Follow-up: Can objective morality exist without God?

“Can moral objectivity exist without God? If so, what would it be founded upon?”

Survival.

“How can moral objectivism exist without God?”

Reason.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Could you maybe expand upon that a bit? I’m not saying you’re wrong (believe me, the whole point of these questions is to show how divided I am and how being agnostic can be a pain in the ass sometimes…) but how exactly does reason demonstrate moral objectivity?

Well, I can’t understand how it can exist with God, that’s for sure.

First, we must define what you mean by moral objectivism. I am guessing that it is the first meaning in the above link. If so, a better question might be whether moral objectivism can exist with God. We have the Abrahamic god ordering slavery, genocide, and stoning to death for high crimes such as eating at Red Lobster or wearing permapress shirts. We have the Islamic variant instructing his followers to slay with the sword all who are infidels, subjugate women like slaves, and chop of the hand of a fellow who pilfers a loaf of bread to keep from starving. We have 3.1 Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Huehueteotl and Tlaloc in Mesoamerica all demanding human sacrifices be made to them. Which of these Gods put forward the true vision of moral objectivism that fits with our working definitin? Or should we turn to Thor, Jupiter, Amon Ra…

The argument, “A) Moral objectivity cannot exist without God, B) Moral objectivity exists, thus C) God exists.” is a fallacy for two reasons. First, it is a circular argument and second, it’s foundational statement, A, is argument by assertion. Without proving A, the entore circular structure collapses into silliness.

“how exactly does reason demonstrate moral objectivity?”

Because reason invites inquiry. It thrives upon questioning. It expects challenge and modification during the reasoning process. It requires foundational support.

Reason allows us to recognize the following statement “morality is subjective”, as an Objective Statement.

From this, two truisms arise.

It is unreasonable to question the ways of God, for we are not Gods. We do not have direct communication available to pose the questions with.

and…

It is reasonable to question the ways of Man, for we are Human. We do have direct communication available to pose the questions with.

The opening statement: Moral objectivity cannot exist without God. indicates that God has provided the rules of morality. However, the God of the Bible and the Koran did not establish what we now recognize to be morality at all. The God of the Old Testament commanded people to keep slaves, slay their enemies, execute blasphemers and homosexuals, and commit many other atrocious acts.

Our interpretation of which aspects of biblical morality to take seriously has grown more sophisticated over time, and we read the Bible selectively and often metaphorically. But that is just the point: we must be consulting some standard/s of morality that do not come from God in order to judge which aspects of God’s word to take literally and which aspects to ignore.

An objective morality is by definition not dependent on God.

Whether it exists or not is not what I intend to debate.

My understanding is that objective morality is a school of thought that states that something is either morally right or wrong, as a fact and not merely as a person’s opinion. Murder would be wrong, regardless of what people think of it, for instance.

If a morality would be dependent on (a) God, it would no longer be an objective morality, but a morality subjective to this God.

In this sense, you might be interested to read up on Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma:
“Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”

God, or deities in general?

@Aethelflaed I recognize that my use of the capital-G “God” probably sounds like the Abrahmic God, but really, I was looking more toward any deity and not necessarily the Abrahamic God.

@DominicX I figured, but thought it best to ask instead of assuming.

I personally think there can be (though, I don’t necessarily want one). But I think there’s a certain problem that religion has been around for so long, almost everywhere, and secular morality is newer, it seems hard to prove that it would never be an outgrowth of religious based morality. It seems like one of those things that we could never really know without throwing some babies on an island (with no parents to raise them and thus influence them) and then checking back on that civilization several thousand years later to see how they developed. Which, as you might have guessed, has some real technical issues as an experiment even before you get to the human rights issues…

Also (and I haven’t gotten around to checking out the other thread, forgive me), I would point out a difference between there being an actual and real deity creating a universal and objective morality, and a religion based around a deity who may or may not be real and the people who follow that religion creating a universal and objective morality.

I don’t believe in objective morality. Even if we posit a god claiming that X is immoral, we could nevertheless posit another god who says, no it isn’t. Seems to me that all god brings to the equation in the case of monotheism, is all powerful subjectivity, not objectivity. My point being that those who link god with objectivity nevertheless have to justify the claim that god’s pronouncements are objective. Really? Who says? And once we start asking that question, we’re right back to square one.

Personally, I find this whole quest for objective morality obscures what seems to be a common all too human underlying motivation…many of us simply want to be told what to do and not to do. But unfortunately or fortunately, morality has never worked when formulated as simplistic black and white pronouncements, and when people have tried to do so they automatically run into that rather infuriating thing called reality. And reality is complex, as are societies and individual relations, and we commonly end up needing to circumvent silly pronouncements when they get in the way..

