Absolute Morality/Natural Law?

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No it doesn't. Values are personal and individual. Morality is not. In order to offend someone's values, there has to be another person involved to do the offending.


Could you show just cause for killing my daughter? Was she acting aggressively and posing a real threat to something you value, such as your own safety or life? I highly regard my daughter, and this would regardless be something difficult to come to terms with. You would have to show some extraordinary circumstances in order for me to eventually find some peace about it. Otherwise, justice is demanded.


WHAT VALUE??? You can't offend something that doesn't exist. You can't offend moral sensibilities if morals don't exist. You can't be "just right" if there is no "just right" or "just wrong" if there is no "just wrong." If there really is no such thing, then there is no explanation for why people have emotional responses. You're relegating "right" and "wrong" to irrational hissy fits. You have a much more difficult time convincing people that crying over the death of a loved one is irrational and unjustified than you do convincing them that it's reasonable and justified. Evidence by far more affirms that such things as internal values exist and that there is such a thing as morality than not.


And there is another one that consistently works? It makes much more sense that if we accept our limited perspective, all we can see is a part of a whole and are therefore unsure what EXACTLY the whole encompasses. And you can't explain why some moral rules are almost universally recognized. Answer this: Do most societies allow unjustified killing? The exact justifications are irrelevant, agreement on justification across cultures is irrelevant. Do most societies allow unjustified killing for no apparent good reason?


Evasive answer noted.


Word game noted.


That's not really a response.


Different bio-chemical reaction. Many, if not most, emotional responses stem from stimuli that have nothing to do with basic survival needs. Bio-chemical reactions don't adequately explain the intuitive nature of most emotions, especially not the feeling of having been wronged by someone. And it doesn't answer the question at all. More evasiveness.


Word game.


Word game again, and I'm wordy enough as it is. It's not my job to be someone's dictionary. If you don't know what a word means, look it up. It just looks to me like someone is being evasive.

Both the Absolute and the Relative belong to one and the same Reality.

absolutely true, relatively speaking.

ruveyn

Groupies of Foucault now have more cracks than the Portland Vase.

Tadzio

Then, exactly where is the 'moral judgment'?


Why do I need to show you? Indeed you never proved there is such thing as 'just cause'. How is you finding some peace relevant? I am 'just right' no matter what you feel. The FACT is you want 'justice' not because because you think I am 'wrong' (you can't even define what is 'wrong'), but you want to feel better EMOTIONALLY.


You consider the behavior of damaging things you value undesirable.


Offending 'moral sensibility'? What is that? Your new utterance?


Right. There is no such thing.


Baseless assertion.


You continue to utter the same nonsense. What can I say?


Based on what you make such assertions? What do you think adequately explain why a dog 'protects' its own 'territory'?

How is the so called 'universal morality' produce bio-chemical change in the lump of atoms known as emotion in a human?


It is someone who continue to utter the same nonsense words. Pretending he has a meaningful worldview. The refusal to clarify his point only makes he looks desperate.

When someone does something that another perceives as wrong, the observer or victim has made a moral judgment. If someone opts for a course of behavior on the basis that course is right, he has made a moral judgment.


But why should anybody give a crap about how I feel EMOTIONALLY? If I drag you in front of a judge for killing my daughter because I "feel" I deserve justice, will a judge say, "no, you're just having an irrational response and subsequent hissy fit because someone killed your daughter. Boo hoo. Next case..."? That's not how it works in the real world. Someone will evaluate the circumstances surrounding the homicide and decide either that you had some justification for killing my daughter or that what you think of as a justification really isn't. You might be right in your OWN eyes. But that doesn't mean other people can't hold you responsible.

People act on emotional responses all the time. Emotional responses on their own simply aren't enough. Nor do emotional responses show how a course of action is justified--how it is right or wrong. Why value certain kinds of emotions over others at all? Why is it "more right" to feel a certain way or another? Why is it "more right" to act on certain emotions than others? Right/wrong are questions of morality, not emotions.


And who exactly cares about what I find to be valuable? I could just be having delusional hissy fits if it's only a matter of emotion. People don't take people to court because someone hurt their feelings. Morality best explains how someone would want to avoid undesirable circumstances at all.


Another non-response.


Evidence suggests otherwise.


Basic logic.


Evidence, please.


Evidence IS possible and does exist. You're ignoring an entire scientific discipline to make this assertion.


Evasive answer noted.


Why are certain behaviors undesirable?


More evasiveness. This isn't really an answer.

