Toad Master

The AntiChris: "So can anyone, preferably someone who subscribes to the existence of objective moral principles, explain what qualities/characteristics a moral principle would need for it to be considered objective?"

I don't think there are objective moral principles in the sense of existing independently of the mind.

In my opinion, morality (or ethics) requires that actions be judged impartially with respect to all persons effected by the action. One meaning of "objective" is "impartial." In this sense, morality is essentially objective. All moral principles are necessarily objective.

I believe the Golden Rule is an "objective" moral principle.

-Toad Master

bd-from-kg

dk:

This isn’t complicated. I distinguished between types of questions and types of theories. For each type of question (or at least for the first two) there are different types of theories.

For example, for Type 1 questions [“What does it mean to say that X should do Y”] the answers fall roughly into the categories of moral realism (e.g., Platonism, divine command theory), moral relativism, emotive and imperative theories, and moral nihilism. Of course, there’s some overlap here: most divine command theorist are also Platonists; many moral relativists often say things that suggest that they’re emotivists, etc.)

For Type 2 questions [“What is the criterion of rightness?”] the most popular answers can be classified as various types of utilitarianism, deontological theories, and virtue theories.

Type 3 questions [“Should X do (or have done) Y?”] are generally dealt with in terms of one or another of the Type 2 theories. Since they generally do not give rise to interesting theoretical questions, modern philosophers have tended to give them short shrift.

The point is that if two theories are offered as answers to different types of questions they are not really competing theories. For example, Alonzo appears to be a moral nihilist and also, in a sense, a type of utilitarian.

bd-from-kg

DRFseven:

Of course I don't deny that people have moral opinions, and all opinions are by definition subjective.

As for the rest, I have no idea what you mean by "there could theoretically be a set of objective morals..." In the first place, a "set of objective morals" isn't something (like a mountain, or a green shingled house on Elm Street) about which one can meaningfully say that it might or might not "exist". In the second, one cannot meaningfully speak of "a" set of objective morals. If there is an objective morality, there is only one; it's the true morality.

In the second place, I have no idea what you mean by "that would always work toward some particular thing". A morality doesn't "work toward" anything; it exists only as an abstraction; a concept.

At any rate, my moral theory was outlined reasonably well earlier on this thread, in my posts of June 21 and July 5. so there's no need for conjectures.

dk

dk: I will try to explain. [list][*]dk: I understand morality (subjective or objective) to conceptualize the most primitive notion of causation derived from agency.
Explanation: First a baby cries on instinct for food, warmth, etc.. and learns from crying that mom brings comfort. After a short time the baby learns to cry for more and more comfort, crying can be in and of itself a self inflicted suffering. The baby has a moral dilemma 1) to cry upsets the baby to cause suffering 2) and not to cry denies to the baby the comfort it wants. A baby needs to learn when to cry to mitigate what it suffers. Most babies learn to cry when they feel discomfort, and to trust mom to bring comfort in good time. This is the most primitive notion of causal agency. A good baby isn’t happy because they receive comfort from mom, but because they trust mom will give comfort in good time. Good time generally means regularly and reliably. The baby and mom suffer less, share comfort and are safer, because mom trusts the baby will only cry when something’s wrong, and the baby mitigates the upset caused by excessive crying. The baby has become its own agent empowered with rational choice, to cry or not to cry, henceforth a domain of liberty and a new found sense of agency manifest with love, trust, intimacy and comfort. An astounding accomplishment for an infant that appears completely helpless.
An upgrade to Skinner’s aircrib might one day find infants hooked up to a cradle equipped with a brain scanner and biometric sensors to respond to every discomfort the infant suffers i.e. automated waste disposal, food dispensers, and burping mechanisms being standard and toys and coo-coos optional. Would the innate intelligence of the baby play the machine like an instrument, but deprive the infant of human intimacy to retard or warp emotional and behavior development with operant efficiency? Would the artificial environment hatch a superior baby unfettered by the suffering most babies are forced to endure? I suspect infants that suffer colic or chronic ailments would benefit, and healthy babies marginally. Technology can supplement parental shortcomings, but will never replace the intimacy and love shared by the intimacy of family life. Everybody suffers morality because it is objective. People are emotive rational and social creatures that require intimacy to share the burdens they suffer, or can shirk intimacy to formally blame their parents, community,,, etc. for what must be suffered in the course of life governed objectively by morality. [*]dk: When a person manifests agency through concrete actions to become ‘an ends unto themselves’ governed by NOM.
Explanation: I use causal agency to ascribe the discretionary exercise of causal power to a person. It is undeniable that bodily actions have a 1st person aspect, and therefore a efficient cause to bring about something else external to the body. Morality governs the exercise of causal power to alleviate illegitimate suffering and assess blame rightly; or morality is the science that governs the exercise of liberty to mitigate what people must suffer wrongly and rightly to establish, sustain and restore dignity, intimacy and social intercourse.
. . People as moral agents can choose to suffer alone, or intimately share life’s trials. Intimacy is undermined by dishonesty. disloyalty, infidelity, incursions of privacy, envy, corruption and promise breaking. Life bares down on a person whether they act moral or immoral. People that conceptualize other people as objects to satiate, adorn and gratify themselves suffer alone and tend to either