Consider this little gem for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator

…or play that ceasless game of shuffling inconvenient moral pronoucements into that trash can of unjustifiable ideas…“it was only a metaphor”.

So like it or not, and as we all can see if we look around societies today, morality is a messy shfiting negotiated disagreed upon thingymabob…and the only way I’ve seen to ensure it improves is via reason and evidence based open discussion and debate.

Whereas an excellent way to ensure it stagnates is to anchor morality to the ignorant pronouncements of some ancient tribesmen who confuse their own likes and dislikes with those of a supreme objective being.

It’s people, all the way down.

Here’s Dawkins making a similar point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxdgCxK4VUA

Haven’t read the thread so may repeat but…

Utilitarianism would qualify.

We can’t rely on God for morality as communication with God is so imperfect we can’t be sure he even exists. But imagine we could communicate with God and he asked us to do something we felt was wrong. We might obey him because he is God but doesn’t the very fact we feel it is wrong mean that objective morality must come from Man rather than God?

I think it can exist without God, if I understand the definition correctly. It seems through life experience we begin to understand from an objective point of view right and wrong. Even children who are taught right and wrong through biblical teachings, even threat of punishment from God for not following the rules, I think most as they mature and come to understand the world, how what we do affects others, and then affects us again, then they start to see why the biblical teachings make sense. But, we have sense without God. Philosophers, and writers, and our elders, would still pass onto us their knowledge of the world, and what is best for society, what is moral, whether it is from God, or just from those who raise us. The bible amd churches put it all into a neat little package I guess. A young child does not change theor behavior because God said their behavior was wrong, they change it either to please their parents, positive reinforcement, or fear of punishment, earthly punishment. Parents can do these things without God. Mine did.

As long as this god does not reveal on what it based its own morality, divine morality is completely subjective and arbitrary.

You could base morality on the objective fact of suffering, and the objective fact that life forms tend to avoid suffering. The basis of this objective morality thus becomes the prevention of suffering. You can then expand this on to other individuals by acknowledging the fact that if you treat the others that way, they will be more inclined to behave towards you in a beneficial manner, creating an overall positive environment. An environment, in which you invariably have to live because of the fact that humans are social animals.

Don’t be too quick, o man, to pat your self on the back for ‘objectivity’.

Man reasons and boasts of reason, but man also dangles his limbs, boasting of classical dance. He plays with his voice and boasts the importance of his song. He splashes pigment on canvas and boasts of high art.

Every thinking being is a subjective being. Everything we are, as subjective beings, is the result of communication. That communication can be between individuals, or communities, or cultures, but irrespective of distance or times, there has always been a standard—more or less. For example, most cultures, despite their differences, prohibit murder, while ‘killing’, in and of itself, has proven useful, even desirable, to achieve certain ends.

Looking past the differences, morality must be seen to be influenced subjectively. Its highest end and its lowest end may both have the same source, but are colored by current need. Western morality, for example, is a business morality, and is, thus, self-serving. Most morality is somewhat self-serving, but there is also a morality of justification. The bleeding heart, being timid and weak, will justify its shortcomings under the banner of morality.

The important thing to keep in mind is that all morality is communicated morality. All morality has a singular source, and that source, for all mankind, may be viewed as the ‘spirit’, or as an alternate term: ‘mindset’. The source does not rest within man—man only conveys. We all draw from the same well, but we do not all bring up the same thing.

I am a lot like my Dad: I make sure drawers are closed, doors are locked, lights are cut off. I pay my utilities before I buy my groceries. These and other defining traits were communicated to me by my Dad. He was not so much into teaching anyone high moral truths, objective or otherwise, but he could not help to communicate himself. What I got from him are habits that prove useful. I was not my Dad’s only offspring, yet, the others took from him something quite different, and their overall view is different, due in great part to what they do not have.

Now, while they do not have of him exactly what I have, it must be admitted that all of us walked away with a part of our Dad living on in us. I may not pat myself on the back any more than my siblings. Still, morals exist to serve a need. Morals are never isolated, but always influenced by someone or something. Why make a fuss?

I could cry about winter (as I don’t find the cold personally useful) but it is part of the bigger picture. Right and wrong are always on the move, but there is a source from which right is communicated, and if we do not draw from it completely, we may end up with a thing that is less than right. Man only conveys what he has learned. If he has failed to receive the full measure, his view is limited. He is like a man that goes through life with two good eyes, but chooses only to use one of them.

