Hobbs

Indeed Lewis is not known as a particularly deep thinker. When I first read him, early in college when I was a Christian, I found this book to be very deep and persuasive. After reading the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant, though I was still a Christian (for a little longer, anyway), and though I still found his philosophical works to be persuasive, they no longer looked all that deep. I recognized them to be pretty cursory and philosophically somewhat sloppy overviews. Now, I no longer find him persuasive, either.

Well over two millennia later, Plato and Aristotle are still taken seriously by philosophers. 2,000 years from now, they, along with Hume and Kant, will still be taken seriously. Lewis isn’t taken seriously by philosophers even now, nor will he be then.

But I’ve got time now, so I’ll give a brief (but long by discussion board posting standards) synopsis of what I think of it. (I had to click turtonm’s link to read it again, it’s been many years since I last read it.)

He makes some good and accurate observations in the first couple of chapters, but they are only partial observations; he leaves some important elements out. He also has some less accurate observations included, and a few non-sequiturs. In chapters 3 and 4, the non-sequiturs become numerous and quite large, in fact enormous. By chapter 5, he is so far afield, there’s no point in reading further.

He also gets into trouble by conflating ideas that are separate. For one example, he uses ‘real’, ‘objective’, and ‘absolute’ almost interchangeably. But they are quite different. Something can be real without being objective, and something can be objective without being absolute. He does a good job of showing that morality is real, but then he seems to think that he can jump from there to saying it is objective, and then to treating morality as absolute.

Yes, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are real. And yes, morality is real. And there are at least some objective elements to morality, there is an at least partially objective basis for moral decisions. What he says can demonstrate this much. But it does not take him nearly as far as he tries to go. And what he leaves out in his observations keeps him from being able to go where he wants to go.

He says there are real standards of behavior, and that there is at least some agreement to what these standards are, and that we recognize these facts, and he gives some examples to demonstrate this. So far, so good. But then he takes this to have essentially demonstrated that these standards are objective, by which he also means absolute. He draws an analogy with laws of nature, and says they differ from these “laws of human nature” in that we cannot disobey them, whereas we can disobey the laws of human nature. Laws of nature say what we have to do; laws of human nature tell us what we should, but do not have to, do. He says that this oughtness of what we should do cannot be derived from the is of nature.

There are, however, some important things he misses. I don’t think there is this essential difference between these laws of nature and laws of human nature. For one thing, we can choose at least to try to disobey laws of nature. The problem is that if, for example, I try to flap my arms and fly from the top of a 10 story building, the consequences will be rather unpleasant for me. By saying we can’t disobey the laws of nature, he is saying that we cannot avoid these consequences resulting from our actions. But if that (being unable to avoid the consequences) is the sense in which we cannot disobey the laws of nature, we cannot disobey the laws of human nature in this sense either. If I kill someone, or steal from someone, then my victim has, to a greater or lesser degree, been harmed. I may not intend the harm (that may not be my goal) any more than I intend to impale myself on a fire hydrant when I fly off the roof of a building, but the unavoidable consequence of my action is that someone has been harmed. Now, of course, there is nothing here about the oughtness of these actions, which is an important point for his distinction, but at least some of his distinction isn’t really so distinct.

What he missed observing (well, he did mention it, but he missed its significance), is that disobeying these laws of human nature does have real consequences for real people and for the society on which we all depend for our well-being. Humans are a certain kind of animal. We are, objectively, one way and not another. Correspondingly, there are some things that are good for us, that benefit us and contribute to our well-being, and other things that harm us. In this, we are like trees. A certain amount of sunlight and rain benefits trees: they can thrive and grow as healthy trees. Too little water, however, or temperatures too cold or too hot, will harm and even kill them. Also like us, there is a rather wide range of amounts of sunlight, rain, and warmth in which trees can thrive, and a very wide and fuzzy border between beneficial and harmful conditions. Further, like us, that range and those borders are different for different trees and in different environments. This means that good and bad consequences are both real (the trees, and we, really are benefited by some things and harmed by others) and relative (what things cause benefit and harm depend on the individuals and the overall situation they are in).

The significant difference between trees and us is that we can think, we are consciously aware of what is going on, and we can also act, we can move around and do things. When we act, our actions have consequences. Since we can think, we are consciously aware of our responsibility for the consequences of our actions. I use ‘responsible’ here in a morally neutral sense, in the sense that a bolt of lightning can be said to be responsible, i.e. the cause of, a forest fire.

Combine thinking and acting, and we can imagine doing different acts and at least roughly approximate the probable results of those acts. This is what allows us to choose to do one thing rather than another. So, in addition to this awareness of responsibility for the consequences of our actions, we are aware of our responsibility for the consequences of how we choose to act. We’re not just aware of consequences, we can choose consequences. This is where responsibility in the moral sense comes in. We can hold ourselves and others morally responsible for our actions.

But where does the morality itself come from? Not from just what naturally is alone, I’ll grant Lewis that. But what he misses is that it comes from what could be. That is, I can imagine taking different actions in a particular situation, and I can, with a more or less reliable degree of accuracy, calculate the probable consequences of those actions. Certain actions will result in beneficial consequences for myself, other individuals, and the society on which we all depend for our well-being, i.e. certain actions will be more likely to promote human flourishing. Certain other actions will likely result in harm. But which of those results we try for, i.e. what could be, is up to us. Benefit or harm: it’s our choice. Right actions are those which result in beneficial consequences, wrong acts result in bad consequences.

