Re: YouTuber CosmicSkeptic - Objective Morality
Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:22 pm
This is how it's used in discourse, otherwise people using reason to argue about morality doesn't make any sense.Logical Celery wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 3:54 pm Also, this may be a very nooby 101 question, but I've read some threads this morning and some people are saying that morality is by definition objective/universal,
Morality would only be subjective (or simply non-real) if it's impossible for it to be objective (impossible for something to fit that usage). E.g. if there is no possible non-arbitrary objective basis to look at.
The golden rule is about consideration of the interests of others.Logical Celery wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 3:54 pmand that it is something close to the golden rule. I'm still a bit confused on how it's close to the golden rule, and I was wondering if somebody could clear that up for me and explain how that is the case?
Not do unto them AS they do unto you (reciprocity), or do unto them SO they will do unto you, but do unto them as you'd like to be done unto regardless of how they do or would do.
Keep in mind that it is self-correcting. Wikipedia's summary of response to criticism is good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Ru ... criticisms
This is in essence consideration for interests of others, which is an objective and non-arbitrary basis.Walter Terence Stace, in The Concept of Morals (1937), wrote:
Marcus George Singer observed that there are two importantly different ways of looking at the golden rule: as requiring (1) that you perform specific actions that you want others to do to you or (2) that you guide your behavior in the same general ways that you want others to.[84] Counter-examples to the golden rule typically are more forceful against the first than the second.Mr. Bernard Shaw's remark "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different" is no doubt a smart saying. But it seems to overlook the fact that "doing as you would be done by" includes taking into account your neighbor's tastes as you would that he should take yours into account. Thus the "golden rule" might still express the essence of a universal morality even if no two men in the world had any needs or tastes in common.[83]
In his book on the golden rule, Jeffrey Wattles makes the similar observation that such objections typically arise while applying the golden rule in certain general ways (namely, ignoring differences in taste, in situation, and so forth). But if we apply the golden rule to our own method of using it, asking in effect if we would want other people to apply the golden rule in such ways, the answer would typically be no, since it is quite predictable that others' ignoring of such factors will lead to behavior which we object to. It follows that we should not do so ourselves—according to the golden rule. In this way, the golden rule may be self-correcting.[85] An article by Jouni Reinikainen develops this suggestion in greater detail.[86]
It is possible, then, that the golden rule can itself guide us in identifying which differences of situation are morally relevant. We would often want other people to ignore any prejudice against our race or nationality when deciding how to act towards us, but would also want them to not ignore our differing preferences in food, desire for aggressiveness, and so on. This principle of "doing unto others, wherever possible, as they would be done by..." has sometimes been termed the platinum rule.[87]
You will find it hard to get comprehensive definitions from a dictionary, they're all pretty vague and broad with multiple cited definitions, e.g.Logical Celery wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 3:54 pmAlso, I would appreciate if somebody pasted the definition of morality that is argued to be by definition objective/universal. Is it just the basic one from Google or something? I'd like to start of my future conversations with this basic route as a means to introduce new people to the general idea. I know this is like one of the basic semantic arguments. This is also the "sophistry" that Ask Yourself is referring to ^_^
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morality
The definition we're talking about refers to how it's used in practice, that is the semantic thesis. It's a question of what people mean when they talk about morality. When people engage in moral discourse in philosophy (aside from anthropologists talking about the "moral systems" of different cultures, which IS a different definition of morality) they're talking about an objective universal morality and trying to work out what it is.
Whether such a morality exists or can exist is beyond the semantic question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rea ... al_realism
You can be an irrealist and agree that most people think that morality is objective.The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).
I don't believe in god, but I recognize that by definition most people consider 'god' to be a real being that thinks and acts in the world. Doesn't mean it IS one, of course.
Morality being defined as objective doesn't make it real; to be real, there has to be truth value to the purported claims.