Do you have a coherent ideology?

[El_Machinae]

I can accept the authority over me. I have no say in its authority over you.

Granted. The thought exercise required us to be both voters in the same nation.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

In the US, or anywhere with a two party system

There is only you.

This isn't to say it is impossible, the it is hard.

You argue the coherence didn't happen because of a kind of sail-out to voter demands, or in other words to serve the demands of popularity.

I think it goes deeper than that. In deed, I think it leads us to the very essence of the human condition.

It is true that there is a strong need within the human condition to identify right and wrong. Black and white. Truth and falsehood.
However, it also seems to be true that the human condition is the product of mindless chaos. And correspondingly a given stream of human consciousness knows great fluctuations of needs and desires. And correspondingly, the identity of right and wrong which suits those needs and desires fluctuates.

To withstand those fluctuations and cling to a coherent ideology isn't just hard as perhaps a math problem or a physical exercise can be.
It is hard because it is unattractive. Because it requires a given human being who values the need for a clearly defined and stable/continuing idea of right and wrong above anything else. Otherwise, things will become incoherent.

I absolutely believe in objective morality.

On what basis? I think we can work out a code or something which serves humanity as a whole as best as possible. But that doesn't make it objectively true but just objectively useful for the collective.

 

[kochman]

I agree it goes deeper than that, and for the reasons you say.
I just used the political parties as a crystal clear example of merging views into an incoherent, but compromising where the voters want idea.

Is "a clearly defined and stable/continuing idea of right and wrong" possible? Desirable?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think in the most strict sense it is impossible. People can IMO not help but to doubt, wonder and simply shift in their frames of mind. Just as the physical world around us we are shifty, unsteady like that.

But in a more loose sense I see it happening. But it IMO requires a zealous dedication which carries a bundle of problems.

In principle, I think such a person can be the most happy person. Or such a person can be shoveling its own emotional demise. It depends on the person and its surroundings, but I think the tendency strongly points towards demise. Because of its inflexibility, of its innate inability to adept and develop.

In terms of communal welfare empathy is IMO often one of the first victims. Though if a given ideology is sufficiently beneficial to others and if the person believing in it also sufficiently acts on it - it can be a net gain for society. Even greatly so if the stars are lucky.

In conclusion - under extraordinary circumstances it can be desirable. But usually - I don't think so. Unless - unless enough people embrace the same ideology. Then not adopting it can be the quick path to personal misery IMO. But that has not happened yet IMO. It is hard enough to have mass ideologies. Coherent mass ideologies? Tough luck.

 

[El_Machinae]

On what basis? I think we can work out a code or something which serves humanity as a whole as best as possible. But that doesn't make it objectively true but just objectively useful for the collective.

What's the difference? Morality is system in which beings interact. If it's objectively useful (though 'useful' might not be the best word), then it's objective.

You can have a subjective component in an objective system.

 

[Global Skeptic]

What's the difference? Morality is system in which beings interact. If it's objectively useful (though 'useful' might not be the best word), then it's objective.

You can have a subjective component in an objective system.

Again, what do subjective and objective mean?

In short in some cases subjective and objective are antonyms to each other and might even be a case of A AND non-A; i.e. a contradiction. So please, I want to learn and I can't known if you know something I don't know, unless you explain the meaning of subjective and objective.

With regards

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I find it safe to say that I objectively benefit from exercising.
Is it hence objectively wrong if I don't exercise? Only if I give a dame. It is objectively wrong to not give a dame? I don't think so. It just is me not giving a dame.
The sun rises weather I gave a dame or not though, that is an innate truth. Morality? It is ultimately a decision, so I am not comfortable calling any morality objectively true. Because it to me implies innate truth of right and wrong where there is none.

 

[Global Skeptic]

I find it safe to say that I objectively benefit from exercising.
Is it hence objectively wrong if I don't exercise? Only if I give a dame. It is objectively wrong to not give a dame? I don't think so. It just is me not giving a dame.
The sun rises weather I gave a dame or not though, that is an innate truth. Morality? It is ultimately a decision, so I am not comfortable calling any morality objectively true. Because it to me implies innate truth of right and wrong where there is none.

Yes, I agree - I can find objective facts, but I can't find objective right or wrong. For 2 or more humans it becomes a cluster **** of subjective, intersubjective and objective.

 

[El_Machinae]

Again, what do subjective and objective mean?

I don't see any point in chasing this rabbit. Their colloquial use is fine and commonly understood. My experience is that people who want definitions inevitably have these long, wandering paths towards incoherence. I'm not trying to be rude, but I've seen this before and have been bitten by it.

Morality? It is ultimately a decision

Is it? Or is morality an outcome? I mean, yes, there are decisions to be made, and we do our very best to project the future. But both of those are prone to errors due to human fallibility.