Or, rather, it would be more accurate to say ‘better’ or ‘worse’ actions than ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ actions. As I pointed out, there is a wide range of consequences that can to varying degrees promote human flourishing, and that range is contingent on the individuals and situations involved. What really does benefit some people in some situations really would cause harm to others in that situation, or even to those some in a different situation. Real standards for real moral decisions, but they are relative to the situations. But that undercuts a significant pillar on which Lewis’ conclusions stand.

Further, with humans, good or bad consequences can be subjective, too. I can be emotionally harmed as well as physically harmed by another’s actions. And the harm is no less real for being subjective. In other words, from the reality of morality it does not necessarily follow that morality is objective. It can be subjective (or at least have subjective elements) and still be real. But that undercuts another significant pillar on which Lewis’ conclusions stand.

Another problem is that “good” is not fully commensurable. In other words, things that are good are not always compatible with one another. What is good for some may at the same time be harmful to others; do you sacrifice the good of some to prevent harm to others, or do you allow harm to others to achieve the good for some? It is good to uphold justice, to mete out rewards and punishments as they are deserved. But it is also good to be merciful, to grant an undeserved reprieve to someone who seems to have learned his lesson and desires to reform. It is good to tell a negative truth to someone if a lack of awareness of that truth would cause harm, but it is bad to hurt someone’s feelings (i.e. cause harm) by telling that truth. Moral dilemmas are not about good versus evil. That is not a moral dilemma, that is a dilemma of will, of choosing what you know is right. A moral dilemma is when you have to choose between two competing goods, or when you have to choose between two unavoidable evils. So, goodness is not unified, either. And this undercuts yet another significant pillar on which Lewis’ conclusions stand.

But what of the ‘oughtness’ of which Lewis makes so much? Lewis says of this ‘oughtness’ that it is something “urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know … “ All right, so it comes, as he admits, from mind. In other words, it is subjective. Even if, as he claims, that mind is the mind of God. By definition, mind is subjectivity. But does it need to come from the mind of God? Why couldn’t it come from our own minds? After all, if what is “moral” is what promotes human flourishing, then being moral is to function well as a human. It is just a description of how humans are. Given our evolved abilities to act and to think and to think about acting, it would make perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint for us to have also evolved a strong subjective sense of oughtness to do the sorts of things that would likely tend to promote our well-being, and the well-being of the other individuals and the society we depend on for our own well-being.

And this scenario would do a much better job of explaining and accounting for the differences people feel in how this oughtness is compelling us to act. It also does a much better job of explaining the incommensurability of ‘good’, and the difficulty and disagreements we often have of determining what really would be good in a certain situation. In addition, it can account for being able to say that some moral choices and standards really are better than others: some really do tend to result in more real benefit and less real harm than others. We really can be mistaken in our calculations of what actions will lead to benefit or harm, and in what consequences would actually be beneficial or harmful in the first place. I do have real grounds, objective and subjective, for saying that the Nazis got a few things wrong in their moral calculations. And all this without appealing to any gods.

As for the necessity, or even likelihood, of there needing to be a Mind of God behind it all, I and others partially addressed this recently in the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=000162" target="_blank">matter over mind</a> thread.

So, to conclude (finally), I’m just not very impressed by the first few chapters of Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

Vorkosigan

Great post. Well worth the effort you put into it.

Well Luv, ball's in your court now. How do we solve the problem of the Nazis, from your perspective?

Michael

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

luvluv

Hobbs, I'm a little slow, so I really didn't get how any of your arguments work against specifically Lewis's first point. That being that there is a universal morality that almost all men can agree on and almost all men everywhere have agreed on.

I think this actually comes from a misunderstanding on what objective morality is. Objective morality does not mean that you apply the same consequence to the same action no matter what the mediating circumstances of that action were. Objective morality does allow for some use of our own judgment from the given situation. An objective moralist can distinguish from a person who kills on purpose for gain and a person who kills in self defense. But an objective moralist would argue that EVERYONE sees and makes these exceptions on the same grounds. Even an objective moralist like myself would object to the immediate execution of everyone who has committed murder without hearing the extenuating circumstances of the crime. That is not what it means to be an objective moralist. To be an objective moralist means that we believe that everyone can and does analyze extenuating circumstances from about the same moral framework. To wit, we all know that it is good to be merciful to someone who has killed to defend their children, and we all know it is dangerous to show mercy to someone who is unrepetant. Yes making moral decisions does require using your intellect and analyzing the results of certain situations, but everyone who uses their intellect in anaylyzing these situations comes to nearly the same conclusions. Thus, I agree with you, that it morality is subjective in the sense that everyone, as an individual, calculates the merits of his particular action, but I feel it is also objective, in that in nearly all cases most of humanity comes to a similar conclusion.

