Are morals objective?

[charlatan]

I personally tend to think the hard problem isn't whether morals are objective but whether we can motivate people to be moral, given their subjective dispositions.
Motivations do not seem to be without a subjective component. Nor do I think one can't form value systems with a significant subjective component which can be said to be premised in either an individual's or culture's collective psyche.

Even Kant, the great champion of non-passion-based morality, seemed to admit to the utility of not distancing oneself from the suffering of creatures, so as to motivate oneself to act morally -- even if the moral truths themselves were derived from reason.

 

[wolly.green]

What does a particular person's thought process of his morals have to do with my explanation? People think whatever they want to. It has nothing to do with me.

You said people follow morals out of fear of retribution. But tis is not so obvious now. Can you justify this belief?

 

[charlatan]

Maybe another important "hard problem" is whether in any given state of affairs, there's a clear moral answer on how to act. I personally tend to think no, because there may be any number of practical limitations which create situations where more or less any outcome would be immoral, and forcing there to be a choice between these immoralities dangerously brings us closer to the realm of sentiments, values, and so on.

I often react to the conflicts between deontological/consequentialist ethics by feeling some of the arguments for/against constantly seem to mention practical limitations (e.g. one argument for deontological is that it offers some clear constraints on what someone's duty is)...in a way I don't think is conducive to producing objective answers ever.

 

[wolly.green]

Sure, all of that sounds right; it's also the reason why I emphasize that seeking good explanations in physics is still the paradigm to go by -- neither empiricism nor pure mathematics will get you there...it's just both these things help produce the hard-to-vary characteristic, even if they alone won't produce the best explanation (which will often involve imagination and so on, like you say). In fact, the fact they're (empirical knowledge and mathematical knowledge) related (the good old "it's amazing how mathematics really seems to be how nature's laws are written" saying) is the really wonderful thing rendering pretty staunch hard-to-vary.

It depends on what you mean by render. Since theories in physics are reached through a creative leap of imagination, its this creativity that product explanations that are difficult to vary, not mathematics. I'm also inclined to agree with Stephen Wolfram when he said that mathematics is a relic of history. Mathematicians have specifically shaped mathematics to prove particular interesting theorems. Although empirical and mathematical knowledge are related, this has largely to do with our own imagination, not some universal property of mathematics. So in what sense do Yu mean render?

 

[wolly.green]

Maybe another important "hard problem" is whether in any given state of affairs, there's a clear moral answer on how to act. I personally tend to think no, because there may be any number of practical limitations which create situations where more or less any outcome would be immoral, and forcing there to be a choice between these immoralities dangerously brings us closer to the realm of sentiments, values, and so on.

I often react to the conflicts between deontological/consequentialist ethics by feeling some of the arguments for/against constantly seem to mention practical limitations (e.g. one argument for deontological is that it offers some clear constraints on what someone's duty is)...in a way I don't think is conducive to producing objective answers ever.

I'm no sure I understand. Why should there be limits on what we can know? On problems that are solvable?

 

[charlatan]

Since theories in physics are reached through a creative leap of imagination, its this creativity that product explanations that are difficult to vary, not mathematics.

Well, I think it's going to be reason and imagination which ultimately produce the explanations and decide if they're hard to vary. However, I think the fact there's a rigid map from our sensible experience to mathematics (the "quasi-empirical" character of quantitative truths) is crucial in terms of it being possible to find them in the first place for physical phenomena at least.

That doesn't mean the supply of good explanations always involves empiricism or mathematics necessarily -- physics is a reductive endeavor and that's quite related to the relevance of empiricism and/or mathematics.

 

[charlatan]

I'm no sure I understand. Why should there be limits on what we can know? On problems that are solvable?

It's not so much a limitation on what we can know so much as a limitation on what problems are even well-posed. I'm not sure subjecting ethics to tons of practical limitations renders it intelligible, and I see that as responsible for a lot of relativist positions (which I don't agree with myself).

I think ethics with practical limitations kinda becomes politics...where the goal becomes more to lessen the damage done (hmmmm there we see utilitarianism creeping in) than to really achieve pristine objective truth!! It's akin to the difference between legal theory and ethical theory -- surely we can say there's the additional criterion of enforcement in legal theory which limits what ethical truths we view as legally enforceable (or, even if enforceable, ones we don't think should be put into that sphere).

 

[Kaotiklysm]

Objective in the sense of existing externally in a way which multiple people can observe? To an extent yes, even if the morals* turn out to be "false", they can still exist objectively. Furthermore, there can be morals which are held across people in general, and so can be termed objective because they are independent of the individual, such as not inflict unnecessary suffering, especially to family.

There there is the question of whether morality is absolute or purely relative. If it were purely relative, then if we measure something as morally good, then if we measured it from someone else's point of view it would seem morally bad. If it were absolute, then it would be possible to say that an action is morally good or bad without needing to consider who is doing the measuring.

*sometimes a distinction is made between morals and ethics, where morals are an individual's beliefs on right and wrong and may or may not apply to people more generally, and ethics is externalised codes of right and wrong, which even if flawed, are still termed objective

 

[Kaotiklysm]

Morals are both relative and absolute; absolute because there ultimately is a measure of the worthiness of experience - how good it feels - but relative because there are no definite rules on how to achieve this.

To give an analogy, it's like making money in a business: that's absolute because there is an absolute measure, i.e. the dollars amounts, but how to make those dollar amounts is relative to the factors at play, and also a certain action may cause a loss in money at first but lead to more money being made in the long run. That's similar to "the end justifies the means".

As for the terms subjective and objective, you may as well speak about Fi and Fe.