The wellbeing of society and the wellbeing of an individual are both subjective determinations.
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Perhaps not like physics, but like the bit softer sciences of psychology and sociology â I know so. I did this when I was 13 years old.
To be sure it is not without some basic assumptions such as the desirability of social stability and psychological (and physiological) health. But as I explained above, no science exists without assumptions and these are completely reasonable assumptions. Then these are subject to measurable experimentation. To be sure this hasnât been done in a controlled manner but various form have been experimented with in human history.
So with these caveats I claim we can derive a great deal of morality from objective facts.
Furthermore the claim that we cannot derive morality from objective facts is actually harmful, for it justifies an authoritarian basis for morality as is often claimed by theists. And this is simply not suitable for mature rational human beings in a changing world.
The softer sciences do try to convert subjective opinions into semi-quantifiable data. However, they are still starting with subjective opinions.
Thatâs not a matter of assumptions. Itâs a matter of data type. âDesirability of social stability and psychological (and physiological) healthâ are entirely subjective. The best you can do is bin responses or assign a number to them so you can apply statistics.
Respectfully, I am going to have to disagree with you on this one.
Strangely, I have the exact opposite view. It is claims of objective morality that lead to the worse authoritarian abuses, in my opinion. It reminds me of Social Darwinism which were subjective biases that people attempted to disguise with objective science. Objective morality lends itself to obedience over empathy, the exact opposite of how I think morality should work.
Yes the softer sciences do depend heavily on statistical studies. But this is a science with error estimates and probabilities which can calculated.
Well, theists have often claimed that their authoritarian morality constitutes objective morality. But this is simply wrong. That is just relative to the supposed authority â nothing objective about it.
Yes people of all sorts love to plaster the label of science on all sorts of things which amount to no more than rhetoric. But that is pseudo-science and to be sure there is nothing objective about any of that.
I see 2 fundamental confusions here
- confusing the determination of what is moral with why people follow its dictates. The latter has always been a combination of both reason and empathy. Subtracting either of these would be harmful.
- I never made any claim that morality could be exclusively objective â quite the contrary. My claim was always simply there could be objective components of morality derivable from measurable scientific methods.
But to bring this down from the abstract clouds to concrete reality letâs look at a simple example. And this is one I refer to quite regularly. The morality of smoking in enclosed public spaces. The scientific part of this is the measurable harm done to people including children by second hand smoke. This is an element of modern morality and law very much derived from objective measurement. And there are many many other examples which can be added to this. You simply have look as the change in laws in modern times as the harm of certain behaviors has been objectively established.
Am I basically reducing morality to what is harmful? Yep. Always have and always will. If no harm can be proven then I see no reason why any associated claim of morality should be accepted.
How do you define error estimates and probabilities for subjective opinions?
We can measure health outcomes, but which outcomes are preferred is a subjective opinion.
âMany attempts at establishing an objective morality try to argue from considerations of human well-being. OK, but who decided that human well-being is what is important? We did! This whole enterprise starts with a subjective leap. Yes, human well-being is what morality is all about but human well-being is all about human feelings and preferences, and is thus subjective.â
Yes and so are the answers following questionsâŚ
- Did the universe begin this morning with all our memories as they are?
- Are there demons out there arranging all the scientific evidence to deceive us?
It is no more reasonable to assume the answers to these questions are no than to assume the answer that health and social stability are preferred.
Six reasons why objective morality is nonsense
- Our morality is evolved - correction: the existence of morality (and some of its content) is evolved, necessary for communal organisms. But the morality accepted and followed by particular groups is not always evolved.
- Humans are only one species - LOL human morality is for humans. This would only establish that morality is not universal â different thing entirely.
- Starting from well being is subjective - sure⌠but see above⌠reasonable assumption.
- Aggregation schemes are subjective. None required if you acknowledge that morality is not completely objective. The problem with denying the objective aspect of morality is to dismiss those very important aspects of morality which very much are a matter of objective evidence for the harm done.
- Rooting morality in God is still arbitrary. Yes. Same for any other âauthority.â The only thing which gives objectivity to any portion of morality is measurable evidence.