• blame others the life they suffer; or
• run from one neurotic compulsion to the next to escape the life they suffer.

. . In Matthew 11:28-30 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The anthropological roots of moral agency evokes “acts of sacrifice” in exchange for{g,G}od{[s,ess,es} favor (the ultimate good), whereas modern philosophy constructs morality to abate all sacrifice and suffering through better technology, pragmatism, materialism and utilitarianism under the empirical criterion of logical positivism and social science. Modern philosophy runs into problems because people under their influence increasingly suffer disenfranchisement, detachment, mania and depression. Across socioeconomic lines children and the elderly are increasingly at risk of suicide, drug addiction, domestic violence, random violence and mental illness. The rub on moral relativism through better social engineering is false promises, duplicitous doctrine, semantic gymnastics, abdication of duty, exploitation of the vulnerable and intolerable suffering.[*]dk: We need to contrast ‘event causality’ verses “agent causality’.
Explanation: An event is something that happens or occurs in time. Event causality pertains to accidental or non-intentional occurrences both general and particular. Casual agency implies human intentionality, blame, credit and responsibility. A particular event occurs once, like the Chicago fire of 1871 and a typological event happens again and again, like a high school Prom. A lightening strike or Nero’s fiddle may cause a particular fire. The latter asserts Nero caused the fire with intention or by accident, negligence or malfeasance, but clearly ‘event causality’ is inadequate to describe human agency. Therefore agent causality is governed by an addendum to the laws that govern event causality i.e. moral law.[*]dk: What a person ‘should do’ ordered to K&U (event causality) is often an obstacle to the personal potential (intimacy) of human agency.
Explanation: When people intentionally withhold or misrepresent causal events, causal agency or facts to someone with a right to know they become an obstacle to human potential. A person irrationally orders their actions by unfathomable consequences, while a rational person orders concrete actions to reliably suit and convey their intent.[*]dk: The point was that people participate their own destiny as intimate individuals governed by NOM irrespective of K&U, society, government and culture.
Explanation: As causal agents people participate in their own destiny. People harmed by unbridled liberty of immoral people are road kill where the rubber meets the road. The suffering that follows from immoral acts plague the entire community. On the bright side, good often follows from immorality, but what is good takes root and endures.
dk: - Yes, more formally I'd say that consequences are a consideration, but of tertiary importance. Morality is primary concerned with suffering, sacrifice and intimacy. In the course of any life a person suffers, scientific morality’s primary concern distinguishes illegitimate from legitimate suffering.
For example…
* all babies suffer many falls when learning to walk and run, and even thought the baby suffers the concrete activity is right.
* Conversely, it is a grave wrong to punish a baby because they fall learning to walk.
The former is an example of legitimate suffering, and the latter an example of illegitimate suffering.
dk: - People aren’t omnipotent, so to base right and wrong on consequences is fallacious. Promise breaking and lies are destructive to the fabric of society because they undermine trust and liberty necessary sustain social intercourse and progress. Absent trust and liberty people are incapable of solving problems. This is the fundamental criticism of radical realism, conceptualism and nominalism and subsequent ethical systems derived thereof. A society, nation or civilization absent trust and liberty suffers sophism, skepticism and cynicism then degenerates to play the blame game.
dk: The question of “?good?” is opened ended under any philosophical or moral system. WW II was good because it ended the great Depression. The Cold War was good because detente avoided WW III. The holocaust was good because it lead to the Jewish nation of Israel. Clearly WW II, Jewish Holocaust, etc… were great wrongs that perpetrated horrible and tragic suffering upon people around the world. The only reasonable answer to the open ended question of “good” requires the acknowledgement that the wrongs people commit and suffer often lead to good. The question then turns to wrongs, “Can wrong follow from the good people commit?” The answer is no, what people sacrifice or commit for good endures, long after a person dies. Whether constructing a house, building, institution or government what people do right becomes known because it endures over time, and what people do wrong wastes away. So to me moral science (NOM) tends to be narrow as opposed to expansive hence moral science governs narrowly from what people universally suffer as opposed to the open ended beauty and truth that goodness entails.
dk: - I don’t care in what sense people speculate about good or should, the question always remains open. Our habits (good or bad) precede us, and morality follows. In the first sense morality is in and of itself indifferent to the ‘rights and shoulds’ people commit or neglect, because morality rains on everybody’s parade. In the second sense moral science is good because it tutors people in the formation of good habits. I’ll add a third sense, morality is bad because it lights a narrow path that make darkness all the more novel and alluring.
dk: - As I have said again and again, what a person ‘should or ought’ to do in retrospect is always an open question. For precisely this reason moral science must understand that consequences are of tertiary importance. Therefore moral science must restrict its jurisdiction to what a person knows to acts upon. A rush to judgment is an emotional impulse to blame somebody for what we suffer, to get closure for the offense we suffer. I’m disgusted with our courts because they routinely admit evidence into fact, that is mere speculation. Courts allow and promote snitches, crime labs, expert witnesses and police to interpret or makeup facts, on the grounds that a jury can distinguish fact from fiction. For example was Andrea Yates (drowned her 5 kids in a bath tub) insane and innocent, guilty of murder, or both. A person acquitted on an insanity plea is sent to a state penal psychiatric facility to be confined until proven sane. How can a person prove they are sane or insane when experts disagree? How can the courts order justices when the facts of law and evidence are in dispute? The answer is they can’t, but in high profile cases they are compelled by opinion makers to put on a drama in lieu of justice. In fact about 90% of felony convictions are negotiated plea bargains bypassing the courts entirely. (added) Justice in a rational sense is an authoritative expression of love (causal agent) that orders a remedy for illegitimate suffering. When the facts of law and evidence become in and of themselves the cause of illegitimate suffering justice fails.
dk: If false promises are right in a sense, then to promise in that sense is meaningless. If lying were right in a sense, then truth in that sense is meaningless. If cheating in a sense is right, then in that sense K&U is impossible to demonstrate (test), therefore K&U is meaningless. This has nothing directly to do with consequences but the rightness of logic to arrive at a verifiable, coherent and consistent conclusion. If this is what logic is good for, then logic is meaningless. The conclusion is absurd, so lying, promise breaking and cheating are inately wrong, not becuase of logic but for logics sake.

