Friend

If there are no true objective morals (Do not steal, kill, rape, etc) and morals are dictated by moral values, then how can the Law (federal, state, etc) build a system of laws to protect the people? If all moral foundations are subjectively based, then can one really say another is doing something wrong, even though anothers actions may not be morally correct for them? Meaning, how can one decide another's moral ideals are incorrect if all moral foundations are built upon a subjectivity? Would this end up being another example of the majority suppressing the minority?

Thanks

~ Friend ~

Alonzo Fyfe

My first recommendation is to read any of the several threads already in existence on the objectivity vs. subjectivity debate and, see if you still have questions. These include:


Keith Augustine's defense of Subjectivism

The Nature of Subjective Morality

Subjective Morality

Alonzo Fyfe

I am going to quote my own postings in Ethics Without God because it is easier to cut and paste than to retype it.


F. Another Look at Subjective and Objective Value

I have a memory of walking down the sidewalk at the University of Maryland, College Park, with three other philosophy graduate students. Somebody expressed the complaint that there were no philosopher light bulb jokes -- at least, nobody there knew of any. You know, "How many philosophers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Therefore, I invented one, on the spot.

Question: How many philosophers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Answer: It depends on what you mean by 'screw in a light bulb'.

This comes to mind because I have once again come to the question, "Do you believe that morality is objective?"

And my answer is, "It depends on what you mean by 'objective'".

I can think of three possible, relevant meanings.


Subjective(1) vs. Objective(1).

There are some people who ask whether moral propositions are propositions at all. Propositions are capable of being true or false. However, moral statements may well be merely complex ways of grunting approval or disapproval. A statement like "capital punishment is wrong" may instead be a verbal equivalent of wrinkling one's nose and saying, "Capital punishment -- ewwww!" Such a statement has no truth value, it is not subject to debate. Like laughing or crying, it is simply an expression of emotion.

Those who hold that moral claims are merely expressions of emotion are typically called 'non-cognitivists' and their opponents called 'cognitivists'. In this debate, I side with the cognitivists. Or, more precisely, I do not see much use for the distinction. Even if moral claims are expressions of emotion, there is an equivalent cognitive proposition to go along with it. The expression "Capital punishment -- ewwww!" can still be rewritten as "I feel ewwwwness toward capital punishment."

So, in this sense, values are objective(1)


Subjective(3) vs. Objective(3)

A voice shouts out from the back row. "Um....Alonzo....Didn't you, perchance, miss school the day that they taught counting. Three does not follow one."

I know that, but I think things are clearer this way.

The debate between whether values are subjective(3) or objective(3) concerns the debate as to whether values exist as mind-independent entities. I have argued this extensively in previous sections, to the point that I can simply summarize my previous arguments by saying, "There are no goodon emitters." All value terms describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. Desires (an essential component of all value) are mind-dependent. Therefore, value is mind dependent.

In this sense, there are no objective(3) values.


Subjective(2) vs. Objective(2) values

This distinction asks if a value claim refers to the mental states of the speaker, or other mental states that are external to the speaker. It assumes that a person who is making a value claim is making a claim about a relationship between a state of affairs and a desire, but it asks whose desires are being referred to in the statement.

Subjective(2) value claims are claims about how states of affairs relate to the speaker's desires. "I like chocolate ice-cream" or "I do not like rock and roll music" are subjective(2) statements.

Objective(2) value claims relate states of affairs to desires that are not those of the speaker. If I am right about terms like 'harm' and 'illness', these relate states of affairs to the desires of the person whose state is being evaluated. The statement, 'Susan was injured in the accident' is not a statement that says, "I don't like what happened to Susan." I might not even like Susan and hear the news of Susan's injury with great glee. The truth of the claim about Susan's injury depends on how the physical damage relates to Susan's desires, not my own.

Statements about harm, injury, illness, benefit, health, and the like, when made about other people, are objective(2) value claims, not subjective(2) value claims. I can be as objectively wrong about whether Susan has been harmed or injured as I can be about the chemical composition of a banana or the number of stars in a nearby galaxy.

So, subjective(2) and objective(2) values both exist.

The relevant question here is whether moral claims are subjective(2) claims (claims merely about the desires of the speaker), or objective(2) claims (claims about desires other than, or in addition to, those of the speaker.

The proposal that I give in the first part of this essay are that moral claims are objective(2) claims. Indeed, they are the most objective(2) type claim that a person can possibly make. People making moral claims are not making "I like" or "Good for me" claims, they are making "We should like" or "good for us to like" claims for all of us.

In this sense, moral values are objective(2).

Summary

So, ultimately, when asked, "Do you believe moral values are objective?" I answer: "It depends."

Moral values are objective(1) -- they are genuine propositions capable of being true or false.

Moral values are objective(2) -- they are propositions that are at least in part about minds -- however, the speaker's own mind is an insignificantly small portion of the relevant minds. Moral statements are not "I" subjective(2) statements but "we" objective(2) statements.

Moral values are subjective(3) -- they are dependent on minds. All value requires one or more valuers; without valuers there is no value.

paul30

Kant tried to make morals or ethics objective by universalizing them.

He called this the Categorical Imperative. It says, basically, act as though your action could be univeralized.

This is a variant of the Golden Rule, which exists in lots of cultures.

It is not really objective, but no morals can be objective.

Wiploc

Those are your examples of objective morals? I could give the same as examples of subjective morals.

