Not sure why this got removed from 196lemmy…blahaj.zone but it would be real nice if moderation on Lemmy gave you some sort of notification of what you did wrong. Like an automatic DM or something
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Came here to say this exact thing
I would have used a lot more words, but that’s exactly what I wanted to say.
I would have just said Patrick’s opinions are subjective not objective
I sadly already made me 200w comment before reading the comments 🥲
Honest question: if a person living in the west in the 21st century thinks they should have the right to take people of a different race as their own personal slaves, do you think there is no basis to call this person immoral? The best we can do is say that this person is incompatible with the time and place they are in?
We in the west have a basis to call this person immoral.
The places where slavery is legal do not have that basis.
Ask the slaves that lol. That argument is moot because it relies on legitimizing the oppression committed by slavers by not seeing enslaved people as part of the population/group. Their history was not recorded the same way the slaver’s history was, yet they were still humans that thought about, talked about, and theorized about morality too. You don’t get to claim to know the group consensus of a past society just because slavers used oppression to erase the viewpoints of those who disagreed.
a person living in the west in the 21st century
This qualifier alone shows that “objective” moral truth is defined only by where/when you live. You’re also showing your own modern western bias here.
If you really think chattel slavery was morally acceptable for the slave owners just because there was a group consensus that the slaves were inferior… then I’m willing to let you go on thinking that
edit: Thankfully, like truths in metaphysics, moral truths are not determined by group consensus. So your downvotes mean nothing lol
I feel like you’re intentionally missing your own point.
You’re being downvoted because that was clearly bad faith. Slavery doesn’t have group consensus among all involved, not even all non-slaves.
Consensus obviously cant mean every single person agreeing, its about what the widespread view in the culture is.
Either way its a hypothetical, doesnt matter if such a culture never existed in reality: suppose slavery was condone by some culture. Wouldnt that have made it moral?
Going by the meme: if a society is mysognist you would be wiling to agree its correct for them and womens rights activist in that society should stop (theyre going against what the culture has decided is moral, making the activist immoral)?
suppose slavery was condone by some culture. Wouldnt that have made it moral?
By definition, yes.
Southern whites in the pre Civil War period considered slavery to be a moral good.
Other cultures disagreed, to the point that this particular culture was all but destroyed.
When I asked if slavery was right for them, I wasnt trying to describe their attitudes. I am saying that a consequence of thinking cultural relativism is true is that you must admit that they were correct in the attitudes they held (because their culture agreed it was right).
a consequence of thinking cultural relativism is true is that you must admit that they were correct in the attitudes they held
No, and that’s stupid.
Let me clarify, because I want to make sure you understand. I’m not saying that I have a different take. I’m not saying that perhaps you misunderstand. I’m saying that’s a fundamentally stupid thing to believe.
The whole point of relativism is that your simplistic concept of ANYTHING being “correct” is wrong. It’s relative. It’s not correct. Nothing is correct. Some people just thought it was correct.
Relativism says there is no objective truth but you’re just for some reason trying to say that relativism believes in objective truth but only for supporting bad things. It’s a ridiculous, childish take on a philosophy and I’m having trouble understanding how you could come to that conclusion. It has the intellectual rigor of “I am rubber you are glue”.
Cool down.
You are thinking of nihilism (specifically error theory it seems - that there are no moral facts and people are wrong for thinking there are) because relativism (whether relative to subject or culture) doesnt deny that there are moral truths, just that they are only correct for the individual or culture that holds them.
Cultural relativism: The view that an act is morally right just because it is allowed by the guiding ideals of the society in which it is performed, and immoral just because it is forbidden by those ideals.
Ethical subjectivism: The view that an act is morally right just because (a) I approve of it, or (b) my commitments allow it. An action is wrong just because (a) I disapprove of it, or (b) my commitments forbid it.
Same book as the other comment of mine you replied to.
So, no, I didnt get it wrong. And the consequences I pointed out do follow from cultural relativism.
The point is that slavery was seen as morally acceptable at some time and the moral relativist is forced to say that that means slavery was okay during that time. Most people here want to be moral relativists but they don’t want to accept its consequences.
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I think you don’t quite understand moral relativism.
