Is there such a thing as objective morality?

[gooseboy]

Yes, they can. The objective cause for morality is one thing, but the simple fact is that there is not a single moral system which is objectively the natural result of human progression. Morals change from situation to situation, from culture to culture, from indivdual to individual. Rather, it seems, that having a similar set of beliefs and values is effective at fostering co-operation and survival.

Right. Having a similar set of beliefs and values may be effective at fostering co-operation and survival. Such morals may be called subjective. But some morals don't work that way, such as incest which I keep going on about. An aversion to incest directly helps the individual regardless of whether the society they are in thinks incest is good or bad.

Would Josef Fritzl have this objective moral aversion to incest? The fact is that incest goes on a lot. Most child abusers are members of the immediate family. An aversion to incest is as subjective as any other part of the moral code.

In the discussion so far I have only been talking about inter-sibling incest. Father - daughter incest is more complex and I don't want to go into it.

BTW, I don't doubt that some (although very few) people would think that inter-sibling incest is perfectly acceptable. But such people would be less likely to survive than those who don't. Thus there is an objective reason that the vast majority of us think that inter-sibling incest is bad.

Really? Popular opinion seems to be "don't give a shit".

Popular opinion about other people committing incest may be "don't give a shit". But what about popular opinion about people themselves committing incest? I think you'll find the vast majority of people will have an aversion to any suggestion that they should shag their siblings.

[Trolldor]

Not cousins, and in some cases aunts or uncles, though.
And secondly, if it's a moral action then what is "right" or "wrong" about it? The reasons given are either "problem with recessive genes" (Not a moral reason) or "just because" (Subjective, without cause or reason)

[Trolldor]

Not cousins, and in some cases aunts or uncles, though.
And secondly, if it's a moral action then what is "right" or "wrong" about it? The reasons given are either "problem with recessive genes" (Not a moral reason) or "just because" (Subjective, without cause or reason)

Edit: Also, "objective morality" would require consistancy with exceptions. Regarding incest as a bit weird but not immoral is not an 'exception'.

[gooseboy]

Not cousins, and in some cases aunts or uncles, though.
And secondly, if it's a moral action then what is "right" or "wrong" about it? The reasons given are either "problem with recessive genes" (Not a moral reason) or "just because" (Subjective, without cause or reason)

1) Well... personally I find the idea of shagging my cousin a bit ick too. But the mechanism that prevents incest is imperfect - eg if siblings are adopted out to different families and only meet in adulthood then there won't be any aversion for them not to shag. But all that says is the mechanism that implements the rule is imperfect.

2) I have been over this quite a few times. I can't say that incest is "objectively wrong" from a moral point of view. But I can say from an evolutionary point of view that it is objectively less right than out-breading. Ie your genes will survive better if they have a code in them that prevents inter-sibling incest.

[charlou]

I haven't got to that. I'm just trying to say that there are objective reasons that we have the morals that we have. To give the analogy I gave before - taste may be subjective but there are objective reasons that cake tastes better than shit (at least to the vast majority of humans).

I agree with this. To continue with your analogy, do you then conclude that there is an objective benchmark for taste?

Yes, they can. The objective cause for morality is one thing, but the simple fact is that there is not a single moral system which is objectively the natural result of human progression. Morals change from situation to situation, from culture to culture, from indivdual to individual. Rather, it seems, that having a similar set of beliefs and values is effective at fostering co-operation and survival.

Right. Having a similar set of beliefs and values may be effective at fostering co-operation and survival. Such morals may be called subjective. But some morals don't work that way, such as incest which I keep going on about. An aversion to incest directly helps the individual regardless of whether the society they are in thinks incest is good or bad.

Now there seems to be a conflation of 'aversion' with 'moral'.

I'll leave the incest example alone as I've noticed in this and other discussions that many people still can't discuss it without transferring their own sense of aversion to the behaviour. I'll use the example of homosexuality as it's become more generally accepted through reason and is more likely to be discussed rationally.

An aversion to homosexuality may give rise to the concept (subjective) that homosexuality is morally bad ... or it may be that the concept that homosexuality is morally bad gives rise to the aversion ... either way the concept - the moral notion - is not objective, it's subjective.

Also, the aversion can be overcome and the moral notion can be changed with the application of reason - a person can go from feeling very uncomfortable about homosexuality to completely accepting it, even to the point of comfortably engaging in homosexual behaviour.

[gooseboy]

@ Charlou

Just to be very clear, just because a moral may be good at reproducing itself I don't think that therefore it is necessarily a 'good moral' in the normal sense.

So for taste, some 'tastes' are good at reproducing themselves within a particular environment, but I don't think this makes them objectively better tastes per se. Rabbits like eating their own shit. Humans don't. Which is right? I'd say both - it depends on the environment. But even within one environment (say for humans) I wouldn't necessarily say that shit objectively tastes worse than cake, just that there's selective pressure on humans to think that shit tastes worse than cake. (Edit: And thus an objective reason why shit tastes worse than cake to the vast majority of humans.)

