That doesn’t address the contradiction though, Cless. If my moral code dictates an absolute that “Moral subjectivity is false”, then either I am right or the moral sujectivists are. But if they’re right, then so am I. Yada yada yada.
Unless you’re saying that I can be wrong, but in that case moral subjectivity falls down?
As soon as I figure out that the person I’m arguing against is not even worth convincing, I tend to start to make fun of them, so at least I get something out of it. It’s like the debate version of faking an orgasm.
It’s almost like you could replace “despise” with “hate” and the meaning of paragraph would not greatly change.
The context of “Eh, fuck it, the sun’s going to blow up,” you mean. Yeah, I guess it doesn’t. Hang on, I gotta go talk to my girlfriend on mars.
So, you’re now arguing for the exact same principal you lambasted me for earlier, in that saying something less is okay if something else occurs. Also, the entropy argument is cute, but I was more referring to the horrible drought my state has been in for years, which makes spending gallons of water so grass that’s not really meant to grow here turns green to make your house look nicer.
See, you’re again arguing that because an individual isn’t perfect, that individual shouldn’t bother trying to improve any of his or her actions. Because I eat more food as per my metabolism, I should waste all the water I like? For the record, my computer is on low performance, wash my clothes in the sink (that has as much to do with 1.25 a load bullshit as it does environmentalism, but still), and have printed out one paper this semester.
You’re one guy in a really big universe. Any contributions you make will go largely unnoticed or be relatively easy forgotten. Shouldn’t I just kill you so I don’t have to bother arguing? It’s not like it would mean anything, on accuont of how big the universe is.
Who says my grass is dead? I grow plains grasses instead of blue grass specifically so it’s used to the lack of water.
Or, rather, I thought I would inform Xwing why Xwing’s mockery of my moral beliefs means nothing to me. It is because the very fabric of his argument is based upon the moral decision that is most expedient and easy to deal with.
Insults like “squeamish” indeed do not.
I, uh, explained all of these already. I think about twice each. The explanation wasn’t satisfactory, I’m certain, which is, I believe, when you just took my opinion and began to make fun of it like a bad haircut. I have a different moral framework than you. It is based on doing what I think is right, not providing a shoddy framework to do whatever I want based on what other people have said was right.
Subjective morality was my first resort. It happens to be something I believe in. You know, like not killing things just because I can, and not backing up my opinions with abstract crypto-fascist linguistics like “strength” and “squeamishness” that don’t really mean much of anything within the context and only apply to certain points, but not the same points to other extents.
Well, uh, why couldn’t subjective moralists do those things?
Also, I’m as much as a philosopher as anyone else, and the only thing I smoke are cigarettes in my dimly lit third floor room.
When did this happen? I seem to recall stating that your hatred of them goes beyond reason and seems to be more something you decided you would hate and then found reasons for than something you ended up hating.
I have said form almost the start I noted that. I can’t think of a single organization whose every action and belief I support.
“What you believe about morality is true for you.”
Why is that. I believe eating animals is morally questionable, at best. You disagree. Neither of us is wrong. We have different opinions. Oops. All I’m really arguing about is the tone you take, which is the tone that I’m some ignorant, stupid little hippie because I think differently than you. I happen to think you’re a dull, self-righteous little man.
I was just pointing out the silliness of the idea that you are some strong man who is in touch with nature and somehow primal and wild, compared to my childish, squeamish self, because when we stand in line, you get beef and I get tempeh.
People that you are not one of, you mean? Also, the only rancher I know kills his own animals instead of sending them to slaughterhouses because he does care how his pigs feel.
It’s a Pawnee tradition to ask a plant before you pick it an apologize afterwards.
The thing is, in large part, it still is. It’s saying that the human race was better when it had no time to consider moral questions, and we would be better off if we did not consider them.
What I was getting at was that, for all your talk, you’re hardly any more in touch with nature than me. In fact, if anything, I’d say my contact with nature is/was very likely more frequent than your own. We have different definitions of what it means to be natural, and yours is to think of it in caveman terms, the idea that because someone a long time ago did this in nature, we should do it now. Saying we should eat meat because in “nature” people did is not far removed from saying we should kill animals with nothing more advanced than spears, since that’s how people in “nature” rolled.