No they understand just fine. Here’s a quote from an ethics book that gets at the same issue:
The extreme sexism at the heart of honor killings is but one of many examples that raise doubts about cultural relativism. After all, societies are sometimes based on principles of slavery, of warlike aggression, of religious bigotry or ethnic oppression. Cultural relativism would turn these core ideals into iron-clad moral duties, making cooperation with slavery, sexism, and racism the moral duty of all citizens of those societies. The iconoclast—the person deeply opposed to conventional wisdom—would, by definition, always be morally mistaken. This has struck many people as seriously implausible.
Russ Shafer-Landau - The fundamentals of ethics p.293 (“Some Implications of Ethical Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism”)
Cultural relativism would turn these core ideals into iron-clad moral duties
Without knowing the context for this paragraph, this statement sounds like utter bullshit.
If that result is absurd, that probably just means you think cultural relativism is bullshit.
I can share a link to get the book, the context is quite short.
But most people don’t believe this.
Believe what?
I don’t think the slaves ever saw slavery as acceptable.
There were Roman slaves devoted to their masters. They sometimes married them and often took their master’s surname name when they were freed. Then kept slaves themselves. So yes, some slaves saw slavery as acceptable.
How’s freshman Intro. to Philisophy treatin’ ya?
I don’t see the contradiction here. Right Person is just asking what Left Person’s beliefs on those matters are, not whether they believe those beliefs are objective.
Don’t you see? Objective truth is whatever moral absolutsts believe. And no, they don’t see the contradiction there.
I couldn’t agree more!
Shit meme, so apt for the community, I guess. Patrick represents a guy stating his own morality, which doesn’t oppose the final sentence, meaning this meme doesn’t follow the expected format nor does it have a point whatsoever.
This doesn’t prove anything? I mean… There are people who don’t think women should vote, or that slavery was good…
This is no conclusion. You can call it objective. All moral is based on subjectiveness: Different people have different morals. Especially ideology can have different morals. For example Nazism has a morality that the (in the eyes of the ruling party) “weak” kin should be exterminated and the “strong” kin should spread more and survive.
This is a moral standpoint, and because objects like “good” and “bad” are based on moral, the political correctness of the moral is subjective.
In ideology there is no right and wrong if you have no premises and no moral yourself, so to speak, if you’re really objective.
Calling something objective is in truth just reactionistic.
But of course I think that in any debate there should be moral premises, like for example a democratic parlament should always have the premise: “for the people”.
In reality it’s quite different sadly.
Of course different people again have different understandings on what makes everyone in a democratic society happy, but for example right wing parties that praise capitalism or fascism there are definitely people that would gain from that.
Capitalism has the consequence that the rich get richer, and so to not devalue the currency, the poorer have to get poorer, even if they don’t get less money, but the amount of money that exists devalues the money of the poor. Inflation. And if political power can be bought through lobbying or corruption, there does not exist a democracy.
Fascism has the consequence that one group of people become absolute and govern the rest which is definitely not democratic.
This seems to assume reality is only that what can be measured by humans currently. But decisions have consequences even if we can not foresee them. To assume that there is no objective morality assumes that consequences were random or exist independent from causes.
And if political power can be bought through lobbying or corruption, there does not exist a democracy.
I have to disagree there, in that I think it’s a bit more subtle.
There will always be people who seek power for self-enrichment and at the same time those people who see having power over others as a great responsability (who would probably be the best in terms of fair and honest yielding of that power), often avoid it exactly because they feel the “weight on their shoulders” would the too much to bare.
So you’ll always have at least some people holding power who use it for personal upside maximization, including via corruption.
Your really can’t have a perfect Democracy totally free of crooks in power, as even if you magically made it so, lots of people seek power for personal upside maximization and sooner of later some would get through.
Instead, what Democracy has is whole concept of the 3 independent Pillars Of Democracy, the Political, the Judicial and the Press, which watch each other and have some for of power over each other (the Press indirectly via influencing voters), and that’s what’s meant to create a sort of “dynamic” balance as crooks seek power but at the same time crooks in power are getting caught and thrown out (even punished).
