In Defense of a Non-Natural Moral Order

[Acrobat]

That would be descriptive moral relativism, not ontological subjectivism.  It’s that and subjective, to individuals, and also....possibly, realist.

Your comment on what should be accepted strongly suggests that you harbor realist opinions, for example.  You’re saying that those cultures and people that don’t accept something are wrong, not that their intolerance is just their opinion.

Yes, not to mention calling Nazi morality “twisted”.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, any declarative like that-without a very specific conditional modifier.

It’s useful to remember that....yes, I have opinions you have opinions we all have opinions. This is a fact.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but all opinions are not equal. Some people are of the opinion that a wizard birthed the universe then played in the mud, and here we are.

So, in defense of moral realism, is it possible that moral opinions can be opinions like that? Can they be wrong? Inaccurate. Downright false.

[Objectivist]

Hello Acrobat,

I actually signed up to answer your question.  My answer is informed by Objectivist principles so it will probably be very different from other answers you've gotten in the past.  Good and bad or good and evil are value judgments and as such, I don't think they exist outside the mind-reality relationship or the subject-object relationship. The subject is the conscious knower and the object is the thing that the knower is aware of. 

The concept "value" presupposes the answer to two questions:  of value to whom and for what? The who is a living being, the what is the life of that being.  Morality in my view is a code of values and principles to guide one's actions and choices for the purpose of living.  Every living being faces the alternative of life vs. death and every living thing must act in order to live.  Every living thing has a specific identity and specific conditions must be met in order for it to not take a dirt nap.  Some things and actions are bad, harm its life, and other things are good, further its life.  If it takes no action or the wrong action it dies.  If it takes the right action it lives.  So right there you can see that good and bad are inextricably tied to life.  It's only to a living thing that things can be good or bad.  A rock has no values, a fox does.  Man is no different.  To live he must have values.  The values he needs are determined by his nature.  To say that values exist outside of nature is wrong.  Values are a type of fact.  They are facts judged in relation to man's nature and the project of living. That is the standard of moral judgment:  your life and its requirements or to put it more abstractly, man's life and its requirements.  You can't get more objective than that.  Surely you agree that we all have needs and values that we share that are not a matter of opinion?

That is what an objective moral value identifies;  Not your personal preference, but what your nature as a Human being requires.  

Man's most basic need is the need to think and he needs to be free to think and to act on his judgment, i.e., he needs to be free of coercion by force.  As Yaron Brook often says, if someone puts a gun to your head and says that 2+2=5, and if you say it equals 4 he'll pull the trigger, could you think?  Could you balance your checkbook, build a bridge, invent a printing press or launch a satellite into space?

Force and reason are opposites.  Force or the threat of force destroys man's ability to think and to act on his thinking.  Therefore force is evil.  That is, the initiation of force is evil, always. The only moral use of force is in defense.  

So let's look at the Holocaust and judge whether it was good or bad?  Did it involve the initiation of force?  Certainly.  Was it bad? Certainly, regardless of whether the Germans thought it was good or the whole of the people on Earth, i.e., it was objectively bad.  Did the allies have the moral right to use force against the Nazi's? Certainly.  Now apply the same principle to rape, murder, theft, lying, cheating, fraud, etc.?

Those are my thoughts.

The Nazis saw the Jews as a greater evil so in their twisted morality getting rid of the jews was the moral thing.

Many of them didn't like doing it (some did and enjoyed it) but they did it for the "greater good".

You can see the same sort of thing happening in the US today with the demonization of immigrants, democrats and Muslims by the president ,where people feel that killing those people or putting them in concentration camps is in some way good.

What I am saying is that morality is quite flexible and is prone to change from outside influences.

Homosexuality was considered immoral but is now accepted (and so it should be)  slavery is now seen as wrong where for most of human history it was ok.

So morality IS subjective but is subjective to society at large not one individual. Richard Dawkins called this the zeitgeist.

Who's morality is quite flexible?  Mine's not.  It rests exclusively on the fact of existence and the law of identity which are not flexible.  They are absolutes.  

Of course, the Nazis had a flexible morality, they were subjectivists and they were mystics.  They didn't use reason to justify anything, they rejected reason.  The Nazis may have thought the Jews were evil and that it was perfectly good to kill them but did that make it right?  you seem to be saying that it did because the majority of Germans agreed, but then you call their morality twisted.  By what standard of value do you judge it.  If morality is subjective and dependent on the group then how can you say theirs was twisted.  

There are three different types of subjectivism.  One is the divine kind where reality conforms to the wishes and edicts of a supernatural being.  One is the group kind where reality subordinates itself to the group's thinking.  The third variant is the individual kind where reality obeys each individuals consciousness.  All three are false because all three have their roots in the primacy of consciousness view of reality which is false.  

