God & Objective Morals

[Whateverist]

For reasons I have posted about rather extensively elsewhere, I do not believe moral systems based on evolutionary psychology satisfy the requirements a moral system should have.

Well what a moral system should have and what it can possibly have need not intersect. If subjective, contingent morality is all we can muster, it will have to do.

You're my favourite member.

Well gee thanks.

For the record, I think you're alright too. Group hug?

[Neo-Scholastic]

{hugs fallen and whateverist}

Are you a dualist?

Dualism comes in many varieties. I have only recently become aware of some of their names. My current opinion seems to roughly coincide with the hylomorphic dualism of Aquinas. In effect, I believe that a proper understanding of reality must include formal and final causes if it purports to adequately account for all relevant phenomena.

Is this why your project necessarily has to search in the physical world, because without anything physical to latch on to, morality is basically by definition subjective?

I wouldn’t call it my project to find a physical basis for morality. I contend that the attempt to do so is futile. And most of the responses, here and elsewhere indicate that atheists, as a general rule, accept this fact. The problem I have is that these same atheists then turn around and deny that this leads to moral nihilism.

…if you think it's possible for a divine being and objective morals to exist…

I do not believe that an objective basis for morality is possible. I say that because I understand ‘objective’ to mean folk notions, such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, could be directly translated into the language of physics. If physicalism is true this would be at least theoretically possible, even it were practically incalculable.

The lack of an objective morality does not mean that divine commands must be arbitrary or capricious. All that is required is a perfect moral standard by which the actions and intentions of people can be compared.

[The Grand Nudger]

The lack of an objective morality does not mean that divine commands must be arbitrary or capricious. All that is required is a perfect moral standard by which the actions and intentions of people can be compared.

If they aren't, then I've no need for any god, I'll just cut out the middleman (nobody likes middlemen). Nor do we require any perfect standard, I'm okay with incremental or relative improvement. Useless, as always.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Nor do we require any perfect standard, I'm okay with incremental or relative improvement. Useless, as always.

Improvement? Relative to what, my friend? By what standard do you judge the adequacy of your current standard? Once again, you have no defense against sliding into nihilism. Your penchant for circular thinking astounds me.

[The Grand Nudger]

The man asks me what my standard is and then (before my responding) tells me I have no defense for nihilism. "No god- no nothing", rgr rgr.

Isn't it telling that rather then defending your useless god and perfect standard conjecture..you felt compelled to babble on about some standard of mine that you'rte ignorant of. Make claim, avoid supporting claim-or addressing an objection at all costs, attack the positions of others in absentia. Standard.

You know somebody who actually doesn't have any defense against nihilism? Someone who requires a "perfect moral standard" that cannot be produced.

[genkaus]

I just wrote up a syllogism for the above dialogue if anyone was interested:

1) It is in God's nature to give these commands as being objectively right
2) These objective morals are what maximize happiness & wellbeing
3) If 1,2 & 3 are true, then God's nature couldn't have been any other way than this way
4) If 4 is true, then it is necessary for God to be this way
5) If 5 is true, then something external to God must have been the condition that made it necessary for God's nature to be this way (i.e. premise 3)
6) If 1-6 is true, then objective morals exist independently of God
7) Objective morals do not exist a priori
C) Since it is in God's nature to reflect objective morals, God doesn't exist.

I think you may have missed a step or two here. Your statements from 3-6 are self-referential, i.e. essentially saying "If this statement is true, then this statement would be true" - making them tautological and therefore conveying no new information. Further, a lot of assumptions here are unjustified, such as it being god's necessary nature to reflect an independent standard of objective morals - something Christians might be more easily sold on than atheists.

As I see it, you argument boils down to
1. If objective morals exist, then it is possible for god - conceived as reflecting those morals through his nature - to exist.
2. Objective morals do not exist.
3. Therefore god does not exist.

The problem here is that it is possible for other conceptions of god to exist - thereby making god independent of objective morality and there is no condition given for the existence of objective morals - thereby making god irrelevant to it.

[Esquilax]

For reasons I have posted about rather extensively elsewhere, I do not believe moral systems based on evolutionary psychology satisfy the requirements a moral system should have. Primarily because certain behaviors generally accepted as immoral, like rape, may in fact assist the survival of genetic material for some low-status individuals. Using pain and pleasure as an index of morality, like Utilitarianism, involves a highly arbitrary assessment of what degree of pleasure offsets what degree of pain (or loss) and to what degree these are spread among individuals.