I think that, at base, is what C.S. Lewis is saying. Not that we have to mete out one standard of justice for every situation. We can and indeed ought to analyze every moral situation for it's consequences on ourself and on others (God, or Nature, did not give us heads simply to be used for hat racks), but Lewis is arguing that when we do analyze these situations, most of us, in the end, agree.

Indeed, that is where the subjective morality argument falls apart. As Lewis explained in the Abolition of Man, (particularly in his appendix) most men at most times have totally agreed on morality. The law codes of all the ancient tradtions of faith agree far more than they disagree. Even if you were to say that this is simply the result of evolution, that would not change the fact that there is a consensus in the human race of a real right and a real wrong. C.S. goes on to explain, (in Abolition or M.C I can't remember which) that where humans disagree it is usually on matters of custom or religion (i.e. whether or not to eat pork or cattle, circumcission, etc).

To clarify, I am not here trying to argue for C.S. full point, though I agree with it, that the moral sense indicates something outside the instincts. I am here simply to try to refute the notion that there is no such thing as an objective right and wrong. There certainly is. And just because we can use cost-benefit analysis to judge each moral act in it's context does not subtract from the fact that morality is not simply a matter of taste.

As for the Nazi's, I know that they know right and wrong as well as I do, and there is no use in pretending that they don't. I am against the death penalty and I am generally against war, but I don't see how it would have been avoided in that case. But again, here is where I feel the position of absolute morality is morally superior to the doctrine of morality as being purely subjective. If morality is purely subjective, and men really do not share some basic values, then all negotion and peace efforts would be as fruitful as going outside and talking to a tree. We might as well try to talk dogs out of chasing cats, or encourage gazelles and lions to negotiate. If humans did not share moral values, if what was good for them had nothing to do with what was good for us, we simply could not reason with another human being. You could not convince another human being to do right if his concept of right is totally alien to yours. Talking as a means of resolving human conflict would be totally useless.

But of course, we know this is not the case. You can try to shame a man out of his bad behavior, because he knows as well as you do that there is such a thing as bad, and that he has committed it. Otherwise, no human being could ever have a moral disagreement with another human being. They could only fight and kill, and this is rather less civilized and moral than argument. Objective morality at least holds out the prospect of peace, but a society in which there were no shared basic values, people could only fight for their own advantage.

It occurs to me that perhaps I am not understanding your argument and am not responding effectively to it. Maybe it would help me if you condensed it a little into your main points.

Pompous says:

"I am saying that it is sometimes ethical to use cooercive force, which may or may not include killing, against people whose actions are a threat to my values."

Then where do you part company with the Taliban. I am not meaning to be insulting, but it seems that this defintion would have totally excused their actions on Sept. 11. Our way of life is a SIGNIFICANT threat to their values, and if no value is any more valuable than any other value, that is to say if we cannot say that there values are wrong, then they are totally justified in trying to destroy us. Also, if it is okay to use force against those who are a threat to your values, doesn't that excuse all religious wars?

Pompous further sez:

"You're falsely equating persuasive argument with 'pushing.'"

With all due respect, that is an excercise in semantics. One thing that is totally subjective is where "persuasive argument" ends and "pushing" begins. A Christian running up to you on the street may believe he is using persuasive argument, whereas you believe he is pushing.

In the end, Pomp, it seems you believe in pushing your morality onto other people and using force on them if there morals are different from or a threat to yours. Are you sure you aren't in organized religion?

As for a working definition of what is moral, as I said I think that probably the best defintion of what is moral can be applied by the Golden Rule, though that occasionally does not go far enough. I would indeed agree that in deciding what is moral it would depend on the situation, but I think that morality is yet objective because if most people are informed as to the context of a moral decision, most of us would agree on what the most moral decision would be.

Sorry if I misunderstood anybody's argument.

By the way I wasn't suggeting that C.S. Lewis was an incredible philosopher, certainly he would not have thought this of himself. I am just saying that he is a darn good apologist, and I believe he was a great thinker, probably greater than any of us on this board. I am heavily influenced by his works, and my reading of Kant and other philosophers (what little I have read) does not greatly alter my opinion of him. I only asked about C.S. because he spoke most vociferously on the issue of objective and subjective morality.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

ohwilleke

Hobbs point would be that "real" morality, in the sense that morality exists, is true. That objective morality exists only in the sense that third parties can look at a society or situation and agree on what moral code is being applied, and that "absolute" morality in common parlance, means what you have called "objective morality."

C.S. Lewis's premise, that everyone has the same morals, is, of course, falsifiable. And, the moral relativist would argue that the excuse that most disagreements are "on matters of custom and religion" is an out that proves too much, for the moral relativists would explain, all morality is a matter of custom and religion. Indeed, custom and religion are primary sources of morality (atheists, of course, relying solely on custom and not religion).

We have a world where one society feels that the a woman who is raped should be stoned to death, another feels that the perpetrator should be compelled to marry her, and a third thinks that she should receive compensation for her harm while the perpetrator should be killed or imprisoned . . . these do not seem like immaterial differences in morality to me.

We have a world where some people feel that it is heroically honorable to blow up the World Trade Center, and others think it is a high crime . . . these do not seem like immaterial differences in morality to me.

We have a world where some societies think that it is morally virtuous to eat the body of a consequered enemy and others think it is a grave sin. This does not seem like an immaterial difference in morality.

