tribalbeeyatch

I think it is perhaps unifying for people to agree with certain core moral positions, but I don't see what a general belief in their objective truth adds to the equation.

JusticeMachine

No, I am not passing any moral judgement that the belief in "believing that your beliefs are objective" if good or bad, just that it is.

JusticeMachine

I am speaking in general underlying principals of social co-existance. We have undergone radical changes, the example of slavery is because that, I feel was against the core moral beliefs of the society, or at least a protion of the society, and changing it did result in revolution.

JusticeMachine

Because there is nearly no motivational force behind the belief that your beliefs are subjective.

Objectivity is motivating.

One Winged Angel

Was slavery for or against our core moral beliefs? Also, it was far from the only cause of the civil war. I'd also like to point out that the war was merely a revolt, and hardly anarchy like you think should have happened.

tribalbeeyatch

There is plenty of motivation in agreement. I see none in this self-deceptive belief in the objectivity of core moral values that you are proposing.

Jinto

And I am passing a factual judgement on this belief: it is false. If you would care to refute that, or to perhaps provide some argument for why we ought to believe things that we know are false, or even to substantiate your OP, we are listening, and holding our Complete Idiot's Guide to Refuting Argumentum ad Consequentiam Fallacies.

Wiploc

It seems to me then that what you should do is tell people that objective morality is materialist-based.

Let's suppose that 80% of us are religious, and 20% aren't. If you let people think that morality is based on religion, then 20% of us will always feel left out. But if you can convince people that morality has nothing to do with religion, that even atheists should logically believe in objective morality, then you can get your "moral fabric of society" sewn up strongly.

On your analysis, isn't this the right reaction?
crc

everlastingtongue

Suppose for some reason that I accept your argument and decide to become a deist because of it. Which form of absolute truth should I accept: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc? Any how can I have the means to tell which of any of these is THE absolute truth? Because if truth is absolute, then every belief system and/or religion must be at least partially wrong, except one.

bd-from-kg

JusticeMachine:
To see where you’re headed with this, let’s see what would follow if it were true. It certainly wouldn’t follow that the morals of the society in question are objective. No, the only thing that would follow is that it’s desirable that the great majority of the people in the society believe that they’re objective. So it would seem that the conclusion you have in mind is a practical one: something like “We should do everything in our power to convince the people in our society that our society’s morals are objective.”

Now the first thing to notice about this line is that it is necessarily false for at least every society but one. But the argument clearly applies to all societies. Thus what you’re suggesting (by implication) is that we should do our best to persuade people of something that we know with near-certainty is false.

The second thing to notice is that our society is implicitly being divided into two groups: “us” - the people “in the know”, who are morally entitled to perpetrate a fraud on everyone else - and “them”, the poor gullible fools who must be deceived “for their own good”. And who decides who constitutes the privileged “us” group? Who elects the elect? Why, us, of course! How convenient.

This whole line of thought is arrogant, elitist, and corrupt. No one with an ounce of integrity would give it a second thought. The only honorable course is to say what we believe to be true. The minute we start to trim our sails, to profess to believe what we think it desirable for other people to believe even though we don’t believe it ourselves, we are lost.