Objective Morality and Atheism.

Nope, nothing in that quote said you don't have the right to post your opinion, and I stand by what I said, your answer to the question is a bad one, and has a lot of problems, that I demonstrated.



Yes, a priori to God. Meaning God could not have made the morality in option 2. It's funny you think logic isn't getting to me, when it's actually you that's struggling wit hthe logic of this. IF something exists apriori to another thing, than thing B could not have caused thing A to exist.



Alrighty, thanks for showing yet more problems with your idea of morality :D You went back to the classic, "The old testament no longer applies." See, the thing is? It doesn't matter even if it doesn't, and, by the way, nothing in the bible repeals anything in the old testament except for sacrifice. Jesus' sacrifice was supposed to be the last sacrifice, all the other laws will apply, "And I say to you, that not a jot or tittle of the law shall be changed until all the heavens and the earth have come to pass". Plus, you essentially said that God can simply arbitrarily change his mind as to what is moral, and THAT is one of the BIGGEST problems with saying, "Whatever god says is moral." Which means, if God wer eto arbitrarily change his mind and say that you ought to rape people, you would be forced to, under your morality , accpet that it is now ok to rape people, and you ought do it.



No, I didn't say survival is in our nature, I said survival is a preferred trait by many people. But regardless, you want to know why survival is a preferred trait by many people? Simple, it's more pleasureable to survive than not survive. Ask why again, Why is it more pleasureable to survive than not survive? Simple, because surviving entails experiences, many positive ones, in life, and not surviving entails no good experiences whatsoever, that's simply mathematically true. Why is that mathematically true? Well because math is a very definite science that is used as a proof for any one thing, morepositive experiences vs. no positive experiences will always win out. Why are experiences positive? Because we make them positive, we derive positivity from them. I don't know a single person in the world that doesn't derive positivity from at least one aspect of life. And on, and on, and on. Can I answer INFINITE why questions?? No, but you can't answer even a couple. That's your problem. Eventually it would get to a point of basic epistomology with me where I'd have to explain why I prefer not being a solipsist over being a solipsist, and why that's credible, and why it's justifiable, and blah blah blah, but you see, at that point we reach the Axiomatic rules to life that I choose to follow, because I love life. And then you would say, "Finally! Ha ha! You're circular too!" the problem is, that's not visciousl circular, so it's completely viable. You're on a merry go round, I'm on a humongous roller coaster that has ups, downs, twists, turns, and doesn't end for a long long time. Sorry, but me being able to answer a lot more "why's" than you makes my morality more useful, and superior to yours.

Seriously, do you read what you're saying? "You're wrong about objective morality because you fail to take into account that it's purely subjective."

Honestly you're being rediculous here. You'r ebeginning from the basis of objective morality being wrong, instead of trying to deconstruct it from the inside out. You're not presenting a coherent argument against anything I've been saying.



And moral actions aren't physical? I can't measure how much an action affects someone either negatively or positively? We're going to have to heavily agree to disagree on that point.



No I dooooooon't. For the thousandth time, you're startig from the point that subjectivity is the only true morality, and then attacking my morality based off of that. Your argument is fundamentally flawed from the beginning.



You're failing to understand anything I've been saying. Here are my basic points, broken down.

1. My definition of morality is subjective to me.
2. The way I define moral actions is done so intentionally in an objectively measureable way.
3. Because it's an objectively measureable thing, I don't have to take into account anyone else's viewpoints on the matter, either something promotes health and well being, and diminishes suffering, or it doesn't. This is an easily measureable scale.
4. Having an objective morality doesn't mean everyone has to follow it, someone might very well come up with a better definition than mine, but they'd still be doing the same thing as me, and completely ignoring other viewpoints, because they do not matter in an objective morality.

Science can not accurately calculate a formula that is made entirely of undefined variables which is exactly what morality is; a series of undefined variables. Each set of variables is given a constant by the morality system used.

For example, A + B = C yet, A and B are undefined so how can we solve this? Simple, we can't. Sure, we can say A is 3 but, that is subjective as A & B never objectively defined. The following person could say that A is 23,476 then we have the question of who was correct. The entire formula changes depending on what we put into the individual variables. I could go on but, I believe everyone will get the gist of what I am saying.

