Morality versus afterlife

[robvalue]

OK I see more that you discussed, apologies. Your second post was formatted weird and I missed some of it. I see words like "injustice". Again, according to who? If I call something an injustice and you don't, who is right?

You did say "the way we ought to behave". Ought to, according to who? This is no more clear. I see nothing in your post that isn't circular in nature.

To me, morality is a judgement of whether or not a person (or society) is acting in the best interests of the well-being of other people. Judgements are subjective, and well-being is subjective, even if we can roughly agree on some basic principles. Without someone to make a judgement, there is no "ought".

[Esquilax]

I don't think that there is that much confusion about what "right" and "wrong" mean in this context.

Then I suggest you go and have a little chat with Drich, who'll completely dismiss the concept of right and wrong so he can smugly tell you all about how he follows "righteousness" instead of all that useless morality, despite the two being essentially one and the same. It's a linguistic trick, but if anything it should show you how elastic these terms can be, depending on who you're talking to; Drich's yardstick for how good a thing is is how closely it cleaves to his god's fiat directives, and nothing else matters. Obviously, that's not going to gel with what we atheists consider morality, but it's still a thing. When we talk with any stripe of theist, there's no assurance at all that we'll be approaching moral concepts from the same place, hence the desire to sort it out beforehand.

  And I get a little leery when people start to ask definitions over and over again about fairly basic words where will it end?

Not to sound glib, but maybe it would have ended at around the moment you gave the definitions you were asked for. I've never known Rob to prohibitively bog down discussions with endless requests for clarification, after all.

 First I was asked to define morality, then define right and wrong.   It seems that according to Rob, right and wrong don't have any meaning in this context, other than that they fit his personal preferences.  Do you agree?  

The way the terminology is applied, and the determinations one might come to based on that, are inherently subjective. All your moral conclusions, your right and your wrong, come to you courtesy of your own personal values system, which is itself cultivated through years of experience. It can, and I would argue should, be based at least in part on evidence and reason, but there's no requirement for that. In that sense, right and wrong are effectively meaningless, in that they describe a set, rather than specific actions; what fills those sets will vary from person to person according to their own criteria, which makes them content-less words on their own without some idea of what your specific criteria are.

I can extrapolate what you'd consider to be right or wrong given a little extra data. I can't do that just on the basis of the terms themselves.

Also; I think, that you are confusing what is moral (along with Rob), with what it means to be moral.   Do you care to define the term?  You had said wellbeing. Is providing greater wellbeing synonymous with morality?  Can I behave immorally and provide a greater wellbeing or is that automatically moral? Is it moral (or ought one to) deceive, if it provides greater wellbeing in their opinion?   The way that people arrive at their view of what is moral, or not; doesn't have any bearing on what it means to be moral (if it has any meaning; but I believe it does).  

I tend to consider these questions in terms of pragmatism: morality requires moral actors, and thus must concern itself with the propagation of actors itself. So I consider wellbeing to be a primary factor to determining the morality of any given action (though not the exclusive factor or even the most pressing one, in all cases). In a broader sense, if being moral doesn't mean concerning oneself with the betterment and wellbeing of yourself and your fellow thinking beings, then what the hell is it even for?

You said, "This is where the subjectivity comes in, and it's where proponents of objective morality completely fail, because everyone interprets data through the lens of their own values before they come to moral conclusions."  Isn't this true for everything (that everything comes through the lens of interpretation)?  If you are interpreting them, doesn't that imply that they exist apart from your perception? I can subjectively interpret your words to mean that you agree with me.  It doesn't however correspond with reality that is outside of myself.  This is what it means to be objective, not just that it is my interpretation or opinion, but how closely that opinion matches what is outside of myself.  

Except that the thing you're interpreting isn't the morals themselves, it's the actions (which do exist objectively) as compared to the framework of values that you have (which are subjective).

