Atheism and Ethics

[The Grand Nudger]

Any idea of scholars who represent the view you hold, or what name they would give it? Trying to expand my reading list

Nearly every moral system explicitly...and the rest (arguably) implicitly... have harm as the or a moral value.  "Don't harm, do help" is Shelley Kagans brisk formulation of the basis of all moral utterances of any kind.  You might enjoy watching his discussion with William Lane Craig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm2w

Is a pretty good example of what happens when an apologist tries to argue with an actual ethicist about his field of expertise. His written work is good too.  The geometry of desert is popular and well received.

[Lucian]

Any idea of scholars who represent the view you hold, or what name they would give it? Trying to expand my reading list

Nearly every moral system explicitly...and the rest (arguably) implicitly... have harm as the or a moral value.  "Don't harm, do help" is Shelley Kagans brisk formulation of the basis of all moral utterances of any kind.  You might enjoy watching his discussion with William Lane Craig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm2w

Is a pretty good example of what happens when an apologist tries to argue with an actual ethicist about his field of expertise.  His written work is good too.  The geometry of desert is popular and well received.

Looks like his book “Addressing Moral Skepticism” could be a useful one for me as well to get some good push back

[Lucian]

Not sure if anyone caught the (infuriating to me) debate between Alex O’Connor and Dinesh Dsouza recently. One of the only things Dinesh brought up that made me pause was his comment on the indiscriminate bombing of Germany and civilian targets during world war 2. The parallel was claimed between that and the genocide in the Old Testament.
Wondering what people think of a simple response that the bombing in World War Two was to force Germany to surrender. The old testament wasn’t that as there seem to have been many small city states. I guess you could say that it was to force the other cities to surrender and leave the land. Not convinced with my response. Anything better?

Sticking this in this thread as the condemnation of the genocides is often objected to by non-religious people

[The Grand Nudger]

If an apologist wants to tell you that his god is no worse than humans at their worst, then let him.

[Lucian]

If an apologist wants to tell you that his god is no worse than humans at their worst, then let him.

Well that is certainly a much better response than mine! Thanks

[Paleophyte]

1. I am interested in what reasons atheists have for believing such morality can exist in a godless universe, but not if it is appeals to intuition without grounding that further.

I'd suggest that it's logically necessary. If we agree that there is such a thing as morality and that we choose which morals to follow then it would appear that we're all using subjective processes for arriving at our moral systems. Us godless heathens pride ourselves on figuring these out on our own using systems that others have already detailed better than I possibly could. Similarly, you god-bothering pew-polishers use subjective criteria for selecting the god(s) that you worship, the particular religion, church, and morals that attach to all of that. Unless there's some objective process for determining The One True God that I missed out on. If there's an objectively true set of morals out there then nobody has stumbled onto them yet.

FWIW, I don't see morals as being anything more mystical than the necessary behaviors of individuals within a society. Individual behaviors that deviate from the moral norms harm the society as a whole and that gets them punished. once the harm done exceeds the effort of correcting the deviation. Show me a society without a prohibition on murder and I'll show you a short-lived society. Replace murder with any other behavior that's a net negative and you get the same result.

As others have suggested, morality is an emergent property of society. As such it is independent of any single mind within that society. No individual writes the social contract and it continues to exist despite the death or departure of any particular person.

[The Grand Nudger]

The idea that we choose our moralities and the idea that moralities are emergent properties of societies are two very different contentions.

Importantly, in the latter case, we are compelled by forces external to us. It's not so much that we choose our moralities in the case that metaethical relativism is true - but that our moralities are chosen for us by what is essentially an accident of our birth. We note that this can often seem to be the case - but we also note moral dissent within societies. It might be, in the case that metaethical relativism is true, that you personally (and subjectively) object due to something like the choices referenced earlier - but that does not (or would not) alter the fact that your dissent would be wrong in fact - as the society from which you dissent is the finder of moral fact, or the moral fact-maker if we prefer. Practically speaking....descriptively speaking...our moralities are neither purely subjective or purely relative. They are at least a combination of these two things - and thus our moralities are...again speaking descriptively.....value plural systems. We defer to both our societies and at least some personal variation within them.

The whole thing is fascinating. How many permutations and consistent moral utterances you can get with just those two underlying variables - but not what the OP is asking about specifically. The OP is wondering whether there is a good reason to believe that at least some moral utterances are of a third type. Those true of the matter itself, in fact. So...maybe I have a personal opinion about [insert degenerate shit here]. Maybe my society also has an opinion and maybe I'm influenced by that.

...but could there be facts of the inserted X itself which might also identify a thing as-such?

[Lucian]

After a period of functioning my brain has taken the inevitable turn to being a complete dullard and failing to function well, so not the best reply here
But yep, I am mainly interested in the question of how we know moral facts if they are mind-independently real. Joyce uses the term non-institutional categorical imperatives. What case is there to be made for such facts as existing as a real objective standard that would be true regardless of all folk decided otherwise

Listening to a paper by Joyce on the way home from work today about projectivism and the idea that we project our feelings onto the world in some sense and then objectify those experiences. He notes that this technically isn’t an anti-realist position, as even realists can adopt this and claim that those experiences that cohere with objective morals are right, and those that aren’t aren’t. Wondering what psychological account of moral apprehension is in vogue in realist literature? I am halfway through Cuneo’s Normative Web and I haven’t quite picked up on anything yet. That could be because of a lack of attention or just that he hasn’t covered it yet.
Thoughts?

[Angrboda]

"fellow travelers"

[Lucian]

"fellow travelers"

Urmmmm, “hail fellow weary peons on this arduous road”?
Not sure what that was meant to mean, sorry so that was the best I could respond