Besides, it depends on what you mean by "most societies." The USA declared independence without the consent of its current leadership. France did the same, a few times... Germany went through a few turnovers prior to WWII. And I don't think from the end of the Tzars to the fall of the Berlin wall that the Soviets ever acknowledged that they even had any PEOPLE under their control... Does Italy even HAVE a government??? The Israelis can't make up their minds if their Jewish or Muslim, with one group pretending the other doesn't even exist. The people of Somalia don't even act like they WANT a government. What about Egypt? What about Libya?

However, fundamentally they DO value law and order and justice. Some of those people feel betrayed and ignored. They've had enough. And what you find in places like Libya is fewer people can justify keeping the current government in place. Now why would they feel that way? Because they can examine their own actions and conclude that they themselves are unjust, that they value justice, and are resolved to provide it. Forget about the leadership, because the leadership is ineffective. They are offended by the immorality of said leadership. They believe they can do better, and by declaring independence they believe that more people can be better served. Why? They value their own society and feel it is RIGHT to preserve it in the best interests of the nation. They are collectively making a moral judgment.


Still evasive.


Evasive.


Evasive. We're talking about humans here, not dogs.


How should I know? That isn't my concern. My concern is observed behavior, not what goes on in the brain. I think that the range of human emotion is far too complex to explain as mere bio-chemical change, at least in those simplistic terms. The plain fact is we intrinsically, intuitively feel that it is wrong to do certain things for certain reasons and that this feeling appears to be largely universal in nature. The bio-chemical or bio-mechanical process alone is inadequate to explain this. Rather look at the behaviors themselves and what people feel when they are involved.


I'm not the one trying to lock a discussion in silly word games. I've answered your questions and responses as best I could. If you're struggling with difficulties of the English language, I can't exactly be that much help to you.

Yet you said one's personal feeling is not a basis of moral judgment

Contradiction.


Nonsense. The law does not distinguish why you take me to court. Whether other people decide to hold me responsible or whether I am 'right in my own eye' has nothing to do with whether I am 'just right' or not.

When you say rational / irrational you are just wrongly assuming both the need and the means to satisfy the need must be both rational / irrational. It is possible to for one to satisfy her emotion / irrational needs with rational means. e.g. building a rocket just to see the view of space. That is why I asked you to define 'rational'.


The whole right / wrong / justified is nonsense. There is on 'more right'. There is no question of morality. Do you have anything more than repeating the same debunked nonsense again and again?


Prove it then. No question begging.


Fact: emotions exist, your 'right' and 'wrong' is not even consistent. If you cannot accept that it is your problem.


Read Hume's law. All scientific research just explain why people have similar personal values / emotional responses. It doesn't make them 'just right' or 'just wrong'.


I mean they are undesirable relative to particular value systems. There is no universally undesirable behavior. Even though the same value is shared by many people does not make it universal (e.g. slavery).


OK then by definition if a killing is allowed then by your definition it is justified (either nobody ask for 'justification' or the killer has an acceptable reason). It is not even logically possible for an allowed killing to be 'unjustified'. What you are asserting is just trivially true by virtue of question begging.


That is still not 'allowed'.


Non response.


Based on what you assert humans need another model?


In other words, you admit that you do not have any model. Your so called 'universal morality' offers NOTHING. You simply pretend the problem doesn't exist by regarding humans and 'morality' as magic.


Except hte dictionary definition is not clear enough in this specific concept. It is you who is struggling with serious philosophical discussion.

Morality is largely opinion. It is not well founded like mathematics.

ruveyn

Morality is a Human invention. It exists only within our minds.

Correct. But it has effects in the external public world.

ruveyn

Ah, but you have it backwards.

Morality exists regardless, and at least two people are required to detect that a moral rule has been violated. If someone's "feelings" get hurt, just as an example, it is because an underlying moral sense has been offended, and it takes another being, whether human or supernatural, to do the offending. If morality doesn't exist, one need not get his feelings hurt.

So, no, personal feelings are not the bases of moral judgments. People already have a sense of morality. They wouldn't have personal feelings one way or another if it didn't exist.


You're confusing personal values and morality. They aren't the same.


Actually, it does. Now, true, you can have just about anybody arrested for just about anything, but law enforcement can't take you seriously if you can't show "probably cause." I dated a woman who was dealing with a stalker ex-bf. When she finally decided to go to the police, she was asked several questions which basically showed she had no cause for "stalking" but because of the emotional disruptions that he was responsible for she did have cause for "harassment." She was distraught, his mere presence was enough to frighten her, she was clearly disturbed, and she deserved justice. So he got arrested and we had a quick misdemeanor hearing a few weeks later. The JP simply asked if he knew where she was, did he go there, and did she get upset on certain occasions. He was forced to admit that he was where everyone said he was and that she had asked that he leave her alone on other occasions. Open-and-shut. Guilty, pay the fine, and leave the b!tch alone.

