My views on objective morality

[Whateverist]

Notice you are no longer saying "rape is objectively evil according to my Catholic beliefs".  Now you seem to be saying that what you say is evil is evil because it is an objective fact.  That makes everyone of us moral subjectivists have to ask exactly how you in your subjectivity get hold of the alleged objective moral facts?  Does believing there is a God who decides what is moral objectively bestow the power to know the difference to those who believe in that God?  Is every Catholic a moral genius on this account?

It would seem that the most you are in a position to say is that "rape is objectively evil" in case my religious beliefs are true.. We all have to assume that your position for recognizing the truth is no better or worse than any of ours.  If indeed there are objective moral facts you must at least explain how you arrived at these from within your human subjectivity.

My bold. You are correct, I just figured it was already implied. But yes, I am speaking according to my beliefs which I feel confident are true, but of course, there is always the chance I could be wrong.

So not so very different than the position we subjectivists find ourselves in.  We also are right unless we're wrong.  That being so it doesn't seem that adding "objective" adds a whole lot, does it?

If morals are objective in any sense -from my subjectivist point of view- it is because we find that various views are wide spread.  Because of what you call free will no morals are binding on everyone regardless of what we call them.  You say it is because the objective morals coincide with God's view.  We say if it is because they coincide with what we find in human affairs.  But, again, the person who is contemptuous of those morals is no more or less constrained in either case.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...tit for tat will prevail in a group over time compared to other strategies such as always defecting.  This is an objective fact and it likely constrains what strategies can be considered good or efficacious and which are considered bad.

I'm not so sure. Tit-for-tat loses its efficacy when there is an imbalance of power between players and that is when ethical constraints seem most critical. Second, effective is not synonymous with moral, so additional steps are needed to make that connection.

...one could hypothesize that the ideal of these naturalistic moral facts is The Good, and is something that we all strive for.

I favor virtue ethics over deontological approaches. In theory, someone could have a non-theistic version of natural law but to my mind it would not be substantially different from a theistic version.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...super busy with the kittens, meal prepping for my surgery next week...

Does that mean you're making Chinese food?

[Kiekeben]

Here's one reason I recently thought of (though someone else may have said this before) for thinking that moral principles are not objective. There are certain facts that are obvious and that as a result just about everyone agrees with. For example, just about everyone agrees that 1+1=2. (Anyone who disagrees would have to have some serious mental issues.)

Now, in morality what would be an example of an obvious principle? Well, one candidate is "killing an innocent person is (almost always) wrong." And there are many other cases like that, principles that, for those of us who agree with them, seem obvious. 

But here's the thing: there are always plenty of people who disagree with such supposedly obvious moral principles. As we all know, quite a few people unfortunately do not consider killing innocent people as almost always wrong.

So why are so-called moral facts different from empirical and logical facts in this respect? Could it be because morality isn't objective? 

Note that what I'm arguing here is not simply that there is moral disagreement, and therefore morality isn't objective. Rather, it is that if there were moral truths, then those that are obvious should be obvious to nearly everyone. And since that's not the case, this suggests that there are no moral truths.

[bennyboy]

I know you don't think it is. I was presenting my beliefs on the matter.

Do you acknowledge that at least some people hold moral positions different than your own? If so, then by what criteria do you establish your own "beliefs" as representing objective truth, and those of others as being objectively wrong?

"I just believe it because I'm Christian" isn't an objective description of anything. It's a description of why your subject morality takes a certain form.

[robvalue]

Either things are objective or they're not. If they are just objective from your point of view, then clearly they are subjective.

So it is entirely semantics. Just saying "I always think X is wrong" is not the same as saying "X is always wrong because..." The first is a fixed personal stance, which anyone is perfectly entitled to have. The second is a general statement, which implies it overrides everyone else's stance.

Like Kiek said above, we all agree that 1+ 1 = 2 according to the standard rules of mathematics, because we all agree what those symbols mean. We agree on the rules. There is one single way of performing the action, and one single right answer. This is entirely different to morality, where everyone has their own different way of coming to a conclusion. So to announce that one particular conclusion is "objective" makes no sense. It can only be objective regarding a particular method of assessing morality, and to assert otherwise is to just say your system is the best. What it means for a system to be "the best", and why anyone else should agree with you, is what you need to demonstrate for such claims.

[Mr.wizard]

The argument for objective morality seems to be "We all agree rape is bad".

[Mister Agenda]

I'm not going back to the drawing board to come up with an analogy more to your liking if this one is too hard for you because I didn't try to find something morally equivalent to genocide to make a fairly simple point. If you don't have the imagination to do so yourself, feel free to continue to not get the point.

I had resolved to walk away from this site for at least a month to take care of my sanity, but when I opened my phone browser it opened this page, this shit analogy caught my attention, and it made my blood boil. So I'm going to say just this, and then I'm done for awhile - how fucking dare you compare the protection of one's personal space and/or health to being an accessory to genocide, rape, murder, and other evils which cause horrible suffering to the victim! Your dog doesn't suffer if you don't allow him on the bed, and if you torture your dog, then you deserve to be treated the same. Just keep at it, and see how much more twisted your arguments become, the more that you attempt to dignify the idea of the trifecta awesome god who allws evil. It takes a  particularly insensitive pig to present this dogshit as an excuse for a god to enjoy his snuff porn.

Appeal to emotion. It's a fallacy, you know. And please take some deep breaths, we don't want you popping a vein.

[Mister Agenda]

Double post

[Catholic_Lady]

I know you don't think it is. I was presenting my beliefs on the matter.

Do you acknowledge that at least some people hold moral positions different than your own?  If so, then by what criteria do you establish your own "beliefs" as representing objective truth, and those of others as being objectively wrong?

"I just believe it because I'm Christian" isn't an objective description of anything.  It's a description of why your subject morality takes a certain form.

Yes, I am aware that people disagree with me, especially here. I was stating what I personally believe to be true. And that is that morality is objective.