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and morals are dictated by moral values,

Values are always subjective. You can only have a value by having somebody value something. That's the essence of subjectivity, right?

So if morals result from values, morals are necessarily subjective.

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then how can the Law (federal, state, etc) build a system of laws to protect the people?

You skipped a step. What is your unstated assumption? That all laws are based on objective morality?

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If all moral foundations are subjectively based, then can one really say another is doing something wrong,

You think objective morality is going to solve that? If all moral foundations were objectively based, then could one really say another is doing something wrong?

Quote:

even though anothers actions may not be morally correct for them? Meaning, how can one decide another's moral ideals are incorrect if all moral foundations are built upon a subjectivity?

How could you decide whether someone's moral ideals are right if all moral foundations were objective?
crc

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Would this end up being another example of the majority suppressing the minority?

Well, hey, what if that were the objectively moral thing to do? Then we'd be supposed to oppress the minority, right? If morality is objective, you don't get to have opinions about the results; you just have to do what is "right" no matter how much it obviously sucks.

crc

"For a complete list of all the ways in which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press three."

Scorpion

Excellent replies here already if you have the time and patience to browse through them, but to give very short and concise answers to some of your questions:

Easily: All moral ideas that are against the moral ideas I have adopted are wrong.

If you mean how conflicts between incompatible value systems are resolved, the answer is yes.

-S-

bd-from-kg

Friend:

Simple. A legislature can pass the requisite laws, or a monarch or dictator can enact them by fiat. Maybe I don’t understand the question.

Well, there’s more than one meaning of “subjectively based”. One meaning is that doing Y is wrong if I disapprove of doing Y; another is that Y is wrong if the agent disapproves of doing Y. (There are other meanings, but these will do to illustrate the point.) Now suppose that Smith does Y (and that he approves of his doing Y), but that I disapprove of it, and approve of punishing Smith for doing it. In the first meaning of “subjectively based” Smith has done wrong (that is, it is true for me that he’s done wrong), and it is right (i.e., it is true for me that it’s right) for me to punish him. In the second, Smith has done right, but it is still right for me to punish him. (It’s true that according to the second meaning a person cannot do something wrong if he approves of doing it; but that doesn’t save him from being [rightly] punished for doing it.)

Again: in the first meaning another’s moral ideas are incorrect (i.e., it is true for me that they are incorrect) if I disapprove of them. In the second meaning another person’s idea about what it is right for him to do cannot be wrong, but his ideas about what it is right for someone else to do will be wrong if that other person disapproves of doing it.

Once again, let’s look at the two meanings defined above. In the first meaning, whether a subjectivist “should” suppress others by trying to force them to do what he considers “right” (i.e., whether it is true for me that it would be right for him to do so) depends entirely on my moral views. If I consider it right for him to do so, then it is right; if not, it isn’t. In the second meaning, whether it’s right depends entirely on whether he considers it right. If he does, it’s right; if not, it’s wrong.

The problem here is not that either of these “moral theories” is internally inconsistent; it’s that both of them are radically inconsistent with how the vast majority of people actually use moral language. (Alonzo will gladly elaborate on this point at length if you wish.) Thus, as a description of how moral terms are generally used, both of these versions (in fact all versions) of moral subjectivism are patently false. And if one does not believe (as I certainly do not) in a transcendent moral reality (or equivalently, in an intrinsic property of “ought-to-be-doneness” that some actions have and others don’t), the only possible interpretation of the question “What does it mean to say that doing X is right?” is “What do people generally mean when they say that doing X is right?” Since subjectivism (in any form) is a patently false answer to this question it can safely be rejected out of hand, and we can turn to more plausible theories.

Alonzo Fyfe

bd-from-kg

A very well phrased post.

I just want to carry your comments one small step further.

You wrote:

The problem is that too many people view these two options (transcendent moral reality vs. subjectivism) to be jointly exhaustive. Many people wrongly believe that rejecting one leaves you no choice but to accept the other.

In fact, there is a huge set of "more plausible theories" that make no use of "transcendent moral reality," and at the same time do not reduce moral claims to some form of subjectivism.

These include most forms of contractarianism, and many forms of rationalism and utilitarianism.

There is simply no legitimacy to inferring "transcendental moral reality does not exist, therefore subjectivism is true," or, conversely, "subjectivism makes no sense of moral claims therefore transcendental moral reality must exist."

bd-from-kg

wiploc:

You say:

These statements seem to be based on the assumption that if morality were objective (i.e., if statements like “John should not do Y” were objectively true or false) there could be no way to determine whether they were true or false. This seems to me to have it exactly backwards. In general, saying “S expresses an actual proposition – i.e., it is objectively true or false – but there is no way, even in principle, that anyone could conceivably determine its truth value” is (IMHO) logically incoherent. It seems to me that to say that a statement is objectively true or false is to say that there is some procedure by which someone, properly situated, could determine whether it’s true or false. If so, it doesn’t make sense to say that if morality were “objectively based” there would be no way, even in principle, to determine whether a given act is right or wrong. On the contrary, it seems to me that this is the crucial test for determining whether morality is objectively based.

dk

Seems to me Kant severed any connection between reality and metaphysics with transcendental idealism in response to Hume. For Kant's theoretical musing Hegel substituted progress i.e. in itself, for itself and in and for itself, while Marx substituted dialectic materialism. Metaphysics was delegated to the practical study of psychology.