But without talking to a police officer first and showing cause for arrest, she wouldn't have had a leg to stand on in court. The law very much DOES distinguish why you would take anyone to court.


Yes, it does. Who makes the laws? If you violate a law, you're "just wrong" whether you agree with lawmakers or not. The only escape clause you have is if it is universally agreed upon that the law being violated is an unjust law that needs to be revised or thrown out.


No, I'm not. Now, I agree that not everything requires a reason/rationality. Sure, I do stuff on a whim. But random, irrational things that I do should not cause people harm or offend someone for any reason. If it's an accident, ok, then I say "I'm sorry" and I make sure I don't do that again.

What you are saying, however, is that there is no underlying, guiding morality for which to even have an emotional response. If (and only if) that is true, then there is no need at all for any kind of retaliatory reaction. If what you are saying is true, then there cannot be any cause/effect response to perceived wrongdoing. There can't even really be wrongdoing. If someone breaks your car windshield purely because he randomly felt like it, then you could just break his face because you randomly felt like it. And if breaking his face immediately followed his breaking your windshield, then it's merely coincidental. Because it would be merely coincidental (i.e. there's no reason why you SHOULD respond), then it's very unlikely that it should even happen at all. The problem is if that is the reality, then you have a whole virtual universe filled with cause/effect relationship coincidences that shouldn't exist. Explaining each event as a random act when a better explanation exists is ad hoc. It makes better sense and is less ad hoc if there IS an underlying cause, a basis, or a standard for comparison that explains why we react the way we do. Not only that, but it explains just as much the reasons why we SHOULD do certain things as it does why we shouldn't.


But you haven't debunked anything. You just say "there is no...morality" over and over again. Just repeating the same thing doesn't make it true.


Law of Identity. A=A.


Evidence please. Why is it a fact that emotions exist? Can you show me what an emotion looks like? I've never seen one.


Still ignoring a whole branch of science. Sorry, not buying it.

Hume said "For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained..." Well, you can observe that unjustifiable homicide (murder) is nearly globally prohibited, giving reason to believe that it is a universal truth. That absolute, universal morality exists to make us somehow feel that we shouldn't murder in cold blood adequately explains why we'd feel that way. And the same can be said regarding other behaviors.


Well, sure...


Commonalities among seemingly unrelated societies and their legal codes suggest otherwise.


No, and I agree here. Only absolute morality would explain why people would gradually come to a consensus that slavery be abolished where ever and when ever possible.


I'm not sure I understand how it is question-begging.

Just because something is "allowed" doesn't mysteriously make it justified, though. Remember, perception is relative because the perceiver's scope is narrow. But that doesn't mean we all don't merely have a view of a small piece of the same thing. A lot of behaviors that might have been justified at one point in time might be found to be unjustified later. Does that mean that they really were justified once-upon-a-time? No. It just means that people have gained an improved understanding of it.

Was the Catholic treatment of Galileo as a person justified? No. Did THEY think they were justified? Sure. Do they still feel that way? Well, yes AND no... Yes in the sense they maintained academic and scientific integrity. No in the sense that their treatment of Galileo as a person was unduly harsh. Were there conditions in place that might have clouded their judgment at that time? Absolutely--the Protestant Reformation was in full effect and the Catholics were having to come to terms with the fact that they were about to lose control of entire nations to the Protestant movement. That doesn't make how they responded "more right." But one can't look back on it and honestly claim that they don't understand why they acted the way they did.

Merely "having your reasons" doesn't make you justified. But because you have an innate sense to act according to what is ultimately right, the tendency will be towards trying to at least have some reason in order to justify to yourself why you should do certain things. The Catholic Church claims that the Bible is an authoritative text. Nothing in the Bible justifies the actions of the Catholics at certain points in history. So can we really, honestly say that the Catholic church was justified in its actions?

The abortion issue is a modern-day example of "allowed" versus "justified." It may be legal. But that doesn't make it right.


Then we seem to be in agreement on something, although I'm somewhat confused as to what that is exactly.


Exactly.


Did I say we need another model? Morality works just fine by me.


Straw man. I said nothing about magic.

Universal morality just simply explains that the moral sense of right/wrong applies to everyone. That's not really a profound revelation. It's just like saying that "all humans have DNA." Saying morality is universal is not like saying that morality is absolute any more than saying "all humans have IDENTICAL DNA." Absolute morality would be more precise--like saying "THIS chromosome determines eye color." Absolute morality WOULD be universal, but if we're just talking about universal application, it doesn't assume that morality is absolute. Two different things here.