Mr. Harris's entire argument of objective morality falls apart once you realize that his argument is presented through the point of view of Western Society. Western culture has it's own set of values (variables) which differ from the values (variables) of other cultures.

He is correct that we must define a constant in order to find the most objective conclusion.

For example, we can ask which political or economic system is the most "free". Once we define what we mean by free we can then begin deducing which system is the most free as per the definition of free in this context. Depending on how we define "free" we can arrive that Capitalism is the most "free" system or that Socialism, Communism, Anarcho-capitlism, etc are the most "free".

Ok..would you be so kind as to explain WHY you feel slavery isn't objectively immoral?

Many people seem to have this problem that we're trying to somehow DISCOVER an objective morality. Mr. Harris was simply saying the first thing we need to do is define A and B in the equation A+B=C, and we can do that subjectively, because part of morality IS subjective, and that's our decision to place values on certain things. what we can do from THERE is demonstrate, scientifically and accurately, wh some things are better valued than others, and hjow we can reach that point. People are hung up on this idea that there is an overall objective moral value that we all are 'discovering' or 'trying to discover and uncover' but that's simply not true. Any atheist concerned with morals will first make the admission that all moral statements are broken down to "If I prefer (blank) Then I ought (blank)"

The if part, the first part, is subjective, the second part, is objective.

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

For example, the Sun gives us heat and light. You can't "subjectify" that. You can't "interpret" that any other way.

2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

Why would you kill someone that's contributing to society?

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

I wasn't born to be responsible for someone else's happiness, although I can choose to be if I want to, which in essence, would also be part of my rational self-interest. It's not "evil" to care about yourself.

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

This is self-explanatory.

Thank you for restating my post.

the difference is in the tone of the post. You're seeing the subjective definitions of A and B as a problem, whereas Dr. Harris ad I, and many others, not only see it as a solution, but fully embrace it as the best solution, for various reasons. there really is nothing wrong with defining A and B subjectively, that doesn't undermine objective morality at all.

I agree with that point. All that basically means is , "Things are as they are." which is simply an obvious statement from Ms. Obvious.



Why would you kill someone who's not? Why OUGHT we contribute to society? This is question begging of the highest degree. Also, Reason isn't out only means of percieving reality. The senses, for instance, are not entirely reliable. Memory is not entirely reliable. IT takes other people's confirmation of things to be rationally sure of a claim.

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

I wasn't born to be responsible for someone else's happiness, although I can choose to be if I want to, which in essence, would also be part of my rational self-interest. It's not "evil" to care about yourself.[/quote]

And we then begin with a problem. I didn't say it was 'evil' to care about oneself, in fact, Ayn Rand is the one saying it's 'evil' to care about others. She's made this point clear not only in premise 3, but also in her books, where she defines an English professor who preaches that his students are part of a whole and ought contribute the whole of society, as an evil person that eserved the oncoming death he recieved.

If everyone thought like this, we'd all be dead, don't sacrifice yourself to others? alright, I won't sacrifice my time to making medicine for people. Don't sacrifice oneself to others? alright, I won't feed the poor, fuck the poor. Don't sacrifice myself to others? Alright, fuck all the people who were unlucky enough to be born in a country where they were fucked from the beginning, they don't get to have any help.



Great, we adopt a laissez-faire capitalism and monopolies start arisinng everywhere. There's a REASON there are limits to trade in people's markets, because if there wasn't a limit, one rich guy could epically screw over the rest, creating a monopoly over the entire market he's taken part in, and overcharge the FUCK out of people, which would be even worse if it was an industry we RELIED on every day, like...gas and fuel.

OP, do you think you could keep your replies all in one post? To avoid that whole double, triple, quadruple posting thing.

Also, don't bother with any of Takerial's points, he's a well known logical drain around here.

Please explain how anything objective can be assigned by subjective values.

A+B=C

Hypothetically, we can both agree that C = 32 but, we can also argue as to what the value of A & B should be which could be any combination of things. That isn't the way to run an objective system. Science isn't a subjective system and therefore can not use subjective values to find an objective value.

Ok, you're not looking at this in terms of logic and morals, you're simply looking at it as math. That's where part of the confusion, I think, is coming from. M?ath and logic are closely related, yes, but they aren't identical, and for god reasons.

