(October 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I don't agree that morality can mean what you are having it mean. Morality is about rightness and wrongness, not just another word for "behavior."
But you did agree - right here:
(October 21, 2013 at 9:54 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Fair enough. We all agree that morality is a guidline for how people should act.
So are you retracting your agreement now? And no, this does not make morality another word for behavior. It makes morality an evaluation for it.
(October 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It's a reasonable try at identifying a maximally good behavior, but it is founded on subjective ideas about what is good. I think the other tries I mentioned also work as possible candidates.
Except, I've already given an example about what an objective idea about "good" would be and you haven't addressed that.
(October 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The point is not so much your judgment, but the fact that the social process must deal with subjective mores-- and if they are rooted in objective processes like instinct, no matter. The variation among opinions is real, and so the objective morality of each idividual cannot stand as objective when applied to that group context.
Like I said before - there is no "objective morality of each individual". The part of the individual's morality that is objective - if a part is shown to be that - then it would be the same for the whole group and thus applicable in group context.
(October 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: So what represents an objective moral code in a group context? A God who created all those individuals is one try.
And why would that god's desire be any more representative of an objective moral code than that of a human?
(October 23, 2013 at 11:25 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The only other try I can think of is an arbitrary choice of a black-and-white standard measure (as with the metric system). For example, maybe complex lab work and statistics over populations of millions of tests could lead to a maximal improvement in the pleasure/pain balance in the population. I don't think either of these tries is very convincing, though.
Or, there is the third option I've presented - figure out the fundamental drive characteristic of being a moral agent and figure out what the necessary premises are for the existence of this moral agent. The moral code derived from this would be objective and universal in its application to all moral agents.
