Do you like Sam Harris?

[Berzerker]

"Moral universalism holds that moral values apply to individuals regardless of their personal opinion

Universal truths about human nature and/or reason may come into play as reasons for the universality and objectivism of morality"

Personal opinion /= universality of opinion

 

[El_Machinae]

I treat morality as objective, but often just in a passing way. In all the ways I care about, 'objective' is a reasonable standin.

There are multiple ways that 'objective' can be put forward as a standard, and various things will flit.

For example, the definition of a circle. Something can be 'more circular' than something else. Objectively. But the definition of 'circular' is subjective in some ways and not in others. Who 'decided' that the definition of a circle is what it is? It's merely a consensus by a fraction of the ape family.

It's objectively true that either having a cigarette or a salad for breakfast today will be 'healthier' for me. But this objective truth is utterly dependent on my past and future behaviour, as well as the behaviour that results from this consumption. And it also really depends on what you mean by 'healthier'.

My stance for morality being objective is that there are always outcomes for a moral decision. Every moral decision causes something to happen, and reality will then run that consequence down in real terms.

Harris defines morality. And that will be subjective. Just like the definition of a circle. Or the definition of 'healthy'. What he's gunning for, too, is that there are a series of outcomes that will be increasingly universal in consensus.

You and I can look at a football from different angles and at a plate at different angles. I'll call the football 'circular', cuz it's face-on. And you'll call the plate circular cuz it's facing you. And we'll vehemently declare that the other shape is absolutely not as circular. You see a, um, football-shaped ovoid. I see a fat line.

The truth is that circles cannot objectively exist in the real universe. But with a wee bit of rotation, we'll casually see that the other person was subjectively correct ... objectively.

 

[Mouthwash]

You can link to a subtext. This is about context- yes, context, the context we all inhabit, the context of your country being built on stolen land with stolen resources- and context requires some willingness to make interpretative leaps.

There's an article at Jacobin, "New Atheism, Old Empire" that explains these criticisms. I'm not presenting it as proof, or expecting you to agree with it, but just to show that it isn't something we're making up for the sake of thread-drama.

It's preaching to the choir. There isn't a single argument in there refuting what Hitchens and Harris have said, just a bunch of contrary assertions.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't take it that the author felt the need to refute their arguments explicitly. The intention was to locate them with a tradition of liberal imperialism that is widely discredited, and thus encourage the reader to look sceptically on their supposedly progressive politics.

Naturally, this will not impress liberal imperialists, but if it was meant to, it probably wouldn't have been published in Jacobin.