But are they “mind dependent”? If no minds existed, including God’s, would mathematical theorems not be true? Or anything about math? If there were no minds, would it no longer be true that 2+2=4? I don’t think so.
Wrong.
By your definition, yes. It is.
The truth of theorems depend on axioms - assumptions that are taken to be true. So, their truth are not mind independent either.
That argument is LITERALLY citing ‘subjective experience’ as the premise.
I suspect the trouble you have is thinking that something cannot be both “subjective” and be “true with absolute logical certainty” at the same time.
1 Like
Yes, but that is only my subjective moral opinion – even if (as I suggested above) it may be a reasonably strong (though I would not suggest universal) consensus opinion.
Irrelevant!
The standard is not the very low bar of “independent of individual whims”, but:
And no, I do not think that this moral opinion is “true independently of individual thoughts, feelings, or perceptions” – so no, I do not think it is an objective moral opinion.
As @Roy alludes to above, you have yet to establish:
-
what is the full contents of this purported system of objective morality;
-
how we know these contents; or
-
how we would establish that this system’s morality is objective.
That rather presupposes that “‘sophisticated’ apologists like William Lane Craig or CS Lewis” don’t use bad analogies.
I’ve long thought the analogy of CS Lewis’, that formed the basis of the name of the band Sixpence None the Richer (a couple of whose hits have stuck in my memory) was a particularly bad analogy.
But then, unlike some, I’ve never had the impression that he’s a “great thinker and writer” – and have seen little to give the impression that he’s seen that way outside chauvinistically Christian circles. Are there Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, etc who praise the profundity of his writing?
Addendum: to avoid an accusation of bias in my impression of CS Lewis, I asked ChatGPT to summarise his reception outside Christian circles. This was the conclusion:
Overall Secular Consensus
- Literature: Valuable and influential.
- Apologetics: Artful, but intellectually limited.
- Philosophy: Morally serious but not rigorous.
- Cultural criticism: Interesting, though ideologically conservative.
I will leave it to the reader to decide if this qualifies as a “great thinker and writer”.
It’s also trivially false, because the two elders in the story didn’t consider their own behaviour morally wrong.
2 Likes
To be fair, people can have differing opinions even about objective matters. Just because the individual whims do not align doesn’t mean that there is not or cannot be an actual fact of the matter, discoverable or otherwise, any more than total consensus means that there is, and that the elders’ assessment would just happen to be (objectively) incorrect.
To be precise, even if the elders’ behaviour was objectively morally wrong, the claim that the “judgement is independent of individual whims” is incorrect, because two of the individuals involved did not make that judgement.
1 Like
“C. S. Lewis and 8 [Bad] Reasons for Believing in Objective Morality”
I don’t think it would surprise anyone for me to state that I’ve found this thread, to date, unsatisfactory.
My strong intuition, going back a couple of decades or so, has been that “objective morality” does not exist – and I was hoping to test that intuition against the best (even if they weren’t good) arguments for objective morality.
What I have seen instead has been an Argument from Authority (here) and a whole heap of bad analogies and quibbling over definitions.
So I first went to Wikipedia, which (baring “the ethical branch of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism” – which seems to be irrelevant), stated that:
Moral objectivism may refer to:
- Moral realism, the meta-ethical position that ethical sentences express factual propositions that refer to objective features of the world
- Moral universalism, the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics or morality is universally valid
Whilst the “objective morality” being argued for on this thread would seem to approximate a juxtaposition of both these positions, their respective Wikipedia articles seemed to offer not much of an argument for either.
I then turned to Google, which led me to this article:
Given that @Giltil had listed CS Lewis among his “great thinkers and writers” who advocated for this position, and @Faizal_Ali among the “‘sophisticated’ apologists”, I thought this would be a good place to start.
I was however less than impressed.
- Quarreling between two or more individuals. [1] When quarreling occurs, individuals assume there is an objective standard of right and wrong, of which each person is aware and one has broken. Why quarrel if no objective standard exists?
So nobody could possibly argue about a subjective difference of opinion? Nobody has ever quarreled, for example, about who is the greatest rock guitarist?
This would appear to be an absurdly flimsy argument.
That which is “obvious” is not necessarily true, let alone objective.
Another absurdly flimsy* argument.
- Mistreatment. [5] One might say he does not believe in objective morality, however, the moment he is mistreated he will react as if such a standard exists.