I hate to take us back to something on the first page, but please don't attribute that evo psych crap to me. That's not at all what I was getting at, I was just observing that we are cooperative as a species, and that this necessarily informs parts of our morality.

That said, it's not a strictly biological equation, that's where our logic comes in too; rape's bad because it serves to cause demonstrable harm to people. I find it actually a bit unsettling when people pretend they can't see that when describing secular moral systems; I don't think for a second that you only see rape as immoral because your god's morality decrees it, Chad. The harm of it is easily seen, and you, just like the rest of us, are empathetic enough to not want it to happen to people, god or no.

[genkaus]

I found that exchange interesting as well. I also found your reasoning sound. Recently this problem has been something I ponder much. I offer the following thoughts.

My particular interest, like yours, revolves around what it actually means to say something is objective. You apply the term objective to physically definable things and systems. I consider physical things quantifiable, i.e. measurable, expressible as empirically observable processes, or capable of being defined as algorithms. (I welcome further additions or refinements to this notion of ‘objective’.)

If morality is indeed objective, then it is reduces to a physically process. Since physical processes are definable by algorithms and algorithmic processes are quantifiable, it follows that objective morality is quantifiable. But morality is not quantifiable, therefore morality cannot be objective.

Indeed, moral dilemmas express a qualitative aspect of life. In order to reduce morality to physics, you must be able to measure degrees of subjective experiences, like suffering and pleasure, as quantifiable brain states. I find that highly unlikely, given my own position on the mind/body relationship. Also it seems inconceivable that you could make a formula of measurable units, like electro-chemical life processes, that has an outcome like 52% moral & 48% immoral.

Considering the above analysis of objectivity with respect to morality, does it follow that morality is arbitrary. It seems to me that objective may not serve as the appropriate way to evaluate moral problems. Perhaps it might be better to focus on whether morality is arbitrary or not. Are there consistent guides, of whatever origin, you can apply to determine if something is fair or just?

There are quite a few points on which you are wrong which serve to undercut the whole argument.

1. The term objective does not always or exclusively refer to things that are physical and/or quantifiable. For example, law is objective - it is established externally to any one person's will or opinion - and yet it isn't quantifiable.

2. Your idea that only physical things or processes are quantifiable is also incorrect. For example, we quantify intelligence using an IQ scale, thus indicating that non-physical can be objective as well as quantifiable.

3. Considering morality to be unquantifiable would also be incorrect. In fact, we quantify it every day, judging some actions to be morally worse or better than others. The absence of standards to assign numerical value to them does not make it unquantifiable. Consider the concept of Karma, where by all your actions are assigned some negative or positive value according to some unknown system and at the end of your life, the sum total of it determines whether you are a good person or a bad person.

4. Whatever your position on the mind/body relationship - and I've said a lot on the subject - it is incorrect to assume that pleasure and suffering simply cannot be measured - when in fact they can and have been measured.

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Either way, I think for morality to be objective, it means that we can come to know of it a priori since we don't require anything physical or a posteriori to reasonably know if something is right or wrong.

I think you may have misunderstood what the terms a priori and a posteriori mean or otherwise, you'd have to justify your position here.

Morality being objective doesn't necessarily mean that it must not require any independent justification or reasoning. Going by your earlier comments - about how, if morality is objective, then it can be known or understood through reasoning - I'd say that it makes it necessarily known a posteriori.

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I believe the fatal error lies with in the fact these objective morals God puts in place are the best.

I think the fatal error lies in first in assuming there is a god and second that the morals he supposedly put in place are objective.

Since we cannot be God we cannot judge his motives. God if a perfect being or atleast superior intelligence, we cannot judge his motives. Reason being how do we know he is not being manipulative or even is what it claims it is.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Even of he is perfect or has superior intelligence, that still shouldn't stop us from making any sort of judgment about him. We may be wrong, but that's the risk be we run while making any judgment.

Basically in theory we need to judge based on our reality what is objectively good.

And how do you determine it to be "objectively" good?

Which usually defaults to what benefits mankind as a collective and pushes positive forward progress.

And that is something you'd need to justify.

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I think the quest for objective morality is always predicated on agreement on some set of presuppositions.

Agreement would be irrelevant. For the quest for objective morality, those principles would need to be justified as objectively true.

But, hypothetically, lets say after exhaustive research we find some small set of moral principles we can all agree on. Would what follows consistently from that small set of moral principles really deserve to be called "objective morality"? I don't think so.

