God & Objective Morals

[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?