Now, if you look at some of the most flawed of Democracies (personally I don’t think they’re trully democratic because their voting systems are mathematically heavilly rigged to create a power duopoly) - the US and the UK - you will notice that the Press was subverted first (and this has been going on long enough and deep enough that some people genuinelly believe partisanship - i.e. taking sides in Politics, so submission to a Political Party - in the Press is a good thing) and then the Political system became more and more corrupt, with in the US the additional problem that even the Judiciary pillar has been subverted at several levels by the Political pillar (not that in the US there was ever much independence of between them to begin with as lots of top positions in the Judiciary are of political nomination).
Anyways, all this to say that we’ll always have pressures making political power “buyable”, hence why its so important to understand the function of and protect the other Pillars of Democracy and their independence as they’re part of the mechanics which pushes the other way, and whilst the system cannot achieve and remain perfect in a static way, it can achieve a dynamic balance that as the crooks get found out, kicked out and their deeds undone.
Capitalism has the consequence that the rich get richer, and so to not devalue the currency, the poorer have to get poorer
I don’t think that’s true in an economy where the population is constantly growing. It’s like saying in a utopia where everyone has the same wealth, having kids would make everyone poorer.
Patrick’s last sentence is still consistent with everything that he said above. He expressed HIS opinion and HIS morals above.
No ethical framework can be truly objective. This is because there is no universal constant that backs any ethical framework. We need universal constants to verify an objective statement. For example, the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference. Also it is measureable. How do you measure the permissibility of an action? We do not know.
In conclusion, Patrick was right when he implied that there was no objectivity in ethics.
I’m seeing this point about moral epistemology a lot in this thread. Of course, philosophers have constructed convincing arguments in favor of different theories (classic ones being virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism). If you were to take a look at those arguments you might be persuaded to one camp or another.
Also, I find this objection makes more sense for the moral skeptic than the moral relativist. If we really can’t know the moral value of an action, then why settle for saying its based on what humans think? Why not just go all out and say either 1) there is no such thing as moral value or 2) there is moral value but we have no way of knowing what it is.
If we really can’t know the moral value of an action, then why settle for saying its based on what humans think
I never said that we can’t know the moral value of an action. All that I’m saying is that the moral value of an action is dependent on the entity giving the value. Morals cannot exist without beings capable of having morals.
Why not just go all out and say either 1) there is no such thing as moral value or 2) there is moral value but we have no way of knowing what it is.
Because saying either of these two statements would not reflect reality. There IS a thing such as moral value. It’s just not constant for all beings capable of having morals. For the second option, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that there is indeed a universal moral constant. Hence, “knowing” that value goes out of the window.
Moral judgements are relative, moral truth is not.
Another philosophy “conundrum” solved by your friendly neighborhood Skelator! See you next time!
NYEH HEH HEH!
isn’t moral truth determined by people making moral judgements?
No. Truth is not relative. Interpretation and consensus, neither are truth.
i know truth itself is not relative, so what is moral truth? to me it sounds like saying that following X persons subjective view of morality we can objectively say that Y is bad. this just then makes objectively proving a persons subjective morality a relative truth though, and not an objective truth, because we could express any side of morality, good or bad, objectively, and as you said, truth is not relative and only one truth must exist.
if you’re talking about things like Sam Harris’ definition of morality being a sort of “majority wellbeing”, i’m sure that while we can theoretically allow for the redefinition of morality and make some objective truths regaridng that subjecte moral viewpoint, but as it is not being absolute in the universe and moreso being related to subjective wellbeing of the most amount of living things, i feel that this is still just fulfilling the subjective definitions.
interestingly though, Sam Harris will go on all day about how we can’t redefine free will as being the ability to make choices which all life evidently has in common. just because these choices aren’t ultimately free, he rejects the “compatibilist” redefinition of free will.
Half of the comments in here are a bunch of equivocations on the words.
“Objective” morality would mean there are good things to do, and bad things to do. What people actually do in some hypothetical or real society is different and wouldn’t undermine the objective status of morality.
Listen to this example:
- Todd wants to go to the bank before it closes.
- Todd is not at the bank.
- Todd should travel to the bank before it closes.
This is a functional should statement. Maybe Todd does go, or maybe he doesn’t. But if he wants to fulfill his desires, he should travel if he wants to go to the bank. The point is that should statements, often used in morality, can inform us for less controversial topics.