How does one distinguish the ‘reaction’ to an objectively immoral act from a subjectively immoral one?
One might consider the profoundly different reaction of two people (e.g. from different cultures) to the same action (that one culture approves of, but another disapproves) to be an obvious counterexample.
Another absurdly flimsy* argument.
- Measuring value systems. [8] When an individual states that one value system is better than another, or attempts to replace a particular value system with a better one, he assumes there is an objective standard of judgment. This objective standard of judgment, which is different from either value system, helps one conclude that one value system conforms more closely to the moral standard than another. Without some sort of objective measuring stick for value systems, there is no way to conclude that civilized morality, where humans treat one another with dignity and respect, is better than savage morality, where humans brutally murder others, even within their own tribe at times, for various reasons.
“He” need assume no such thing. There is no reason to assume that the “standard of judgment” is “objective” – it could be the individual’s subjective moral intuitions.
Less obviously bad perhaps – but still hardly solid.
- Attempting to improve morally.[10] Certainly, countless individuals attempt to improve themselves morally on a daily basis. No sane person wakes up and declares, “My goal is to become more immoral today!”[11] If there is no absolute standard of good which exists, then talk of moral improvement is nonsensical and actual moral progress is impossible. If no ultimate standard of right and wrong exists, then one might change his actions, but he can never improve his morality.
Again, there is no reason to assume that the standard that the person is attempting to “improve” themselves against is an objective one – it could likewise be that individual’s subjective moral intuitions.
Likewise, less obviously bad perhaps – but still hardly solid.
- Reasoning over moral issues.[13] When men reason over moral issues, it is assumed there is an objective standard of right and wrong. If there is no objective standard, then reasoning over moral issues is on the same level as one arguing with his friends about the best flavor of ice cream at the local parlor (“I prefer this” and “I don’t like that”). In short, a world where morality is a matter of preference makes it impossible to have meaningful conversations over issues like adultery, sexuality, abortion, immigration, drugs, bullying, stealing, and so on.
Ditto (bad assumption) and ditto (hardly solid).
- Feeling a sense of obligation over moral matters.[14] The words “ought” and “ought not” imply the existence of an objective moral law that mankind recognizes and feels obligated to follow. Virtually all humans would agree that one ought to try to save the life of a drowning child and that one ought not kill innocent people for sheer entertainment. It is also perfectly intelligible to believe that humans are morally obligated to possess (or acquire) traits such as compassion, mercifulness, generosity, and courage.[15]
No, it does not imply that the moral system in question need be “objective”. There is no reason to believe that the moral values need not be subjective – even if (within our current culture) with a strong consensus behind them.
Infanticide and child sacrifice were accepted in many paleolithic and ancient cultures.
There seems to be a strong pattern throughout these"reasons" that if a moral sense exists, it must exist objectively – which is obviously fallacious.
- Making excuses for not behaving appropriately.[16] If one does not believe in an objective standard of behavior, then why should he become anxious to make excuses for how he behaved in a given circumstance?
Why? To avoid punishment. To avoid disapprobation. To avoid looking bad in our own eyes. None of these, perfectly obvious, answers necessitates that the transgression be against an objective moral standard for us to make excuses.
I’m quite sure that people likewise make excuses for their violation of the most arbitrary of social conventions.
Another absurdly flimsy argument.
These do not appear to be compelling reasons for accepting the existence of objective morality, nor for accepting that CS Lewis is a “great thinker” (or even a “‘sophisticated’ apologist”).
2 Likes
Yes, all these arguments hold exactly the same if instead of an objective (I.e. existing outside of and independent from human experience) morality there is a widely shared intersubjectively one. A morality that has originated with our roots as social animals, and that has grown and developed as human culture grew and matured.
No God’s required here.
8 Likes
These are all terrible reasons.
Many, possibly most can be rejected immediately with the simple counter example “I don’t”. Others have equally obvious counter-examples from history.
E.g.:
Reasoning over moral issues. [13] When men reason over moral issues, it is assumed there is an objective standard of right and wrong.
That’s not assumed when I reason over moral issues.
Virtually all humans would agree that one ought to try to save the life of a drowning child and that one ought not kill innocent people for sheer entertainment.
The Romans didn’t agree, because they did exactly that in the Colosseum.
