HelenM

But that's not a moral issue. No-one is being hurt by what you eat or don't eat in the way that some would say a child is hurt by an adult coercing the children into sexual activity with them. I don't think that food choice is a good example because it's not a moral issue.

That may be true of some people.

But I imagine that others, if questioned specifically enough, would say they are not claiming that their position is 'objectively good'; they are simply saying it's the one that they prefer and/or it's the one preferred by consensus, for demonstrable reasons.

After all, isn't it true that subjectivists nevertheless might take very strong positions on what are moral issues?

As I tried to say above, I don't think people who know they are subjectivists assume their moral preferences to be 'right' in a way that is demonstrably universal (objective).

I think I understand that position.

And this takes me back to "But how does one define 'good for all of us'? How does one define 'good'?

I understand that and it's the second position that confuses me because I don't understand how 'good' is defined.

I think I see the distinction.

But doesn't this simply mean that they are grunts that you can defend as rational and reasonable?

I don't see that 'substantive' necessitates 'true for all of us'. Do you think it does?

Ok. So you believe that certain things are 'good for all of us'. Is that simply because we're all human so we have certain things in common? Is it like how exercise is good for all of us, because of what we have in common physically? Is it analogous to that?

Ok, fair enough.

Thanks for your responses - they are helpful to me...I think...

Helen

Alonzo Fyfe

Some would argue that the very points that you make here explain why it is a good example.

The very fact that morality is so heavily concerned with harm to others is offered as one of the major reasons for rejecting subjective(1) and subjective(2) accounts of morality -- because they fail to give the full weight of concern for the wellbeing of others.



There are times when it is not wise to take too seriously what a person "says" is going on.

A person standing, with fists clenched, face red, shouting at the top of his lungs, "I AM NOT ANGRY!" is not to be believed. There are people who will say, when asked, that they are subjectivists and that there is no preferred position, but his claims stand as much in contradiction to his moral practices as the person who shouts "I AM NOT ANGRY".

Another example that moral philosophers is that, if you ask a person how he stays balanced while riding a bike, almost everybody will give you the wrong answer. He will say that he remains balanced by shifting his weight left and right to keep his center of balance over the tires -- the way one would balance on a beam. But, in fact, people keep their balance on a bike by slightly turning the front wheel. This is why, as the bicyclist goes slower and slower, he makes more and more radical adjustments to his steering.

In other words, in order to find out what a person is doing it is not always the best practice to take their word for it. Sometimes you have to look at the act itself. And when you look at actual moral debates, even where one of the participants claims to be a subjectivist, you will see little evidence that either party considers both points of view to be equally valid.




I was, admittedly, focusing on the question, "How does one define objective?" -- which is at least as important to the question of whether there is an objective morality as the question "How does one define good?"

It would take some time to defend, but I hold that the only definition that makes sense says that "good" refers to some type of relationship between a state of affairs and one or more desires. It makes no sense to say "X is good" except as a way of saying "somebody wants/likes X" -- and "X is morally good" is a way of saying "Everybody will be able to get more of what they want if they also learn to want/like X."

In order to get people generally to learn to want/like X, we bring all sorts of weapons to bear; praise, blame, shame, guilt, anger, social sanctions, punishment, rules meant to establish certain habits. All of these aim at getting people generally to want/like X, so that we can all enjoy the benefits that would follow from having a society in which people generally want/like X.



Simply?

I would disagree that the distinction between grunts of approval/disapproval, and grunts that can be defended as being in everybody's best interest if universalized, is a simple distinction.


It does not necessitate 'true for all of us'. But it rules out 'me like' and 'me don't like', and for this part of the argument that is good enough.

Some times, it takes several steps to reach the end of the journey, it is no objection to say that the first step is insufficient to cover the whole distance. It only needs to cover the first part of that distance.


First, there is an important distinction between "good for all of us" and "good for each of us." What you have described here with the reference to "we [all] have certain things in common" would be applicable to "good for each of us."

Second, the view that I am defending here says that it is often a bad thing for us to have "certain things in common". It promotes scarcity and generates conflict. It is better if we like different things -- that some of us like being police officers, and others like being teachers, so that we are all better off by each getting what they want.

If you can see how we can all benefit by having different desires, then you can see what I am talking about when I talk about an objective(2) good.

DRFseven

Hi, Helen,

1. Some people (not necessarily atheists, by the way) have the opinion that once an objective is agreed upon (say, survival), there are objectively correct and incorrect ways of working toward that goal.

2. Some think that moral behaviors are innate and, like reflexes, they therefore objectively occur.

3. As far as I can tell, some think morality is a real force, sort of like gravity, that compels all who are free of mitigating forces (such as being born with or acquiring defective brains) to "know" what is moral.

HelenM

Hi DRFseven - thanks for your response

I understand that - but it's atheist views I'm interested in because once one includes [a personal] God then good is defined as God's will and humans have a God-instilled moral capacity into people and I understand that position.

It seems to me that this doesn't rule out the possibility that agreeing to the goals is a subjective decision.

