Morality - Objective or Not?

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If a fox is chasing a rabbit, which one, from some "objective" 3rd party perspective, "should" win the race? (And why should either of them care about your "objective" take?) If the fox wins, he gets to eat, and the rabbit dies. If the rabbit wins, he gets to live, and the fox eventually starves.

Goals conflict. "Should" unpacks to "if you want to achieve A, you should try actions B." But about wanting A, in terms of your longest term fundamental motivations, these things are functions of your nature.

While there are policies that allow humans to live with each other in peace, and other policies that will inevitably lead to conflict, the policies themselves derive from human nature and human goals, (particular individual/familial nature and goals) and can't be divorced from them.

(Utilitarians usually go wrong in assuming they can cook up some kind of "collective utility function" as anything other than a gross simplification.)
 
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If you don't believe in God, no. That's why liberals are so unabashedly evil, they have their own twisted version of good and evil based on nothing but their own hedonistic feelings.
 
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But I believe in the Führer owo.

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Unless you believe either in God (and Him being the source of morality) or in Platonic Forms, at best you can claim is that morality is intersubjective.
 
Morality has nothing to do with God or any divine being. In fact, I'd argue that religion muddies the waters when it comes to understanding true morality.

The seven deadly sins as described by Christianity, i.e. Pride (internal emotion), greed (self indulgence), wrath (internal emotion), envy (internal emotion), lust (internal emotion), and gluttony (self indulgence) are VICES, not immoral actions against others, hence not sins.

None of these violate the natural rights of others.


The real seven deadly sins then would be:
Murder (Theft of life)
Assault (Theft of well-being)
Rape (Theft of Sexual association)
Theft (Unrightful taking of property)
Trespass (Theft of security)
Coersion (Theft of Free will)
Deception (Theft of Informed decision-making)

All of these violate the natural rights of others.

Ultimately, learning and applying objective morality and natural law is entirely about understanding what one's rightful property is vs. what it is not.
If we fully understand and value our rightful property, we will then naturally extend that understanding to all others' property (or risk being a hypocrite).

In doing so, we will cease to violate the one true Law of Morality:

DON'T STEAL.

To learn more, I'd recommend this video by Mark Passio.
 
TheSkyrimAddict said:
Morality has nothing to do with God or any divine being. In fact, I'd argue that religion muddies the waters when it comes to true morality.

The seven deadly sins as described by Christianity, i.e. Pride (internal emotion), greed (self indulgence), wrath (internal emotion), envy (internal emotion), lust (internal emotion), and gluttony (self indulgence) are VICES, not immoral actions against others, hence not sins.

None of these violate the natural rights of others.


The real seven deadly sins then would be:
Murder (Theft of life)
Assault (Theft of well-being)
Rape (Theft of Sexual association)
Theft (Unrightful taking of property)
Trespass (Theft of security)
Coersion (Theft of Free will)
Deception (Theft of Informed decision-making)

All of these violate the natural rights of others.

Ultimately, learning and applying objective morality and natural law is entirely about understanding what one's rightful property is vs. what it is not.
If we fully understand and value our rightful property, we will then naturally extend that understanding to all others' property (or risk being a hypocrite).

In doing so, we will cease to violate the one true Law of Morality:

DON'T STEAL.
Click to expand...
I wish there was a fedora sticker I could rate you.
 
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I think morality is objective but - and this is a big but - nobody will ever be able to lay out, with full certainty, a complete code of morals that satisfies every circumstance. Cultures are just closer or further from it. Living with the insecurity of it is part of it.

It, like science, is something that can be developed to be more and more accurate but it - by its nature - cannot fully describe the thing.

I've only become interested in it recently and am still unread in it, but the British Enlightenment (which was just working in the same intellectual tradition that Christianity and the ancient Greeks did) recognized the existence of a Creator God and interpreted that the design of the world reveals to us what this Creator God intends for its creation. We can interpret out of Man's characteristics what some of these underlying purposes and associated principles are, and by extension then develop a body of rights (natural rights) from them. The most fundamental is that man's capacity for reason implies he is supposed to be a decision-making creature, which leads to an understanding that constraining people's free will is immoral when they aren't impinging on others.

Europeans have always understood this and it, more than anything, is what makes them unique in the world. They would just arbitrarily bend their rules (like developing rationalizations for slavery; even Aristotle did this) or ignore/relax it at will (like a lot of Bible-thumping).

TheSkyrimAddict said:
Morality has nothing to do with God or any divine being. In fact, I'd argue that religion muddies the waters when it comes to true morality.

The seven deadly sins as described by Christianity, i.e. Pride (internal emotion), greed (self indulgence), wrath (internal emotion), envy (internal emotion), lust (internal emotion), and gluttony (self indulgence) are VICES, not immoral actions against others, hence not sins.

None of these violate the natural rights of others.
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That's great and all, but:
1) You're wrong. Damn near every philosopher who worked on natural law believed in a creator God and it directly feeds the worldview that nature has a purpose/will to be satisfied.
2) You're assuming that natural rights violations are the sole thing that can qualify as immoral or a sin, which is not what either of those things are.
By the same sort of logic that people developed natural rights (search for cultural universals, appeal to the premise of nature having a design), you have a certain emotional/behavioral state that is intrinsically good and what is moral is that which shapes the individual into the sort of person that they're supposed to be.

Every single thing you listed is something that the Church recognized as disordered, self-destructive and soul-rotting behavior, and half of them are the things that social conflict and dysfunction are made out of (greed, wrath, pride, lust, etc.). I'm spitballing (again, I'm not that read in this stuff)
 
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Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Damn near every philosopher who worked on natural law believed in a creator God
Click to expand...
Consensus fallacy. Even if millions agreeed on something, that doesn't make it objectively true. Regardless of who they are/claim to be.

Same thing applies to morality. Morality is objective, and does not change based on culture or beliefs.

Natural law and morality go hand-in-hand, so yes, it qualifies as the sole thing in determining whether an action is moral or immoral.
**in other words**
The (Natural) Law being "don't steal" and the right action (moral action) being that which aligns with the principle of not stealing or Natural Law.


I completely disagree with the Church since all of their listed sins are nothing but vices.
To add to that, I'd even argue that some of the vices they call sins are actually good!
For example, if a father is proud of his son for accomplishing great things, how is that self destructive or soul rotting in any way? Isn't it a good thing? In fact, wouldn't it be wrong if the father showed a complete lack of care towards his son's accomplishments?

Or let's take lust as another example. Imagine a couple with no lust in between them. Wouldn't the opposite of what the Church says be right or moral?


I can't recommend mark passio's podcast enough to those interested in understanding morality, natural law, the occult and other such topics.

His work can be found here

Recommend starting from episode 1 where he explains solipsism, clearing the difference between relativity and objectivity and why solipsists always end up concluding that truth is relative, thereby leading them to conclude that morality is also relative.
 
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Universal objective morality is an oxymoron. If there are aliens out there somewhere, their morality will be far different from our own monkey-evolved morality. They may have none at all from our point of view (unless they evolved in a way similar to our own evolutionary path). On that subject, god help us if they ever show up here.

Among humans, there probably is something like an innate shared morality, hard-wired into our brains. So pretending "it's subjective and whatever you decide it to be" is horseshit. If someone's acting immorally, it's not because there is no such thing as objective morality, but rather some rationalization that they use to try to screw over their fellow man. Such beings are lower than animals, and should be punished harshly where ever they are found.

All this said, I have been working on a theory of objective morality for a few years now, and I've got something... but it's not ready for public consumption.
 
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