What some people use as an argument against God, i.e: ‘atrocious’ acts, is a view based wholly upon modern, and predominantly western sentiments. If God is the source: that is, the spirit or mindset from which we all draw, it may be wise to consider that there is more in the well than only what we like. We really cannot judge the past based on current views. As they say: “You had to be there”.

So, modern man reasons and pats himself on the back. Primitive man did the same. You think your morals are better? Circumstance may prove you wrong. Consider this: the Donner party was a group of moral people. They had a sense of what was right and wrong, but circumstance changed their minds for them. Most people who have gone to war and killed other people, were themselves moral people, and did not hold with murder.

Reason is no argument against God. Morality is no argument for objectivity. I think objectivity is, itself, a subjective issue.

I think we already tried to or at least attempted to with our social contract. Even though it doesn’t work. Societies attempt to established objective truths. But since they’re not really truths, and just agreements, it’s not objective. I don’t think there is any objective truth, maybe other than things like math where 2+2 is always 4 no matter where you are in the universe?

@starsofeight You are confusing epistemology and metaphysics. Even if it were true that none of our human judgments were made objectively, that would not mean that there are no objective facts in the world. To say otherwise is to commit the fallacy of equivocation.

I hope no one will mind if I post the same definitions that I posted in response to the other question. I think they could be just as useful here as they were there.

Moral realism is the technical term for what most people call moral objectivism. To be a moral realist, you must assert all three of the following:

(1) Moral statements are the kind of thing that can be true or false.
(2) Some moral statements are true.
(3) True moral statements have their truth value in virtue of the metaphysical status of the actions they describe (that is, something about the metaphysics of the universe makes moral statements true).

Note that these theses are not entirely independent. If you deny (1), you must also deny (2) and (3) on pain of contradiction. If you deny (2), you must also deny (3). Only (3) may be denied without denying either of the remaining theses.

Moral anti-realism is the contradictory of moral realism. To be a moral anti-realist, you must deny one of the three theses of moral realism. Given that the three theses of moral anti-realism are not entirely independent (as noted above), all moral anti-realists deny (3).

Constructivists only deny (3). They hold that there are true moral statements, but that the attitudes of sentient beings are in one way or another essential to the truth of those statements. There are many varieties of constructivism, some of which are very close to moral realism.

The most common, however, are moral subjectivism (which holds that moral statements are assertions about personal attitudes and thus are true when the person asserting them accurately conveys his attitudes) and moral relativism (which holds that moral statements are assertions about group attitudes and thus are true when they actively reflect the attitudes of the group from which the statement is being made).

Another common constructivist view is called ideal observer theory, which holds that the best thing to do is what a perfectly rational and fully informed individual would tell us to do. Divine command theory, which says that we should do whatever God commands, is one version of this view (placing God in the place of the ideal observer). As divine command theory is a form of constructivism, it is also a form of moral anti-realism.

Error theorists deny both (2) and (3), holding that moral statements are failed attempts to refer to moral properties that do not exist. Thus moral statements are the kind of thing that can be true or false, but it turns out that none of them are true because the world lacks anything to make them true. Error theories are always relative to a particular moral discourse. So while one might think that ordinary moral discourse is erroneous, such an error theorist is not committed to the view that all possible moral discourses are erroneous.

Non-cognitivists deny all three theses of moral realism. On this view, moral statements are not assertions at all—despite their syntactic structure—but either commands or effusions of emotion. They do not need anything to make them true because they are not attempts to say anything that is true, informative, or descriptive. Instead, moral statements are solely in the business of getting people to do things with no additional semantic content whatsoever.

I will note again that this taxonomy is incomplete. These are largely categories, each of which contains several particular versions. And, of course, there are questions in moral philosophy beyond which of the three theses of moral realism are true or false.

I also hope nobody will mind if my answer is also exactly the same:

When I was in high school, I invented my own objective moral code, which goes something like this: It’s always wrong to initiate force or aggression against other people without their consent. (If others commit force or aggression against you, that constitutes consent on their part, i.e. self-defense.) The corollary of that is that you have the right to do anything alone or among consenting adults that is mutually consensual and that doesn’t involve force or aggression against others. I think that’s about as close to an objective moral/ethical code as you can get.

BTW, this sounds a lot like the Libertarian ideology, doesn’t it? Well, I developed this moral code years before I knew there was even such things as Libertarians or objectivism or Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman anything about their ideology.

While I appreciate your code of ethics @HungryGuy… it’s not Objective. Since you invented it, that makes it Subjective.

