectively right moral choice is.
Though I gave the objective moral position for it my objection was about having to consider such an unreal situation in the first place. Because if all options were available then the objectively right thing to do would be what most people would do and that is to beep the horn and yell to the workers or yell and beep to get someone else to warn and get the workers off the track and avoid killing anyone at all.

But you have made the trolley problem that way and taken away those real-life options. What the ethical experts were complaining about was how unreal the situation was with all the examples. You are denying human agency which is capable of extraordinary things when trying to save lives in a crisis situation and ironically are making humans robots.

Doesn't change the fact that there are situations where the cars may have to choose between causing a small amount of damage to avoid a larger amount.
But then that would not be the Trolley problem as a small amount of damage is different from killing someone. It is different because the Trolley problem only has tow options kill 5 or kill 1 in hitting a switch. A car heading towards a pedestrian who they may kill and swerves away from that into an unknown there is no definite killing for that option thus the moral dilemma is different.

Most people would probably hit the brakes but this is not allowed or you saying the person must die anyway. So then most people will swerve away thinking that they will avoid killing the pedestrian. But unlike the Trolley problem, they will not know or think they are definitely going to kill someone else as a result.

And this also ignores much of the self-driving car situation. What about the people in the car?
They cannot be held responsible because they are not driving the car.
And who gets the lawsuit? The manufacturer of the self-driving car is going to be the one slapped with a lawsuit, so the manufacturer is motivated to program the car properly. What should they have the programming do?
That may be a lawsuit but for morality it is different. The programmer has not intended to kill anyone, they are not actively involved in killing anyone at the scene. They have programmed the car to do everything they can do to act like a human if not better. At worst they may be indirectly culpable but moral wise they have not committed any intentional act. But applying all this to your situation where a person darts out from between parked cars illegally then the fault will mostly lie with the pedestrian.

So you are saying that the lives of five 90-year-olds are more valuable than the life of one 5 year old? Even though the five-year-old has another 60 or 70 years at least, and the ninety year olds would be lucky to have 20 years between them?
Your assuming a lot. The 5-year-old may be a cripple who is suffering every day of their life. They may drown in an accident the next day. The 5 ninety-year-olds may be nuns who are helping thousands of 5-year-olds to have better happier lives thus prolonging their lives. They may be passing their knowledge onto others so that it continues a legacy. They may be grandmothers of 5-year-olds who play an integral part in a larger family unit that thrives with them there.

Your only looking at the quantity and not quality and that's a bad way to determine things. As we will never know all these factors it is a risky general rule to apply. I think killing a number of people as opposed to 1 is wrong and has more risks associated. It is wrong to multiply the act of killing regardless of age. If the crime of murder more wrong whether its an old person or a young person morally. Do they get a longer sentence under the law?

Why is one person to blame in the trolley problem? Do you think the driver in the trolley problem deliberately took the brakes off?
We don't know as the trolley problem doesn't allow for any consideration of these factory brakes. You've got to assume that somehow the brakes were not working or there were no brakes. Otherwise, if there were brakes we could perhaps look at someone else not ensuring the brakes were working properly or sabotage from a 3rd party.

That's why it's unreal. It takes away human agency and disallows what any normal human would do which is "Do absolutely everything within their power to avoid killing anyone. When someone is able to do that it diminishes their moral accountability as they at least tried.

Doesn't change the fact that he knows it could happen.
But unlike the trolley problem, it changes the fact that he knows his decision it will not definitely result in the death of someone. Therefore diminished responsibility IE accidental harm or death and not an intentional killing. For morality that's a big difference as it is about intentions.
 
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stevevw

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Nah, it's not a stretch.

If a person programs a thing to behave in a certain way, and then that results in some damage, then the person who programmed it is responsible for that.
Morality is about the intention to do wrong and the programmer when designing a program has no intention to kill anyone. In fact, the programmer programs the car so that it saves lives. Therefore their intention is to save lives. No moral wrong has been committed.
You don't get it. It's not about who is responsible for the situation in the first place. It's about what a person can do in response to it.
Then if someone cuts your brakes and you end up swerving to miss a pedestrian because you find there are no brakes and kill someone doesn't the fault for that incident lies with the person who cut the brakes.

