Absolute Morality/Natural Law?

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Vg, it's a projection, but would the animal in this condition be motivated to do likewise in the other scenarios? I don't believe it would connect or do the same with something very different. I suspect it is emotive.

even if it were emotive it doesnt have to be inherent morality.

many would argue that true altruism doesnt exist and that the person doing it does it excactly for the emotive response, one could say people dedicating their lives to this are addicts of that emotional response.

Objective morality, given a crude definition is a moral code that is binding regardless of whether anyone agrees with it or not. For example, if one starts with the statement 'the practice of sati (the Hindu practice that involves burning a widow on her husband's funeral pyre) is wrong', one then needs to justify how this would work. The code then needs to be ironed out and made non-contradictory in order for it to be described as objective.



Irrelevant question, the question you are asking of what is right and wrong is one of moral epistemology. We are discussing moral ontology.



That is your assumption.



Maybe, I am not sure.



The statement you are replying to related to a statement I made about needing to ground logical truths. Validity and soundness have little to do with the reality of the law of non-contradiction. This statement completely misses the point. Also, logic is not just about validity, logical arguments that are valid and have true premises are called sound.



I don't disagree with this as much as you think I ought to. Perhaps if you think of a mind large enough to ground the abstract object of logical non-contradiction......



The social contract view of morality is in my view not powerful enough to allow us to condemn all that we know to be wrong. See the link I gave to fnord a few pages back.

There is no Absolute Morality. Only a consensus-driven moral code, which can change once a new consensus is reached.

That assumes that nihilists, egoists and libertarians are all irrational. It assumes that all rational agents would agree with your statement; which if taken as an argument against the positions mentioned, is massive question begging (you are just assuming that nihilism is false).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhUHYAcgmUw&feature=feedu[/youtube]

Why not? What do you count as justification? Is 'It never comes across my mind a Christian is a human being' a justification? If every motivation can be used as justification, then any deliberate act of killing have justification.


You are confusing behavioral modification with morality. Say feeding your child is right. But what if I tell you I will mince your whole family if you feed your child? Clearly one can be deterred to do things no matter it is right or wrong or neither.

Moreover, if one kills other people regardless, we mince him to ensure he cannot kill more.


[/quote]
One example is enough to to prove that your universal morality wrong. There are indeed such people who reject morality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoralism

Lol, that proves nothing. The fact that some people reject morality does not mean it does not exist. It does mean that it is not axiomatically true when discussed as a social contract; which was my point to fnord recently. It does limit how it can exist, but AngelRho is a Christian who seems to believe (correct me if I am wrong) that morality is centered in the nature of God. The fact that someone does or does not believe in it has absolutely no impact on this conception.

But AngelRho was claiming much more

It's less an argument and more a framework for developing a hypothesis. It's rough, probably isn't bulletproof, but does show how one MIGHT go about providing material evidence of morality. If you can demonstrate that this has been the pattern throughout human history and would continue to be the pattern into the future, it would dispel ruveyn's idea that it is "doxa, not logos." Granted, the material evidence would be the responses of people, but given the nature of what we're discussing a global consensus that reaches across national, cultural, and even religious lines would be hard to ignore or dismiss. You'd probably want to call psychology as a legit science into question if you really wanted to find a basis for rejection. The above could also be reworded slightly to make clear that we aren't assuming morality to exist. We have to first establish that there even IS morality before we can conclude whether it is absolute.

91 is also right--I do happen to believe that God is the source of morality. I also think that morality is self-evident. Moral absolutes DO exist, and it seems to me that unjustified homicide is ONE moral absolute. Also, logically, moral absolutes have to exist and there is no reason to think anyone is really a moral relativist. If all morality is relative, then 01001011 shouldn't care if I take all his stuff, compromise his Internet accounts and spam/troll with his username, threaten any friends/family he cares about, get his girlfirend pregnant, or beat the snot out of him. The instant he asserts that I have acted in any way unfairly towards him, he asserts something he feels is morally wrong or unjust. Not only that, but he asserts things he feels would consistently be wrong or unjust. So certain actions are not just wrong--they are ABSOLUTELY wrong. You could say "but only for him," but that would also be inconsistent because for at least one person there exists absolute morality.

I suspect that what's really going on for many deniers of absolute morality is just some need to assert their own autonomy in order to justify to themselves things they wish to feel free to do. If YOU don't feel pre-/extra-marital sex is right, then YOU don't do it-- just don't tell ME what I can/cannot do. That's not really a bulletproof argument against moral relativism or for absolute morality, just rather something to consider as a likely motivation for holding certain views.

There are things people ought to do in order to successfully live in a society. You must not confuse that with morality.


That is just your intuition and it is clearly a very naive view on morality.


What logic?


Wrong. I don't even think there is relative moral. I think morality is irrelevant and basically meaningless.


If _I_ am having my property or safety compromised why I should not care.


Indeed what is the point of whining? If you take my stuff, I get you into jail. If you threaten my safety, I shoot you first when I see you. If you beat me, I cut off our arms so you cannot beat me again. As I explained in the last post, it is mutual interest and deterrence that is relevant.

But the crocodiles bite the hippo and the hippo dies, proving once again, no good deed shall go unpunished.

ruveyn

You shouldn't care because, assuming no morality or meaningless morality, you have no right to judge me for doing anything at all, including violating you and yours.


If there are no morals, there is no reason why I should even go to jail. Mutual interest? Why should I even care about mutual interest? That's a moral statement.