Define "hte." I can't find that anywhere. Define "clear." Define "enough." Define "concept."

I don't agree that it is a human invention. I would say it only applies to humans. As to being immaterial, which is basically what you're saying, I fully agree.

The problem with "not well founded" is that certain moral ideals or laws are codified into legal systems with the intention that entire societies abide by them and subject themselves to discipline if they break those laws. If you can find commonalities among legal systems--heck, "murder" is even illegal in Iran--then you have evidence that morality is more than just opinion. What we agree on that constitutes murder specifically, however, WOULD be more a matter of opinion.

It is often said that "you can't legislate morality." But isn't that a silly statement? If we all agree that murder should be punished, that murder is punishable because it is wrong, and we pass laws to that effect, isn't "legislating morality" what we've done?

Morality can be imposed and/or enforced at the point of a gun when people do not voluntarily comply, but then that is actually legislating justice over immorality, is it not?

the great battle of semantics and concepts.

is it really that hard to believe that people wiould reach the same conclusions about murder, that it is largely a bad practice within a society?

Good question, and I'm not sure exactly how to answer. I suppose justice is also legislated. But where does justice come from? Does justice demand that we have morality, or does morality demand justice?

That's the thing, though. I'm doing my best to avoid a battle of semantics. There is nothing deep or mysterious about any of this.


I don't see why it is so hard to believe.

What we're struggling with is this: If morality exists, we can make moral judgements. If morality does not exist, we can not make moral judgements.

Take your question as a prime example. You describe "murder" as "largely a bad practice" "within society."

First you have to understand exactly what murder is: Unjustifiable homicide characterized by a malicious intent. Only in a few cases is homicide ever justifiable. Accidental death is unjustifiable. Negligent homicide is unjustifiable. In accidental death, there is no motive nor intent to kill someone, so a crime really hasn't been committed. Sh!t happens. Negligent homicide isn't the same as murder because it can't be shown that there was an intention to kill someone; however, it does show that conditions existed that could have caused death that the responsible party was aware of and willfully declined to remedy. Accidental death isn't murder, isn't justified, but by its nature requires little if any penalty. Negligent homicide (if tried in a criminal court) would require some punitive action such as fines, possibly incarceration, and likely costly wrongful death civil suits besides. Self-defense is a form of justifiable homicide, as is public execution of criminals. Murder, on the other hand, is never an accident.

It's not a surprise to me that we think of things such as murder, negligence, and so forth as being "bad."

Second, you said "largely a bad practice." Obviously not EVERYONE thinks of murder as a bad practice, but the more famous examples of murder tend to be psychopaths and/or sociopaths. But these are people who tend to be aware of societal/moral rules and somehow act as though those rules don't apply to them. I consider mental illness and psychiatric/psychologic anomalies to be outliers, though, and not within the realm of expected, normal behavior. If this kind of behavior were the norm for more people, there'd be less of a reaction from the majority against it. Sure, there are such cases of mass hysteria... But we also understand that mass hysteria also has underlying causes or triggers that are outside the norm. It is, in other words, not normal to expect murderous behavior.

The problem with your statement (I agree with you, btw) is that some will try to argue that "bad practice" is a subjective term because "bad" means different things to different people. Regardless of what exactly constitutes "bad," we still desire to avoid "bad behavior." We do this either by adhering to a more-or-less objective standard OR by coming up with excuses for why we would participate in what might be bad behavior--maybe even redefining the behavior itself in such a way that it is actually "good" behavior (whether it really is or not according to an objective standard).

"Within society": IF and only if there are no standards (objective or subjective, it doesn't matter), then there is no reason why a rational person should even care about society. What if "society" is wrong and I'm right? Well...ok, that's question-begging because if we abolish morality there is no wrong/right. Better to ask, "What if society is incorrect and I'm correct?" about a particular matter of will. Society cannot claim to be justified in compelling you to assume a given behavior. And you cannot claim to be justified for reacting against society. Things like "individual" and "society" are just meaningless words when it comes to justice and how justice applies to each.

The ONLY way something or someone can be called "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," "justified," "unjustified" is if a standard exists by which they may be judged as such. You may disagree with me here, but I say that the only way you can talk about "fairness" and "consistency" in the law for all people is if that standard is objective. If objective standards exist, they are evidence that some standards are unchangeable and applicable to all people across cultures and societies. And if unchangeable, universal standards that apply globally exist, then they must be absolute. We call that sense of standards for right/wrong morality. And morality is absolute, not relative.