I don't think that homosexuality is as clear cut as incest, and I don't know the mechanisms that makes one homosexual or straight.

The most straight forward 'moral' that I think almost every human mother has is to not kill their own healthy children. I think this clearly represents the point I am trying to make - a mother who kills her healthy children will be less successful at passing on her genes than one who doesn't. A mother who thinks it's bad to kill her healthy children is less likely to kill her healthy children. Thus there is selective pressure for mothers who think it's bad to kill their own healthy children. From this it would come as no surprise that the vast majority of mothers think it's bad to kill their own healthy children.

Edit: Thus there is an objective reason for mothers to have the moral that killing their own healthy children is bad.

[Trolldor]

Thus there is selective pressure for mothers who think it's bad to kill their own healthy children. From this it would come as no surprise that the vast majority of mothers think it's bad to kill their own healthy children.

It means the moral has an objective cause, not that the moral is objective. I disagree with anyone who says morals are 'absolutely' subjective, that's absurd. But the position I'm arguing is only that the "value" of a moral is not an objective value. Mothers who killed their healthy off spring tended to not reproduce their genes, it doesn't make their action any more or less moral, and is certainly a behaviour that has not been eradicated. If no mother, anywhere, killed their healthy children - deliberately - irrespective of the situation they might be faced with, and where the reason for it was solely empathy and compassion, and that under no circumstances were the results differing according to the surrounding circumstances (ie all results were the same), then it might be said to be an "objective" moral. But it's not. It's an incredibly common ideal, but it's not an objective moral as it (killing their own healthy children) happens far too frequently and for a number of reasons which outnumber those which see them protect and nurture.

[FedUpWithFaith]

Considering morality to be the quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct, and considering objective to be an adjective used to denote something as being 'The Truth' that is not the result of any judgments made by a conscious entity, I agree with Charlou that the phrase 'objective morality' is an oxymoron.

This is true but rather trivial. It illustrates the limitations of language in philosophy more than any deep fact. Of course, we could argue there is no such thing as an objective anything as all information comes through the veil of human perception. I have heard you and Charlou yourselves argue that there is no "TRUTH" that can be known by humans and I've agreed with you. Arguing about objective truth is ultimately an exercise in futility. Most of us deal instead with pragmatic truth. And in pragmatic terms you can't discuss anything objectively without supplying a frame of reference and a measuring stick. Once you do, you can begin to see that there are qualities of morality that are objective. Morality can be tested by its consequences and if something can be tested, it can be objectified at some level.

This becomes obvious in the very oxymoron you're defining, which at its heart, is a tautology of right/wrong decisioning. You have defined morality at a very high level where it loses all practical meaning to real applications. To give it practical meaning, you need a frame of reference which leads to critical arguments on the nature of morality itself (which are ultimately subjective). For example, I could select a purely naturalistic morality, i.e., the qualities of behavior that result in the greatest adaptibility and survival of our species under certain conditions. You may not agree, as I do, that this should be our only frame of reference but if you did accept it then I'm sure you could give many objective moral "laws" to optimize that outcome.

Most of us probably would tend to pick a frame of reference based on some function of minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness (whatever that is) that would have to deal with the conundrum that some level of suffering may be required to maximize happiness in a self-referential way, hence the extreme complexity involved in analyzing morality objectively. Others might try to define optimization functions of achieving human potential however subjectively defined. If you could take all the possible frames of references that could be defined, I have little doubt you'd also find areas of convergence and divergence that also have objective testable qualities.

As an example, I tend to believe that the Golden Rule, "do unto others..." has a substantial level of objectivity and would likely be one convergence point of many of the reference frames mentioned above, as well as others we could speculate upon. The amazing thing is how internal subjective drives and beliefs of rather selfish individuals take on objective properties in the mass action of society. The fact that evolution programs many drives and feelings consistent with such a convergence speaks to this testable objectivity which the balance of your post i didn't quote attests to.

Morality is a path-dependent problem. I have little doubt that many paths can lead or converge on similar outcomes depending on the frame of reference selected. That alone leads to much apparent moral relativism. And given our individual diversity it seems also likely that we should react differently to many moral dilemmas in order to optimize whatever "morality function" we select as our frame of reference.

Although moral frames of reference are testable in principle, human societies don't volunteer for the spectrum of studies required to fully and scientifically test them. We have to rely on the vagaries and incompleteness of history and animal studies. Nevertheless, history, with all its limitations, offers us excellent insight on the various levels of objectivity and relativism in moral codes, from hemlines to murder.

[Hermit]

We are into the eleventh page now, and nobody has at this stage attempted to defend the view that there is, to use Xamonas Chegwé's question in the opening post, "an absolute right and wrong." (original emphasis)

Or did I miss something?