When people deny that morality is objective, I can then ask so what is the point of morality? I don't doubt that human morality is kind of a human creation (though we then have to decide whether we create it or discover it). Relativists think we create it. I think morality is too grounded in physical reality to be created. We both create the laws of gravity and discover them. And I think saying we 'discover' them is much more accurate, since gravity is so based in reality. And then, people will never complain that the laws of gravity are subjective and not objective - they don't fall for that trap. But, we can totally arrange/create the subjective gravitational forces you're feeling now, working within an objective framework.

 

[Global Skeptic]

"(Of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts"

"Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual"

"Intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings"

"Being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject"

"Of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality"

"Of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind"

In short - objective as not taking place in brains and subjective as taking place in brains.
So it useful objective?

 

[kochman]

Again, what do subjective and objective mean?

This is the 3rd time you've asked him the exact same question.
Take the hint.

 

[Global Skeptic]

This is the 3rd time you've asked him the exact same question.
Take the hint.

I have:

"(Of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts"

"Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual"

"Intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings"

"Being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject"

"Of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality"

"Of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind"

In short - objective as not taking place in brains and subjective as taking place in brains.
So is useful objective?

 

[Mise]

I find it safe to say that I objectively benefit from exercising.
Is it hence objectively wrong if I don't exercise? Only if I give a dame. It is objectively wrong to not give a dame? I don't think so. It just is me not giving a dame.
The sun rises weather I gave a dame or not though, that is an innate truth. Morality? It is ultimately a decision, so I am not comfortable calling any morality objectively true. Because it to me implies innate truth of right and wrong where there is none.

Right, and murder is wrong*, even if you don't give a damn. When I say "murder is wrong", I am making a statement of fact (or what I perceive to be a fact), in the same way as I would say "the sky is blue*" or "cheetahs are fast*". This is what Moral Realism is about. The opposite, Moral Anti-Realism says that moral statements are not statements about what is true or false, fact or fiction, but about something else. For example, they could be expressing an emotional state: when I say "murder is wrong", what I mean by that is that murder makes me feel uneasy and disturbed (to put it mildly). Or perhaps I mean "I want people to not commit murder". Or perhaps I really do mean to express an opinion on a factual matter, but actually I'm just wrong, in some systematic way, and actually no fact exists at all on morality.

I think the reason that so many educated and intelligent people instinctively gravitate towards moral anti-realism is because they know well enough to question what we traditionally, but erroneously, considered "moral facts", but make an erroneous conclusion of their own: just because many things we previously considered "moral facts" are, in fact, false (e.g. homosexuality is wrong, black people are inferior, etc) doesn't mean that there is no such thing as a moral fact in general. It might just mean that we are wrong about moral facts.

But what is a fact, and how do we establish them? Most people accept, for example, that the sky is blue. This is because we can see quite clearly that the sky is blue. We have overwhelming evidence that the sky is blue. And we have a rigorous, logical argument to make: if the sky was blue when I last checked, it is probably blue now, and I can legitimately claim that the sky is, in fact, blue (inductive reasoning; c.f. problem of induction). In other words, we have an intellectually rigorous method of analysis, one that is based on reason, evidence, and rational argumentation. Facts about the physical world, for example, are best established via the scientific method; the scientific method provides us with an intellectually rigorous method of analysis.

But the scientific method isn't the only intellectually rigorous method of analysis. Philosophical argumentation may similarly be based on reason, evidence, and rational argumentation. A great many facts can be established through reason, evidence, and rational argumentation, without applying the scientific method at all. The scientific method is wholly inadequate in establishing facts about things that aren't physically observable. For example, it is a fact that I love my mum. But the scientific method is simply not equipped to establish that as a fact. Instead, we establish it using reason, evidence, and rational argumentation.

Reason and rational argumentation are probably obvious to us all here. We are all aware of how logic works, for instance. All dogs have tails attached to them but not all tails have dogs attached to them, and so on. The most contentious part for educated people is this concept of "evidence". What do we mean by this? What evidence is sufficient to establish whether or not I love my mum? Well, do I call her or answer the phone? Do I look forward to seeing her when I visit or when my parents visit me? If she were to die tomorrow, how would I feel? These are all forms of evidence that we can use in our rational, reasoned argument in favour or against the hypothesis that I love my mum. We can argue it out. It's clearly much more difficult to establish whether I love my mum than whether the sky is blue, but in both cases, we are using an intellectually rigorous method of analysis, based on reason, evidence, and rational argumentation.

Note that scientific "facts" are often not really facts at all. Newton's laws of gravitation were "facts" until later reasoning, evidence, and rational argumentation proved it wrong. Similarly, moral "facts" are often not really facts at all. Victorian laws of sexual purity were "facts" until later reasoning, evidence, and rational argumentation proved it wrong. But in both cases, we are constantly refining what we believe to be facts, based on the ongoing application of our intellectually rigorous method of analysis.