We live in a world where some people think that an abortion conducted to permit the woman to have a more financially secure life is morally justified, and others who think this is murder. This does not seem like an immaterial difference in morality.

Some societies think that theft merits cutting the hand of the perpetrator off, others think it merits a period of probation and a couple of hours of community service. This does not seem like an immaterial difference in morality.

Some societies think that there is moral benefit form human sacrifice (one was conducted in India for moral purposes pertinent to a particular group just a couple of months ago). Others do not. Still others, like Christians, argue that it has moral benefits but don't pratice this on a day to day basis.

Some societies have thought that brother-sister marriage is acceptable. Others have permitted cousin marriage but found brother-sister marriage to be sick, and still others demand that no marriage take place between people who have the same common last name feeling deeply shamed at such a marriage. These are not trivial differences.

An evolutionary and structural-functionalist will acknowledge that common pressure for survival are going to create some similiarities between all moral systems. No group that accepts wanton killing of members of its own group for no reason will survive long. In much the same way, animals with disparate origins can end up looking similar. Dolphins are more closely related to hippos than sharks, yet the two beasts look similar. But no one would claim that they are ultimately the same kind of animal except for trival differences. While there are vague similarities between morals in different human socieites, these are nothing close to a universal or objective set of morals.

No reasoning, no matter how valid, is useful if it is based on erroneous facts. C.S. Lewis had erroneous facts about human morality. He hadn't been exposed to enough of the variability that really exists to know.

We can see you are a newcomer to this board. For whatever reason, the maschistic folks on this board spend an inordinante amount of time in arguments no more fruitful than those we would have with trees. We have have a special symbol especially devoted for conveying this experience to each other. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Often we can be confused into thinking that there is a common set of values between people, which prompts us to discuss things, only to learn, several hundred posts later that no amount of semantics and debate can paper over the ultimate divide in moral values between two people.

Humans within a single society generally do share a common set of values. But, humans in different societies often do not share a common set of values. And humanity is composed of many, many societies.

Also, simply because people don't share values, doesn't mean that they can't reason. Even within a single society, I, as a lawyer, rarely broker a deal where each side doesn't have a different meaning and moral reason for their agreement. As long as person A has one reason for an act, and person B has another reason for the same act, there can be agreement even if the reasons are totally different, and humans are intelligent enough to recognize that A and B are playing with different sets of rules which are sometimes reconcilable and sometimes not reconcilable.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

luvluv

ohwillke, you did notice that the great disparaties between cultures is over PUNISHMENTS for crimes, not as to whether or not the act itself was a crime. However they vary in terms of what the consequences of an act might be, they all agree that rape, murder, and theivery is wrong. That is Lewis's argument. Not that all moral codes are identical, but that they are more alike than they are different, suggesting that there is a universal standard of morality that we can expect that all cultures know and ought to adhere to. Cannibalism is the exception that proves the rule, in that it is extremely rare, proving that most societies agree that it is wrong. Lewis' argument was that the small differences in morality do not constitute anything like a TOTAL difference. The small differences in morality do not overcome their similarities to the point where a totally objective observer would say that morality is totally subjective. There are some things that almost everyone views as wrong, though they may disagree on how to deal with it.

A corallary to Lewis point, was that those people who had left societies with bad morals usually can be made to see that their societies had bad morals once they come to a society with better ones. They can see that the morality that is present in this new and better society is not simply different, it is superior to the society of their old country. My own country of America is one of the best examples of this phenomenon, amost all people who have entered this country from less than liberal democratic traditions have come to embrace pluralistic democracy. They can see it is not just a different, but a better way to live. If there was no such thing as a "real" right, society could not morally advance.

And perhaps most people in America did think it was wrong to crash a plane into a building, but they did not think it was wrong to drop bombs on the civillians of Afghanistan. I'm not sure there is as much difference between them as you think. Both seem pretty willing to accept mass civillian casualties for their cause.

And I'm sorry, people will have to accept at least one value in order to negotiate: the value that it is better to negotiate than to war. And what if they do not share that value? But again, all men do share this value, because it is an objective moral. If people had totally different defintions of what is right and what is wrong they simply could not negotiate. If one tribe thought that running away in battle was heroic, or that a person who betrays provides information to the enemy is to be admired, that individual could not be negotiated with. They'd be dealing from a totally different deck. But again, we have never encountered that, because at bottom all men do believe the same things to be right and wrong, despite the consequences.

I'd like you to name a society which currently exists in which it is morally acceptable to marry your brother and sister. Nearly all societies have started with this ethic, but nearly all societies have outgrown them. Some societies differ as to whether or not you can marry your cousin, but again, this trend is all moving towards strict non-relation weddings (apart from the South ) which would seem to suggest that all men are at least coming to agreement on this point.

you say:

"C.S. Lewis had erroneous facts about human morality. He hadn't been exposed to enough of the variability that really exists to know."

