AspenMama

This is a great discussion, but I think it belongs better here....

Jamie_L

Another interesting thing to remember is many religious people also use their empathy and intuition as a moral guide more than there religion. People tend to shop religions until they find one that suits their sensibilities. And when people are comfortable with little things their religion says are bad, they often trust their internal compass more than their religion's. I've known many "Catholics" who engaged in pre-marital sex and used birth control.

People like to say religion provides a moral absolute, but it doesn't. A primary reason why there are so many Christian sects is because people formed new sects when they disagreed with the moral tenants of their previous sect. That's just moral relativism cloaked in religious interpretation.

Jamie

Hobbs

Way back a long time ago, I was involved in a thread in which we were discussing how relative morality can be real. It was in the context of CS Lewis and his view of objective ethics as based on or derived from the Christian God. I argued there that subjective and relative morality is real and has real standards. Others made similar arguments about the lack of a need for absolute objective standards. So, in case you find that discussion helpful, here's the link.

managalar

I always try and think of morality in terms of promoting human life and life quality, that's my foundations. Judging the payoffs and costs of human actions is never easy, frequently, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one, and sometimes protecting the good of the few (leaders - minorities - ect) protects the many or enhances the quality of human life.

Anyway, if moral relativism by its self seems too arbitrary, think of morality relative to life, and call yourself a Secular Humanist, it seems to come quite naturally to me.

99Percent

Hello Eric, here is a self styled objectivist response for you:

Your moral compass is your knowledge of what is true. If you commit an act that you must hide from, that you are not proud of, that your conscience nags you about it because it goes against the truth as you know what it is then you know you have probaby commited something immoral either to yourself or to others. Initiating violence instead of resorting to reason, talking and communicating with the other moral agent is another way to know when you are being immoral.

Your reason and your human capacity to tell what is true and false is your moral compass, as simple as that.

The fundamental reason the holocaust was wrong is simple: The Nazi's used and initiated force and violence against the will of other human beings to kill and torture.

managalar

The only 'truth' I know of comes from my calculator (and similar devices). I was just thinking of etching "Truth Giver" on my TI-89 plastic cover about an hour ago...LOL.

99Percent

Really. And how do you know even that? So your calculator is superior to your mind? Pretty pathetic, even as a joke.

Gurdur

Let's keep this calm, shall we ?

managalar was making an important point regarding the empirical source of true/false knowledge.

OTOH, moral knowledge is not ultimately true/false in an empirical sense.
People do have quite widely varying morals, you know, and many of these differing morals are contradictory to each other.

What Eric is asking (and BTW, he's already tried Objectivism, and it finally didn't work for him) is a definite sense of what is morally right or wrong, since he feels he lacks it at the moment

( BTW, Eric, feeling you lack a sense is not the same thing as actually lacking it )

The best advice, so far given on this thread, towards buildingup a moral system from the ground afresh has been given by AspenMama.

99Percent

Which is?Which I think would contradict your first point, and mangalar's, because yes, moral knowledge is based on reason not empirical observations.In the subjective sense yes, but there is an overall objective morality that supersedes each individual one and is based on what is objectively true.And what I am telling him is that morality is not based on a feeling but a knowledge, an awareness, a consciousness of what is true.

Gurdur

The point that has been made a million times on this board ; morality has no external objective ultimate legitimization.

[COLOR=firebrick[/COLOR]Point 1:[/COLOR]
If you accept there is a natural world independent of human perception, then you can make a good case for the ultimate truthfulness of empirical claims; but you cannot make the same claim for moral claims.

No, wrong again.

[COLOR=firebrick[/COLOR]Point 2:[/COLOR]
Moral "knowledge" is based on a whole horde of things:
evolutionary psychology
individual imagination
experience
social interaction

Sez who ? God ?
We've been over this a million times, and neither you nor anyone else has ever proved this claim ---- and throughout philosophical history, a great many people have tried.