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>> The argument isn't to "prove...that morality is objective" or, for that matter, to prove God exists. It is just an observation that "For morality to be Objec

by redial 10y ago

>> The argument isn't to "prove...that morality is objective" or, for that matter, to prove God exists. It is just an observation that "For morality to be Objective, this is the necessary dependency: God". The argument is that for morality to be objective, something external must be the source. You are making a huge jump by calling it god, and then you go even further and claim it's the christian god. >> But if God does not exist, morals are not Objective. Just our inventions, along with God and we used both for our comfort/survival/thriving. If god does not exists is health an invention? Science has liberated us from attributing health to gods, I suspect the same will be true of morality. To me it already is more moral to care for someone just because they are a fellow human being than to do it because some ancient manuscript may have commanded it by fear of ironically, itself immoral and eternal torture. >> And what's fascinating is that in such a world, all those times Theists (and Atheist Humanists) proclaimed that humans had value without scientifically-accepted empirical evidence they would not have been acting Immorally/Wrong. I'm assuming you mean 'humans had no value'?

keane 10y ago
>>The argument is that for morality to be objective, something external must be the source. This is what Hume shows. Can you refute his observation by providing a source of objective morality that is Empirical/not external/not supramundane? (You can't. There is none.) >>If god does not exists is health an invention? No and by volunteering a metaphor that compares the existence of objective moral facts (Values/Ought) with empirical facts like health (Facts/Is) you betray a laughable lack of understanding of the Is-Ought gap. >>Science has liberated us from attributing health to gods, I suspect the same will be true of morality. The question at hand is whether we do so tenably. >>because some ancient manuscript In the case of Christianity the attempt is to follow the instructions of an actual Person and the central feature of Christianity that distinguishes it from perhaps all other religions is that actions must lack self-interest, ruling out actions based on fear as Tim Keller explains http://subspla.sh/8149923 http://subspla.sh/8149923 >>immoral and eternal torture Conditional immortality is an area of exploration, cf. http://jewishnotgreek.com/ http://jewishnotgreek.com/ >>I'm assuming you mean 'humans had no value'? No, that's what I meant. If morality does not truly exist, it was not morally 'wrong' anytime humans proclaimed it truly did. We remember the realization of the Marquis de Sade that if God does not exist then everything that is, is Right; but further, if the unempirical does not exist, then proclaiming it does is not wrong. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either". Fun.
- redial 10y ago
  >> In the case of Christianity the attempt is to follow the instructions of an actual Person and the central feature of Christianity that distinguishes it from perhaps all other religions is that actions must lack self-interest, ruling out actions based on fear as Tim Keller explains http://subspla.sh/8149923 http://subspla.sh/8149923 Every major religion claims a lack in self-interest. Almost all of them offer torture as dissuasion. >> This is what Hume shows. Can you refute his observation by providing a source of objective morality that is Empirical/not external/not supramundane? (You can't. There is none.) That is not what he shows, no one has been able to show this external source. That is what he postulates. And I think he is wrong. >> No and by volunteering a metaphor that compares the existence of objective moral facts (Values/Ought) with empirical facts like health (Facts/Is) you betray a laughable lack of understanding of the Is-Ought gap. What you don’t understand is that you only called them values because you have no explaination for them. Is-Ought is only a problem if you chain yourself to the baseless idea that Oughts have to be supramundane(??). Science can tell, empirically, what ought to be, and it already has in many many cases; it tells us with a very broad body of evidence that women are not inferior to men, thus we ought to treat them equally. Is that objective? it is objective enough at least in the same sense that medicine tells us objectibly that we ought not to vomit every day. That is why the analogy works. Your argument fails because at the end of the day it is nothing more than the god of the gaps argument: You don’t know were morality came from, therefore god.
  - keane 10y ago
    >>no one has been able to show this external source. For a start, look up Nihilism on Wikipedia or Moral Anti-realism on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: this is why people are Nihilists and Anti-realists. >>And I think he is wrong. No surprise, you can't provide a source of objective morality that is Empirical/mundane/"scientifically-verifiable". You give no reason why Hume is wrong because you seem to still not grasp the reach of what he "postulates". >>Is-Ought is only a problem if you chain yourself to the baseless idea… Dismissing it while unable to give a coherent refutation shows it not to be baseless but painful perhaps. >>Science can tell, empirically, what ought to be…it tells us with…evidence that [X: empirical fact]…thus we ought to [Y: behavior]. This presumes we ought to treat men a certain way. On what grounds should a human not murder another human? Because society will inflict a certain consequence? That's called Hypothetical Morality, and it falls under Moral Nonrealism. It can be ignored if one is willing to accept the consequence or can evade the consequence. Just because a neurobiologist says something on stage at TED does not make it the case. Though the Sam Harris fan club is often not capable of being persuaded otherwise. >>medicine tells us objectibly that we ought not to vomit every day Here you presume human health to be an ultimate good. We (hopefully obviously) can't reason "Humans like to practice violence therefore humans should continue to practice violence" and likewise we can't reason "Humans like to avoid vomiting therefore humans should avoid vomiting" as strange as that can at first sound. >>You don’t know were morality came from, therefore god. It's more an observation that our only options are #1 Moral Realism (cannot be shown Empirically) / "Theism"/departure from Empiricism #2 Moral Nonrealism / Atheism / Empiricism / Materialism You have chosen the second camp and seem to dislike the logical conclusions that camp is forced with, namely in such a world nothing is truly Moral or Immoral. How anyone is unfamiliar with this very real dichotomy this far away from 1738 is a puzzle. And you are without grounds to declare that those who proclaim camp #1 are truly acting Immorally.