- No-one has any idea what objective morality means. Incorrect. I know exactly what objective aspects to morality means. It means that some things are measurable, and if there is no measurable harm then maybe this âmoralityâ should not imposed on people. It helps to distinguish this from âabsoluteâ versus relative morality which is something quite different. Morality is only absolute when there are actual reasons why. Some morality is necessarily relative such as when it is more important to have a rule than what the rule actually is.
Furthermore none of these establish what is claimed, that objective morality is nonsense. At most I will grant that what many push as objective morality is nonsense.
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Some might ask if morality is just measurable harm, then what can religion possibly contribute?
I think it refocuses the question of morality in an unexpected direction, to say morality is not just about harm to the victims but also harm to the victimizers⌠and that this is even the greater harm. To be sure this supposed harm is difficult if not impossible to measure⌠so yes⌠a lot more subjective in nature.
I could take or leave this one. It doesnât matter to me if morality evolved or not. What matters is that it exists, so it behooves us to understand morality.
If morality differs because of the subjective needs of the species then that would make morality subjective.
Not sure what you are trying to say here.
Objectively, we can only determine what the outcome of our actions will be. That doesnât tell us which outcomes we should aim for. Thatâs what morality/ethics is for. It is the infamous Is/Ought problem.
Subjective morality will have objective aspects. That doesnât make it an objective morality.
Nobody said anything about âsubjective needs.â That is just your own employment of circularity to prop up a failing argument. And your argument is like saying physics is subjective because it is not the same for electrons and neutrons. WRONG. The principles are the same and the objective portions are still measurable regardless of the change of nature and conditions for a different species.
Subjectivity and objectivity are both a part of all aspects of life. Morality is neither completely subjective nor completely objective. It is both. Thus âobjective moralityâ isnât nonsense any more than âsubjective morality.â And the simple fact is that good morality must consider both the things which are measurable and the things which are not.
I did.
It is my contention that morality would differ between species based on the subjective needs and wants of those species.
Perhaps you could outline the aspects of morality you think are objective.
You mentioned smoking in public spaces before. We could objectively determine the health impacts of smoking and no smoking in public spaces. However, how do we determine which of those outcomes are preferred? The facts canât tell us what we should do, it can only tell us what is.
DEFINITELY!
And the morality would also differ based on measurable differences also. For example, for a different species the whole smoking in public enclosed space could be entirely different.
Sure. There are the impacts on social functionality and stability of things like theft and murder. These prohibitions are the same everywhere because âsubjective needsâ has very little to do with it. And BTW the idea that native Americans had no concept of personal property is a myth. As long as people work to create things then there will be the concept of property and theft will not be accepted as moral. âSubjective needsâ has nothing to do with it. As for murder there some flexible lines drawn between murder and killing which is not murder. And these lines are socially relative and involving the subjective needs of the group. But those lines must be drawn because otherwise the trust needed for social cohesion would dissolve.
But these are just the old core elements of morality. Like I said above, you can get many examples from changing laws as we get measurable evidence of things which are harmful.
How do you determine which impacts are good or bad?
I would also argue that the existence of the same prohibitions across human culture is due to shared subjective needs and wants.
âSubjective does not mean arbitrary. Human feelings are not arbitrary. It is not arbitrary that we love our children while most of us dislike and fear spiders and snakes, nor that most of us like the taste of chocolate while shunning excrement. Our feelings and attitudes are rooted in human nature, being a product of our evolutionary heritage, programmed by genes. None of that is arbitrary.â
Six Reasons Why Objective Morality is Nonsense
You can take or leave the evolutionary heritage, but I think it is obvious that a large proportion of humanity shares a lot of subjective preferences.
We have been over this already.
The point is I donât believe in any magical supernatural notion of good or bad. What is good or bad is simply measurable or it is nothing at all.
Does it depend on the âsubjectiveâ decision that social stability and psychological (and physiological) health are good? To which I answer with a big exaggerated DUH!
Absolutely. Nor does it mean unimportant.
BUT the fact that there are subjective elements to perception, reality, and morality doesnât mean there is nothing objective about them as well.
The point I am making is that we canât measure good or bad. We can measure the rate at which one human kills another, but that doesnât tell us anything about good or bad. We can measure the health outcomes of people who are exposed to second hand smoke, but that doesnât tell us if those outcomes are good or bad.