What I don't understand is why commonality of human response, from a naturalistic viewpoint, would have a moral dimension to it. Maybe a behavior furthers the species and/or is pleasurable and is therefore defined as 'good' but that really only means 'pleasurable' or 'useful' and I don't see how one gets from there to defining it as 'morally good'. I still don't understand what 'good' means to a naturalist. Maybe I should start a thread asking 'what is the meaning of 'good', to an atheist?' Maybe that's what I'm really trying to understand. But I don't think it has to have any meaning to subjectivists in the way it needs to, to objectivists. Or so it seems to me.

Do any atheists believe this? This sounds more pantheistic or theistic to me.

Helen

HelenM

Alonzo, thanks - I will respond to your comments when I can.

Helen

DRFseven

Thanks for YOURS. I hadn't seen a post from you in a while and I was afraid you were gone. I'm glad you're still here.

Quote:

I understand that - but it's atheist views I'm interested in because once one includes [a personal] God then good is defined as God's will and humans have a God-instilled moral capacity into people and I understand that position.

Yes, moral-objectivist theists are more understandable to me, too, than moral-objectivist atheists.

Well, it is a subjective decision, but some think that the innate survival instinct, in effect, cancels out any decision-making involved in such a goal. The fact that it doesn't cancel out having to decide on a goal is seen as evidence of how far astray from our basic animal nature we have been led by technology/decadence/subjectivists/postmodernists/etc.



Well, think about what the moral dimension is to you as a theist. Something (God) is thought to define goodness, itself. To the NON-theist objectivists we're talking about, who name objective means to an end, the end, itself, is an objectively good end. "Good" in these cases is not a value judgment, but a label that describes something about God or survival, as if you were using the word "vehicle" to describe something about a minivan. It is as strange to me, the subjectivist, to think of "good" as bearing no reasoning behind its application, as it is to most theistic moral objectivists to think of "good" as useful.

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Do any atheists believe this? This sounds more pantheistic or theistic to me.

Plenty of people who describe themselves as atheists believe in all kinds of mystical forces. **shrug** I guess as long as the force is not referred to as a god....

HelenM

I've been posting on IIDB and I haven't seen you around either - maybe we've been on different forums...anyway it's a pleasure to hear from you

Ok, let's see whether I'm following what you said: is this it?

Objectivist: our goals are determined by our innate survival instinct which is an objective fact, therefore they are objectively arrived at by us.

Subjectivist: if that were true we'd all have the same goals, wouldn't we? And we don't, so you must be wrong.

Objectivist: no, it is true; it's just that we've managed to override our objective survival instinct by technology/decadence/etc

Did I understand you right?

Yes.

Ok - but what does it describe about something? What does it mean, that the something is 'good'? What additional information does that give us?

In order to be clear - I understand that subjectivists have reasoning behind what they think of as 'good'. I understand it's not 'arbitrary'. But if one follows the reasoning back enough then presumably what you think is 'good' ends up being based on something subjective about you. For example - if you didn't eat meat because you didn't like the way they raise animals that are eaten, that's based on your own feelings about what is right and wrong treatment of animals. You're a subjectivist so you wouldn't try to say there's some 'law of the universe' that makes it wrong to treat animals the way they are treated when raised for food. You may feel strongly that it's wrong and you may protest against it and try to change it but you still wouldn't claim it's 'written in the stars' somehow that it's wrong.

Is that correct?

Ok then. I suppose that didn't occur to me

Thanks for your comments!

Helen

HelenM

Yes but why should we care about the well-being of others? Why is not caring about it objectively wrong - to an atheist - and why is caring about it objectively right - to an atheist?

Ok, fair enough. Let's assume we're talking about atheist objectivists who aren't in denial of their own emotional states, who have the awareness and wisdom and integrity to say "yes, I am angry" when they are angry

When you turn your front wheel doesn't it shift your center of gravity - isn't that why it works? In other words, they aren't independent events are they, that you turn the wheel and your center of gravity shifts?

The reason you don't fall over is that you change your center of gravity, not that you turn the wheel. Turning the wheel is how; moving your center of gravity is why.

Ok, but again let's limit this to people who are better at understanding and presenting their viewpoint than this.

I want to understand the objectivist position of people who know they are objectivists, not to discuss the people who don't even understand what their own position is, because they claim to be subjectivists but argue like objectivists. No offense, but - I'm not looking for a defense of objectivism based on 'the people who claim to be subjectivists aren't really". I'm not trying to argue against the objectivist position. I'm only trying to understand it!

Ok, I respect that. I was trying to respond by saying that of the definitions you gave, only some of them appropriately describe the position I'm trying to understand.

I don't understand what's moral about 'wanting stuff' though. I mean, animals want things too - food, sleep, shelter. So are they moral agents because of that? I didn't think so.

But how does that support objective morality? Maybe the most influential person subjectively decides what X is and then tries to coerce everyone else into agreeing. What's objective about that?

Maybe it just overrides 'me like' and 'me don't like' with 'me better like what most powerful person likes or me get in big trouble'. What's moral about that?

That depends whether you can convince those you're hoping to persuade that this first step is truly in the right direction

Then what each of us wants is clearly subjective (I mean, it's an objective fact that we want it but what we want is subjectively determined), since it's different and you're implying a context in which wanting X is no better or worse than wanting Y.

