(December 9, 2010 at 10:48 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: Morality is an evaluation of how our intentional behavior impacts our fellow sentient beings. It is not something that can be objectively measured, as in you can't plug numbers into a spreadsheet to determine the course of action that produces the highest number of moral units.
False, values can be calculated. They're all only really one thing. Desires, and they are brain states. which are quantifiable.
Quote:The closest that any philosopher has come to measuring morality objectively was Jeremy Bentham who advanced the utilitarian ethic, by which morality could be measured by the promotion of the sum total of pleasure in the universe and reduction of the sum total of pain. Even this approach requires some subjective judgment, as measuring pleasure and pain are almost subjective by nature.
You've been under a rock for the past 200 years it seems. Pleasure Utilitarianism was a step in the right direction, but his case for "pleasure" being the object of moral evaluation was flawed.
And if we assume for the sake of argument that pleasure is justifiably to be used as the object of evaluation there is nothing at all subjective about it, pain and pleasure are brain states and they are quantifiable things. Just because it may be difficult to gather data does not mean than the principle is subjective any more than our inability to measure with precision the distance to other galaxies makes that measurement subjective.
Quote:A belief in God does nothing to make moral issues any less subjective. Saying "GodWillsIt" is every bit as unsatisfying an answer as to why something is moral as "GodDidIt" is unsatisfying an answer to matters of science. Such simple statements don't fully and satisfyingly answer the whys and hows. If something is moral because God says so, then morality is by God's decision and therefore still relative to God's judgment.
I disagree, Divine attitude theory solves these problems. Sure it's completely void of substance as far as support for the argument goes, but if it were true you couldn't call it subjective.
Quote:Saying morality is subjective is not to be confused with amorality or "anything goes". It is to admit the issue is complex and requires judgment.
Subjective == Opinion
Good in Opinion == I like
What new information does the word morality bring? None... You can't get to shared values through opinion, so morality has no meaning in this context.
Quote: Personally, I live by three commandments which I feel measure morality well enough: act with integrity, respect the rights of others and take responsibility for your actions. I came by these rules by my own analysis as to why I react negatively to some things, that is thinking something is "wrong" "evil or "immoral". Typically, things I find immoral are violations of these three rules. I have yet to find any exceptions and will add more to that list if I do.
That to me sounds like "I don't like == wrong" where "I don't like" is your three arbitrary standards of evaluation.
You sure you aren't a nihilist in disguise?
Quote:I will say, in a rare praise of Christianity, that Jesus' admonishment that we do unto others as they would to us, essentially empathizing with others, is an excellent rule. The reverse, expect not from others what we aren't willing to do for them, is also useful. Such rules touch upon the very thing that morality is an evaluation of.
Not so fast, the golden rule long predates Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule#Antiquity
And would you like to expand on that last part?
Quote:If Christians would spend more time adhering to that "golden rule" and less time trying to force their beliefs on others (an ironic violation of that rule), I think we'd all get along much better.
Indeed.
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