Actually, wrong. As I said before, Lewis concluded his Abolition of Man with a long appendix comparing the religious codes of 7 or 8 of the worlds major religious traditions and customs, including Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

you say:

"Dolphins are more closely related to hippos than sharks, yet the two beasts look similar. But no one would claim that they are ultimately the same kind of animal except for trival differences"

Yes, but a dolphin does not look at a hippo and say "You know, he's right. I really ought to look like him." Whereas humans can look at those with superiour values to their own, recognize them as superior, and adjust himself. And again, it is this standard of right and wrong which is ingrained in him which allows him to see and know that this morality is superior, and the former inferior.

All in all, I don't think that the differences you cite count as anything more or less than a difference in degree of punishment for acts that ALL men know to be wrong. The variation seems to be on how severe the respective societies feel these crimes to be, not on whether or not they are crimes. Thus, they agree more than they disagree, which is Lewis' point. And again, even in the area of human sacrifice, all men have dabbled in that, but all men can recognize that it is wrong and have moved away from it. This seems to suggest that all men everywhere have looked at human sacrifice in light of a standard and abolished it. If half the world were constantly engaged in tossing babes into the flames, you would have a formidable point. That there are a few reluctant stragglers who have yet to abandon what the entire world considers to be an immoral tradition is harldy proof that morality is totally subjective.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Pomp

luvluv,

I’m going to interject some thoughts into your discussion with Hobbs, as it’s relevant to our discussion. I don’t think that you have a firm understanding of the subjectivist position.

I really didn't get how any of your arguments work against specifically Lewis's first point. That being that there is a universal morality that almost all men can agree on and almost all men everywhere have agreed on.

First of all, as Hobbs notes, and I as I will expand on further down, there is no such agreement beyond, possibly, a few basic principles. Further, agreement on a principle, even agreement among all minds who ever lived or ever will live, does not show that principle to be objectively valid.

Objective morality does not mean that you apply the same consequence to the same action no matter what the mediating circumstances of that action were.

Obviously not. Consequences are not something that we apply. An act has whatever consequences it has as a matter of (objective) fact. It is our judgments of those consequences that are subjective.

As Lewis explained in the Abolition of Man, (particularly in his appendix) most men at most times have totally agreed on morality. The law codes of all the ancient tradtions of faith agree far more than they disagree.

To nitpick, if they “totally” agree, then how can they disagree at all?

C.S. goes on to explain, (in Abolition or M.C I can't remember which) that where humans disagree it is usually on matters of custom or religion (i.e. whether or not to eat pork or cattle, circumcission, etc).

Yes, minor matters of custom such as whether or not women ought to have the same rights as men, whether or not one ought to keep slaves, whether or not certain races or castes ought to have dominance over others, and so forth. To pretend that there are no significant moral disagreements between cultures and religions is disingenuous, and Lewis should know better.

I am here simply to try to refute the notion that there is no such thing as an objective right and wrong. There certainly is. And just because we can use cost-benefit analysis to judge each moral act in it's context does not subtract from the fact that morality is not simply a matter of taste.

To say that morality is a “matter of taste” is a gross oversimplification of the subjectivist stance. I, subjectively, hold certain values, which might be called “matters of taste,” although it seems rather trivializing to refer to my “taste” for freedom or survival and my “distaste” for torture or death. Each of my acts, objectively, has consequences that are beneficial or detrimental to the fulfillment of those values. I ought to perform those acts that will objectively lead to the fulfillment of my subjective values. Subjective morality in a nutshell. It only gets complicated when we consider that others are pursuing their own values and I have to find a way to cooperate with them. There are a number of subjectivist theories regarding how this cooperation is best accomplished.

As for the Nazi's, I know that they know right and wrong as well as I do, and there is no use in pretending that they don't.

Please explain how you know what they know. Are you omniscient?

If morality is purely subjective, and men really do not share some basic values…

Note that the notion that morality is subjective is not inconsistent with the notion that most human beings share some basic values (such as the desire to go on living, the desire to be free from oppression, etc.).

…then all negotion and peace efforts would be as fruitful as going outside and talking to a tree. We might as well try to talk dogs out of chasing cats, or encourage gazelles and lions to negotiate. If humans did not share moral values, if what was good for them had nothing to do with what was good for us, we simply could not reason with another human being.

Please note that my discussion with you so far has centered around the idea that we do, in fact, share certain values with the Nazi regime, which could serve as a reasonable starting point for negotiation with them. You have repeatedly referred to such negotiations as “pushing” our morality on the Nazis.

You could not convince another human being to do right if his concept of right is totally alien to yours. Talking as a means of resolving human conflict would be totally useless.

This is not true. To stay with the Nazi example, even though I do not share the value of “Aryan purity,” I could certainly suggest that it might be attained more efficiently by means other than those chosen by the Nazi regime. Negotiation proceeds by recognizing what each party values and working out a means to attain it, not by deciding who is “right” and who is “wrong.”

But of course, we know this is not the case. You can try to shame a man out of his bad behavior, because he knows as well as you do that there is such a thing as bad, and that he has committed it.

Ah, shame. The theist’s best friend.

Otherwise, no human being could ever have a moral disagreement with another human being.

This is not true. As subjectivist morality deals primarily with the fulfillment of values, it is certainly possible to disagree over the best way to fulfill any given value.

Objective morality at least holds out the prospect of peace, but a society in which there were no shared basic values, people could only fight for their own advantage.