Ok, I can see how we benefit by having different desires. But that just 'is'. Or are you saying it's 'moral' to facilitate each of us wanting different desires? Hey, like Brave New World. Was that a moral way of facilitating people having different desires?

Helen

Alonzo Fyfe

Helen:

I am going to take your comments somewhat out of order, because I think things will be clearer.

I am not sure what I would be agreeing to here. One interpretation is that, when I see a person with fists clenched, face red, shouting I AM NOT ANGRY! I am to take him at his word and assume that he is not in denial of his own emotional states. Why should I assume that relevant evidence to the contrary is to simply be dismissed?

Also, these claims were made about subjectivists. The claim is that when you follow somebody who claims to be a subjectivist into a substantive moral argument, such as a debate over the proposition, "There should be a separation between church and state," they act in every way like people who hold that this is an objectively true claim and those who hold a contrary position are mistaken. They use the same types of evidence, employ the same types of arguments, and draw the same types of inferences.

In light of this, when they clench their fists and shout I AM NOT AN OBJECTIVIST, I think that it is perfectly legitimate to suggest that the evidence says otherwise.

Last, would not say that subjectivists are "in denial," only that they have made a mistake. To be "in denial" the evidence against subjectivism must be so blatant and obvious that any who refuse to see it must be engaged in some sort of self-deception. Though I do not believe that subjectivists provide an accurate account of moral claims, I do not believe that the evidence against subjectivism is blatant and obvious.

The purpose of my analogy was to simply illustrate a link between what a person claims is happening (even when talking about their own behavior) and what is happening in fact.


I think I qualify, as long as you understand that I am a level-2 objectivists, and not a level-3 objectivist.



This is the wrong question. The right question is "Why should we make it that people who care about the well-being of others?"

(Or, alternatively, "Why should people care about preserving the separation of church and state?" or "Why should we cause people to have an aversion to torturing children?")

The practice of morality is the practice of causing people to have a certain set of desires and aversions. We pick the desires and aversion they SHOULD have according to the criteria of what desires and aversions will better allow people generally to live in harmony with others -- desires and aversions that will make people generally better off.

If a person is generally asking a question like, "Should I or should I not torture this child?" then the art of morality has already failed on that person. Morality aims at creating people who would never ask such a question. At this point, the only option left is to threaten any who we find acting contrary to how a good person would act. At this point, we leave the institution of morality and enter the institution of law. Yet, even here, the distinction between morality and law is not a clean break. It still makes sense to ask, "What laws would a person with good desires support?" If a good person has an aversion to mixing church and state, then a good person would be adverse to laws that mix church and state.


"Wanting stuff", while paying no attention to the "stuff" that is wanted, is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the distinction between good wants and bad wants. Good wants are wants that are harmonious with other wants, while bad wants are wants that generate conflict with other wants. The desire to rape is a bad want. A desire to protect children from those who would harm them is a good want.


There is an objective right answer to the question of whether a want is good or bad.


Sure, what I want and you want are subjective(2). But moral claims are not assertions of what I want or you want. They are claims (ultimately) about what we (note, plural) should want. Or, I should say, if you look at actual moral debates (over issues such as separation of church and state) it makes far more sense to see them as debates over what we should want then competing assertions about what each participant in the discussion does want.

DRFseven

Pretty much for a lot of people, except that for many, there is a fallacy involved in that there is no logical reason to leap from acknowledging the presence of an instinct to asserting that the instinct is therefore something that should be furthered or that it should be an objective goal. Yes, I strive to live, but why does that mean I should live? It doesn't. Also, people don't actually do moral things out of a sense of hoping to enhance chances of survival; they do them because it feels right at the time to do them. And finally, not everybody wants to survive all the time.

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Ok - but what does it describe about something? What does it mean, that the something is 'good'? What additional information does that give us?

None. That's the nature of an objective good. It's like pointing the moon out to a toddler and saying, "That's the Moon!" What's "moon" about it? Nothing; we just decided it would be called "moon", and so it is the moon. "Moon" means that thing up there. "Good" describes that thing you were told was good; it's not good for any reason, as in the case of subjective goods.

Quote:

In order to be clear - I understand that subjectivists have reasoning behind what they think of as 'good'. I understand it's not 'arbitrary'. But if one follows the reasoning back enough then presumably what you think is 'good' ends up being based on something subjective about you. For example - if you didn't eat meat because you didn't like the way they raise animals that are eaten, that's based on your own feelings about what is right and wrong treatment of animals. You're a subjectivist so you wouldn't try to say there's some 'law of the universe' that makes it wrong to treat animals the way they are treated when raised for food. You may feel strongly that it's wrong and you may protest against it and try to change it but you still wouldn't claim it's 'written in the stars' somehow that it's wrong. Is that correct?

Exactly; good is a value judgement applied against a standard. In addition, many people understand that their parents instilled in them feelings of right and wrong that are attached to certain behaviors and they use the reasoning you mentioned above to justify and modify those feelings throughout their lives.