Perhaps the attraction/revulsion many feel toward certain acts reflects inclinations and dispositions which have been selected. So would that make morality objective to a degree?
I donât think so. We often excuse the actions of members in different species because we donât think our morality applies to them. We donât think less of a cat if it tortures a mouse before killing it, as one example. If we came across a sentient and sapient alien species we probably wouldnât (shouldnât?) expect them to conform to our moral norms. Different selective pressures may very well result in different moral codes which seems to run counter to the idea of objective morality.
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So long as you are good endorsing the idea that the emotions, needs, and wants of Nazis or White supremacists are no inherently better or worse than those of abolitionists or charity workers, then no problem at all, I suppose.
If the Nazis and White supremacists announced that God commanded them to take those actions would they suddenly become objectively moral actions? What good is an objective moral code if it goes against everything humans subjectively believe is moral?
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Taking a different approach than T_aquaticus here, since I do embrace an objective existence of morality, I still wonder about this conjecture / conviction of yours (and my own too since I have thought this way too, and perhaps still do - so I do feel I can appreciate the way you are thinking here).
So here is my question about this. Why must a physical explanation for said morality preclude its objective existence? Wouldnât this be like suggesting, âif we can explain the physical growth and development of a baby as a collection of molecules and energies, then it must follow that such a collection has no real thing called personhood.â ⌠or âif Jesus is entirely a human being, then it is impossible that Jesus is God incarnate to us.â
In other words, just because something takes on a form of matter, or has become instantiated in matter, dare I say ⌠is incarnate in matter ⌠must it follow that its (or his or her) significance is therefore limited to the material? In the same way, if morality can be understood in terms of biological or social phenomena among humans, does it follow that it loses any objective status?
Iâm not convinced [yet] that such a case has been made.
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I donât think the case has been made in terms of morality at least. I donât think human behavior will ever be considered to be on the same level as natural disasters ⌠even though our biology is entirely natural too. Nor will we ever excuse monstrously bad human behavior on the grounds of biology. If someoneâs psychopathy is shown to be a biological condition, then in a sense their person-hood is defective. There are excusing conditions which will be dealt with differently under the law. Whether or not they will be judged by a deity differently is beyond my ken.
Of course not. No more than my belief in objective mathematics requires me to endorse any and every answer given by a third grader on a math test. One can believe in objective truth about something, and thereby believe that certain beliefs or answers are thus objectively wrong.
(In other words, they would remain objectively immoral actions.)
Then that eliminates Godâs commands as an objective source of morality.
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sir, respectfully, your logic is entirely non sequitur. If someone makes a false or erroneous claim about claim about God having revealed some command, it in no way follows God could not or did not make any such similar command claim in any other time or context.
If someone falsely shows up at your door and claims the IRS sent them to collect $500 from you, this in no way magically eliminates the objective fact that the IRS really does exist and really does have legitimate authority to require taxes due from you.
Despite much of morality being both subjective and relative to culture and community there are still some objective and absolute aspects to morality as well: absolute from what is universally required for cooperation and community and objective when it can be demonstrated as a necessity for the well being of the community and its members.
Now some will respond to this by saying that this presumes the need for cooperation and the well being of the community and its members. Of course it does. NOTHING holds itself up by its own bootstraps â not science nor morality. Everything depends on at least some premises somehow. The point is that some necessities for cooperation and the well being of the community ARE universal and capable of demonstration. And that means there are absolute and objective elements to morality.
Of course, there are some people who want a morality that is not a matter of cooperation or the well being of the community and its members â or even contrary to it. There are some people who want to enslave others, perform human sacrifices, and/or abuse women and children, Naturally, they like to invent deities who demand such things and make that the standard of behavior. But, surely you donât want to take your definition of morality from people like this.
Then how can we know that any command came from God?
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There are species that do not cooperate or look out for the well being of others in their species. It is our subjective judgment that we should strive towards goals that require cooperation. What is best for human society is subjective, and that includes cooperation and well being.
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So??? That just means there are species which have no use for morality any more than they have any use for science. Why in the world would I accept a premise that all species have some kind of morality? I have never argued for any such thing â quite the contrary. I will argue that morality is not exclusive to human beings â different kettle of fish altogether.
Nor is it obvious to me that morality must be solely a matter of intra-species behavior. Cooperation and community are not exclusive to the internal workings of a species.
It means that the need for cooperation is subjective, as is our want and need to do science. Why is doing science good? Because we decided it was.
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But I never claimed that morality was exclusively objective â nor science for that matter. But are you going to argue that there is nothing objective about science? LOL
Mervin, good thinking as always⌠apologies for a long response to try to do justice⌠the core distinction i would make is - regardless of whether morality having had a physical/biological âbasisâ (with which i donât disagree)⌠the core question is whether or not morality is something that our physical processes invented, or is morality something it discovered. If morality is objective, then we can discover it, and thus judge certain things to be moral or immoral. But if it is something we invented on the other hand, like grammar or spelling conventions, then there is nothing inherently wrong or right about any particular moralityâŚ
For instance, even given my own personal skepticism about Darwinian evolution, I have no core logical difficulty with the idea that humans evolved as proposed, and after acquiring requisite intelligence, they discovered the objective truth inherent in, say, the multiplication table, heliocentrism, or the speed of light. Now, in principle, I would have no objection to that concept being applied to morality⌠humans evolved, and at some point gained the requisite capacity to discover objective morality.