Why should I care about deterrence? People beat the system all the time. A little forethought in risk/benefit analysis and I can come up with a plan to get around any deterrent. Sure, I had some moronic teenagers trash my house a few times, and not even the security cameras (which were in plain sight) stopped them from trashing the place one last time. I called the cops on them, burned a DVD as evidence, and FINALLY it stopped--though I don't think anything actually happened to the kids. It was just too easy to identify them. A little planning and they might have found blind spots (since the cameras only covered the front of the property), come up behind the cameras, and disabled them without being detected. Jail time isn't really a deterrent because in most cases it poses no real threat to the life of the criminal. One is guaranteed three hots and a cot, some exercise, and maybe even the occasional conjugal visit. It is also possible to be jailed without having actually committed a crime. At least in American thought, there is such a conviction that those who are wrongly jailed should be set free that convictions are being overturned on new DNA evidence all the time. Deterrent consequences aren't really consequences, so this doesn't work. Suppose I'm just lazy? I steal your stuff, keep what I want, sell what I don't, have an easy life--OR I get caught and serve time in prison where all my needs are provided for anyway. I win either way.

You could cut my arms off, but what hope do you really have of actually cutting my arms off? Suppose I just hire someone else to just beat you up some more, maybe even permanently disable you such that you could never cut off another arm again?

BTW, I meant no offense picking on you as an example, and that's really all it is. The important thing is for anyone reading to put themselves in the same place and imagine how they'd take it. The thing is, you feel your life, safety, and possessions are valuable, if to no one else but yourself, and on some level you feel obligated to protect them. You feel you have every right to seek justice to assert those rights and will do so if necessary. But if there is no morality at all, then you have no guarantee a judge will even help you. There's no reason to even HAVE laws at all without some sense that there ought to be laws.

Laws don't just exist for their own sake. They exist because people feel things "ought" to be a certain way. Any time someone intuitively "feels" something "ought" to be, they are making a moral judgment. If morals don't exist, then there is no "ought" governing actions. You have no natural rights. You can say that laws would be enacted to ensure the safety and life of those under their governance if for no other reason than the sake of the survival of humanity. The problem there is you place a value on survival of a species (human beings) and it would somehow be "wrong" to kill 'em all. That would, again, be a moral statement because of an intrinsic need or desire to protect the human species since there is no other need to keep them alive.

I didn't see this earlier, but figured I "ought" to respond :

Basically, you're right. There would have to be some standard for determining what is justified and what isn't. It's not murder if it's justified--so you have to have a definition of justifiable homicide. THIS is not universally agreed upon, but groups of people can agree based on ideology, religious dictates, and so forth. What can happen is, for example, if you take the rationale for Roman Catholic atrocities and compare against the Bible and decide, "Wait a minute, that wasn't really right/justified." It can be that justified/unjustified is a later revelation, but that by no means does that change what "justified/unjustified" really is. I'm not going to make a case for what a universal standard SHOULD be, but suffice it to say that at the very least situational standards set in place culturally can determine what at the very least will do the least amount of harm for the majority of people. It doesn't change the fact that most accept killing IF sufficient reason is given for doing so and that punishment should be the most severe for cases in which there is not good reason--regardless of what the reasons are.


OK, but WHY modify behavior?


Why? Why does it matter whether he kills more or not?


Well, that doesn't prove universal morality wrong, though. Also, universal morality isn't like a law of physics. It can be broken, rejected, ignored, or one may become desensitized to it. Admit it or not, everyone has SOME sense of morality, making it universal. Further, note that I did point out that perspective/opinions ARE relative, though I think they're all merely facets of the same thing. It doesn't change the big picture, but rather explains an individual view of it. We've been talking about murder--and you've already noticed that justifications for killing vary from person to person and from situation to situation. Whether there is a universal moral prohibition against killing is a kind of yes-and-no thing. I think for the most part human life is valuable to the point the MOST people would agree that killing ought to be avoided IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. Where killing is unavoidable, there has to be a justification for it, with the killer having to answer for why he did it. I had every right to kill the kids who messed up my property a few years ago--there was just a better way to handle it that didn't involve the loss of anyone's life. A general prohibition against taking human life does seem to be a significant moral value that is nearly universally accepted.

I've always said "nearly" universally accepted. Of course there CAN be exceptions. But often times the exceptions can be easily explained. A sociopath doesn't think the rules apply to him, so he just cuts off someone's head to see if they'll bleed. He doesn't need a justification. So the question is why this person is an exception to the rule, and this might be understood as being somehow mentally, emotionally, or otherwise damaged in some way that a moral sense can be switched off. The exception or anomaly doesn't (by definition) exist in ordinary circumstances. There are and have always been places in the world in which there is no clearly defined government and so people look after themselves and each other. They may not be formally charged and prosecuted for crimes, but they still hold to moral standards and espouse common values (common to the culture/tribe/society/etc.). I'd be curious to know what people in Afghanistan and Somalia would have to say, since a degree of lawlessness has been prominent in those regions to varying extents in recent history.

Nowhere does the consideration above involves judging you.


Then why I cannot hire people to do the same and more? You cannot win. Indeed, if you go and threaten other people, then there are more reason for everyone to eliminate you then help you.

In this sense, The law and the legal system is just (in theory) teaming up against the trouble maker, and hiring people to do the job. That is just basic game theory. NO magical morality is needed to explain how people ought to behave.

I ought to ask you how is absolute morality relevant? Why I cannot not kill despite killing is universally wrong?

Perhaps a simple example to distinguish between 'ought to' and morality.

In the US, one ought to drive on the right side of the road, but there is no particular right or wrong to drive on either side.

No. It is the custom to drive on the right in the U.S.. It just as well could have been the other way. There is no ought for that. The ought comes in here - on ought to obey the law and the law (in the U.S.) is drive on the right unless otherwise indicated.

ruveyn