This is not true. Even if we shared no values at all, we could still negotiate with each other by acknowledging each other’s values and basing negotiations on what would be mutually beneficial to the pursuit of our divergent values. Of course, the fact that we do share certain values makes such negotiation easier, but it is patently false to say that we could not possibly negotiate if we did not share values.

On to your reply to me:

Pompous: I am saying that it is sometimes ethical to use cooercive force, which may or may not include killing, against people whose actions are a threat to my values.

luvluv: Then where do you part company with the Taliban. I am not meaning to be insulting, but it seems that this defintion would have totally excused their actions on Sept. 11.

You are repeatedly showing the same misunderstanding of subjectivist morality. Let me repeat the salient point: I do not have to label their actions “morally wrong” in order to disapprove of them. I can find their actions reprehensible simply because the consequences of those actions are detrimental to things that I value. I do not need to show that their actions have negative consequences to some set of shared values.

You seem to think that admitting that their actions are based on a value set aien to yours would leave you with no means by which to disapprove of their actions.

Our way of life is a SIGNIFICANT threat to their values, and if no value is any more valuable than any other value, that is to say if we cannot say that there values are wrong, then they are totally justified in trying to destroy us.

Based on their set of values, yes they probably are justified in trying to destroy us. Based on my set of values, we are perfectly justified in fighting back.

Now, the argument could be made that their actions will, in the long term, be detrimental to their overall value set (assuming that their “West is bad” value is not strong enough to override all their other values, including “survival is good”), and thus that they ought not engage in terrorism, but that does not mean that they are not justified in holding those values. Values need no justification.

Also, if it is okay to use force against those who are a threat to your values, doesn't that excuse all religious wars?

The point is not to “excuse” anyone. I don’t care how valid your religious war is, based on your value set. If it is detrimental to my value set, I will oppose it.

Pompous: "You're falsely equating persuasive argument with 'pushing.'"

luvluv: With all due respect, that is an excercise in semantics. One thing that is totally subjective is where "persuasive argument" ends and "pushing" begins. A Christian running up to you on the street may believe he is using persuasive argument, whereas you believe he is pushing.

Note the distinction I made. I am not suggesting that we change the Nazis’ values, or “shame” them into accepting some common value set, as you are. I am suggesting that we make a reasonable argument to the Nazi regime that their existing values, including “Aryan purity,” could be better served by altering their actions. Their subjective values are their own, and not ours to dispute but their actions have objective consequences that we can rationally discuss with them.

In the end, Pomp, it seems you believe in pushing your morality onto other people and using force on them if there morals are different from or a threat to yours.

This is false, as I hope I have demonstrated.

Sorry if I misunderstood anybody's argument.

Misunderstanding are always forgivable.

ohwilleke

When one culture thinks it is a crime to be raped, and another thinks it is a crime to rape, I don't think that this is just a difference over punishments. Moreover, these differences reflect deep differences in values. Someone who thinks that Islam and Christianity are really just professing the same values, for example, is so myopic that he doesn't deserve mention. On your corollary point, maybe the people who leave a society are the ones most unhappy with the values of the country they are leaving . . . the U.S. was founded by religious dissidents.

If morality really were objective, then there wouldn't be such a divergence of opinion. There is a divergence of opinion precisely because values differ.

People do not negotiate because they value negotiation over war. They negotiate because they are worried that they, in this particular instance, will lose the war horribly. Perferring losing v. losing big time is hardly a significant value. One can value war very highly and still negotiate.


This historical example that comes to mind is certain subcultures in Ancient Egypt where this is documented. . . contemporaneous, more or less, with the culture that produced the Old Testament. If there is such a thing as objective morality, it shouldn't matter when you are looking. The Objective Morality position is that people have always had the same morals and always will, and this doesn't hold up to scruitny.

And was too ill informed to understand just how different those traditions are in their values, notwithstanding this, and just how many other cultures our world has.

No. People don't recognize that people with different values have values superior to their own. C.S. Lewis's claim that everyone will see that his morality is right in the end and bow down to it is just a bit of pompous, bull typical of the colonial power in which he lived as he wrote.

Pomp

A few hit and run points:

And I'm sorry, people will have to accept at least one value in order to negotiate: the value that it is better to negotiate than to war. And what if they do not share that value?

I don’t personally hold that value, and you and I could certainly negotiate. I don’t value negotiation more highly than war. It’s just that negotiation, in my experience, tends to be a more efficient way to get the things I do value.

But again, all men do share this value, because it is an objective moral.

What does the fact that I do not share this value do to your argument?

If one tribe thought that running away in battle was heroic,

Even though that violates the definition of “heroic.”

…or that a person who betrays provides information to the enemy is to be admired, that individual could not be negotiated with.

Why not? Presumably, this person holds other
values that might outweigh their bizarre desire to betray, and could be persuaded that those values would be better served by not betraying.
I’m not sure how valid that example is because, realistically, betrayal is a strategy, not a value. I might choose to betray someone if that betrayal helps me get something I want. It is a very odd case that someone might betray for the sheer joy of betraying. At any rate, betrayal in general is a poor strategy because others tend to distrust known betrayers, limiting their ability to negotiate successfully.

