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

[The Grand Nudger]

Is wrong the right word? If I claim to prefer red to any other colour, that is not wrong is it? It's objectively true, but it tells us nothing about red or any other colour beyond my subjective preference. I suppose we examine moral ideas because it matters to us, and therefore we think it worthwhile. It just may make life more tolerable, though of course it is not an objective truth that life should be more tolerable. 

Wrong would be the right word, yeah...but not for you claim to prefer red to any color...and we're right there with respect to why we might want to employ these terms in a more careful or systematic way.  Subjectivist, relativist, and objectivist statements are all statements that are or can be true or false.  Right or wrong.  Practically speaking, you're not likely to get your favorite x false, or wrong (though it is possible!).  A similar thing with relativist statements - but these are easier to get wrong than subjectivist statements in their classic example.  A child might misreport the moral assertions of their community because they are not yet fully aware of them all.  Because, for example, societies employ different moral systems or postulates or metrics as we age.  Or, in a religious example..because some moral assertion is a mystery of the faith only known to the most highly placed.  Everyone else may know that x is so and so, but only a few know the why x is so and so.  

I'm right there with you on it not being an objective truth that life should be more tolerable.  I'll raise you one.  As an objectivist, I think it's objectively true that doing the right thing can make your life objectively worse.  Try stopping a crooked cop from murdering some hapless teenager and see what happens to you.  Fuck, try holding them accountable.  I hope you've got alot of moving violation money laying around.

though the competing moral theories have to deal with reality as well, they can't be entirely theoretical or else they'd be useless? Or I have missed the point? I must admit I am no closer to accepting that morality is objectively true, only that if we make a subjective claim about something, we are then able to make objectively true claims about how best to achieve it. 

We think X is wrong.  

Y causes X.

It follows then that if x is wrong, then y is also wrong. 

The first assertion remains subjective. The second is an objective claim about reality. The conclusion is true only if we accept the initial subjective claim. 

So I think the idea that there is no universal or absolute set of moral principles is true, unless someone can offer an example? As even though we do seem to have evolved such that certain behaviours are anathema to most of us, this doesn't make them objectively immoral, surely those are just instincts that natural selection has kept because it aided societal cohesion enough to provide a survival advantage.

I'm not trying to get you to decide that metaethical objectivity is right.  I hope to help you better understand what metaethical objectivists are talking about.  How differences in the way we employ language as laymen and how ethicists employ it as professionals produce different conclusions in the gp and academia.  How there are wonderful and compelling arguments against metaethical objectivity - but repeating "it's all subjective" isn't one of them.  More than anything, and this is lost in pages and pages....I'm exploring the swampy end of why you never have to accept a lunatics framing or premise said lunatic being wrong-in-fact on the idea that metaethical subjectivity is true.


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The Grand Nudger Wrote:[url=https://atheistforums.org/post-2220240.html#pid2220240][/url]

This seems an absurd position to me, it was of course the argument Shapiro tried to peddle with NdGT, and he gave it the contempt it deserved. Just because one sets a bar for credulity that requires beliefs be supported by sufficient objective evidence, does not mean one can't have a favourite colour based on an entirely subjective view, and the same for moral judgements. I can abhor actions like rape and murder that cause harm to others unnecessarily, but this does not mean I delude myself that it is objectively true that harming others is wrong. 

Just another disingenuous objection used as cover by a religious nut.  It follows pretty cleanly from the notions that there is objective evidence for the existence of trans people and objective evidence that harming people is wrong...that harming trans people would be wrong.  They don't give a shit about that, though.  Their god has an opinion.  Their culture has a position.

The bar for credulity in objectivist ethics does require sufficient objective evidence (rightly or wrongly..in a metaethical sense..whether we possess it or not..in a practical sense).  Shapiro and all his ilk are on the wrong side of science and the wrong side of objectivist ethics on this one.  If they're on the wrong side of subjectivist ethics that's cool....but since benny and co are insisting on science and objectivism, we can give them both barrels - even if we do not believe in objectivist metaethics.  All they really want, in fact, is for you to flee the "scientific" and "objective" fields so that they can claim possession of them, and say that their bigoted shit is scientifically and objectively true....as a pretext to alter our laws to their satisfaction.

Consider our discussion not as one of me convincing you of something, but in me equipping you with the full range of weapons at your disposal for handling claims and people like these ones.