Is Morality Objective?

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's pretty much what I mean. If we're talking about gravity, I can point to the effect and rest assured that your perceptions will mostly coincide with mine; we will see the same stuff fall. It is objective precisely because we all see gravity the same way.

If you have a good grasp of general relativity but I have a classical conception of it, no, we will perceive very different things. One of us perceives the curvature of spacetime, the other one perceives a force pulling the object down. Both of us are having an objective conception, because for both of us gravity is defined in terms of observable objects, but one us has a more accurate conception.

The fall of the apple looks the same to us, is my point. The fact of gravity is my point.

If you can point to a factual, objective existence for moral precepts, I'm all ears.

This quality is notably absent in discussions of morality. There are many different ways to see an action and so much depends on context that it slips into subjectivity, like it or not.

It has been as you say, but it can change. As natural phenomena were subjectively investigated within natural philosophy before the development of the scientific method.

What objective facts would you point to?

Context dependence and relativity make morality complex, not subjective.

Context makes it relative, though, which is another argument against objective morality.


 

If you ask a simple question, like 'how much time it takes until I press the keyboard button and the letter appearing on the screen?' it is both context dependent and relative. Who is measuring time? it depends on the frame of reference, for someone moving near the speed of light relative to the keyboard, it takes forever. What is the context? How is the configuration of heavy masses relative to the frame of reference? Someone who is near a massive object measures a very long time.

Likewise morality is both relative and context dependent, but that makes it subjective only if we do not have the necessary facts to address the complex moral situations that arise. Hopefully relying on facts from evolutionary biology, neuroscience and other relevant fields can change that.

Yes, morality is subjective and relative, once you consider that the morality of complex situations often changes depending on which perspective one adopts.

When we're discussing abstracts like morality, definitions are pretty damned important to me. It's not like we can point to a rock and agree that that rock is there. One man's cannibalism is another man's funerary ritual.

Indeed it is important, I agree it would be a great challenge to come up with a definition that can address all the complex situations that arise, but again it doesn't make it subjective, it makes it a hard problem.

How do you define morality, then? And why is that important to this discussion? I generally eschew philosophical obscurantism such as too often accompanies semantical discussions myself, though, so just fair warning, you may not find my part of this discussion terribly interesting.

What we need for now is a basic definition that makes sense to some extents, I suggest this:

An action is moral if it contributes to the goals of human species.
An action is immoral if it hinders the goals of human species.
An action is amoral otherwise.

When we're discussing whether morality is objective or subjective, the underlying premise of your definition becomes a circular argument, as you are assuming that which you are trying to demonstrate.

This needs to satisfy two requirements:

1. It must make sense, it is relevant to our intuition about morality to some extents, isn't it?
2. It must only rely on objects of reality. 'actions' are observable, when human societies are observed and analyzed as a whole, goals can also be determined objectively. The definition does not depend on any subjective parameters such as intention and preferences.

1) Can you demonstrate that intuition is objective?
2) Yet you've included your human preference for human survival as a premise of your point.

If you can point to it and we both can see it, there we have a definition of objective reality.

I point to a man feeding starving children and we both see morality, as much as I point to a rolling ball and we both see energy.

What if the man feeding the child is a camp guard only feeding the child to keep it alive long enough so he can help build artillery tubes in Krupp's Essen factory? The two situations aren't really analogous.