However, at the end of the day as well, animals are animals and so are we. Humans ARE indeed animals, let us not forget that. The fact that we are further evolved than other animals means nothing, why, in our societies we are more prone to mistakes, evil, wrongdoings, etc, than animals themselves are. The lives we lead are devastating, to ourselves, to animals, to the world. Yes, many diseases were caused by humans themselves; their laziness, stubborness, presupposing ideas of themselves is what causes humans to believe they are above animals in every since of the word.
What makes us better than they, the fact that we can reason, that we have knowledge that no animal has known before us? Hardly! Perhaps if we used our minds for something fruitful and purposeful, this knowledge and reasoning that we are greater than animals would be justified. This is NOT so. We are NOT just vindicators, seeking only to improve the world around us, we seek to further only our own greedy and ammoral goals, regardless of the cost to the world around us. Regardless of the fact that the Earth will crumble and die beneath us. For all of our strengths and flawless ideals, we do not flex our full power for the purpose of benefiting ALL, including the world around us.
To spread our misery to animals; yes, perhaps we may be able to contain these animals, but nothing is definate. Perhaps they get out . . . perhaps our misery spreads of its own accord. Surely it will, it is only a matter of time, and but what and whose device, we do not know either. Surely we will enjoy the fruits of our labor - death and destruction, in all eventuality, it will happen.
It is our intelligence which corrupts us, we are truly the most flawed animals of them all. Truly the world may indeed be better off without us! But we are here, and we will continue our efforts, some of them good, some of them bad, things will come to pass, and we shall never change, never learn.
I know i’ve been ranting, but I’m just tired and sorta . . . well, yeah, ranting lol. A bit off topic, and I would have continued to fit into this topic more, buuut I gotta go . . . and I have had to for like 10 mins lol.
I think you’re still too hung-up on the content of the message, and not the message itself. If your moral code dictates an absolute that “moral subjectivity is false”, well, that’s your own problem and opinion. No one said you had to be right or wrong. If <i>you think</i> you have to be right or wrong, <i>that’s your opinion</i>. See what I’m getting at? Moral subjectivity doesn’t have to use absolutes like “right” or “wrong” for morals and opinions simply because there is no fair static measuring stick by which to compare them to. One can try to ascribe an absolute to something as personal as morals, but it seems like a wasted effort to me, because you will never be able to prove that you are “right” or “wrong”.
This reminds me somewhat of the development of medicine. Physicians, for the better part of 2-3,000 years, believed that everything in the human body was composed of four humours. They couldn’t accept the idea that perhaps every part (I don’t only mean organs) in the human body was simply a unique functional collective that interacted with a myriad of other functional unit in ways that are too complex to be fully understood by any single individual, with each unit having its own properties that sometimes fell into categories, and sometimes didn’t, with even the boundaries between these functional units being of varying strength. So, they tried to cram everything in the human body into four arbitrarily chosen categories. It was a poor model, and had no real bearing on the human body.
So, I guess the caveat here is to beware of attempting to cram all of morality into “right” and “wrong”. Perhaps these categories in themselves are false descriptions of morals in the first place, and have no real bearing on them. We can try to describe people’s hairstyles as “right” or “wrong”, but that’s not exactly applicable either, is it?
Cavelcade is using “right” and “wrong” in the sense of “true” and “false.” And you can break it down however you’d like, but the statement that “morality is subjective” is either true or false. The only way around this problem is to avoid saying “morality is subjective,” and instead say, “My belief is that what you believe is true.”
To elaborate on that: Arac insists that subjective morality means “whatever you believe about morals is true <i>for you</i>.” That statement still violates its own rule: by declaring what <i>is true</i>, it fails to allow other people to believe what is true. But let’s say Arac construed subjective morality to mean, “My belief is that what you believe is true.” So, for instance, I say, “I believe that what <i>you believe</i> about morals has no bearing on what’s true for you.” The subjective moralist can reply in two ways:
–1) “You’re incorrect.” In that case, the subjective moralist is telling me that what I believe about morals is not “true for me,” which violates subjective morality. Or,
–2) “I believe you’re correct <i>for you</i>, but that has no bearing on what’s correct for anyone else.” In this case, subjective morality loses all potency whatsoever. It just means, “I’ll do what I want!” And if the rest of the world believes in absolute morals, the subjective moralist has no grounds to dispute the world – because what the world believes is true for them. All that the subjective moralist can do is curl up in his own subjective and say, “You can’t touch me here, outside morals! My belief is that what I believe is true!” If this is Arac’s position, it’s logically fine.
