Ben Shapiro vs Neil deGrasse Tyson: The WAR Over Transgender Issues

[Ferrocyanide]

It depends on how you define morality.
If you define morality as = causing harm is immoral.

That's not how morality is defined:

Morality 
noun
1. principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

Ultimately all moral assertions rest on subjective opinion. 

If you define morality as = causing harm is immoral.

Then, if person X punches person Y, person X is causing harm. He did an immoral act.

This is still a subjective assertion, all you have done is use a begging the question fallacy to assume your conclusion in your opening premise, it is both arbitrary and circular. Also moral assertions are relative, what if you punched someone for example, to prevent a greater harm, like murder or rape? 

Note the notion causing harm is immoral is a subjective one, not an objective one.

I think your definition doesn't work either. I didn't see anything circular reasoning in it or any begging but you said principles, which is unclear.
You said good and bad behavior but you did not display the logic behind it.
What logic should I use to figure out if something is right or wrong?

I can also make up words and give them vague definitions:
Kazouting and "to kazout" = spending the day doing certain things in a full way.

I think that if we use emotions as our guide, then this issue of "morality is fully subjective" gets changed to "morality is partially objective".
It is an objective fact that humans have pain sensors. You can punch a human in the face and activate the pain sensors.
You can also do psychological harm using verbal abuse and other methods.

Isn't morality mostly derived from feelings, from pain?

Also moral assertions are relative, what if you punched someone for example, to prevent a greater harm, like murder or rape?

It all comes down to "how do you want to define morality?"

I'll be happy to answer your question:
In your above example, the focus seems to be on rape. That is the initial action. That is the problem point.
In order to stop it, you want to take an immoral action ==> punch someone.

The rape part, we can judge that it is an immoral act. it is objectively immoral.
The punching part, we would have to decide as a society if this action is acceptable. This is the subjective part.
It is similar to a sheet of glass cracking. The crack is spreading. You try to stop the crack by cutting the glass at some point. Did you make the best decision possible?

[The Grand Nudger]

Isn't morality mostly derived from feelings, from pain?

Non cognitivism.  Emotivism.  When we say a thing is bad, what we really mean is not about that thing, not about cultural indoctrination, not even about some cognitive opinion we hold.  Just yuck.  Thing is yuck.  

I'll be happy to answer your question:
In your above example, the focus seems to be on rape. That is the initial action. That is the problem point.
In order to stop it, you want to take an immoral action ==> punch someone.

The rape part, we can judge that it is an immoral act. it is objectively immoral.
The punching part, we would have to decide as a society if this action is acceptable. This is the subjective part.
It is similar to a sheet of glass cracking. The crack is spreading. You try to stop the crack by cutting the glass at some point. Did you make the best decision possible?

What a society accepts or demands being the truth making property is the very definition of relativism, not subjectivism.   

An objectivist is free to say that both things are bad.  We can note that society allows us to do bad things, sometimes demands that we do bad things, but that societies allowance does not make them less bad or more good.  This is a direct contradiction to metaethical and observational relativism, btw.  We can note that we sometimes find personal utility in doing bad things, or even necessity in doing bad things...but they are still bad things. A direct contradiction to subjectivism. That we sometimes find satisfaction in doing bad things, or discontent in doing good things, but they are still bad and good things as we see them. A direct contradiction to emotivism.

Ideas about moral desert and moral warrant are additional to ideas about truth making properties.

[Sheldon]

That's not how morality is defined:

Morality 
noun
1. principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

Ultimately all moral assertions rest on subjective opinion. 

This is still a subjective assertion, all you have done is use a begging the question fallacy to assume your conclusion in your opening premise, it is both arbitrary and circular. Also moral assertions are relative, what if you punched someone for example, to prevent a greater harm, like murder or rape? 

Note the notion causing harm is immoral is a subjective one, not an objective one.

I think your definition doesn't work either. 

It's the dictionary's definition, not mine. I don't compile those, they reflect current common usage. 

