Morality Subjective or objective

Reflection​

I used to be a person that believed morality was subjective, this was difficult for me to reconcile. If morality is subjective than how can we say it's objectively immoral to kill people? Having grown up as a christian I believed as many people in that group did, God gave us morality. This also posed a problem, from a fundamentalist stand point only Christians could be moral. From a general theist's stand point atheists would be amoral. This clearly isn't the case. So this gap was causing a gaping hole in my logic.​

This video is 13:25 long and quite informative worth the time.
[video=youtube;T7xt5LtgsxQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7xt5LtgsxQ[/video]

Here is my opinion:

Morality cannot be subjective, if it is all things are permissible. Further you don't have to be religious or non religious to share this opinion. It may mean that rigid obedience codes are indeed amoral.

From a theist's perspective, (I am a theist) God couldn't have brought us morality, if he did it would be perfect. Clearly no code of obedience is perfect. Also to say that God is moral or morality would subject him to a human condition.

I cannot give an atheist or non theist perspective on the video because i simply don't think that way, but I welcome any opposing or agreeing view point into the debate.

 

Agreed. But this remains a problem for many Christians, who are not as evolved in their faith as you are. Many haven't actually stopped to consider the implications of this position. Some have, but then deliberately avoid information which reminds them of the lie. I applaud your more honest approach.​

 

Very few people would maintain that it is "objectively immoral to kill people" if pushed for details. They do not find it objectively immoral to kill someone in self-defense, or to defend another. They would not find it immoral for someone to kill their nation's enemy in combat. They would not find it immoral if the person was killed accidentally. They would not find it immoral if the person was an executioner carrying out a death sentence, or a judge or a juror imposing the death sentence. They would not find it immoral for a doctor to assist in suicide. Somewhere in all that you will find very few people who would consider all the things I mentioned immoral.

 

IMO morality is relative to the individual but this is not to say than the individual cannot have an objective morality. An objective moral truth to me becomes nothing but an subjective opinion once I express it to another. I have an objective basis for my morality but this does not mean that my basis for morality is universal to all humanity... because its not... thus the subjectivity. Those who claim that their morality is inline with an objective universal morality are fooling themselves at best or severely hampered by an overinflated ego at worst.

From my perspective there are only two paths for those seeking a moral foundation; 1) Digging for and finding the axiom of ones own morality. 2) To follows the predetermined moral code of another.

Here is the axiom of my morality in a nutshell. If I would find an action harmful to me then I should not do that action to another. Because of this I see harm as the boundary that separates action form immoral action. The litmus test I use to assess any moral quandary is I ask if the action causes any physical, psychological, or material harm to another. If the answer to all three questions is no then the action is amoral. If the answer is yes to one or more of the questions then as a general rule the action is immoral. What constitutes a moral person to me is one who actively seeks to cause no harm to others. Now with that there will be statistical outliers for example in surgery it may be required to permit harm to achieve a greater good of curing an illness.

Now to open pandora's box... what constitutes harm? That is one fun rabbit hole to go down... and again an object lesson in subjectivity.

 

None of those contingencies make it subjective.

 

All morality is subjective because it's humans coming up with it. If there was some kind of cosmic rule, whether by a God or some other power, than perhaps what they say would be objective. But since human beings are coming up with it, there's nothing that makes what what human being says more objective than what the next says. All societies, every one, has been morality by consensus. The prevalent morality is whatever the majority or the folks who wield the power want it to be.

Morality being subjective does not mean there aren't things that 99% of the people are going to agree on. Murder, theft, rape, torture, I think you'll find the consensus is largely against those things. But they cannot be objectively wrong without something making it so, without it being woven into the universe or set as a rule by a force or entity higher than humanity.

That's one half of the reason that gods have been invented, with the other being creation myth.

 

I disagree with your reasoning. Humans came up with the laws of physics and those appear to be pretty objective fur the same reasons.

So you are saying that there can be a circumstance where murdering a 8 month old can be completely moral? Even if it is 1% of people?