[ August 01, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

DRFseven

OK, good, at least I got that right. You don't deny that people hold subjective moral opinions.

Oh, come, now; I don't think YOU think I refer to some silver-plated set of morals boxed like a tea service and housed in a vault somewhere. Surely, you must know I refer to concepts of right and wrong. And since you admit that people DO hold subjective moral opinions, based, one would presume, on principles, you must think there are more than ONE set of morals, even if there is only one "true" set.

Well, since I am under the impression that you have previously told me that you reject the idea that a value could be good in itself (I think we were commenting on the biblical idea that wearing purple could be objectively wrong), then I have no idea what you mean by such a response.

It was more an attempt to simplify in order to be able to think about it "all at once".

emphryio

What a load of ..... The equivalent of Ptolemy astronomy with all the planets constantly making tiny circles to stay where eyesight/telescopes show they actually are.

Actually it IS as simple as I described. (Of course you need perfect knowledge to always do the most moral action.) But beyond what I have described all other moral systems are meaningless artificial constructions invented by imperfect men.

Its usually a bad sign when a thread reaches this length. Usually means someone's going around in circles, purposefully misunderstanding and coming to incorrect assumptions. (Trying to "win" a debate as opposed to cooperative learning.)

bd-from-kg

emphryio:

Part 1:

Oh, that’s helpful.

Let’s try again.

You say:

Presumably, then, you would say that “X should do Y” means “It is in X’s self-interest to do Y”. But what do you mean by that?