Let's look at...the action of running people over with my car.


I ought not run over people with my car. Can I say that's an objectively moral statement? No, because I haven't defined WHY I ought not run over people with my care. And that would only beg more questions answering in itself. So let's look at it in a different way, the "If (blank) I ought (blank)" way.

The subjective part. If, comes from here: If I don't want to harm people" or "If I want people to like me" or "If I respect people's lives" which is purely subjective, I grant that across the board, "THEN I ought not run over people with my car." And it is objectively true that if I subjectively value people's lives, then no, I ought not run over people with my car. That's objectively true no matter how you look at it.

Sorry about that. It's getting kinda hard,, the posts are so big, and I'm responding to so many people, sometimes I don't even see responnses until after I've already posted a response to ANOTHEr person. I'll try and double them up, but I'm gonna have to /spoiler everything if I want to not jumble up the page.

Perhaps I meant this: Why would you blot out the Sun? Oh, so if you don't rely on your senses and your memory, what do you rely on? You rely on OTHER people's senses and memory? Why are they any better?



I've read that Ayn Rand gained controversy for this, and that objectivism is hard to define because her own initial writings sometimes contradict each other, so I'm using the list that I got from that website. And in that list, 3 doesn't explicitly say that it's "evil" to care about others, but it would be "evil" to not care about yourself. Your first and greatest priority should always be yourself, but that doesn't mean you're necessarily selfish. It's "rational self-interest", of course you should care about eating food, water, and entertainment.



The only reason monopolies are bad because of corrupt people. Monopolies are not inherently corrupt.

Thanks for showing you clearly don't even know what I was saying. I didn't say "I abandon my own senses in favor of others'." That's stupid, I said, "My senses are not entirely reliable, so to be completely sure of anythingI would require confirmation from other people's senses." How many times do you think you smell something not there? How many times do you see a shadow in the corner of your eye and turn to see nothing? Ask other people if they saw or smell what you do, if they say no, you can safely say, "Oh, well then I guess I'm just seeing/smelling things."



What does 3 explicitly say? Well it says trhat one ought not sacrifice themsleves for others. I fundamentally disagree with that. I think sacrificing ourselves for others, whether it be with work, nmoney, or whatever, is a necessity for social creaturs like ourselves.



But they're still bad. So you really haven't gotten over the problem have you? the fact is in reality, a laissez-faire system won't work, because monoploies are almost inevitable, and they WILL fuck us over, because they WILL be corrupt, because people DO do that sort of thing. You haven't solved a problem by saying, "Monopolies aren't inherently evil" you've just said, "Well, we can dream for a perfect world, can't we?"

If you're a normal, healthy human, and the other person is a normal, healthy human, it would HELP that he further confirms your observations, but you don't NEED it. You NEED only reason and logic to confirm your observations. If I see a shadow, I can go CHECK IT OUT, and then form a conclusion from that.



Sacrifice is if you gain absolutely nothing from it, and in a way, that is bad, because someone is losing out. When you want food and water, you need money. If you need money, you get a job. If you get a job, you are contributing to society. It isn't a sacrifice, it's an equal trade that should be benefiting everyone towards a brighter and better future. And that brighter and better future will include you, so of course you'll want it.



We're not going to pretend we live in a dream, we're going to work for it. And you can't do that if you don't have a dream first. Even if a corrupt person takes over a monopoly, no one is invincible, or can be. You shouldn't have to settle for anything less.

So you're saying that your 'objective' morality is based solely on how you define things. Based solely on how you want to measure them?

Do you not understand what subjective means? Honestly not understand it? Because you are describing the exact definition of subjective as you being objective.

And again, you are ignoring the social aspect. How do you expect to ever be objective about something if you completely ignore one of the biggest chunks of it?

All you're trying to do is arbitrarily install your own subjective sense of morality on others until it is the only viewpoint.

Essentially, all you're doing is mimicking the religious mindset except you're trying to put yourself in the deity position.

QualiaSoup made some excellent videos demonstrating that some morals *can* be objectively defined, as well as why you don't need God for morals to exist:

The fallacy of God as a moral compass:


Why the Bible fails as a moral compass:


He does *not* claim that morality is objective. In fact that very fact that once slave ownership was considered moral demonstrates that it isn't.