 

I think fundamentally, morality is subjective in that nobody can be blamed for receiving the moral code one has received (maybe subjective is the wrong word, just not objective). If you bring a child up, cultivating a non-standard moral framework, we have no method of disproving it. A God does not resolve this issue, since we've introduced disagreement here, and God is just as good an entity to disagree with as anyone else ("can't derive ought from is").

However, most of us will (albeit subjectively) respond badly to this and might end up locking up the person with the non-standard morality. This means that while the fundament of morality is subjective, in practice, we must derive an effective morality, which in turn should be objective (albeit maybe hard to know). If that is done, the details about what is moral and not does not hinge directly upon the basis of morality, which explains why there is disagreement about what morality entails even though there is more or less no disagreement on whether we should act morally. If this morality is in effect, then that is the only morality we have, and we shouldn't consider morality in the fundamental objective sense morality at all (other than for academic purposes). Why call it a morality if it neither looks, nor quacks like a morality?

This leaves us having to identify a morality which is objective but which does not have to relate back to the fundamental reason for morality. Here there is some disagreement, but the ideas which have already been presented here, empathy, avoidance of harm, the veil of ignorance, and so on have been identified as useful concepts through the recent history of moral philosophy (I like the Rawlsian version, but I must admit I don't know very much of any other versions, so I'm not going to risk stating it as the only solution). I'm not saying my argument above resolves how to derive at a correct morality, but it does relieve us of the constraint to prove our morality objective in order to argue that it should be followed.

 

I think this topic was on an NPR show this weekend. Some scientists are coming around to such things as morality and religion being innate to human biology, and to animals as well. William James, or was it his brother, which ever one was the 'psychologist', speculated this was the case back in the 19th century, and of course it's been a feature Jewish and Christian thought for centuries. Thomas of Aquina devotes parts of his Summa Theologica to this premise. Personally I don't see anything 'debatable' about it, theistic or not; it's obvious, well, except to sociopaths, anyway.

But, given the opening panel of the vid, it's also obvious it isn't a serious intellectual attempt at discussing this, just another propaganda thread all about how religion sucks n stuff, and we should all be able to make up whatever we want, and gays are just the wonderfullest people evar and normal after all, not anything to do with morals or principles.

 

lol .. are you claiming to be 'more evolved' than Xians ??? Really? That's hilarious. And what do you base this particular epiphany on, exactly?

 

Collective experiences over millennia build up traditions and build cultures based on those traditions; it works better than 'rationalism'. Rationalism can't work, since it's impossible for anyone to know the relations or even all the variables needed to make a truly 'rational' decisions or conclusions about anything. 'Rationalism' is a 'faith based' belief in itself.

Now, some cultures obviously do far better at this than others, and we can see the results on a planetary scale now.

 

I'll be the first to admit that rationalism isn't a waterproof way of finding the perfect solution, and in fact, it probably isn't even able to come up with anything that everybody will agree with, but I'm not seeing tradition resolving that any better. Tradition is great for those in power, but if you look at women's rights, slavery or similar, tradition didn't do them any good.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "works". A torture machine might "work" without being morally laudworthy which is what I understand this thread to be about.

 

Western traditions evolved the framework and means to make 'women's rights' come about, and also the abolitionist movement was a Christian movement, here in the U.S.. There was no abolition movement anywhere outside of western culture, for instance.

 

All of them do. "It is immoral except when I think it isn't" isn't objective.

 

We all have a problem separating emotion from intellect. In severe cases emotion can suck our IQ numbers to below zero levels. A example of that would be a poor individual that kills themselves for someone they thought loved them (and finding out they didn't in no uncertain terms). Likewise IMO we humans are enabled with a special mind brain triality (lol my word meaning three things). By that I mean as a theist I feel the mind is a vehicle or a conduit for the soul that bridges, and connects the natural universe ie this physical reality with the spiritual universe or realm, which can be thought of as Gods (angels, and your minds, ie your souls etc) realm*. We are Gods hands and do his will on earth is a good example of the mind being able to bridge the spiritual (Gods) realm with the physical (or our) realm. In any case you don’t have to be spiritual to understand this reply, its just that I must explain how I understand the spiritual to describe the non-spiritual. Maybe if you understand that my answer may be easier to understand?

