Arguments against absolute morality

[the_gelf]

Originally Posted by Loki

Strikes me that objective moral systems can also be subjective, which is perhaps where confusion begins.

A moral system need not be based on hard edicts to be objective. For example a moral system built on "least harm" provides an objective measure to compare actions against. Such actions are not written in stone but free to adapt to situation and society. As such there is a degree of subjectivity to the application of what is ultimately an objective moral system.

The oft repeated xian cant that people need an objective moral system and that such is only provided by gawd as writted in the bibble is simply rubbish. I've come to realise that moral systems which are not written down on old vellum but are developed on the fly against an idealised outcome are indeed objective and that the theist's obfuscating attempts to reduce any moral system in opposition to their own to relativism is empty rhetoric.

*ideas still in development, please destroy if invalid.

I am of the view that holding the concept that objective morality exists is a view of ignorance. It is impossible to be entirely objective in morality, evidenced by the way religions gladly promote one idea, and are blind to the other 99% of ways to look at a situation.

When studying a little bit of teaching and psychology, they actaully teach Kohlberg's Morality levels.

It was arrogantly maintained by the lecturer's deigned to teach it that there is such a thing as universal morality. They blindly hold the notion that morality on a universal level must be 'good', and my arguments that 'why do you assume what you know as 'good' is actually 'good'' went unanswered, or downright ignored.

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavi...rg.stages.html

This sums up the actuality of those moral stages, but never advanced on it further - but the emotion of morality is entirely due to western culture societal conditioning (and is therefore not objective)

At the very basis, complete objective morality must be indifferent. The universe simply doesn't care.

[bundybear]

I am not sure if anyone has read Sam Harris' 'Moral Landscape'. He develops a theory regarding various moral peaks and troughs, based on how well or poorly a peak or trough respectively improves the well-being of the person following it, and its impact on the people around the person.

He defines "good" as actions that improves the well-being of the person, physcially, mentally and improves the well-being of others as well.

It strikes me as a remarkably flexible system. As in any good system, it has built in its own feedback mechanism and is consequentialist.

I has just finished reading his treatise of Free Will, which basically says that free will (as defined philosophically rather than a lay definition) is an illusion and even the illusion of free will is an illusion. I have struggled with this concept but am coming around to understanding the causality chain - chemical, environmental, social - that determines our behaviours.

It fits perfectly, IMHO, into the concept of a moral landscape, that has as many moral peaks as is needed to fullfil our genetic imperative of survival. I think well-being leads to survival. This is my opinion, not Sam Harris.

In the context of this thread, whatever xtians see as objective morality is but one point of the moral landscape and is not neccessarily a peak. Morality has to be subjective, but is constrained by the idea that the consequence of an action that is spawned from a moral concept, must ultimately improve well-being, to be considered a peak.