People may disagree on if a particular situation is moral.  But in general, I find that they agree quite a bit on what morality is.   That there is a way we ought to behave, and a character which is objectively better.  That we can judge others (including cultures) based on moral choices.  That good and evil, justice and injustice; that these are real things.   Even when someone behaves immorally you see them trying to justify it.  I have never seen someone trying to make what is clearly immoral be called moral.  Not even from a hyper relativist.

That's because we have the advantage of existing within a shared, objective reality, which really helps when determining a shared moral system. Our individual values will have an upper and lower bound on them with deviation around the mean, rather than all over the place, because our shared experiences are similarly restricted around what is possible, and also what's objectively good or bad for us as biological entities. There's widespread agreement on many moral questions because the actions underpinning those are objectively impactful; we agree that murder is wrong, in large part, because murder is objectively bad for the person being murdered and those close to them, without a corresponding benefit... except in situations where that benefit exists (hostage situations, military action etc) which may lead us to consider the action justified regardless.

We may all have subjective moral values, but we have a broadly similar background, hence we should expect some agreement.

[robvalue]

Thankyou Esq, very well put You've explained my position better than I would have been able to.

Again apologies RR that I overlooked some of your post and perhaps made a fool of myself in the process.

[robvalue]

Final thought before bed time:

If right and wrong actions are what we all agree are right and wrong actions, then that depends entirely on the views of the people alive at the time. In a few generations, what is considered right and wrong may be different, at least partially.

Which set of right and wrong was then objectively more correct? Neither, because it doesn't mean anything. Someone has to compare them, and come up with a criteria for comparing them.

[robvalue]

Further to my last post:

If it is agreed that "right" and "wrong" mean how effectively wellbeing is maximised through attitudes, then particular aspects of wellbeing could be compared between the two different norms. Even then though, we're comparing overall trends. Each individual is going to have their own entirely subjective views on any given subject.

It can't just be overall wellbeing full stop, since that will depend partly on the level of technology available. It's not "more moral" to have a cure for a specific diseases available, for example. Although for two societies that have such a cure, how they make use of it could be compared. And you could look at how such cures are reached, and whether the society is working towards them or blocking progress.

If instead it's not agreed to just about wellbeing, but also about such nebulous things as "making God happy", then comparisons will be far more difficult. Of course, I personally would never use such a thing as a yardstick. But some people would. It could theoretically turn out that "keeping God happy", whatever that may mean, actually is extremely important and we've been "wrong" to neglect it as atheists. So if you're looking purely at outcomes, it depends upon who is actually right. This makes any action probabilistic in nature concerning morality. No one ever has all the facts. It could turn out everything humans have ever done is really bad for the universe in general, other life in it, and even ultimately our own life because we were missing some crucial piece of knowledge. But that doesn't make us immoral because we didn't know about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

If gods gonna hurt people if we don't believe or espouse or live by a godly morality with a big ole flood or an asteroid or a volcano, or an "end of days" scenario.....then maybe the -pragmatic- argument can be made for atheists to "try their best for the good of the rest".....provided, of course, that if enough atheists believed or espoused or lived by a godly morality...god would -not- do those things.  

[robvalue]

One last point:

Even if we agree about wellbeing, wellbeing of who?

Personally, I see the attitudes of most societies with respect to (nonhuman) animals to be unjust. Clearly, society does not agree with me in general. Who is "right"? It depends on how you factor it in. Who gets to say how important animal wellbeing is compared to human?

[The Grand Nudger]

Here, in the us, you and I do (and anyone else interested).  We'll invariably come to some sort of compromise that probably doesn't reflect either of our positions on the matter to our satisfaction but does represent them better than not being represented at all.   If that's the sort of thing that revs us up.

[robvalue]

Exactly. The idea that there is some objectively correct way of doing so is similarly absurd.

[robvalue]

So I made a video response to all of RRs points over the last couple of pages. I think there is a massive confusion of what terms mean. It's in two parts.

http://youtu.be/bjcjWr23EW0

http://youtu.be/-41jGxs1nCE