Subjective Morality?

[GrandizerII]

Maybe the feelings we have about certain acts are a result of our cognitions regarding these acts, not the cause.

I think about a lot of things.  I don't have feelings about math problems, for the most part.  However, I can say that there's no case in which I form an idea about "should" which does not involve feelings, either current, or past, or as inferred from others.

Thinking isn't feeling.  That they are connected is apparent enough, but thinking alone isn't the basis of moral positions, so far as I can tell.  I'd argue that all motivated behavior, which is automatically implied by "ought," requires some kind of emotion to serve as the motivator.

Well, let me speculate even further. Perhaps there's something about our thinking regarding the "oughtness" of these moral acts that triggers us to feel strongly about these acts, as a way to reinforce that thinking.

[bennyboy]

I think about a lot of things.  I don't have feelings about math problems, for the most part.  However, I can say that there's no case in which I form an idea about "should" which does not involve feelings, either current, or past, or as inferred from others.

Thinking isn't feeling.  That they are connected is apparent enough, but thinking alone isn't the basis of moral positions, so far as I can tell.  I'd argue that all motivated behavior, which is automatically implied by "ought," requires some kind of emotion to serve as the motivator.

Well, let me speculate even further. Perhaps there's something about our thinking regarding the "oughtness" of these moral acts that triggers us to feel strongly about these acts, as a way to reinforce that thinking.

No doubt.  The question is which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I'd argue that since "ought" implies a motivated behavior, and that motivated behaviors are mediated by hormones, feeling precedes cognition.

---

That's a strange conflation of skill and moral correctness.  I'm fine saying Jordan is objectively good at basketball, because the rules define a context, and are not really debatable.  If there was only one set of moral ideas, we could say the same about rape, or about any other moral issue.

However, morality does not provide a single set context by which things can be judged right or wrong.  People, in thinking morally, establish many different contexts, many at odds with each other.  If there were a thousand different versions of basketball, it might be difficult indeed for me to demonstrate that Jordan was an excellent basketball player.

Why don't we all agree on the following: given a particular social context, it may be able to establish that some act or belief is objectively wrong by the rules of that social context?  But that, in general, morality more generally is a mediation among feelings, ideas, and environment?

No. Morality has nothing to do with feelings anymore than a theist's love of Jesus has anything to do with God's existence.

Look at it this way: if I say "rape is morally wrong." You could say one of three things:

1) That's just your opinion, Vulcan.

2) Your viewing rape as morally wrong isn't even an opinion. Rather, it is your emotional reaction to rape.

3) Rape is only wrong within the specific moral framework to which you subscribe.

I guess I should make room for:

4) Other (please explain thoroughly)

So when I say, "Rape is morally wrong"... what am I ACTUALLY saying, Bennyboy?

I'd say all of the above.  I've said morality is the mediation among feelings, ideas and environment.

Your opinion is a collection of ideas.  Your emotional reaction to rape is a feeling.  The social framework is your environment.

But in all cases, if nobody ever cared about rape, then there never would have been anything said about it.  Furthermore, since sexuality long predates humanity, then I'd definitely say that feelings about sexuality must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it. In other words, I'm pretty sure whether the chicken came before the egg.

[The Grand Nudger]

Suppose I used to eat meat, but then I decided that enclosing animals in tight quarters and shooting them in the head with a bolt gun to put them on a bun was too painful an idea for me?  Would my vegetarianism be a moral position?  How far from skull-fucking is that, really, and how acceptable is it to you?  I'm pretty sure you're okay enough with it to buy a burger.

I'm more or less okay with alot of bad things, I'm sure.  Having previously read your explanation for your dietary choices I'd say that there was a moral position or ten involved, sure.  

What if I decided (rationally) that reducing meat consumption would free up crop lands to produce more grain and legumes for people to eat, thereby reducing the net suffering in the world?  Wouldn't this still require me to care about reducing suffering-- because I dislike suffering

IDK, you might require that.  I don't.  

Is there a moral truth about killing animals?  Is one party horrendously wrong, but nobody will "get" that it's them?  Or is it that some people, when they think about it, are deeply repulsed by the idea, and some much less so?  Or perhaps that their enjoyment of meat (read: the feelings they get when they eat meat) are so important to them that they're not willing to consider it?

I think that there are alot of moral truths in the killing of anything.  Doesn't make me give a shit about a fish...but it does remind me to treat them better. 

As for skull-fucking your neighbor.  There are all KINDS of feelings about this involved.  If people were emotionally neutral on it, then they wouldn't feel the need to make rules about it.  The same goes for all kinds of harm: I fear death, so I accept abstinence from murder as part of the social contract, even though people leave their fucking shopping buggies in the middle of the aisle every day.  I very much dislike pain, and in fact when I recognize pain in others, it causes me distress; I do not want either to feel or to inflict pain, so I happily accept rules to that effect.

Sure, there are feelings involved.  

That's the first question, yup.  Do you think that you are in a state of belief.  You indicated earlier that even asking the question was absurd..ofc you are.  If that was an earnest response (and it certainly seemed like it, lol) then welcome to the cognitivists club.  There are error theorists, subjectivists, non naturalists, and realists in here.