For example, when someone says “Chicago is north of El Paso” or “Today is Friday” I have a pretty good idea what he means, because I have observed how people use the words “north”, “Chicago”, “today” and “Friday”. But I also have a pretty good idea of how people use the word “should” in a moral sense, and they do not say “X should do Y” when, and only when, they think that it would be in X’s self-interest to do Y. In fact, I suspect that if somone were to say “It would be in X’s self-interest to do Y, but he shouldn’t do it; it would be morally wrong,” the vast majority of people would find this sentence perfectly coherent, and certainly not self-contradictory, as it would be if they understood “It would be morally wrong” to mean “It would not be in X’s self-interest”. So evidently you are not asserting that what most people mean by “X should do Y” is “It would be in X’s self-interest to do Y”.

But words do not have “objectively correct” meanings independently of how they are actually used, so you cannot mean that this is what this statement “really” means regardless of how most people actually use it.

Thus, in trying to construe your meaning, we are left with very few logically coherent alternatives. One is that you think that there is some hitherto unknown intrinsic property possessed by acts that bring happiness to the agent (or equivalently, that possession of this property causes acts that have it to bring happiness to anyone who does them); another is that you are suggesting that everyone change the way he uses moral terms to correspond to your new proposed meaning; another is that you are just informing us that this is what you personally mean when you use such terms, although you can give no reason why anyone else should adopt this usage. But it seems clear that you don’t mean any of these things either.

Perhaps I’ve overlooked some other alternative, in which case I’m sure you’ll be happy to point out my error.

Good. If it’s simple, you should have no trouble explaining what you mean.

Part 2:

After looking at your <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000243" target="_blank">Pseudonym's morality</a> thread, I’m even more puzzled about your position. You say that you agree with Pseudonym that:

You then comment:

Now the combination of these statements is logically incoherent. If one must necessarily always act in his own self-interest, it makes no sense to say that one should always act in his self-interest. It’s like saying that one should always obey the law of gravity, or that whenever one draws a triangle one should draw it with three sides.

Take a simple example. Suppose that Smith is trying to decide what to do with $10. He’s considering the following choices

1. Buy a bit of crack cocaine for himself.
2. Save it for a rainy day, or for his retirement.
3. Buy a present for his wife.
4. Buy some food for his family.
5. Feed some starving orphans in Africa.

We can now imagine the following exchange:

Smith: Which of these should I do?
emphryio: You should do what’s in your self-interest.
Smith: But which choice is in my self-interest?
emphryio: Why, all of them, of course! Or at, least, whichever one you choose will certainly be in your self-interest.
Smith: So which should I do?
emphryio: Morally, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. All that matters, morally speaking, is that you do what’s in your self-interest, and whichever one of them you choose will be in your self-interest.

This is, shall we say, not terribly helpful.

Finally, the statement “Every thing a human will ever do is the result of his own self-interest” is suspicious. Given the wide variety among human beings, it is hard to see how this could be true unless it is a logical necessity. That is, if it were logically possible to act in a way that is not a “result of one’s self-interest”, surely someone, somewhere, would occasionally do so. Thus if this statement is true at all, it must be a tautology. But tautologies tell us nothing about the real world; they are true by virtue of the meanings of the words involved. Thus it is true that “If Richard is David’s grandfather, then David is Richard’s grandchild,” but this tells us nothing whatever about David or Richard; it is true purely by virtue of the meaning of “grandfather” and “grandchild”. In the same way, if “Every thing a human will ever do is the result of his own self-interest” is a tautology, it tells us nothing about how humans behave, or about their motives; it only tells us something about what you mean by acting in one’s self-interest. It seems bizarre to construct a moral system from a tautology based on one of the many possible meanings of “self-interest”.

Now if you want to show that “Every thing a human will ever do is the result of his own self-interest” is not a tautology, all that you need to do is to describe an intentional action in some possible world that would not be in the agent’s self-interest (in your sense), and explain what it is about this world that makes such an action impossible in it.