Again, you are more concerned with who is at fault. Just goes to show you don't understand the point I am trying to make. Either that or you are deliberately trying to muddy the issue.
Well, you need to explain things better because I am just seeing things as they are. What if the pedestrian ran out in front of the car on purpose in a way that ensured he was hit and the driver didn't even have time to do anything.

You're moving the goalposts.
You asked how I can have an objective viewpoint that morality is subjective. I answered that question.
And what are you talking about, my own personal morals being applied to others? Are you saying that others should be made to have the same morals as me?
No I'm not moving the goalposts I just misunderstood what you said when you said: "I can have an objective viewpoint that morality is subjective". Because that implies that you truly know that all morality is subjective. You didn't clarify that you were only talking about your view being objective about your subjective morality.

So you claim it applies to ALL moral situations? Then why do you think you only need to show it once? Even if there is some objective morality that applies to one situation, that does not mean it applies to ALL situations! If you want to show that objective morality applies to ALL situations, you must SHOW it for all situations!
But that was not my claim. Once again I claimed that objective morality exists. That is different from saying it exists in all situations. Therefore to show that objective morality exists I only need to show it exists once.

No, lived experience is SUBJECTIVE.
Lived experience is how people live, how they act/react in situations. That is objective. How you behave in a given situation is an objective observation. Scientists can observe how something happens and behaves and can draw conclusions from this. If someone says I never get angry but then acts/reacts/behaves angrily then we have objective evidence they do behave angrily. We observe the behavior of someone to determine mental illness.

So if someone says I my view it is OK for someone to steal something to make their life better but then reacts against someone who steals from them we can see that they acted contradictory to their view and really believe it is wrong to steal from others. So we can observe people's moral positions in the way they act/react. People act/react as though morality is objective IE that certain things are always wrong. That is the lived experience we can be justified in believing that there is objective morality.

But that doesn't show that all illness is mental illness. If you say something applies to ALL cases, you must prove that it applies to all cases. You can't just show it applies to one case and then assume it, therefore, applies to all cases.
Once again I never said that. I said if I wanted to show there was such a thing as mental illness then I only have to show one case of mental illness.

This just shows once more that you do not understand the issue I am trying to talk about.
I can't comment because you are demanding that I use my subjective opinion to comment on whether or not something is objective.
No, I am saying when you say There are things that I believe are morally wrong and I could never support. But that doesn't mean that they are objectively wrong.

I am saying that your subjective moral position forbids you from ever saying to anyone that certain moral acts are definitely always wrong no matter what their subjective opinion. That seems counterproductive and going against intuition. Otherwise, if you condemn the act as always evil to the other person you are being objective.

Once again, the fact that most people agree with a moral position does not mean that the moral position is objectively true.
I keep saying this and you refuse to listen. Am I wasting my time with you?
I wasn't trying to make that connection. I agree that it doesn't show that the moral objective is true. I am more so appealing to a persons intuition and sense of right and wrong. I am asking why people don't acknowledge that certain evil acts are always wrong regardless of how people justify them under subjective morality. It seems a subjective position forbids them from ever admitting this.

You know there are plenty of situations where those things don't work, right?
That's not the point. It is about human agency. being a human and at least trying all those things. In that way rather than being restricted to try these things in the trolley problem, we are like a robot programmed not to be a human. The point is even if we try and fail we are reducing our intentions about killing. We are showing that we car and respect life and that diminishes our moral culpability.

Again, just because most people share the view that it is wrong does not make it objectively wrong.
I think this is beginning to become a cop-out. Sometimes it is because everyone believes it is always wrong to do something that makes it objectively wrong and they don't have to believe in God to think that. There are a lot of non-religious people who think certain things are always wrong and therefore objectively wrong. They view people who think that things like sexually abusing a kid as ok and can never be seen as always wrong as sick and deranged.

Like I said I think some under subjective morality is forced or programmed to stick to the mantra that something can never be said to be objectively wrong because that will undermine the subjectivist's position. even if that means denying it against all odds and their intuition.

Yeah, it's a double standard. You give a single example and then assume that it applies to all possible examples.

