RE: morality is subjective and people don't have free will
June 6, 2017 at 10:05 am
(This post was last modified: June 6, 2017 at 10:16 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(June 5, 2017 at 11:50 am)pool the matey Wrote: Even if there were an objective morality it could only manifest as if it were subjective.Agreed, and objective moral theorists point that out constantly. That our moral agency, and our moral agreement(or disagreement) are separate subjects of consideration, and so to is any moral system. There's no necessity that the three be in agreement. Our subjective moral agency may lead us to believe that slaughtering the neighboring tribes firstborn is a good thing to do, everyone in our tribe may agree (and the other tribe may agree, with reference to our children)...but that won;t change it;s objective status as good or bad, if there is such an objective status or system.
Quote:The downfall of objective morality is it doesn't take into consideration circumstances leading to an end result. It says a particular result is "bad" or "good" no matter the circumstances.It doesn't, actually. Any particular objective moral system might use the goodness or badness of an act in a vacuum as a baseline, but there's no reason that it couldn't also account for what we might call extenuating circumstance. For example, a person who does harm to achieve a greater good. The only particular acts which would be absolutely and uniformly bad in sum would be those to which no extenuating circumstance could rescue. Sure, we might make allowance for warfare - but how about rape? What extenuating circumstance make rape less than bad? At that point, we're not disputing an objective morality, we're appraising an act by reference to an objective morality. What can make a thing that objectively satisfies the conditions of being bad, less bad?
Quote:Assault can be good in a number of scenarios and charity can be bad in a number of scenarios. Objectively declaring them "good" or "bad" is short-sighted. I feel as if objective morality is result oriented and subjective morality is action oriented. The very fact that morality is used by humans make it subjective.The status of the moral agency of humans does not equate to the status of any moral system. An objective moral theorist would tell you that we are subjective agents, and deeply flawed in our perceptions, but that we are attempting (opr at least could attempt) to approximate a system of objective values as best we can....given circumstance both of the act being appraised and of ourselves.
Assault as warfare can be good and charity as manipulation can be bad..but bad by reference to -what-? If that reference is objective, we're still peddling an attempt at objective morality.
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