 I didn't see anything circular reasoning in it or any begging but you said principles, which is unclear.

You assumed your conclusion in your opening premise. 

You said good and bad behavior but you did not display the logic behind it.

What logic should I use to figure out if something is right or wrong?

You can avoid violating principles of logic in your reasoning, but moral assertions ultimately rest on subjective claims. 

I can also make up words and give them vague definitions:

Kazouting and "to kazout" = spending the day doing certain things in a full way.

Indeed, but what would you hope to achieve, you did this already with morality, when I claimed that the assertion that causing harm is immoral, is a subjective one, and you responded by saying "not "If you define (redefine in fact) morality as = causing harm is immoral." it fails because it isn't the definition,  which one can find in any dictionary, and that reflects common usage, and because it created the circular reasoning I pointed out. 

It all comes down to "how do you want to define morality?"

Not really, one cannot arbitrarily redefine words, this is just sophistry. I might as easily claim morality means subjective, what would I gain from such a nonsensical claim? 

The rape part, we can judge that it is an immoral act. it is objectively immoral.

I agree it is immoral, but this must ultimately rest on a subjective opinion, not an objective one, but please explain why you think this without ultimately resorting to a subjective opinion. I have tried and cannot, perhaps you can. I must say I am dubious. 

In order to stop it, you want to take an immoral action ==> punch someone.

I disagree, in this instance it is my subjective opinion that punching someone would not be immoral, as it would stop a greater harm, demonstrating that punching someone is not objectively immoral by the way, but relative to a complex set of consequences. 

I don't see what your glass analogy is for, but best decision would depend on your subjective moral worldview, and mine involves not causing unnecessary harm, and where possible preventing it, thus I consider punching someone immoral, but not objectively so, as the example explains. 

Though I think examining the consequences of our actions can help inform our morality, another subjective opinion, moral consequentialism also runs into problems when when we subject it to simple scenarios , like murdering one to save many for example.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sheldon. Can you think of any fact claim that you would not call a subjective opinion?

I'll make four assertions to moral fact, all of which I disagree with. This is what I'm referring to when I say objectivist opinions, relativist opinions, subjectivist opinions, and non cognitive responses.

Homosexual sex is bad because it spreads stds.
Homosexual sex is bad because it erodes the traditional family.
Homosexual sex is bad because god abhors it.
Homosexual sex is bad because it disgusts me.

[Sheldon]

Sheldon.  Can you think of any fact claim that you would not call a subjective opinion?  

I'll make four assertions to moral fact, all of which I disagree with.  This is what I'm referring to when I say objectivist opinions, relativist opinions, subjectivist opinions, and non cognitive responses.

1. Homosexual sex is bad because it spreads stds.
2. Homosexual sex is bad because it erodes the traditional family.
3. Homosexual sex is bad because god abhors it.
4. Homosexual sex is bad because it disgusts me.

Yes, the earth is not flat, is not just a subjective opinion, as it rests on an amount of objectively verifiable evidence, that would make denial of it unreasonable. I tend to think of objectivity as a scale, the more objective the evidence, and the more objective evidence we have the more reliable the conclusions it supports. 

I have numbered them one to four to help me make my responses clearer:

1. I don't see how this is a moral assertion? All sex can spread disease, that's what the S stands for in the acronym. One can reduce risk of course, avoiding promiscuity using protection like condoms etc.. 
2. I am dubious this is true, as it seems like a slippery slope fallacy to me. 
3. I don't believe any deity or deities exist, so again I find the claim dubious, but if a deity makes it clear to me that it abhors gay people, I would view that as a subjective claim, and an immoral one, but of course my objections would rest on my own subjective opinions ultimately. 
4. By this rationale garden peas would be immoral for me. Whilst I accept moral assertions ultimately must rest on subjective opinions, I don't think my disgust of something is a reliable bar for what is moral. If one is disgusted by something then one can avoid it, but one cannot avid who they are, only weigh their actions and the consequences to try and avoid harming others unnecessarily. Though of course the idea that causing harm is wrong or immoral is subjective, it is an opinion I share, as I think the world is generally a more bearable place if we try to avoid causing, and where possible prevent unnecessary harm.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, the earth is not flat, is not just a subjective opinion, as it rests on an amount of objectively verifiable evidence, that would make denial of it unreasonable. I tend to think of objectivity as a scale, the more objective the evidence, and the more objective evidence we have the more reliable the conclusions it supports. 