The problem is that most subjective moralists (including PETA, if they claim to be subjective moralists) are type 1 – they like to have their cake and eat it too. To counter moral-absolutist arguments, these subjective moralists say, “You’re <i>wrong</i> because morality is subjective.” They don’t say, “You’re wrong for me, so keep doing what you’re doing.” That would be logically consistent, but it also sounds pathetic. In other words, a <i>true</i> subjective moralist can’t attack any belief.
I only wish I could have vocalized this five years ago, before dealing with countless stupid arguments involving moral relativity.
Edit to summarize, because what’s above gets kind of intricate and complex:
To say, “What you believe is true for you,” is already to do violence on certain people’s beliefs, in contradiction of the statement itself. So again, the only logically tenable way to phrase this is to say, “My belief is that what you believe is true.”
Well, no one said I had to subscribe to Arac’s statement. In fact, I’d probably say “Whatever you believe about morals is what you believe about morals, which may be as different, or as congruent, as those of other people.” As far as I’m concerned, subjectivity in morals is just a description of how depending on the point of view, everyone has a different one. Right/wrong, true/false doesn’t even come into play. All this stuff about being true or false is just your impression of how people who subscribe to subjectivity must think, <i>apparently!</i> In fact, I can construct equal arguments for how subscribing to absolutism is weak:
I guess the only reason you’d subscribe to absolutism is in order to attack other people’s morals when they are “in the wrong”. There, you could say “you should stop because your morals are false” instead of “you should stop because <i>I disapprove of</i> your morals”. But in the end, your grounds for saying a given set of morals are “false” are still because you disapprove of them, for whatever reason, whether they are logical or not.
So, to summarize: Moral subjectivity is a <i>description</i> of the moral system. It is <i>descriptive</i>, not <i>prescriptive</i>. If you try to summarize a moral subjectivists’ opinion with right/wrong/true/false, then you’re doing something wrong (omg pun).
Lazy and stubborn describes cats to a t. And they seem to consider themselves above humans. They’ve truly been infected, help! 
Cless, that’s exactly what I believe. 
There is a set of things that is wrong (though wrong in this case means what is bad for the race as a whole, and other races can do what they like. This doesn’t advocate extinction of other races - we remove a part of the natural cycle we may not understand and which may have impact on life which we couldn’t predict and would be horrible).
I don’t think we can ever know what this true morality really is though, so we just have to try our best.
However, I do think there are some things that can be decided on.
The only reason I’m arguing is because I find moral subjectivity to be paradoxical - I don’t mind saying “Yeah I don’t know what the perfect moral system is, I disapprove of what you’re doing strongly though!” I do mind saying “It’s cool man, that’s what you believe.” because I find cases where this is contradictory.
Basically: I think moral subjectivity is a flawed argument, so I argue against it. But I still subscribe to the belief we don’t know everything, fuck it just do our best.
After actually forcing myself to think about why I think animal cruelty is immoral, the only reason I can come up with is that animal cruelty could potentially foster cruelty in general in many members of society; in other words, people who are cruel to animals could potentially be encouraged to be cruel to human beings as well. But I’m inclined to think that such people are gonna be cruel no matter what; so it doesn’t make sense to protect animals.
Well, moral subjectivity doesn’t mean approval of everything either. And yeah, you’re right, and it’s because we don’t know the best all the time that I find it personally preferable to just admit it outright rather than believing through pure faith that there is some set of perfect morals; on the flip side, I guess believe that that set of morals does exist gives you some kind of goal to aspire to, even if its ever intangible. If you incorporate absolute descriptors like “true” or “false”, then yes, of course this pseudo-subjective morality becomes a flawed system, but changing the definition of subjective morality just so it can be attacked is not a good argument, and I don’t think absolutes have any part in the definition of subjective morality.
I think I’m maybe not being clear. I have a tendency to do this and I apologise.
I agree that everyone is going to have different moralities (you saw that much).
I don’t agree that this is the same as subjective morality, since I believe there is a set of morals which would be best to follow (this too).
I think that we can’t ever get it, but aiming to be the best we can is better than just sitting on our laurels.
I think that both a pure faith that we already know what’s best, or a belief in subjective morality encourages this.
And subjective morality has to at least allow for an individual to bring in absolutes - I’m not arguing that subjective morality itself does, though. And I think I understand that what you’re saying is that this is fine - that morality is true for that individual, but that’s as far as it goes.