No, I'm pretty that didn't happen.  I don't think I would call that question absurd.

...................................

You seem to be doing this weird Socratic moving of goalposts.  Is this another one of those threads where you keep arguing, but don't actually have a point you are trying to assert?  Let me ask you bluntly-- what's your position?

Moral naturalism, ofc.  I'm torn between my options in that regard - but pretty much stuck with the camp.  

I think that our moral propositions express states of belief.
I think that our beliefs are sometimes true.
I think that the facts of which our beliefs are constituted can be mind independent.
I think those facts are natural facts.

[Angrboda]

Well, first off, an argument based on some hypothetical "semantic level" is pathetically ridiculous.  But more substantively, I noted in the original post that responding to the phenomenological differences isn't definitive, as the phenomenology of numbers is also different from that of perception, yet no one in their right mind would argue that numbers are necessarily subjective due to that difference.  Likewise that's not a sufficient argument against the objectivity of morals, and note, it isn't the moral feelings and intuitions which are claimed to be objective, but rather the things they refer to, the moral reality itself.  Your arguments simply aren't a successful refutation of the points I made.

Numbers can be non-arbitrarily represented by putting forward a thing, then another, and calling that number of things by a name, "one" or "two."  If someone would like to clearly lay out objective morals, then they are free to do so.

DLJ's way of explaining it is good.  Supposed objective "moral facts" are also facts about any other idea you'd like to apply to the real world.  That's because they aren't moral facts, but just facts which one subjects to a moral treatment.

I can pretty easily give examples of subjective morals-- all of them, really, since mores are ideas, and since they vary greatly among individuals.  But would you care to demonstrate that any particular more is objective?

Your account of numbers is one account from several which are not definitively proven. So, that's a nice assertion, but it doesn't actually carry any water.

You believe that you can give examples of subjective morals because you believe that all morals are subjective -- a belief you haven't yet abetted. For any specific moral that you can identify, you have no way of demonstrating that said moral is not objectively true. So your claim that you can give examples of subjective morals is hollow and based on nothing more than your confidence in your belief that morals are subjective. I'm not holding that morals are necessarily objective, only that they might be. That carries essentially no burden of proof. You, on the other hand, appear wedded to the idea that objective morals don't exist. That's a claim that does carry a burden of proof, which you haven't met. I haven't claimed that I can demonstrate that a specific moral is objective. I presume your question is intending to imply that if I can't demonstrate an objective moral, that morals are then likely subjective. But that is nothing more than an argument from ignorance, and carries no water.

Your belief in the subjectivity of morals seems lacking in evidence or sound argument. Have you provided some that I've missed?

[vulcanlogician]

But in all cases, if nobody ever cared about rape, then there never would have been anything said about it.  Furthermore, since sexuality long predates humanity, then I'd definitely say that feelings about sexuality must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it. In other words, I'm pretty sure whether the chicken came before the egg.

I want to to isolate this portion of your argument to show how wrong-headed this type of argument is. We can return to your other points later. But (if I accomplish anything) I'd like to convince you to stop taking this approach to criticizing moral objectivism.

Let us not consider rape "since sexuality long predates humanity... feelings about sexuality must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it." Let's consider something else.

Let's say in that in the far future, mankind sends probes to Alpha Centauri and discovers a long-dead alien civilization. We then send more vessels to gather some of the aliens' technology and return it to Earth. Among the alien tech, we find some sort of helmet that allows its wearer to read the thoughts of another person and also causes the target of the thought-reading to feel intense pleasure during the process. When scientists discover this ability of the helmet, they name the phenomenon "grok-o-fecting." Humanity soon learns how to reproduce the alien tech and Grok-o-fecting becomes a popular pastime on the planet Earth.

The thing is, it is later found that grok-o-fecting leads to long term nervous system damage and also interferes with the target's ability to feel pleasure or pain due to normal external stimuli.

So some ethicist in the future makes a moral judgement about grok-o-fecting. She says "Grok-o-fecting is morally wrong."

Surely a counterargument cannot be "since grok-o-fecting long predates humanity... feelings about grok-o-fecting must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it." Because this simply isn't true. Furthermore, it has no bearing at all on the issue of whether the ethicist's judgement is an objective matter or a matter of opinion. It is a red herring that doesn't belong in the argument at all.

I hope my weird little sci fi yarn demonstrates how misguided it is to mention the evolutionary origins of feelings concerning a given action or behavior when discussing meta-ethics.

****

In response to your other comment about "if nobody cared about rape, nothing would ever be said about it." Immanuel Kant had an odd answer to this thought experiment:

You answer the doorbell late at night. Upon opening your front door, you see a man covered in blood, holding an axe. He asks where your child's bedroom is, stating that he intends to chop your child up in to little bits.

Kant says that it would be wrong to lie to him about the location of your child's bedroom. (He says that remaining silent would be the most ethical course of action.)

