RE: Objective morality as a proper basic belief
June 24, 2017 at 10:46 pm
(This post was last modified: June 24, 2017 at 11:00 pm by Little Henry.)
(June 24, 2017 at 6:01 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(June 24, 2017 at 9:45 am)Little Henry Wrote: If this is the case, then moral acts are neither right or wrong. They are just preferences and desires, not right or wrong.
Then you deny that a human can make moral judgements? How, then, do you assert your morality proper?
Humans make moral judgements. If you wish to dismiss those judgements because they don't share your own premises, that's your business. But then at that point you yourself are practicing moral subjectivity -- "their morals are wrong because they aren't based as mine are."
In other words, you insist on equivocating, and I'm unimpressed. *yawn*
If OM does not exist, then moral judgements are just delusions...
(June 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(June 24, 2017 at 12:21 am)Little Henry Wrote: It seems when we make moral claims, ie, rape is wrong, murder is wrong, we are saying something with an intent for that statement to be fact. We are not just expressing preferences/likes/desires, but trying to say something that is fact.
. . . . .
But when we talk about morality, we use the words right and wrong with an intent for it to be FACT.
Our intentions in talking about something can be mistaken. When people believed the earth was flat, they talked as if the world were flat. Their intention was irrelevant to the fact. Beyond that, all you've basically done is assert. You know what would show that morality is objective? An explanation of morality that can be demonstrated to be correct. That is how we show that something is objective. Do you have an explanation of morality that can be demonstrated to be correct? I see you making a lot of assertions, but haven't seen anything like an explanation of how morals work. Until you can do that, all you've got is an ipse dixit argument.
As soon as you label a moral act right or wrong, you are already admitting that OM exists. Right and wrong ONLY exist in relation to facts. They dont exist in relation to subjective items.
In your title you tentatively assert that morality being objective is a properly basic belief. I take that to mean you are employing reformed epistemology as a foundation for your beliefs. I reject reformed epistemology. Any framework that asserts that something is true until it can be shown false is nothing but a wholesale falsehood. In traditional foundationalism, a belief is basic if it is either self-evident or it is incorrigible. The belief that morality is objective is neither of these things.
For what it's worth, I'm not a subjectivist in the sense that you mean because I believe the foundation of our morals lies in evolution, not God. But it does point out an important question about morality. Does our metaphysics not alter what we view as moral and immoral. A middle eastern woman is killed because of being an abomination to God. To those who don't believe in God, this act itself is an abomination. Can we ever have objective facts about metaphysics?
Evolution does not make morality objective. It is just an adaptation acquired to enhance the survival of species...not objective.
Consider this quote by Michael Ruse
"What I want to argue is that there are no foundations to normative ethics. If you think that to be true a claim has to refer to some particular thing or things, my claim is that in an important sense, normative ethics is false… the claims of normative ethics are like the rules of a game. In baseball, it is true that after three strikes the batter is out; but this claim does not have any reference or correspondence in absolute reality.” (Michael Ruse:1995:248-9)
If you deny OM exists, then your moral claims have no " reference or correspondence in absolute reality".