So how could this be implemented upon all of society to agree… And even if it was… would that make it an Objective morality… or is it still Subjective regardless if everyone adopts the Subjectivity of one persons morality?

did I say that right?

You’re right. It’s not objective. But I think its as close as you’re going to get to an objective code created by mankind, that’s what I meant: do anything you want as long as you do no harm to others. But even “harm” is subjective. You beat someone to a parking space at the mall, and it can be argued that you “harmed” them. Or you buy drugs instead of buying a new TV, and it can be argued that you “harmed” the employees of the TV store. I think the meaning of “harm” is clear to me, but someone will always argue.

Anyway, I don’t think it can be implemented upon all of society. An authoritarian regime would never adopt such a code because dictators are ultimate control freaks. And a democratic regime, as we’ve seen, has too many powerful special interests pulling the strings to allow such a code to exist. Besides, I no longer agree that such a code, in its purest form, is a good idea anyway; a “no force/no coercion” creed in its purest form is lassiez-faire capitalism, and is what caused the recent economic problem.

If I understand @HungryGuy correctly, it seems to me that he is suggesting that something like his code of ethics can be shown to be reasonable or warranted—even if not objectively true—given various facts about how human beings work. If that is correct, then it would be a form of constructivism. This, I think, is what underwrites @HungryGuy‘s claim that his code of ethics is as close as he thinks we can get to moral objectivity (as moral constructivism is the closest we can get to moral realism without being moral realists).

Chuangtse and Hueitse had strolled on to the bridge over the Hao, when the former observed, “See how the small fish are darting about! That is the happiness of the fish.”

“You not being a fish yourself,” said Huei, “how can you know the happiness of the fish?”

“And you not being I,” retorted Chuangtse, “how can you know that I do not know?”

“If I, not being you, cannot know what you know,” urged Huei, “it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot know the happiness of the fish.”

“Let us go back to your original question,” said Chuangtse. “You asked me how I knew the happiness of the fish. Your very question shows that you knew that I knew. I knew it from my own feelings on this bridge.”

@SavoirFaire I don’t mean to seem contentious, but neither of those is actually a thing in itself, rather a branch of something else.

Epistemology (from Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), meaning “knowledge, science”, and λόγος (logos), meaning “study of”) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
How do we know what we know?

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:
“What is there?”
“What is it like?”

As philosophy is philosophy, I do not at all feel as if I have confused anything with anything other than itself.

@starsofeight Your argument makes no sense. My left arm and my right arm are both part of me, but that doesn’t make it impossible to confuse one for the other. So while you may not “feel” like you’ve confused anything, it remains true that you have. Indeed, this is a case of exactly the sort of mistake I was saying you were making: conflating what makes something true with how you might come to know it. These can come apart, which is why you “feeling” like you haven’t made a mistake is independent of the fact that you have made a mistake.

@SavoirFaire

Well, I guess—if you say it is, it must be so.

It has been a very long time since I have seen philosophy dissected this deeply (since I studied philosophy in college). I am impressed with the responses. Most of us seek knowledge, but it is a life-long pursuit & even when we reach the end of our physical existence there will still be things that we have not learned.

@starsofeight It has nothing to do with who is saying it. If you think I’m wrong, show me why. Just make the answer reasonable.

I don’t recall electing you to tell us what’s what, or to make the rules regarding my answers. How about you tone it down a bit?

@starsofeight I’m not sure what you mean. I just said—quite explicitly—that I don’t decide what’s what or make the rules. I am simply requesting that you show me why I’m wrong.

So @Linda_Owl… on “things that we have not learned” by the end of our lives…

Do you believe that we learn enough, or at least what we’re supposed to?

Even if we assume the existence of god(s), the only access we have to His/Her/Its/Their supposedly “objective” moral code, is blocked by a lottery of subjectivity. We don’t know what god wants, because the answer depends on which of the world’s thousands of religious denominations one belongs to…and that choice, or indoctrination, is hardly an objective decision. And even if someone wants to claim that they know what god wants, because god regularly chats to them…well they can get in line.

So the whole argument that without god we lack an “objective” morality, belies the reality that even if we assume god(s) exists, we still lack an “objective” morality.

So objective or not, the best we can do, is aim for a justiable morality. And the only viable path I am aware of to reach that goal, is via open discussion using empathy, reason, and evidence.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies , all I am saying is that we learn things all of our lives & that it is impossible to learn everything that there is to know – all we can do is try to learn through out all of our lives. Learning new things is the key to keeping life interesting.