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are people who don't accept subjective morals stupid???

calmingforzzzz

what is absolute? where do these objective morals come from??

Reply 1

Retired_Messiah

Good idea for a thread, worded in the worst way possible.

Reply 2

Implication

Original post by calmingforzzzz

what is absolute? where do these objective morals come from??

Some of them are stupid. Some of the people who think morals are subjective are also stupid though.

Presumably you believe that morals are subjective and think you have good, easy to understand arguments for this view. Would you care to present them?

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Reply 3

miser

One place I think an objective moral framework could come from is the universality of suffering and well-being. If moral decisions are those decisions that have a bearing on the welfare or quality of experience of some conscious perspective, then we can suppose there exists an objective measure of to what degree those decisions could affect any given perspective.

It's troublesome that the universe seems pretty uncooperative in facilitating any exact measurements of an individual's suffering or well-being, but the data should in principle exist and it could (to the extent that such data is available) be used to inform efforts in moral decision-making.

If we acknowledge that morality's principal concern is the suffering and well-being of conscious perspectives, then those things are rooted in objective reality (i.e., they actually exist and to an actual extent), despite that they are experienced subjectively.

The reason I think morality is often thought to be subjective is because we can't actually agree that morality is in fact principally concerned with suffering and well-being, and a lot of people think any conception of morality is equally valid. This seems to indicate we have a problem understanding the topic of discussion, rather than with discussing it once we know what we're talking about.

Reply 4

sleepysnooze

what do you even mean by "subjective"?
subjective in their sources? or subjective in their applications (i.e. "slavery is bad, except in situation x")?
I have a morality that is mostly objective but it is subjective in its origin (e.g. a flawed human being's mind, not a deity's or from nature)

Reply 5

Kendrik Lamar

Original post by Implication

people who think morals are subjective are also stupid though.

I couldn't disagree with you more, not just because you think some of us are stupid, but because even without the non-judgmental insult, I believe you are mistaken. The idealistic concept of moral absolutism has over time been transcended (even within legal parameters) by the more realistic philosophy of situational ethics. This is even, for example, partly why not all homicide cases lead to murder charges. Even the law recognizes that circumstances negate application of absolutes.

Reply 6

Implication

Original post by Kendrik Lamar

I couldn't disagree with you more, not just because you think some of us are stupid, but because even without the non-judgmental insult, I believe you are mistaken.

Think there might be a misunderstanding here - I didn't insult anyone! My point was simply that there are invariably intelligent people who believe stupid things. So even if we concede that objective morality is an outrageously stupid idea, it's still not very sensible to infer that any particular proponents are themselves stupid. I just stated that there were stupid people on both sides of the table!

The idealistic concept of moral absolutism has over time been transcended (even within legal parameters) by the more realistic philosophy of situational ethics. This is even, for example, partly why not all homicide cases lead to murder charges. Even the law recognizes that circumstances negate application of absolutes.

Situational ethics is perfectly compatible with objective systems of morality though, no? I don't think it's sensible to conflate absolute morals with objective morals.