However we can agree that as science marches on and we *know* more and more about the world, morality too becomes more and more objective as there's less room for personal belief. Furthermore there are objective criteria for one's morality else it can't pass muster of modern society.

The problem with trying to completely define a social term falls in that it changes based on social standards and such.

Essentially, what is seen as moral and immoral, completely lies in how people see things. The fact that there is an interaction aspect involved in every moral decision, that it cannot truly be objective. It's not like many of the sciences where the reasoning can come from outside evidence.

That's because morality is more in lined with philosophies rather than science. And it has no concrete evidence to support it.

There is no real objective criteria to measure morality. You can only really hope to create less dissonance amongst people in what is moral and not.

The easiest way to see this sort of situation trying to happen is the court systems. Not necessarily the actual trial, though there is room to look at it, but deciding how to try and how to punish criminals. You'll notice that this is either decided arbitrarily, as in what a judge things is best, or is decided based on precedence, what others thought was a good punishment.

That's the truth. If there was an objective way to measure morality, then punishment for immoral decisions would have a more concrete way of being decided. You could easily compare a rapist to a murderer. To a child molester.

But you can't concretely measure it. You can only gauge it partially by how the majority of society reacts to each one.

Which changes a lot.

...So in other words, you ony believe in what you can see and hear, are you saying to don't trust the experts when they come across something and say they've made a discovery? You rely on other people all the time in everyday oservations. If that helps, why in the world would you decide to not do so? It makes no sense to deny relying on confirmation toe be sure of things if it serves as reinforcement to what you believe?



No, that's not what sacrifice is, not only has Ayn Rand never made that clear, but she has shown consistently that such is not the case, sacrifice is helping others when you don't have just as much benefit, if not more to gain, from helping them. I could still have benefit when I sacrifice to others, but she would say, "IF it's not a complete benefit, then it doesn't count and you ought not do it!" Something, for instance, that WOULDN'T be done if everyone had this thought process, is helping people by the side of the road. You're sacrificing time, minutes on your cell phone, and labor to help a complete stranger, and you get nothing but self satisfaction at the most from it. I would still do it, however, and that's why my morality is better than Objectivism.

[spoil]

We're not going to pretend we live in a dream, we're going to work for it. And you can't do that if you don't have a dream first. Even if a corrupt person takes over a monopoly, no one is invincible, or can be. You shouldn't have to settle for anything less.[/quote]

This isn't just dreaming here, this is asking for a literally perfect world. Any philosophy can easily go, "The ideal world is that which everything is healthy and people al are cool to eachother regardless of what they believe." Ummm, DUH, that's just common sense, it serves no use. It does nothing more than say, "Wouldn't it be cool if blah?" Sorry, but I see no practical purpose in this idea.

Essentially, what is seen as moral and immoral, completely lies in how people see things. The fact that there is an interaction aspect involved in every moral decision, that it cannot truly be objective. It's not like many of the sciences where the reasoning can come from outside evidence.

That's because morality is more in lined with philosophies rather than science. And it has no concrete evidence to support it.

There is no real objective criteria to measure morality. You can only really hope to create less dissonance amongst people in what is moral and not.

The easiest way to see this sort of situation trying to happen is the court systems. Not necessarily the actual trial, though there is room to look at it, but deciding how to try and how to punish criminals. You'll notice that this is either decided arbitrarily, as in what a judge things is best, or is decided based on precedence, what others thought was a good punishment.

That's the truth. If there was an objective way to measure morality, then punishment for immoral decisions would have a more concrete way of being decided. You could easily compare a rapist to a murderer. To a child molester.

But you can't concretely measure it. You can only gauge it partially by how the majority of society reacts to each one.

Which changes a lot.[/quote][/spoiler]

Look, I'm sorry Tak, but you keep repeating the same incorrect points that I've pointed out the flaws of over and over again, I just don't know what to say to you anymore. And you then demonstrate that you have no idea what you're talking about when you say, "Morality is in the realm of philosophy instead of science." Which is such an ignorant statement, in so many ways...it's not even funny. The fact is many people have already pointed out that I'm right, that morality CAN, and indeed in many cases IS measured in objective manners. You haven't said a single thing to coherently argue against anything I've said. And I'm just gonna stop responding to you until you present an actual coherent argument.