Maybe true isn’t the right word here? I’m pretty sure that this is the only part I’m actually unclear on about your argument - is the morality true for each person, or fine for each person (though if we’re going to use the word fine, please tell me more about what you mean by it. Different cultures have different meanings for the word, so I’d just like to know for sure we’re on the same page), or is it something else entirely?
The way I’ve always heard it stated, which is why this is the way I’ve interpreted it and attacked it, is that it’s true for each individual, which is where I find the contradiction. If it’s really something else, please, correct me.
Edit: And if any of this sounds sarcastic, well FUCK YOU INTERNET. It’s just how we layout our sentences in Ireland. 
It’s just how we layout our sentences in Ireland.
Oh come on, you’ve gotta be making that up
<.< Not really. Irish people are constantly told we sound sarcastic by foreigners.
This is because we are, of course, but they don’t have to say it, the jerks. Especially when we’re trying hard not to be for their sakes!
Well, both “true” and “fine” imply that we’re somehow judging the individual’s morals, so I’d use some other term like “in existence” Subjective morality simply means that everyone has their own morals.
I agree that everyone is going to have different moralities [but] I don’t agree that this is the same as subjective morality.
I think there is where most of the confusion comes from.
[…] moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances
Notice how the definition of moral relativism makes no references to how right or even how fine a set of morals is for an individual. It only mentions that different sets of morals for different individuals <i>exist</i>.
I guess the problem is that a lot of people will interpret as there existing multiple “true” moral sets, each bound by the viewpoint of the applicable individual. Well, that statement has no meaning, because any sort of statement like “moral relativism is the view that everyone has a set of morals that’s ‘true’ for them” is most definitely not a definition of moral relativism.
Basically, we have the one set of best morals, or we don’t. If it exists, and we have someone way of determining them, then good for us. Since we can’t determine them even if they do exist, we’re left with moral relativity. I don’t agree with the Wikipedia article stating that it’s the “opposite” of moral absolutism, because really, it’s not. It’s just two philosophies of which absolutism is based partially on faith and relativism is based entirely on observations.
Ha. I was right to ask for clarification then, since that is pretty much what I’d have meant when I used the word “fine” here. >> Hurray!
And in that case, pretty much everyone I’ve heard talk about moral relativism (either pro or anti) has been talking out of their ass. Thank you, Cless. I guess to a certain extent I am a moral relativist then.
lol, just the fact of being adamantly determined that a philosophy which states that everything depends on context is the absolute truth should immediately set off some warning bells
It did, that’s why I was arguing how stupid it was. >>
Moral relativism says, no moral proposition reflects a universal moral truth. In so doing, moral relativism proposes a universal moral truth. Therefore, moral relativism does not reflect a universal moral truth. To put it differently, this definition still does violence to other people’s beliefs, which the definition says is impermissible.
As I mentioned, you <i>could</i> say, “My belief is that what each person believes is true for that person.” Follow the logic of that statement – it’s a tricky way of <i>almost</i> saying morality is relative, but with no potency for attacking other’s beliefs. See my prior post.
But I think what you’re getting at, Cless, is something different from moral relativism. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re saying, “An absolute morality may exist, but nothing in my experience, nor anything which others have told me about their experiences, leads me to believe that we have access to this morality. <i>Taking as a premise</i> this non-access to whatever absolute morality may exist, everything we describe as “moral” is really just an expression of “social, cultural, historical or personal” circumstances.” The small but important difference is that you admit to relying on an unprovable but scientifically demonstrable premise, while subjective morality flat-out asserts that that premise is true.
Does this make sense?
There are a lot of words in this thread.
No, proposing that a universal moral truth does not exist is not in itself a moral. It’s not a code of conduct, it’s not a judgment, and it’s not an ethical notion. It’s a proposal. A hypothesis. The fact that you suggested I would use the clause “true for that person” already conflicts with the definition of moral relativity. I understand moral relativism as this very hypothesis, which is very much like the summary paragraph you posted but apparently is “something different from moral relativism”.
So one of us has misunderstood the concept of moral relativism, and to be quite honest, I’d rather it be you, because otherwise moral relativity would indeed be a very weak concept, susceptible to logical fallacy for all the reasons you and Cav have already described:
Epic: There are probably over 9000