But again, we have never encountered that, because at bottom all men do believe the same things to be right and wrong, despite the consequences.

Please stop pretending to know the minds of “all men.” While we're on the topic, why say "men" instead of "humans?"

I'd like you to name a society which currently exists in which it is morally acceptable to marry your brother and sister. Nearly all societies have started with this ethic, but nearly all societies have outgrown them.

I don’t personally find anything morally wrong with marrying ones brother or sister or even with having intercourse with that person. I find reproducing with them repugnant, because of the danger to the future child.

Whereas humans can look at those with superiour values to their own, recognize them as superior, and adjust himself.

The concept of a “superior value” is a misnomer. Values are subjective by definition. They cannot be superior or inferior to one another.

Pomp

ohwillke,

The Objective Morality position is that people have always had the same morals and always will, and this doesn't hold up to scruitny.

Alterately, OM could hold that there is one valid set of morals and always will be, but that humans are imperfect in their comprehension of it. Thus, when we see a historical trend toward a particular moral rule, we could say that people were "discovering" that rule.

Vorkosigan

Luvluv,

Your discourse on morals is similar to CS Lewis', and fails for the same reasons his does. Others have addressed the problem of the objective existence of universal values so I will quickly go over that to pointing out another problem with your thesis.

You are perfectly correct in stating that certain values are universal. Some for evolutionary reasons, others for structural reasons. Yet, because some values are universal, it does not follow that they themselves are (a) objective and (b) there is a universal morality. Clearly there is not; only one example is needed to falsify your thesis. And numerous examples have been provided.

The major concern of my post is that your definition of objective is in fact relative. For some people, objective may well mean "universally known among humankind." For others, objective means "found in my Holy Book." For others, it might mean "whatever advances my interests." In other words, Luv, there is no objective definition of the very word objective. The definition itself is still a value that has to be negotiated with other humans.

Note that even a set of values that is universal across humans would still be relative to them only. I doubt our values hold for dolphins, cockroaches or wildebeest, let alone Glorphs from the Planet Znork.

You have also made the mistake Hobbs pointed out above; confusing the two senses of the word "objective." The "objective" existence of a moral behavior is not the same as saying it is an "objective morality." Most people, when they talk about "objective morality," actually hope to make that morality absolutely binding on everyone. They mean it in some absolute sense. What Lewis does is slide over the very different usages of those words, hoping his readers won't notice.

Another issue: your "objective morality" is stunningly incomplete. It has to constantly evolve to meet new social, political and technical challenges. Unfortunately New Guinea tribesmen do not have to deal with cloning, Jones Act subsidies, infant industry protection, nuclear waste disposal, flood plain management, and a hundred other urgent questions of public policy. Objectively, those values exist only in industrialized societies, and each one has its own response (China is building dams whilst the US is tearing them down). So Luv, your "objective" values are actually hugely incomplete.

Let's look at some of the comments from your posts.

To be an objective moralist means that we believe that everyone can and does analyze extenuating circumstances from about the same moral framework.

This is simply your personal definition. Most of the advocates of objective morality here have a biblically-based system. They are easier to rip to shreds, however.

...but I feel it is also objective, in that in nearly all cases most of humanity comes to a similar conclusion.

You may feel that way, but my experience of living and traveling in over 20 countries leads me to conclude that you are very wrong. As I said above, it only takes one case to refute you, and many have been provided. In the US, widows can remarry and women can own property. In traditional India, widows are burnt and women cannot own property. In Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, the husband's permission is needed to divorce, in England and France it is not. In San Francisco homosexuals are celebrated, in northern Kenya they are killed. In Thailand young men typically cross-dress, in Kenya they hold hands, in the US young men consider it immoral to do those things. How many examples do I need?

..but Lewis is arguing that when we do analyze these situations, most of us, in the end, agree.

Yes, but Lewis is wrong, for many reasons. BTW, brother-sister marriage occurs here in Taiwan. Look up shimpua marriages in the anthro databases some day.

...most men at most times have totally agreed on morality.

Luv, what you have just said actually means "At all times some men have not agreed on morality. Most does not mean all. And as I have said above, universal agreement at the cultural level (certainly not the individual level) does not necessarily constitute a basis for an objective morality. Even if we could derive such a morality, it would be incomplete.

...that where humans disagree it is usually on matters of custom or religion (i.e. whether or not to eat pork or cattle, circumcission, etc).

I'm afraid that Lewis simply has never bothered to do any fieldwork or study in this area, or he would not have written anything this uninformed. I suggest, Luv, that you reflect on the status of women in China, India, Saudi Arabia, Italy and the US. Can you say that those cultures are in broad agreement? In Taiwan in divorce, the kids go to the father, in the US, to the mother.

As for the Nazi's, I know that they know right and wrong as well as I do, and there is no use in pretending that they don't. But again, here is where I feel the position of absolute morality is morally superior to the doctrine of morality as being purely subjective. If morality is purely subjective, and men really do not share some basic values, then all negotion and peace efforts would be as fruitful as going outside and talking to a tree.

I am glad you wrote that last sentence. Luv, it is an objective fact of history that negotiating with the Nazis was as fruitful as going outside and talking to a tree. Less so, talking to trees is relaxing, you know. . It was because negotiations failed that war occurred. But that was Hitler's goal from the get-go. Hitler and the Nazis did not share our basic values, and so we had to fight them.