Not unless that small set was established as being objectively true.

The point is that the so called objective morality is still contingent. If someone is born who does not accept that common core of moral principles we have nothing whatsoever to offer as to why they should accept them .. except that they are failing to fit in with our norms. So contingent morality can never be objective morality.

Except, if the principles are shown to be objectively true, then that contingent morality would be objective and any person's or froups disagreement to those principles would be as irrelevant as their disagreement with science.

Even those who accept the common core of principles may disagree on how to resolve conflicts between them, and there will always be conflict. You do hear atheists arguing for objective morality based on reason alone but that must always be contingent on agreement.

Is this moving the goalposts? That morality would not be contingent upon agreement, it'd be contingent upon the established and justified pre-suppositions.

Or else you have to argue that a person should accept those principles to be rational. Of course nothing can stop the 'immoral' person saying "screw your rationality". If your morality is based on the imperative that one should act rationally, then that is still contingent and no true moral imperative at all. You might try to argue that irrational people are just defective but by then your assumptions will have so corrupted your logic that your project will be dead in the water.

And why would you assume that being objectively moral or rational would be an end in itself?

[Neo-Scholastic]

1. The term objective does not always or exclusively refer to things that are physical and/or quantifiable. For example, law is objective - it is established externally to any one person's will or opinion - and yet it isn't quantifiable.

And how is this person’s will or opinion in any way objective? The law is objective only in the sense that the symbolic expression is observable. That to which the symbolic expression refers, the person’s will or opinion, is not objective.

2. Your idea that only physical things or processes are quantifiable is also incorrect. For example, we quantify intelligence using an IQ scale, thus indicating that non-physical can be objective as well as quantifiable.

Not so. The IQ test measures the efficacy and efficiency of the brain as a physical symbolic processor.

3. Considering morality to be unquantifiable would also be incorrect. In fact, we quantify it every day, judging some actions to be morally worse or better than others.

Objective things can be quantified, but not all things can be objectively quantified.

4. … it is incorrect to assume that pleasure and suffering simply cannot be measured - when in fact they can and have been measured.

Once again, objective things can be quantified, but not all things can be objectively quantified. Following surgery, hospital staffers ask patients to rate the degree of their pain on a scale of 1 (annoying) to 10 (unbearable). I do not believe such a survey objectively measures any real similarity of pain experience between a pansy like me and a Navy Seal. Qualitative experiences lack the attributes that make physical events empirically verifiable. What the Navy Seal experiences as a 3, I might rate as an 8. And even then, how we rate our pain might depend on our moods or other factors.

[Tex]

First, I'm just nit picky, but a priori means able to reason, yes, but it specifically is talking about ontological reasoning. You don't need any sense organs to experience anything, just the ability to have rational thoughts. On contrast, a posteriori is the ability to reason if there is experience. However, you're still correct in word choice through the dialogue. And sorry for the critique!

No, please, tell me these things; I'm here to learn

I thought "a priori" meant that we could literally sit on a couch and come to the conclusion that something must be true? Seems to me we can do that with morality and moral problems.

That's basically what it means. You can do the same with math problems without actually ever seeing 2 apples removed from the basket of 5. However, if you're on the couch trying to figure out why birds can fly, you're using the concept "bird" achieved from knowing what a bird is, so the logic takes place posterior to the experience, rather than prior.

I'll try and explain myself some more: could it have been possible for a world to exist where burning puppies is the morally right thing to do? If yes, then apparently morality is arbitrary because although we can say that's horrible, our feelings toward that action mean nothing whatsoever. It also means God's nature is arbitrary. If you say no, it was necessary for God to be the way he is, then that begs the question.

I used the example of my car. The engine is necessary to the car *only* when I want to drive. It's not necessary if I want to jump up and down on my car. It's not necessary when I want to vacuum my car. Therefore, it means that for something to be *necessary*, there must be an external condition. Well, then, if God's nature is necessarily the way it is, then what's the *external* thing controlling this necessity?

I'll leave it there and wait for your response.

No possible world exists where burning puppies is ok, I'll address the second objection, "...it was necessary for God to be the way he is...".

The response to this is the relationship between those weird transcendentals I bring up sometimes (if you look, you may use the morality version of this and replace it with existence very easily). Basically, if God is not internally infinitely Good, he doesn't exist in the first place. Good and Being can't be split, since you need a person to first exist to do Good and once the person is Existing, he/she has the ability to be moral. So, the reason he must exist as infinitely Good is because he exists.