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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Subjective morality” is just what people tell themselves so they don’t have to do any actual introspection
Some cultural things may be subjective - take looking someone in the eye when conversing, for example. Some cultures find it disrespectful to do so, while others find it disrespectful not to do so.
But the big things? Actual morality? There is absolutely an objective right and wrong.
An Aztec would not agree to any of that. They took slaves, they didn't allow women to vote because they didn't allow voting and women were second-class and they weren't interested in a fair and equitable society, which is part of the reason their enemies helped the Spanish take them down.
So I'd say that your 'objective truths' didn't apply to a major human civilization.
So is this meant to be a cryptic argument against objective morality and for less ethical actions? Group consensus and moral relativity can apply to... Idk, the Nazi regime?
OR is this an argument saying we need more people to agree about what is "objectively" moral if we want it to become true? Democratically around consensus?
I imagine this argument has been used in bad faith more than it has been used in good faith.
Can't something be objectively immoral whilst simultaneously being something that some people like to do? Does the objective morality of any given action need to be linked to a specific groups preference?
Slavers liked to keep slaves but it didn't make them right to do it. Im sure the slaves didn't enjoy it. Objectively, it's morally wrong to gain from somebody elses loss. The fact that people are happy to do it doesn't affect moral objectivity.
I like Matt Dillyhuntys approach to objective morality: he picks a subjective and kind of arbitrary foundation like wellbeing and objectively measures all actions against this foundation.
All of those things are group consensus though. As in there are plenty of examples when group consensus was the other way and those things (slavery, not allowing women to participate in democracy, extreme inequality) were accepted and practiced freely
I too highly suspect most moral relativists are full of shit and don't actually believe in it. Ya'll don't believe in moral progress? A society of chronic rapists is not inherently bad outside of your societies or personal preferences? The overwhelming majority of moral decisions being relative doesn't discount that at least one very important concept can be capable of superceding our preferences.