Gurdur

Who claimed it was ????
Strawman.
Who is claiming --- apart from yourself --- that any ethic or morality is ultimately "true" ?

As for "moral validity" --- a vague term you haven't specified further --- it can only be determined from a moral system, not outside it.
IOW, moral validity is a judgment issuing from within a particular moral system ---- not an objective judgment.

99Percent

Gurdur: No, I have (repeatedly) said only that the good (and bad)and therefore ethics can only be determined by the individual, not by society or by groups.How is this demonstrated in purely empirical way? Say we observe an individual doing X action. How do you know in a purely empirical way that individual doing such action X to achieve value Y? In order to do so, you must be making apriori judgement of the intentions of X to achieve value Y. This is not scientifically or logically provable, we must fall back in this case, on the domain of philosophy and rational explanations, not empirical ones.Your definition of objective in these sketches are not the same definition of "objective" as in "objective morality". There are two senses of the word objective: one that relates to objects of the physical world, and the other which denotes lack of emotion, opinion and personal experience on the matter as in "being objective about it".You are saying that the good or bad is determined by social consensus. So if social consensus determines that Gurdur is evil (whether it is true or not is irrelevant) then you must be eliminated. I am merely following your logic.

Gurdur

Wrong !

If you read what I write, you will notice that I have said many times that morals are determined by both social groups and individuals.

And you're confusing the question, but that's a minor point.

I suggest that you actually pick up on my posts where I start describing what happens, and what would be desired to happen, when ethical systems come into conflict --- it would be nice to actually make progress in this discussion, rather than my having to reiterate the very initial first steps all the time.

Gurdur

heh, I suspect you simply have not made your own definition of "objective" precise and clear enough.

My own definition is the fairly standard one, here a tad simplistically put, but hey:
Objective = independent of varying human interpretation

It fits both cases you cite.

Gurdur

Ah well, it's the 10 minutes where I will be kind, despite this being not the point being made.

99Percent made a hypothetical argument that a society determines, for whatever ethical reasons, that Gurdur must be eliminated.
Leaving out the fascinating glimpses into psyches, here we have a clear situation:

1. A society determines its ethic is to elimante Gurdur, who is a member of that society.
   This social decision is a intersubjective one.
   
2. Gurdur now has a choice, given the potential ethical conflict.
   He can first decide if the society is correct or not in its ethical decision. Gurdur's own decision is then a subjective one.
   
3. If Gurdur decides subjectively that the social decision is morally wrong (to him, on a subjectively decided basis), then Gurdur can either work for change within that society, or leave that society.
   
4. Note that this whole description is descriptive; it makes no reference to any non-existant "objective" morals, and makes no appeal to prescriptive morality of any kind.
   
5. No reference to an ultimate justification is made or necessary.

tk

This "faith" was temporarily introduced into the argument only for the purpose of proving it wrong. This is the mathematical proof technique of reductio ad absurdum.

A similar technique was used to prove that the square root of 2 is not a rational number. To do this, the Greeks first postulated that sqrt(2) is rational, then by a series of logical steps arrived at a contradiction. Since every step is logically correct, it must follow that the original postulate (sqrt(2) is rational) is false. The Greeks did not need to have the "faith" that sqrt(2) is actually rational; at the most, you can say that they temporarily assumed the faith for the purpose of breaking it later.

But you've just sidestepped the question, not answered it. If an explanation "makes sense" and seems "rational", does it necessarily mean it is true?

As an example: you asserted that good and evil can be determined only by an individual alone. Define the following:

Think(X, P) = the proposition "person X thinks proposition P is true".
Ought(X, A) = the proposition "person X ought to do action A".
Murder(X) = the action "murder of person X".
r = some retard in this world.

Your assertion then translates formally to this inference rule:

Think(X, Good(A)) |- Ought(X, A) ...(R1)

that is, for any person X and any action A, if Think(X, Good(A)) is objectively true, then we can immediately deduce that Ought(X, A) is objectively true.

For the moment, assume that (R1) is indeed true. Now I (tk) believe that murdering retards is a good thing. Thus this is true:

|- Think(tk, Good(Murder(r))) ...(1)

Applying (R1) onto (1) by substituting X = tk and A = Murder(r), I obtain

|- Ought(tk, Murder(r)) ...(2)

...that is, I ought to murder r. Since every step was logically derived, and we obtained a bogus conclusion, the only possibility is that your original premise (i.e. "only the individual can determine good or evil") is bogus. This is again the technique of reductio ad absurdum.

99Percent

But the premise "only the individual can determine good or bad" is not the only premise. There are additional premises into my argument which you are ignoring.

From my op:

99Percent

Gurdur: I read your descriptive position on morality and I really have nothing to reply. Your position is one where morality, subjective, intersubjective, or otherwise, cannot be argued or debated. So there is nothing more to discuss with you. Thanks for your input (and I mean it sincerely).

Infinity Lover

I liked John Cleese and Michael Palin's original version better.

Gurdur

This is also wrong.


First off, this thread is about your promotion of a putatively-existing "objective morality".
And I have rigorously stuck to the topic in showing that no such thing exists.


Second off, it is ridiculous to say that my stance is one where morality cannot be debated.
On any particular concrete situation, I'm always happy to discuss the ethics of that situation --- and I'm always happy to discuss morality in general.

Simply facing the obvious ---- that there is no ultimate justification --- does not mean that morality is not open to discussion; in fact it means the very opposite.