by redial 10y ago

keane 10y ago

>>The argument is that for morality to be objective, something external must be the source. This is what Hume shows. Can you refute his observation by providing a source of objective morality that is Empirical/not external/not supramundane? (You can't. There is none.) >>If god does not exists is health an invention? No and by volunteering a metaphor that compares the existence of objective moral facts (Values/Ought) with empirical facts like health (Facts/Is) you betray a laughable lack of understanding of the Is-Ought gap. >>Science has liberated us from attributing health to gods, I suspect the same will be true of morality. The question at hand is whether we do so tenably. >>because some ancient manuscript In the case of Christianity the attempt is to follow the instructions of an actual Person and the central feature of Christianity that distinguishes it from perhaps all other religions is that actions must lack self-interest, ruling out actions based on fear as Tim Keller explains http://subspla.sh/8149923 http://subspla.sh/8149923 >>immoral and eternal torture Conditional immortality is an area of exploration, cf. http://jewishnotgreek.com/ http://jewishnotgreek.com/ >>I'm assuming you mean 'humans had no value'? No, that's what I meant. If morality does not truly exist, it was not morally 'wrong' anytime humans proclaimed it truly did. We remember the realization of the Marquis de Sade that if God does not exist then everything that is, is Right; but further, if the unempirical does not exist, then proclaiming it does is not wrong. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either". Fun.

redial 10y ago
>> In the case of Christianity the attempt is to follow the instructions of an actual Person and the central feature of Christianity that distinguishes it from perhaps all other religions is that actions must lack self-interest, ruling out actions based on fear as Tim Keller explains http://subspla.sh/8149923 http://subspla.sh/8149923 Every major religion claims a lack in self-interest. Almost all of them offer torture as dissuasion. >> This is what Hume shows. Can you refute his observation by providing a source of objective morality that is Empirical/not external/not supramundane? (You can't. There is none.) That is not what he shows, no one has been able to show this external source. That is what he postulates. And I think he is wrong. >> No and by volunteering a metaphor that compares the existence of objective moral facts (Values/Ought) with empirical facts like health (Facts/Is) you betray a laughable lack of understanding of the Is-Ought gap. What you don’t understand is that you only called them values because you have no explaination for them. Is-Ought is only a problem if you chain yourself to the baseless idea that Oughts have to be supramundane(??). Science can tell, empirically, what ought to be, and it already has in many many cases; it tells us with a very broad body of evidence that women are not inferior to men, thus we ought to treat them equally. Is that objective? it is objective enough at least in the same sense that medicine tells us objectibly that we ought not to vomit every day. That is why the analogy works. Your argument fails because at the end of the day it is nothing more than the god of the gaps argument: You don’t know were morality came from, therefore god.
- keane 10y ago
  >>no one has been able to show this external source. For a start, look up Nihilism on Wikipedia or Moral Anti-realism on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: this is why people are Nihilists and Anti-realists. >>And I think he is wrong. No surprise, you can't provide a source of objective morality that is Empirical/mundane/"scientifically-verifiable". You give no reason why Hume is wrong because you seem to still not grasp the reach of what he "postulates". >>Is-Ought is only a problem if you chain yourself to the baseless idea… Dismissing it while unable to give a coherent refutation shows it not to be baseless but painful perhaps. >>Science can tell, empirically, what ought to be…it tells us with…evidence that [X: empirical fact]…thus we ought to [Y: behavior]. This presumes we ought to treat men a certain way. On what grounds should a human not murder another human? Because society will inflict a certain consequence? That's called Hypothetical Morality, and it falls under Moral Nonrealism. It can be ignored if one is willing to accept the consequence or can evade the consequence. Just because a neurobiologist says something on stage at TED does not make it the case. Though the Sam Harris fan club is often not capable of being persuaded otherwise. >>medicine tells us objectibly that we ought not to vomit every day Here you presume human health to be an ultimate good. We (hopefully obviously) can't reason "Humans like to practice violence therefore humans should continue to practice violence" and likewise we can't reason "Humans like to avoid vomiting therefore humans should avoid vomiting" as strange as that can at first sound. >>You don’t know were morality came from, therefore god. It's more an observation that our only options are #1 Moral Realism (cannot be shown Empirically) / "Theism"/departure from Empiricism #2 Moral Nonrealism / Atheism / Empiricism / Materialism You have chosen the second camp and seem to dislike the logical conclusions that camp is forced with, namely in such a world nothing is truly Moral or Immoral. How anyone is unfamiliar with this very real dichotomy this far away from 1738 is a puzzle. And you are without grounds to declare that those who proclaim camp #1 are truly acting Immorally.