In practice, however, i have trouble grasping how that could possibly work. All the other objective truths i noted earlier (mathematics, astronomy, physics, etc.) are objective truths we discover outside of us. they are external to human experience. Morality comes from within us⌠it is something at core tied to our very nature, our biology, our genes, and all the restâŚ,
Now, stretching my mind to explore any possibilities⌠if i were to, for the sake of argument, embrace something more akin to Biologos position as i understand it⌠that God really did intend, guide, and plan for us humans to come out just like we did, with the inherent morality inside us, even through the undetectable process he used under the form of human evolution⌠then even there i wouldnât have an issue logically⌠morality would still have had its origin outside of us⌠in Godâs mind and character, and that was somehow woven into our very nature⌠and looking within ourselves, we still âdiscoverâ that morality that is yet at core something outside us, something we did not invent, it yet originated before us, transcends us, etc., etc. I think I could go that far.
But insofar as someone who is not a theist believes that morality originated from a blind evolutionary process, then it is not something we âdiscoverâ in any sense, rather it is a convenient and beneficial social and instinctive convention we as a species invented⌠not unlike grammar or spelling conventions. Having common spelling or grammar is extremely useful, beneficial, and we can conceivably see why and how such conventions evolved. But it would absurd to say that spelling it âhonourâ is better or worse, more wrong or right, good vs. evil, than spelling it âhonor.â An invented convention may be more or less useful than another for particular ends, and can be argued to be more efficient at achieving certain goals⌠but one can never say that one is âgoodâ and another âevilâ if those words have any meaning. I prefer Latin spelling consistency to English haphazard spelling, but prefer english word order grammar to Latinâs endings, and prefer them both to Japanese mixture of picture words and the very long alphabet that utilizes every combination of vowel and noun⌠One could talk about which is âbetterâ for achieving certain ends, and even make scientific analysis that prove certain methods are âbetterâ given certain desired goals⌠but what we canât say is Japanese is inherently ârightâ and Italian âwrongâ or Latin âgoodâ while French âevil,â, or anything like it, if it is ultimately a convention that we humans invented⌠if it originated from within us.
If morality is at core a convention, however inherited from our evolutionary ancestry, and does not and never did exist outside of that evolutionary process, then we can never say any action or moral code is ârightâ or âwrong.â We might argue that our modern Western morality is âbetterâ at achieving certain ends⌠but (and I shudder to think), presumably the Nazis could just have well argued that their morality was âbetterâ at achieving those particular ends that they desired. Southern apologists for slavery conceivably could argue that their system was similarly âbetterâ at achieving certain end states as well. And there is nothing objective where we can say that we âoughtâ to desire certain end states if morality is simply an invented convention.
Lewis once responded to the thought of those who argue for a morality based/ derived on what will best benefit the preservation of the species:
he will endeavour to base his values on biology and tell us that we must act thus and thus for the preservation of our species. Apparently he does not anticipate the question, âWhy should the species be preserved?â
And granted, there are plenty of people who could care less about that particular endstate, and without an external objective morality, we canât tell them they âoughtâ to desire that endstate.
So, to sum up a very long train of thought⌠so long as morality ultimately originated from outside of us, and remains an objective truth we discover in some form or fashion, then i have no issue with it being derived from something physical, our biology, our genes, etc., etc. It would remain akin to us discovering the multiplication table or the speed of light. Some answers are inherently more or less right or wrong than others.
However, if our morality originated from our own evolutionary process, undirected by any moral being, and it is ultimately something our species invented, then it can in no sense be an objective reality⌠it remains a convention⌠Conventions that we might judge better or worse that others at achieving certain ends⌠but as there is no objective standard that tells us what we ought to desire as our endstate, we have no way of judging one morality inherently better or worse than another, simply some are more or less efficient at achieving certain ends. As such, it is more akin to conventions of driving, language, or dress. Some may be more efficient at achieving certain ends, but inherently, none is more âwrongâ or ârightâ than another.
Did anything i wrote there touch on your question, or did i simply muddy the waters further�
But it is clearly both. Certainly some aspects of morality are totally invented â arbitrary dictates of manners for clothing and eating. This is clearly seen in the way these vary from one culture to another. But other aspects of morality are not arbitrary dictates but necessities, and they can be discovered even by children working out their relationship with each other.
Well, now, there indeed is the real question. Iâm sure there could be various legitimate answers.
For instance, some men and women some 2,000 years ago came to believe certain commands actually came from God, since the man who issued said commands and claimed said divine status effortlessly got up out of the grave after having been executed and confirmed dead by competent Roman authorities⌠And I personally find that to be quite adequate grounds, hence why I personally embrace those same commands as being having come from God, of course.
Out of curiousity, would you mind if I asked⌠what could God do, or what would he need to do, to convince you that any particular command actually came from him?
concur and wholeheartedly agree. Good clarification/qualification.
So apart from failed analogies, what, or who demonstrates objective morality? What objective morality did God in the flesh demonstrate? Where?