Let's think about this for a moment. If you did lie to this person nobody would CARE. If this happened IRL, and you told the axe murderer your child was asleep in the local police station where he was thereafter arrested, nobody would say, "Hey man. You lied to that guy." In short, nobody would care at all. But even so, Kant still had something to say about it.

[vulcanlogician]

Double post.

[Whateverist]

Double post.

I liked the first one better.

[bennyboy]

Your account of numbers is one account from several which are not definitively proven.  So, that's a nice assertion, but it doesn't actually carry any water.

You believe that you can give examples of subjective morals because you believe that all morals are subjective -- a belief you haven't yet abetted.  For any specific moral that you can identify, you have no way of demonstrating that said moral is not objectively true.  So your claim that you can give examples of subjective morals is hollow and based on nothing more than your confidence in your belief that morals are subjective.  I'm not holding that morals are necessarily objective, only that they might be.  That carries essentially no burden of proof.  You, on the other hand, appear wedded to the idea that objective morals don't exist.  That's a claim that does carry a burden of proof, which you haven't met.  I haven't claimed that I can demonstrate that a specific moral is objective.  I presume your question is intending to imply that if I can't demonstrate an objective moral, that morals are then likely subjective.  But that is nothing more than an argument from ignorance, and carries no water.

Your belief in the subjectivity of morals seems lacking in evidence or sound argument.  Have you provided some that I've missed?

The problem with these kinds of debates is that the correctness of an answer is more likely to depend on semantics than on any particular truth beyond the semantics.  Morality is subjective if you define subjectivity as I do, and morals as I do.  It's objective if you define subjective or objective other than as I do, or define morality other than I do.

I'd say, though, that objective morals exist about as much as objective unicorns exist.  They might exist as brain patterns, or be encoded to some degree in DNA.

It's kind of like the God argument.  Given any particular description of God, and an assertion that such a God exists, I'm likely to claim gnostic atheism.  Given a general statement, "There's something we could reasonably call God," then I'm agnostic, or perhaps ignostic.

If someone states that objective morals may exist, I will take it much the same way.  I'm agnostic about that, unless someone can define very specifically what they mean by objective morals, and give a concrete enough example for me to put my finger on it.  Without this, then by default I tend toward subjectivism, because I consider mores to be ideas, and ideas for the most part to be subjective mental experiences.

---

I want to to isolate this portion of your argument to show how wrong-headed this type of argument is. We can return to your other points later. But (if I accomplish anything) I'd like to convince you to stop taking this approach to criticizing moral objectivism.

[. . .]

So some ethicist in the future makes a moral judgement about grok-o-fecting. She says "Grok-o-fecting is morally wrong."

Surely a counterargument cannot be "since grok-o-fecting long predates humanity... feelings about grok-o-fecting must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it." Because this simply isn't true. Furthermore, it has no bearing at all on the issue of whether the ethicist's judgement is an objective matter or a matter of opinion. It is a red herring that doesn't belong in the argument at all.

I hope my weird little sci fi yarn demonstrates how misguided it is to mention the evolutionary origins of feelings concerning a given action or behavior when discussing meta-ethics.

]
First of all, I demand you write at least a short story about this.

Second, we don't have specific feelings about Grok-o-fecting, but we do have evolved feelings against doing harm. Your ethicist is not against Grok-o-fecting for any reason but that she does not generally like the idea of people harming others. She feels bad about that idea.

In response to your other comment about "if nobody cared about rape, nothing would ever be said about it." Immanuel Kant had an odd answer to this thought experiment:

You answer the doorbell late at night. Upon opening your front door, you see a man covered in blood, holding an axe. He asks where your child's bedroom is, stating that he intends to chop your child up in to little bits.

Kant says that it would be wrong to lie to him about the location of your child's bedroom. (He says that remaining silent would be the most ethical course of action.)

Let's think about this for a moment. If you did lie to this person nobody would CARE. If this happened IRL, and you told the axe murderer your child was asleep in the local police station where he was thereafter arrested, nobody would say, "Hey man. You lied to that guy." In short, nobody would care at all. But even so, Kant still had something to say about it.

The idea that lying is wrong is not only a statement about objective morality, but seemingly about absolute morality. It reeks of religious dogma, methinks. That being said, some people get so fixated on particular religious ideas that they have strong feelings about them, and this (of course) affects their moral position.

[vulcanlogician]

The idea that lying is wrong is not only a statement about objective morality, but seemingly about absolute morality.  It reeks of religious dogma, methinks.  That being said, some people get so fixated on particular religious ideas that they have strong feelings about them, and this (of course) affects their moral position.

The problem with your original proposition is that it is not able to be challenged or argued against. If someone didn't care to mention the issue in the first place, then the issue would not be mentioned... and we would never have the discussion at all. But if someone DID mention the issue, then he/she would thereby care which (somehow) amounts to an admission of subjectivity as far as you're concerned.

Consider this: If nobody cared about having an accurate description of how the natural world functioned, science wouldn't be considered a valid way of discovering facts about the world. You could even take this further: If nobody cared that Saturn was further from the Earth than Jupiter, then nobody would bother to figure it out. This much is true, is it not?

[SaStrike]

All this subjective or objective nonsense is just subjective anyway.