[Drewish]

I am of the opinion that there is, but I tend to lead to... "bad conversational outcomes" on this topic.

[FedUpWithFaith]

We are into the eleventh page now, and nobody has at this stage attempted to defend the view that there is, to use Xamonas Chegwé's question in the opening post, "an absolute right and wrong." (original emphasis)

Or did I miss something?

Why does the issue of objective morality require absoluteness? In my scientific research I like to think I'm working objectively. Yet I rarely have the luxury of absolutes. I'm not even sure I know what "absolute" right or wrong means. Can you define it without a reference frame? Can you define it at all?. Is it simply the lack of relativity? Aside from absolute zero or systems with rigorous defined entities like mathematics which can "live" wholly in the conceptual, "absolute" anything is completely contextually dependent and at a deeper epistemological level it may be meaningless.

We blithely assume that theist can say there is an absolute right and wrong if a God says so.. But is that even true? Dennett argues otherwise quite well in an interesting series on the BBC called the Atheism Tapes hosted by Jonathan Miller (you can probably find it on YouTube). But even if you accept the proposiition that the theist is correct if God exists that's simply because God serves as the reference frame and measuring stick as I argue above. But He is not the only one conceivable. Picking the reference frame and measuring stick is subjective. But once you've done that i suppose you could say that a given behavior is "absolutely" right or wrong in that context.

[Hermit]

I am of the opinion that there is, but I tend to lead to... "bad conversational outcomes" on this topic.

Ah, yes. You did contribute early on. At one stage you said: "There is an objective moral standard for beings of sentience, and it is their achievement and survival." That standard is not about - to reiterate Xamonas Chegwé's question in the opening post - an absolute right and wrong. It is a value judgement made by humans, not something that is self-evidently true. Absolute moral standards - the thing Xamonas Chegwé was asking about - are supposed to be entirely independent of human judgement, and that is an oxymoronic proposition that nobody has advocated yet without redefining what 'objective' means in relation to the way it was used in the opening post.

[charlou]

I am of the opinion that there is, but I tend to lead to... "bad conversational outcomes" on this topic.

So long as people post within the guidelines and keep the forum's community ethos in mind it's fine. I hope you'll continue to participate, Andrew.

[FedUpWithFaith]

Seraph,

Let me turn the table on you. Are you arguing that the nature of morality is completely subjective, that there are no objective components to it? If not, what do you see as the objective components and how would you distinguish them from mine?

Let me point out some other more subtle points. You are relying on the definition of objective as not dependent on "human judgment". OK, let's follow that path. If some advanced alien intelligence came to our planet would they be intrinsically incapable of describing, understanding, and following ALL of our moral rules? What aspects of their being would enable or prevent them from completely comprehending our morality and judgment worse or better than our fellow humans?

Could they fully understand it? To the extent that there is unique human wiring and social evolution involved that answer might be at least partially "no". But my guess is that with a sufficient level of sentience we'd have much in common because much our morality is based on common sense reasoning. And reasoning, if it is completely logical and rational, is actually objective even though it is a form of [human and non-human] judgment. Our biology and hard wiring may determine things we can't reconcile with each other. Perhaps the aliens require 4 mates to reproduce depending on conditions that influence behavior. But my guess is we can at least gain some understanding albeit without associated qualia, why sticking the right tenticle in the left most orifice of an alien's third partner at midnight is considered immoral.

My guess is that advanced alien societies around the universe tend to obey the Golden Rule. If you agree, doesn't that at least suggest there is something objective about it? If it were only a product of human judgment I'd tend to agree with you fully. But I find that unlikely. Societies depend on cooperation and often competition. Those are objective processes which must yield, to some extent at least, logical and objective guidelines of behavior, whether hard wired or logically deduced.

[Hermit]

Are you arguing that the nature of morality is completely subjective, that there are no objective components to it?

Yes. In so far as the opening poster's question is framed, that is to say: is there "an absolute right and wrong" concerning morality - a standard that is independent of human judgement - it would have to be so for a pretty obvious reason: any standard other than the 'self-evident' one (oxymoronic in my view) would have to be determined by humans making a value judgement - and therefore relative. For instance, the assertion made by Gooseboy and others that humankind's morals ought to be measured by the standard of how those morals aid or impede the chances of human survival are relative to that assessment.

The golden rule is ultimately a variation upon the same theme, and it is even more directly of social (rather than 'objective' or 'self evident') nature. Aliens would have no problems comprehending the many varieties of morals generated by homo sapiens sapiens, and they would be able to do so without needing to think of them (including the golden rule) as absolute rights and wrongs.

You are going down the exact same wrong path as Andrew and Gooseboy by qualifying 'objective'. Just look at what you have said here: "Societies depend on cooperation and often competition. Those are objective processes which must yield, to some extent at least, logical and objective guidelines of behavior, whether hard wired or logically deduced."