Objective morality at least holds out the prospect of peace, but a society in which there were no shared basic values, people could only fight for their own advantage.

Ah, Luv, this is not the case. For moral subjectivists hold that we cannot force others to accept our viewpoints, we can only seek common ground to have mutually beneficial negotiations. Subjectivists emphasize empathy and tolerance.

Moral objectivists, however, are authoritarian in nature. Look at the various systems of "objective" values, Christianity, Communism, Islam, Nationalism, Facism and so on. What do they all have in common? They are damned bloody. They are the opposite of peace. For the objectivist starts with the basis that his values really ought to be universalized, and always ends up attempting to universalize them at swordpoint. While the subjectivist starts out with the notion that there are no objective values, and so does not have a basis to enforce her moral will universally at gunpoint. The claim of "objective" values is actually a sort of rhetorical aggrandizement designed to get the listener to submit her mind and body to the authority of the claimant.

It occurs to me that perhaps I am not understanding your argument and am not responding effectively to it. Maybe it would help me if you condensed it a little into your main points.

Read the little passage above. That does it for me. Since, as a subjectivist, I cannot speak for others, you will have to roust them out on your own.

...and I believe he was a great thinker, probably greater than any of us on this board.

I do not believe he was a great thinker at all, though an effective apologist. Lewis was fond of making uniformed pronouncements, did not bother to master the philosophical basis of his arguments, did not consult major figures/texts in the fields he was writing on.....the list is endless. This ignorant, supercilious approach made him an effective apologist, but not a good thinker.

As for the issue of brains, I prefer to deal with arguments, and not people. I don't accept another intelligent person as an authority because she is smart. I examine her data and arguments. As you should Lewis'.

This passage below shows some of the core problems with your thinking:

A corallary to Lewis point, was that those people who had left societies with bad morals usually can be made to see that their societies had bad morals once they come to a society with better ones.

On what grounds do you say that societies have "bad morals?" If your grounds are indeed universal in nature, note that practically all cultures in human history have practiced polygamy. Should we in the US change to polygamous marriages? Also, should we start beating our wives, since that is universally practiced outside western cultures?

Additionally, how do you deal with widespread accepted practices, such as prostitution, that are also illegal everywhere they are practiced, though ignored (like here in Taiwan)?

Finally, if something is ubiquitous, does it qualify as an imperative? For example, if the most common language grammar form is subject-verb-object, should everyone be forced to speak an SVO language?

Also, what about new things, like human rights, found only in the west? How do we treat them?

They can see that the morality that is present in this new and better society is not simply different, it is superior to the society of their old country.

Really? Or do they follow the "when in Rome" principle? Here in Taiwan I live like a Taiwanese whenever possible, less friction that way.

My own country of America is one of the best examples of this phenomenon, amost all people who have entered this country from less than liberal democratic traditions have come to embrace pluralistic democracy.

Yes, Luv, as you admit, many do not embrace pluralistic democracy.

They can see it is not just a different, but a better way to live.

Some do. You are probably not aware of groups such as fundamentalist Christians, militias, muslims, Hassidic Jews, Amish, corporate elites, and other groups that reject pluralistic democracy (whatever that is -- is it your claim that everyone has the same idea of it?)

If there was no such thing as a "real" right, society could not morally advance.

Luv, it can "advance" only relative to some value or goal. "Advanced" is relative.

And I'm sorry, people will have to accept at least one value in order to negotiate: the value that it is better to negotiate than to war. And what if they do not share that value? But again, all men do share this value, because it is an objective moral.

They DO NOT have to accept this as a shared value. They merely have to believe that it is in their interest to negotiate at a given moment.

This seems to suggest that all men everywhere have looked at human sacrifice in light of a standard and abolished it. If half the world were constantly engaged in tossing babes into the flames, you would have a formidable point. That there are a few reluctant stragglers who have yet to abandon what the entire world considers to be an immoral tradition is harldy proof that morality is totally subjective.

You do not understand what it means to say that morality is "subjective." It simply means that there is no point of view that lies outside our conversation that is the ultimate arbiter of our conversation. There is nothing you can point to that would compel me to adopt your standards, except force. Instead, values must be negotiated using tolerance, empathy, reason, patience, civility and other values that encourage, rather than discourage, interaction and communication.

More practically, human sacrifice has been stopped in many cultures by the intervention of colonial authorities at gunpoint. Not because some "saw the error of their ways." What error? Your thesis is exceedingly naive.

I'd like you to name a society which currently exists in which it is morally acceptable to marry your brother and sister.

Like I said, check out the phenomenon of shimpua marriages, where a brother marries a sister, specifically adopted as a toddler, for that very purpose. There are several cultures with such systems. I believe there is a discussion of it in Guests in the Dragon by Gallatin, and Brown covers this issue in Human Universals from a different perspective.

In a nutshell, the existence of a single universal value does not mean that all values are universal, nor does it mean that if a value is "universal" it ought to be (is does not mean ought, another Lewis error), nor does it mean that it is "objective" in both of the common usages of the word.

Michael

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>