That's like me saying that 2 is an even prime number, therefore all prime numbers are even.
Then you don't understand logical arguments. Are you telling me you cannot see the difference between the following positions?

Positive claim.
Steve says that there is such a thing as objective morality. Therefore Steve only has to show one example to show that there is objective morality.
Negative claim. Kylie claims there is no objective morality. Kylie cannot prove this by just showing one example as there may be another situation with objective morality. So she has to show every single moral situation to show that there is no objective morality to prove her claim.

Not double standards but two completely different claims.
 
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Ken-1122

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There is no guarantee that the universe emerged from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state as this is based on the theory of General Relativity which doesn't take into account Quantum Physics.
I don’t know enough about quantum physics, but the Big bang theory is a scientific theory that has not been refuted.
But if you read that section under misconceptions properly you will see that it is saying that the Big Bang model doesn't describe how matter, time, and space was caused. It is not saying that energy, time, and space were already there. In fact, in saying it doesn't account for how these were caused is acknowledging that they must have been caused another way therefore also acknowledging they were not present in the beginning of our universe.
The big bang theory does not address when or if time, matter, and space was caused, and it doesn’t address when or if the universe had a beginning, because these are among the many questions science does not have answers for. That’s why I objected when you said the Big Bang Theory mentions that time, space, and matter were created by the Big Bang event; it does not. These are questions science does not have answers for.
 
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ToddNotTodd

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I can't believe I have to say this again, because I've already said it so many times and you just don't seem to listen to me.
I used to teach, and would sometimes come across a student that could not learn the subject matter, no matter how I approached the subject.

He’s wrong and can’t see it, and I don’t think anything you say can say - anything at all - is going to change that.
 
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stevevw

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I don’t know enough about quantum physics, but the Big bang theory is a scientific theory that has not been refuted.
I'm not disputing the Big Bang Theory just how it may have happened exactly.

The big bang theory does not address when or if time, matter, and space was caused, and it doesn’t address when or if the universe had a beginning, because these are among the many questions science does not have answers for. That’s why I objected when you said the Big Bang Theory mentions that time, space, and matter were created by the Big Bang event; it does not. These are questions science does not have answers for.
Actually the theory does mention that space was created and then stretched as a result of Inflation from the Big Bang and matter formed after the universe expanded and began to cool. So our universe began without space and matter and then created them.

The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe.

There's another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That's because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.
Origins: CERN: Ideas: The Big Bang | Exploratorium
 
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stevevw

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I used to teach, and would sometimes come across a student that could not learn the subject matter, no matter how I approached the subject.

He’s wrong and can’t see it, and I don’t think anything you say can say - anything at all - is going to change that.
I don't think you can come into a debate that has been going for many pages and just assume you know what is going on or the context. For me, that immediately points to someone who is opposed to the person's position rather than dealing with the actual content. When you say I am wrong what are you exactly saying I am wrong about.

PS. The ironic thing is that you are taking an objective position by saying I am wrong as though you know ultimately that you are right. IE
He’s wrong and can’t see it.

Can't see what, your opinion, or some special objective truth you claim to know.
 
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ToddNotTodd

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I don't think you can into a debate that has been going for many pages and just assume you know what is going on or the context. For me, that immediately points to someone who is opposed to the person's position rather than dealing with the actual content. When you say I am wrong what are you exactly saying I am wrong about.
I’ve read the whole thing. Participated in it. And I don’t see any reason to point out again what other people already have tried to get you to see.
 
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Ken-1122

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I'm not disputing the Big Bang Theory just how it may have happened exactly.
The Big Bang Theory explains how it happened; if you are disputing how it happened, you are disputing the Big Bang Theory.
Actually the theory does mention that space was created and then stretched as a result of Inflation from the Big Bang and matter formed after the universe expanded and began to cool. So our universe began without space and matter and then created them.

The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe.

There's another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That's because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.
Origins: CERN: Ideas: The Big Bang | Exploratorium
I am a bit skeptical of the link you provided because it says the Big Bang was an actual explosion. Despite the name, science does not claim it to be an actual explosion but an expansion as pointed out by the below link
Was the Big Bang Really an Explosion? | Live Science
Here Astronomer Michelle Thaller does an excellent job of explaining it in a youtube clip
 
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