So is morality subjective? No! What is subjective is that ‘thing’ we define as morality. I beleive our concept of morality is wrong in many cases. So our wrongly defined concept of morality is what is subjective. IMO true morality is not subjective because it is defined by Jesus/God and God is an absolute. So God being an absolute God/Jesus defines morality by default. Of course the problem is to atheists and some agnostics etc God does not or may not exist. So according to them morality is subjective!

The real question then is 'does God exist'? The answer to that question will determine the answer to the threads question etc.

 

Is gay sex moral or immoral. I suspect there are many ideas on this topic. Suggesting each has their own subjective views of what is moral or immoral.
You can take any action of humanity and this will apply.

The hot topics in the US now are gays and abortions. If these were truly objective, there'd be no emotional discussions taking place.

 

Morality is most certainly subjective. Which is why it varies from culture to culture and time period to time period.

- - - Updated - - -

Humans DISCOVERED the laws of physics. Big difference.


So you are saying that there can be a circumstance where murdering a 8 month old can be completely moral? Even if it is 1% of people?[/QUOTE]

 

Now all you have to do is show this Jesus/God exists and what absolutes they command. Christians who believe they exist can't figure out what the absolute commands are form humankind. Else there'd be only 1 christian religion.

 

The US and the west were not unique for their reliance on tradition, but they were unique for their reliance on rationalism, governments and societies (especially the US) being influenced by the enlightenment to a much larger extent than other countries.

Tradition had a good couple of thousand years and the entire world to deal with the issues mentioned but didn't, except for exactly when and where the enlightenment brought some rationalism into the mix.

Besides, rationalism isn't detached from reality. If tradition displays any specifics which works well, rationalism will steal them.

 

Yes it is. It's immoral in every instance regardless of circumstance to kill a person because you DINT like the way their hair looks. It however isn't immoral in any circumstance to kill a person you reasonably believe is presenting a clear and present danger to your life.

Not really what I was talking about anyway. Situations don't make something subjectively moral. I was referring to it being subjective from one person to another.

 

It being variable doesn't mean it's subjective. In other time periods and other cultures they may lack the education to be moral.

Why can't I simply say humans discovered morality? If morality is strictly human perception how can we say the laws of physics are not? As more knowledge is gained about our fellow man we lend more compassion to things that once meant you were ostracized or worse.

As we learn more about our universe we discover more laws of physics and how they apply.

I don't know if I agree with you. It's quite possible we discovered morality. I think the only reason we say it's subjective is so that we can give excuses to ourselves for being ignorant in the past.

 

First you used a bad example. Sexual acts are the same regardless if you are gay or straight. The only difference between the two is the participants.

Yes you could apply this to many things and get many answers. That doesn't mean some of them aren't wrong.

I disagree. There is plenty of emotional discussion taking place in regards to evolution existing and that it's objective. There is plenty of emotion regarding how old the earth is, and that is also objective. People have emotional attachments to their beliefs whether they are correct or incorrect. So I disagree with your reasoning.

 

I only post the adjective part:
adjective
4.
being the object or goal of one's efforts or actions.
5.
not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased:
an objective opinion.
6.
intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings, as a person or a book.
7.
being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject (opposed to subjective ).
8.
of or relating to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality.

Age of the earth is subjective. We only can guesstimate it's actual age. Evolution is still a theory for the most part. Nothing objective about it. Except it occurs.
Those are physical things. Morals are hardly physical and bound by laws of physics. Morals are thoughts, words, deeds, humans may or may not do.
Whether a God exists is purely subjective. There are literally thousands of gods in mankinds history. 1000 different ones believed today. Nothing objective there.

 

They did discover morality. And it evolves and changes with time. Objective morals would be the same since it's discovery.

 

It's still subjective. It's a human construct based on majority opinion.

Because it varies from place to place time to time. Physics doesn't change no matter where or when you are.

Reality. Try to defy the laws of physics.

Hence the changing morality.

But we don't alter physics.

It strictly a philosophical exercise.