Now if you want to say that my morality is subjective, show me where it assumes the primacy of consciousness.

[downbeatplumb]

Now if you want to say that my morality is subjective, show me where it assumes the primacy of consciousness.

There are different morals in different societies therefore morality is subjective.
That you do not follow the morality of Islamic state and throw homosexuals off the tallest building in shows that morality is subjective, it can be influenced by books and other people and of course alcohol.

There is no need to show this primacy of consciousness of which you speak just point to the fact that morals change with the wind.

[Objectivist]

Now if you want to say that my morality is subjective, show me where it assumes the primacy of consciousness.

There are different morals in different societies therefore morality is subjective.
That you do not follow the morality of Islamic state and throw homosexuals off the tallest building in shows that morality is subjective, it can be influenced by books and other people and of course alcohol.

There is no need to show this primacy of consciousness of which you speak just point to the fact that morals change with the wind.

Then you don't understand the concept "subjective".  It has directly to do with the issue of metaphysical primacy.  The concept "subjective"  refers to the view that the subject has primacy over its objects.  The concept "objective" refers to the view that the objects have primacy over the subject.  To ignore this results in a stolen concept.  You're using a concept while ignoring its conceptual roots.  That different societies and people have different moral codes only shows that man has volition, it says nothing about whether those moral values are true, i.e., objective.  So long as man is what he is, it will always be wrong to throw homosexuals off buildings, no matter who says otherwise.  Even if every person on Earth said it was moral, it would still be wrong.  Slavery was wrong in the past, is wrong now, and will be wrong in the future as long as man is man.  I notice that you ignore the connection between life and morality.  If morality truly were purely subjective then it would have no relation to any fact pertaining to man's life.  He would be able to do anything he wants and suffer no consequences, but man cannot live any way he wants. He cannot escape the consequences of his actions.  Those are determined by his nature which is not just a matter of opinion.  

Let me ask you, is the principle that if you want to live you should not eat poison mushrooms objectively true or is it just a societal convention?  Do the people in China eat them and suffer no bad consequences?  Your view of morality separates values from the requirements of life determined by man's nature and that right there is a stolen concept.

[Acrobat]

Now if you want to say that my morality is subjective, show me where it assumes the primacy of consciousness.

There are different morals in different societies therefore morality is subjective.
That you do not follow the morality of Islamic state and throw homosexuals off the tallest building in shows that morality is subjective, it can be influenced by books and other people and of course alcohol.

There is no need to show this primacy of consciousness of which you speak just point to the fact that morals change with the wind.

If you think its subjective, than why would you say the morality of the Nazis was twisted?

If They just had a difference taste, no different than difference in your preference of music, why would it be twisted?

So you seem to be betraying yourself, a point two others also pointed out, but you just passed over it.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

...... If They just had a difference taste, no different than difference in your preference of music, why would it be twisted?

Uhm..... last I checked 'Music' didn't have anything to do with or in common with 'Morals'?

So.... is this a bad analogy? Or a type of fallacy?

Am curious.

[Acrobat]

At work.

...... If They just had a difference taste, no different than difference in your preference of music, why would it be twisted?

Uhm..... last I checked 'Music' didn't have anything to do with or in common with 'Morals'?

So.... is this a bad analogy? Or a type of fallacy?

Am curious.

That was downbeats view, that morality is matter of likes and dislikes, like one society feelings about man buns, another's aversion.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Uhm..... last I checked 'Music' didn't have anything to do with or in common with 'Morals'?

So.... is this a bad analogy? Or a type of fallacy?

Am curious.

That was downbeats view, that morality is matter of likes and dislikes, like one society feelings about man buns, another's aversion.

*Nods* Okay.

So, in regards to downbeat's veiw.

How is some one's preference for chocolate ice cream over strawberry some how 'Moral'?

What am I missing in understanding?

[Objectivist]

There are different morals in different societies therefore morality is subjective.
That you do not follow the morality of Islamic state and throw homosexuals off the tallest building in shows that morality is subjective, it can be influenced by books and other people and of course alcohol.

There is no need to show this primacy of consciousness of which you speak just point to the fact that morals change with the wind.

If you think its subjective, than why would you say the morality of the Nazis was twisted?

If They just had a difference taste, no different than difference in your preference of music, why would it be twisted?

So you seem to be betraying yourself, a point two others also pointed out, but you just passed over it.

Hi Acrobat,

That's what I'd like to know as well.  I asked but no answer is forthcoming.  It's easy to miss a question or get sidetracked so I hope he answers you so we can find out.  Seems to be a contradiction here.