Debate 9: Whether morality is absolute: Philosophy Forums

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Debate 9: Whether morality is absolute

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Debate 9: Whether morality is absolute

dclements
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0 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 06/24/06 - 06:09 PM:	#11
You have misread my post and think that my argument about omniscient beings means that I believe their possibility proves that there is objective morality when my actual argument is that is possible that there is objective morality and that your argument that morality is subjective is merely a belief and not a fact. So far you have argued that it is impossible for anyone's morality to be objective. As for your comment on your belief that morality is subjective is 'truth' and not a moral proposition as a person that understands subjective morality you should know that all religious and moral systems of belief start with one or more such simple axioms. With one such simple axiom moral 'truth' I or anyone else can believe whatever we want to and we can continue to believe it as long as we do not question it. Also the criteria that you used to prove that morality can only be subjective is a truth is ambiguous so it is no better than any statement that someone makes when they claim their morality is objective, but yet does not have any proof to back it up. Again you have misunderstood what I said about knowledge and truth require morality to have value. My point is that without morality science, knowledge, and truth can not have value. If all one believes is that it is better to gather, protect, and use knowledge to make our lives better and they do not believe in any other forms of morality then their view is that morality objective since they believe that their view is better than those who think it is better to destroy knowledge. If you or anyone has a belief that your views are better than another than you are making a claim that morality is objective. It is interesting to see an argument that is supporting subjective morality imply that objective morality is evil. Your last couple of arguments about why subjective is 'good' and objective morality 'evil' makes it almost impossible to tell the difference between your 'subjective' arguments and another persons arguments as to why they moral beliefs are objective. Everything you said was a moral proposition as to why your 'subjective' materialistic morals are better than other peoples morality. Once you start claiming that your morals are better than other people's I can not see how you can still think your views are subjective since at its core subjective morality states that no single set of moral beliefs is better than all others. Since we have spent most of this debate arguing over certain aspects of objective and subjective morality I thought it might be better to take a step back and reexamine some concepts. The definition of subjective is: Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world: a subjective decision. Existing only in the mind; illusory. If morality is subjective than all moral beliefs (including your own that materialism is better than theism) is completely illusory and moot. I believe the best way to conceive of how morality can be subjective is to think of if someone existed as only a brain in a jar and there was so way in which anyone could communicate with them and everything they knew was a dream. In this situation I believe it is impossible to argue how this person can be moral or immoral since all thoughts can not effect the outside world and when they die all memories are lost. The world would be no different than if this individual never existed. For this individual morality can only be subjective since they can not effect the outside world. In order for morality to be objective one actions must be the best one for outside world. As I said before this is a non-trivial problem and it can be tricky to even conceive. For starters, most confuse personal morality with objective morality. Then there is the problem of if objective morality is not personal morality what is it. Often people believe that objective morality is what a society believes is moral. Although social morality may be closer to objective morality than individual morality, one society does not represent all of the world. After thinking about morality for awhile, I've come to believe that everyone tries to do what is best but is unable to do to a lack of understanding. Part of this is due to not understanding what is best for ourselves and the rest of the world. We are unable to see what are the best consequences for any action we may take. Because we do not know how to control the consequences of our actions, we focus our concepts of morality on what we can control which is our thoughts. By believing that controlling one's thoughts we can be moral we are mislead to believe that controlling one's thoughts alone is enough to be moral. However, this misconception causes problems because morality of thought(virtue ethics) and morality based on consequences are very different. The best way to understand this is to realize that anything that we are able to easily understand and control the consequences of is no longer thought of as moral or immoral, such as building a house or driving a car. These consequences of these activities depends on one's skill instead of how virtuous one is. If we realize that knowing what is moral requires an understanding of the world and is a skill, like driving a car, we can overcome some of the problems. Also morality based on consequences shows a big problem with morality that is pretty much unsolvable and is avoided in virtue ethics. Until we able to understand the consequences of our actions we are unable to make the best choices. This can partly be thought of as the things we could change if we could go back in our lives and make certain choices again, but it is also about the choices we could make if we knew exactly what would be the outcome of any choice we made. It is hard to describe how much better our lives could be if we were able act on the knowledge of what all possible consequences of our actions are. It is also hard to descibe the horror in realizing the problems that are caused by not being able to act on such knowledge. Last is the problem of for whom we should be concerned with we consider the consequences of our actions. The answer is simply everything in the world. Although it is almost impossible for people to exist without harming animals and using the environment for resources, it doesn't mean that it is moral for us to do so. As we advance we should be able to take better care of the world around us, and if we don't than we will like kill ourselves in the process.
No, you don't get it, thats why I'm telling you. You think you get it, which isn't the same as actually getting it. Get it?-Kakashi Hatake Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometimes by action dignified-Friar Lawrence The state of mind that questions is much more important than the question itself.Any question may be asked by a slavish mind, and the answer it receives will still be be within the limitations of its own slavery...Freedom of desire for an answer is essential for the understanding of a problem-Krishnamurti

Paul
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Posted 06/24/06 - 06:43 PM:	#12
This debate is now concluded, thanks to Floyd and dclements for participating.

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