Here’s another take: why should we be rational? We could base our epistemology on breeding, money, or other random ends. If you think I should be rational, you’re leveraging morality to do that.
Most people believe in objective morality, whether they understand it that way or not. Humans have disagreed over many subjects throughout history. Disagreement alone doesn’t undermine objectivity. It’s objectively true that the Earth revolves around the sun. Some nut case with a geocentric mindset isn’t going to convince me otherwise. You can argue it’s objective because we can test it, but how do I test my epistemology?
This is just a philosophy 101 run around. I’m a moral pluralist who believes in utilizing many moral theories to help understand the moral landscape. If we were to study the human body, you’d use biology, physics, chemistry, and so on. When looking at a moral problem, I look at it from the main moral theories and look for consensus around a moral stance.
I’m not interested in debating, but there’s so many posts making basic mistakes about morality. My undergraduate degree was in ethics, and I’ve published on meta ethics. We ain’t solving this in a lemmy thread, but there’s a lot of literature to read for those interested.
I guess I don’t really understand. Does moral objectivism argue that there is “one true” framework for assessing the rightness of decision/action, or merely that there are objectively right/wrong answers within any given framework?
Meta ethics focuses on the underlying framework behind morality. Whenever you’re asking, “But why is it moral?” That’s meta ethics.
Meta ethics splits between cognitivism (moral statements can be true or false) and non-cognitivism (moral statements are not true or false). One popular cognitive branch is natural moral realism, the idea there are objective moral facts. One popular non-cognitivism branch is emotivism, the idea that moral statements all all complicated “yays” or “yucks” and express emotions rather than true/false statements.
Cognitivism also has anti-realism, which is there are moral facts, but they are truth/false conditional based on each person or group. My issue is you lose the ability to call out certain behavior as wrong; slavery is wrong; not respecting others is wrong. If you want to believe all morality systems are valid, meaning your morality is no better than some radical thought group’s, then go ahead. On an emotional level, speciesism level, rights level, deontological level, utilitarian level, and many more slavery is wrong. Again, some nut job doesn’t invalidate all other thoughts. That’s my take.
How is one Patrick agreeing equal to objective truth?
We get it, you want slavery back, therefore viciously beating you to death is morally acceptable because the consensus admits your life has no value.
the logic understander
Honestly it’s more disturbing that you don’t think something can be “bad” unless it’s “objectively bad”. are you a christian?
What? So just because I happen to agree with your stance, I also have to concede that there’s such a thing as objective morality?
Morality is subjective by definition.
People who down vote genuinely believe objective morality is possible, but it’s literally impossible and it’s incredibly obvious and self evident this is true.
It’s only self evident if you accept your own morality is subjective. There are people who think morality is defined by some invisible friend who is right about absolutly everything.
Yea, plus divine commandment theory has so many holes, that it could be a sieve.
“God created this world, hence god defines what is good”. Why?
Let’s even agree to go with the statement above. How would you even verify that an entity was god while writing your commandments? Is it not possible that an organism with superior tech was trolling you?
In a single line, how do you differentiate between God and an imposter?
Just five minutes of thinking can lead to these questions that destroy divine commandment theory. People just refuse to think…
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I’d assume it got removed because the title didn’t include rule, but the modlogs just calls you unhinged.
Honestly I think I agree with the modlog.
It got removed because it was posted in 196 lol
If objective morality existed, we wouldn’t be arguing about those things since we would all be in the same agreement.
Even “murder is wrong” isn’t objective morally when you ask someone who believes in the death penalty.
This argument makes a fundamental mistake. Objective does not mean everyone agrees. Objective just means it’s true.
The earth goes around the sun is objectively true, but give me 5 minutes and I can find you someone to disagree with that statement.
Disagreeing with an objective truth just means you’re wrong.
While that works with ‘facts’, it doesn’t work for opinions. A sense of morality is exactly an opinion or set of opinions that define what is and isn’t right. It is exactly mired in perspective and again this is very self evident.
Muslims say that music is Haram because it is said so in Hadith, does that make music objectively wrong? They believe when a religious authority states this is true, that the religious authority has made a canonical judgement ( fatwa ) that is basically binding.
