On Moral Authorities

[Ignorant]

Pretty much, yes. Beside circular statements like "try to do good things", I feel I have nothing in common with someone who blows themselves up, killing other people, because Allah wants them to. What would you suggest? [1]

Well yes, I'm not suggesting I just walk into another culture and expect them to all agree with me. People act certain ways for reasons. I don't subscribe to my culture, I have my own morality. I try and influence everyone, in my culture or not, towards my way of thinking. And I do this by making reasoned arguments as to (a) why my goals are important, and (b) how I go about things are a good way of achieving them. [2] Sometimes I change peoples' minds, I have done in the past. Sometimes I fail. But it's all anyone can do, make their case. 

I don't understand what you're getting at. The reasons for which we act? Yes, there are good/bad acts with respect to certain goals. But until we've agreed the goals, we can't say what is good and what isn't. [3] I do a lot of wanking, because I consider it's harmless. Some people think it's immoral, because it runs contrary to some goal or other they have for their morality. I think shooting innocent people is immoral, but an Islamic extremist thinks it's extremely moral. We act the way we do due to our emotions, ultimately. They guide us. [4] But our emotions depend on what we believe, and what we consider important, which can be heavily influence by culture.

If you're talking about some sort of circular "act the way we are designed to act" business, then I reject this as nothing to do with deciding and improving morality, although it is very important in explaining why we act morally in the first place. [5] Studying it and developing it on an individual level are totally different.

1) I think Alasdair's response clears this up. Clearly you have disagreements with other people's goals. Your disagreement does not necessarily mean that there is no absolute goal which would be desirable by both of you based on rationality.

2) But if you are arguing that they are important, must it not be done in such a way that it is also important to the person you are trying to persuade? How else can you do that if not be appealing to some rationally shared aspect of human life? And how else can it be appealing to a different culture if not described as MORE important or more real than whatever goal x that culture holds?

My point is that rational persuasion is pointless unless you hold that you and the other person share something real to which the goal you value appeals. If that is the case, then THAT is the object of your own objective morality... and therefore, your moral authority. If there is no real object, then there can be no rational persuasion, but only clever coercion. Some people use violence to coerce people to share their cultural/personal goals. Some use reason. I am saying that reason is only available in persuasion when there is an actual object about which reason can apply.

I don't think you try and coerce people, so you must have some real goal/object about which you think your judgments are closer to reality than other judgments. You think this because of reasoned arguments which correspond to reality, and you appeal to those reasons and argument when you seek to persuade people. I just don't think you have been able to articulate exactly what that goal/object is.

3) Precisely. You need to agree on the goal before you can evaluate the acts which might be good or bad for achieving that goal. The goal, then, is the reality which provides the criteria by which action is judged.

But then, how do you judge one goal better/worse than another (say one cultural goal of doing Allah's will) vs. robvalue's goal)? My position is that you can't judge between them without some "higher" or more successive goal in mind to provide the criteria by which action is judged. Short of a common goal to serve as the criteria, like you said, there is no better or worse. So short of a common goal between you and those who kill for the sake of Allah's will, you are not able to rationally call killing for Allah's will, bad.

You do call it bad (and rightly so), and you call it bad with good reason. That reason is part of your own goal, the object by which you judge morality, and I think it includes something about the humanity common to you and those who kill in the name of Allah.

4) I thought we act they way we do because of our reason? I thought reasons guided our action?

5) No. My intent in responding was purely on the reason why people defend "objective morality". If there is no "goal" common to humanity to which rational discourse can appeal, then there is no rational/human reason for denouncing the atrocities of the 20th century (or any atrocity) as "bad". The "reasons" are purely cultural (mostly our own), and have nothing to do with the goals and actions of the atrocities themselves. The goals and actions would only be considered bad in reference to our own goals common to our own culture. 

I don't think you or anyone here actually believes that is the case. I think everyone here thinks that there are real things about those events that are bad for reasons common to every human being (even the human beings who did the bad things for bad reasons). For example, I think that everyone here thinks that the tenets and goals of German National Socialism in the early-mid 20th century would be bad for every human culture, including the one holding to that German National Socialism. I think everyone here (both atheist and theist alike) has a rational leg to stand on when it comes to that judgment, and it isn't god. Maybe there is something there that is more than mere human emotion.