Excellent.  It's those types of assertions which metaethical objectivists would refer to as "valid" moral assertions.  They accurately report the thing they purport to report.  

1. I don't see how this is a moral assertion? All sex can spread disease, that's what the S stands for in the acronym. One can reduce risk of course, avoiding promiscuity using protection like condoms etc.. 

It's a moral assertion because it makes the claim that some x is bad. 
It's an objectivist moral assertion because it purports to report a fact of the matter of homosexual sex.
It's incorrect because, as you note, it is not the sex's homosexualness that transmits disease.  If that's the bad making property, then a more accurate, but perhaps still meaningfully untrue claim would be "unprotected sex is bad."

2. I am dubious this is true, as it seems like a slippery slope fallacy to me. 

It's objectively true but not an objectivist objection.   It is the claim that homosexual sex is bad because of some fact about our relativist norms, rather than homosexual sex.

3. I don't believe any deity or deities exist, so again I find the claim dubious, but if a deity makes it clear to me that it abhors gay people, I would view that as a subjective claim, and an immoral one, but of course my objections would rest on my own subjective opinions ultimately. 

Another objectively true statement but not an objectivist objection.  It is the claim that homosexual sex is bad because some subject..god in this case, is against it.

4. By this rationale garden peas would be immoral for me. 

Correct...or, that immoral was garden peas. Where's the clownface emoji?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The war is over. Gender ideology has been fully discrediteded. Some lunatics that cannot tell the difference between real and makebelieve will continue to wail but no one cares anymore.

[Thumpalumpacus]

And there's your subjectivity.

How so?

Who defines what? And by what standard?

Sure, but you and I can count frogs. How do you count morals? First we need to agree on what is or isn't moral. If we share the same definition, we can agree an act is moral or immoral. But that definition is not something we can point to in nature and say, "That, my friend, is a frog."

But isn't counting also subjective? You might want to count frogs by counting object A as 1 frog and frog B as 2 frogs.

You might say that object 1 is 1 frog because it has 4 legs.
Object 2 is 2 frogs because it has a pencil that is glued to a styrofoam cup.

Object 3 is 1.35 frogs because it is a painting of object 1 using watercolors.

As you can see, an agreement must be achieved.
Did I show that definitions are subjective?

You kinda missed my point here. To put it plain for those of hobbled thinking, you cannot count off or point to objective morals at all. I can support the objectivity of gravity's existence by pointing to the bottom of the cliff. I can prove the existence of an axe-head by splitting wood. Neither you nor I can prove our sensible morality by pointing to a physical fact.

The only thing you can do is say "I think this is wrong" and hope to win the crowd. It's not like you can point to a stone tablet handed down from a mountaintop -- and even if you could, the objectivity of those moral precepts is very definitely questionable.

Is killing immoral because some book says so? Is killing immoral because we don't want to be killed? Is killing moral because someone is trying to kill us?

[The Grand Nudger]

I can support the objectivity of my assessment about harm with a corpse.

Is killing immoral because some book says so? Maybe - and this would be relativist. Is killing immoral because we don't want to be killed? Maybe. A less comical version of non cognitivism. Is killing moral because someone is trying to kill us? Maybe. Subjectivist. Is killing immoral because it causes harm? Maybe not - still objectivist.

[Thumpalumpacus]

 Is killing immoral because it causes harm?  Maybe not - still objectivist.

Trolley problem. Assassinating Hitler. That sort of thing. It's a big "maybe" you're sneaking in. Oh, look, a squirrel!