Am I a heathen for liking music then?
I can’t believe people are so naive as to think objective standards for morality are even remotely possible.
Muslims say that music is Haram because it is said so in Hadith, does that make music objectively wrong?
That is the exact opposite of what the above comment said. An objective view of morality would say that the “rightness” or “wrongness” of the act of making music is an objective truth. If music is “right”, then music is right, regardless of what Muslims or any other people say, and vice versa.
It means you can’t come to a correct moral judgement just by taking a poll of the people around you.
That’s literally exactly how all humans work. Our ideas is morality come from our peers, and culture. That’s all relative and very mutable.
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The universe doesn’t exist in human terms though. Stars don’t care about genocide, or abortion. Black holes don’t care about gender or identity issues. I’m certain the universe does not exist on human terms, and human morality is only an idea that has meaning to other humans.
I don’t believe there is a single valid, unassailable concept that can prop up the idea that objective morality is likely, or even possible.
Would morality exist once the last human dies? Did morality exist before? It’s just a useless question.
“Objective just means it’s true”. No it doesn’t. How do you even define “truth”? How do I know that I am not the only real person and that all of u r NPCs? How do I know that I am not in a simulation? Now, discussing about the simulation hypothesis is dumb, as it is unscientific in nature. It is not testable.
What is true can be established only when it goes through the scientific method. Hence, an “objective” statement is that statement that would be agreed upon using the scientific method by a certain consensus.
Morality is not testable. Hence, the scientific method cannot be used here. Hence, it can never be objective.
Look at the upvote/downvote ratio on OP’s comment. That you all you need to know lol. Wish there was a !philosophymemes community on Lemmy
All 3 would receive a negative response in the last 100 years in different parts of the world. Hell there are plenty of places currently where women can’t vote, slavery is a thing and the government isn’t working toward a better society. Those places wouldn’t exist if those people thought it was morally wrong. Objective morality is definitely not a thing.
The “truths” picked here are just pretty terrible to make that point. There’s for example one kind of slavery that people are usually fine with: children are to some extent the slaves of their parents. They have to do what they say, have no freedom of where they want to live and should they run away, the police will return them to their owners. Oh and kids can’t vote either and roughly half of them are female.
That’s exactly the point. For example, people used to think chattel slavery in the US was morally acceptable because they viewed black people as inferior. But today we would say that black people are not inferior and that they were mistaken. The moral relativist would say that slavery was okay to do back then because that’s what the people agreed on. Do you still agree with the moral relativist?
I agree that morals are relative considering there are a ton of people who still believe black people are inferior and also places with slavery.
Something can be morally objective if every single person in the world believes it but I can’t think of a single example of that.
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That would be the case if morals were something we can measure outside the human experience. Unfortunately there is no way to measure if something is moral or not outside how someone feels about it.
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Not really, if absolutely every single human at all stages of life believed it’s morally good to spit in their palm every day that would be an objective moral truth, there would be no subjectivity to it. For morals though no such thing exists.
You don’t need to be able to observe it externally to distinguish it. For example i can say I have a conscious experience and that would be objectively true even though we have a pretty minimal understanding on what that really is or how to measure it.
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That doesn’t mean it does not exist though. It simply means we can’t measure it.
I’m not saying that, just that there’s no outside way of verifying if something is true or not in case of morals. I don’t believe objective morals exist because you can’t find a single moral stance shared among all of humanity not because you can’t measure the truth of that stance.
Is suffering good or bad? I don’t mean that in a specific context, but any type of suffering in itself.
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Do you think pain is real?
I don’t use 196 but aren’t images on there supposed to be funny? That’s probably why this was removed.
aren’t images on there supposed to be funny?
the rule is you have to post when you visit, it doesn’t say anything on what you have to post.
Maybe you can tell me what the numbers 196 are supposed to reference/mean. I’ve seen memes from there but there’s no theme that I can detect.
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That’s amusing. Thank you.
196 community can have some very strict moderation at times. Mods were/are on the lookout for sus political takes. 🤷♀️
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Which seems pretty extreme to me, but what can I do?
It got removed because you’re meme is objectively wrong.
no ur a meme