Lewis clearly didn’t spend even ten seconds considering possible counterarguments. The whole thing appears to be aimed at people who already agree with the conclusion; there’s nothing at all to convince anyone who doesn’t. He’s setting up anyone who uses his arguments for instant and embarrassing failure.[1]
Not that this will stop them - cf every thread on apologetics or YEC. ↩︎
2 Likes
I have never heard a case for moral realism that did not rely on the popularity of human intuitions, or widespread feelings of outrage or revulsion, or appeals to consequences.
The case for moral realism is so bad I am literally astonished when I see otherwise intelligent people make it.
1 Like
It is of course a perfectly reasonable question to ask just why it is that (some) moral intuitions are so (if not totally) ubiquitous, and that they reflect some objective moral truth would surely seem to account for that. But that’s ultimately an objectivity-of-the-gaps:
Why people agree? Dunno. Therefore objective.
Even if we had no alternative ways to account for the popularity of some moral sensibilities, this argument is… laughable. And, of course, we do actually have very compelling explanations for why we have some very strong feelings regarding the likes of murder, and widely culturally varying sensibilities about inconsequential things like form / politeness.
1 Like
There is a sense in which I think it could be claimed that morality is “objective.”
It is an objectively true fact that human beings need to breath air and eat food in order to live. In that sense, the statement “You ought to breath air and eat food” is an objectively truth that applies universally to all human beings.
However, this is not a transcendent truth that exists whether or not human beings exist. It is, rather, a mere accident of our evoutionary history. This truth does not apply, for instance, to the entire plant kingdom. If evolution had only produced plants, the statement would not be true in any context.
Similarly, if there are moral “truths” that are universally held by all human beings, these could also be nothing more than contingencies that have arisen over the course of evolution. However, that does not make them any less objectively true than is the truth of the fact that we need air and food.
Does that make sense?
Not to mention some rather more consequential things. Like slavery, or whether a woman should be stoned to death for losing her virginity.
This wouldn’t be really a moral truth, though. The ‘ought’ in that statement is not a moral ought, but rather translates to a statement about the connection between some activity (or its lack, as it were), and the consequences. “In order to stay alive, one needs to stay oxygenated and nourished” does not imply that one morally-ought to desire or to pursue the goal of staying alive, nor that, effectiveness aside, the only way of achieving that goal is a way one morally-ought undertake in pursuit of it.
Yes. I did not mean to suggest the ought in “One ought to breath and eat” is a moral ought. However, it is an ought that emerges as a result of our evolutionary history, rather than predating us, and is objective in the sense that it is not a matter of opinion. Ths “is/ought” problem is not avoided because, as you point out, we must first append the condition “…if you don’t want to die.”
Well, it is a nearly universal aspect of human nature that we prefer to live than to die. And it is about as universal that we prefer to live in a society in which our personal safety is secured, in which we are treated fairly, and in we are free to live our lives as we see fit. For many of these goals the means to achieve them are so clear they could be considered obvious. A society in which murder is not condoned is objectively better able to achieve these goals than one in which it is. Other moral questions, however, involve a delicate balancing of these various priorities, and that is where disagreement will arise and where different societies will arrive at different answers.
I don’t really see how basing morality in the nature of an unseen deity better describes morality as it exist, nor provides a better method to arrive at correct answers to moral questions. Certainly no good argument has been provided in this discussion.
1 Like
The is-ought gap, I say, is not bridged even with that qualifier. Without introducing a rule that allows such inferences, “It is the case that you wish to stay alive” does not imply that “Therefore you ought eat and breathe”. Perhaps a more technically correct version of “If you don’t want to die you ought eat and breathe” would be something like “Eating and breathing will serve to keep your body alive”. Where the former phrasing permits the confusion, and invites clarification as to what sense of ‘ought’ is being employed, the latter one, in my opinion, expresses exactly the same sentiment, but is unambiguous in having no normative component at all.
1 Like
Yes, I agree. Sorry if I was not sufficiently clear about that.
3 posts were split to a new topic: The Greatest Rock Guitarist
But isn’t the case that the abolition of slavery or the renunciation of gladiatorial combats as entertainment marked an objective moral progress? And conversely, isn’t the case that if our societies were to reintroduce slavery or gladiatorial combats, this would mark an objective moral regression ?
Well, if some people quarrel about who is the greatest rock guitarist, it is because they do think that an objective answer exists to this question, otherwise it would be nonsensical for them to do so.