The very determination of social stability and psychological health is subjective.
âThis debate seems hampered by a lack of clarity on what âobjectiveâ and âsubjectiveâ moralities are. Coyne gave a sensible definition of âobjectiveâ morality as being the stance that something can be discerned to be âmorally wrongâ through reasoning about facts about the world, rather than by reference to human opinion.â
And as I said⌠good or bad which cannot be measured simply doesnât exist.
As I said above, religion proposes the existence of harm which is difficult if not impossible to measure - harm which is done to the victimizer rather than just the victim. So I certainly believe in non-measurable aspects to morality. But this is directly tied to harm to the victim which is measurable.
And then there are types of morality which has silly made up aspects varying greatly between cultures because of the arbitrary nature of the lines drawn, like table manners. You can usually see good reasons why lines are drawn and even find some measurable good/bad involved in them as well â like sanitation and hygiene.
How so?
Like I said, we can measure the health outcomes of people exposed to second hand smoke. However, whether that counts as harm is a subjective judgment.
No it is not. NOBODY thinks like that. This so called step of subjective judgement has no part of the moral thinking of the vast majority of people. It is never a question.
It is a pervasive reasonable assumption much like the assumption of science that there are no demons fabricating evidence and results to deceive us. If this assumption doesnât make science subjective then why should the same kind of pervasive reasonable assumption make morality subjective.
Is-ought problem
Obviously I am not buying into this argument. Sure there is a distinction of meaning. I simply disagree that this is such a big gap. Ethical conclusions can be inferred from descriptive statements on the basis of a pervasive reasonable assumption in the same way scientific conclusions are inferred from measurable evidence.
Thus the is-ought problem is in the same category as another one of Humeâs contributions.
I think that.
It is being questioned.
âMany attempts at establishing an objective morality try to argue from considerations of human well-being. OK, but who decided that human well-being is what is important? We did! This whole enterprise starts with a subjective leap. Yes, human well-being is what morality is all about but human well-being is all about human feelings and preferences, and is thus subjective.â
Six Reasons Why Objective Morality is Nonsense
I think this is where our disagreement stems from. What you consider ââpervasive reasonable assumptionâ I view as subjective opinion. Perhaps there is no way for our views to meet, which is fine. If this is where are argument is that, I think it is best to leave it there.
Feel free to respond to this post with the understanding that I wonât respond to it unless you demand otherwise. I have said my peace, and Iâm good with not having the last word.
There are always two steps in the process.
The first step is observations / facts - that step is (or should be) neutral.
The second step is to make conclusions based on the observations/facts.
The second step is based on certain assumptions and in morality questions, also on more or less subjective values. You cannot reach conclusions in ethical questions without using subjective opinions about values (or some behavioural code told by an authoritative source).
An example:
humans are destroying natural environments on the globe with a rate that leads to an exceptional wave of extinctions - a mass extinction where the rate of extinctions can be compared to the worst known mass extinctions. One reason for the destructive development is that the human populations have exceeded the levels where all people can get decent living conditions if the life styles continue as before. Human population size and mass extinctions are connected through this link.
In an ideal situation, the problem could be solved through changing the life styles of all the people who consume more than what is their share of what the globe can sustain. All people would feel their responsibility and act to stop the destructive development, assuming that we think that life on this planet is worth preserving (a matter of subjective opinion).
In real life, humans are selfish and so stubborn that they are not willing to make cuts in their consumption just because it would help people on the other side of the world. What would be an ethically justified solution in this reality?
Depends on what is the relative value of the different species, systems and freedom.
A nationally known peaceful thinker (pacifist) ended up to the logical conclusion that an ethically justified solution would be to reduce the numbers of humans to save much of the life on this planet. Killing most of the humans on Earth would be a morally justified/correct action. He did not himself start to kill anyone but wrote books that got some media attention.
Which alternative is more valuable, save most of the life on the globe, or save the lives of as many humans as possible? The answer depends on how we value humans relative to the other life and ecosystems on Earth. As long as humans behave as they do, we cannot get both.
That is a difficult ethical question where the âcorrectâ answer and morality depends on subjective opinions about the relative values of humans, the other species and livable ecosystems. Facts reveal what is the situation but do not tell what is the correct ethical conclusion.
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