Anyway, I would strongly recommend anyone interested in Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism (or objective vs subjective morality, as we've been calling it in this thread) to read the links I posted. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is an excellent and highly regarded resource on Philosophy, and many of the articles therein are better than most published books. I would suggest that anyone intelligent enough to be thinking about this stuff has enough intellectual curiosity that the investment of time will pay back tenfold.


*-properly caveated, of course. Sometimes murder is morally justified, e.g. in self defence. Sometimes the sky is red. A dead cheetah is not fast**.

**-unless it is falling from a great height.

 

[Global Skeptic]

...

Hi fellow human

Your post is so long and I am short for time. So here is the relevant differences - that the sky is blue(the physical process of sun light entering the atmoshere) will not alter no matter how much your brain/eyes changes. That is the objective fact.
That you love your mother is a subjective fact, because if you stopped loving your mother, that would take places in your brain.

Another thing - how do you combine reason, rationality and logic with feelings/emotions?

More when I have time.

 

[Mise]

The sky isn't blue to colour blind people. It's not blue to dogs. And how do you know that your conception of "blue" is the same as mine? The very concept of "blueness" depends on my brain, my eyes, my experiences, my language (in some languages the sky is green, and we often disagree on what colour the neighbours' rug is), etc etc. It is not true that "the sky is blue" will not alter no matter how much your brain/eyes change. In fact, it is demonstrably false. So the fact that "the sky is blue" is just as dependent on sensory processes that are unique to each observer -- subjective judgements -- as whether or not I love my mother.

You could rephrase, and say that "the frequency of light from the sky is X hz", though, which would solve your problem in the short term. In this case, however, such a statement is of a fundamentally different nature to saying "the sky is blue". And since we certainly have no problem saying that "the sky is blue" expresses an objective fact, and not a subjective one, I don't think this solves your problem more generally.

In any case, whether or not you wish to call it objective or subjective is irrelevant to me. When I say "murder is wrong", I mean to express a fact of the same nature as when I say "the sky is blue". Perhaps this is indeed "subjective", but I'm okay with that -- it is nonetheless a factual statement (though it may not be true). If I can make moral statements of the "the sky is blue" variety, then I'm happy. I mean, we often use the phrase "the sky is blue" to express something that is obviously true and uncontroversial, so I'm happy to call "murder is wrong" "subjective" if you'll agree to consider it "obviously true and uncontroversial"

 

[galdre]

@ Mise: that is a great post

@GS: you miss the point. We use reason, rationality and logic to look at both. We may not be able to explain emotions like we can the color of the sky, but then the color of the sky is a much simpler thing.

 

[Borachio]

I don't see any point in chasing this rabbit. Their colloquial use is fine and commonly understood. My experience is that people who want definitions inevitably have these long, wandering paths towards incoherence. I'm not trying to be rude, but I've seen this before and have been bitten by it.

Exactly! Which is why I think coherence, although a worthy goal, is ultimately elusive.

But where does that leave us? With the even more untenable position of "Well, we all know what we mean, don't we? So what's the point in talking about semantics?" Which seems to leave us with not only incoherence but incommunicability as well, since if we can't even say what we mean by a word how can we say anything meaningful about what it refers to?

Which, come to think about it, seems pretty much incoherent.

 

[Mise]

BTW here is another set of definitions:

ob·jec·tive (b-jktv)
adj.
1. Of or having to do with a material object.
2. Having actual existence or reality.
3.
a. Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: an objective critic. See Synonyms at fair1.
b. Based on observable phenomena; presented factually: an objective appraisal.
4. Medicine Indicating a symptom or condition perceived as a sign of disease by someone other than the person affected.
5. Grammar
a. Of, relating to, or being the case of a noun or pronoun that serves as the object of a verb.
b. Of or relating to a noun or pronoun used in this case.
n.
1. Something that actually exists.
2. Something worked toward or striven for; a goal. See Synonyms at intention.
3. Grammar
a. The objective case.
b. A noun or pronoun in the objective case.
4. The lens or lens system in a microscope or other optical instrument that first receives light rays from the object and forms the image. Also called object glass, objective lens, object lens.


The bolded are the meanings that I have been using. Clearly Global Skeptic is using other definitions.

 

[Borachio]

So, something which is subjective doesn't actually exist and is unreal?

 

[Camikaze]

'Murder is wrong' seems more a truism than a meaningful factual statement. 'The sky is blue' isn't a truism, though. It's telling us that we observe X to be Y, though either of those might ultimately be subjective, I suppose. When we say murder is wrong, we're not really saying we observe X to be Y. It's more a case of X being defined by Y. If the sky's colour were to change, we would stop observing it as blue. If our conception of wrongness was to change, our conception of murder would change along with it.

I think it's useful to distinguish between 'social fact' and 'brute fact', where a social fact is something intersubjectively constructed in some way (such as 'murder is wrong'), rather than necessarily being an objectively existing phenomenon.