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

dk

dk: - I appreciate your insightful response.
dk: - To propose that all questions of “Type I” follow roughly from moral realism is untenable. Moral realism asserts a passive mentality of discovery. Moral relativism asserts an active mentality of creativity. It’s incoherent to assert that morality at the same time and in the same sense is discovered and created. The concepts are mutually exclusive, or the union of {discover and create} is nil. I don’t follow you at all here, seems like you’re imposing moral realism upon currents of thought that are fundamentally alien.
------ DEFINITION
moral realism The view that moral beliefs and judgements can be true or false, that there exist moral properties to which moral agents are attentive or inattentive, sensitive or insensitive, that moral values are discovered, not willed into existence nor constituted by emotional reactions. Far from being a function of wishes, wants, and desires, moral demands furnish reasons for acting, reasons that take precedence over any other reasons. Debate centres on the nature and credentials of moral properties as the moral realist understands them. In what sense are they 'real'? Real, as irreducible to discrete affective experiences of individuals. In this and other respects they share characteristics of the 'secondary qualities' of our life-world: filtered by our mentality, but not on that account illusory. They can be well-founded, making a real difference to situations and individuals that possess (or lack) them.
Moral realists are arguably justified in displaying the inadequacies of subjectivist moral theories; but less successful so far in developing a convincing positive account of the 'reality' of values.
------ <a href="http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=552863&secid=.-" target="_blank"> The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, © Oxford University Press 1995 </a>
Plato being an idealist defined philosophy as the “Science of Ideas”, therefore an Idealist asks…
“In an ideal world what does it mean to say X should do Y”
Aristotle defined philosophy as the “Science of reality”, therefore a realist asks…
“In the real world what does it mean to say X should do Y”
Materialists defined philosophy as the “Science of the empirical”, therefore a materialist asks…
“In an empirical world what does it mean to say X should do Y”
dk: I understand the criterion to depend upon metaphysics, because metaphysics is the science of universal concepts, being as being, immaterial being, abstract concepts, and first principles. Ironically, the fact that most modern philosophers reject metaphysics as transcendental moonshine merely establishes materialism as the metaphysical criterion of reality.
dk: Both nihilism and utilitarianism are branches of metaphysical materialism, so don’t necessarily contradict one another. .

bd-from-kg

DRFseven:

Of course not. People have subjective opinions about whether the earth is round, whether democracy is the best form of government, whether Mozart’s 40th is more beautiful than Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, whether chocolate malts are tastier than strawberry milkshakes, whether to root for the Lions or the Bears, and lots of other things. This tells us nothing about the nature of the questions that they have opinions about.

This is still unclear. When you refer to "a set of objective morals" you could mean:

(1) The set of moral statements that some one person regards as “true” (or as I would prefer to say, valid).
(2) A set of logically consistent moral statements.
(3) The set of true (or valid) moral statements.

If you mean the first, then of course there is a set of objective morals; indeed, there are many such sets. If you mean the second, strictly speaking it depends on whether you are willing to speak of abstractions like sets as “existing”. But most people speak as though such things exist even if they hold that in a strict metaphysical sense they don’t. With this caveat, there are obviously lots of “sets of objective morals” in the second sense as well.

So the question of whether I hold that “there could theoretically be a set of objective morals ...” is only interesting – i.e., nontrivial - if you have the third sense in mind. But in that case your wording is peculiar. If moral statements are the sort of thing that could theoretically be true (or valid), then surely some of them are true (or valid). And obviously there cannot be more than one “set of objective morals” in this sense.

This is still very unclear, but I think that what you may be getting at is that it is meaningless to say simply that “X should do Y”; there is always an implied goal or purpose – e.g., “Smith should honor his mother and father in order to get an inheritance”, or “Jones should refrain from murdering Smith in order to avoid going to jail”. Now in the case of any specific statement of the form “X should do Y,” I agree that there must be some intelligible point to doing Y in order for it to be true (though it needn't be self-interested as in the examples I gave). But I would certainly deny that there must be some single goal or purpose common to all true statements of this kind. It may be that X1 should do Y1 and that X2 should do Y2, but the point (the goal or purpose) of the two acts may be entirely different. Thus I deny that morality as a whole must “work toward” anything in particular.

[ August 02, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

bd-from-kg

dk:

I did not suggest that all answers to Type 1 questions “follow roughly from moral realism”. Obviously moral relativism, emotivism, etc. are incompatible with moral realism.

No doubt one will answer Type 2 questions on the basis of one’s metaphysics. But people with different metaphysical theories can and do arrive at roughly the same answers (i.e., the same criteria of “rightness” or “goodness”); in that sense the answer does not depend on metaphysics.

An idealist does not ask… “In an ideal world what does it mean to say X should do Y”. The sense of the word “ideal” in philosophical idealism has little to do with the sense of “ideal” in the phrase “ideal world”.

As for the rest of your last post, and the previous one for that matter, there is little that I can understand, and I don’t see the relevance even of that.