Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Belindi]

Lucky, I'd call that intersubjectively wrong. There is not certainty if everybody in a defined location hold murder is wrong everybody will in that location will think it wrong. True, there is a time dimension that might be a statistic. So let's say absolutely everybody is interrogated, houses searched,open spaces thoroughly searched, hidey holes, every conceivable place a person might be hiding at a specified time. And everyone says murder is wrong, on oath. There is no way even with a closely monitored observation such as that there can be absolute certainty. For practical purposes we'd say "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." This would then be the highest possible degree of compliance. But it's still not grasping that mirage, objective.

[Peter Holmes]

By all means - suggest any moral assertion you like, then demonstrate the independent existence of the moral rightness or wrongness that it asserts. And when you find you can't, perhaps you'll change your mind.

Change my mind about the fact that your inference was invalid? I don't think so.

We've been using 'slavery is morally wrong' as an example of a moral assertion. And the point is, that assertion isn't and can't be objective, because it expresses a value-judgement, which is subjective. And that applies to all moral assertions. The case against moral objectivism is radical. It's about a category error. So I'm not inferring a conclusion from one example.

Now, instead of cavilling, why not demonstrate the objectivity of a moral assertion - I assume you have one in mind - and just one example will do to blow my argument out of the water. I wait in keen anticipation. Not.

[GE Morton]

Sounds good on paper, but in the Real World if 95% of a locality agrees that murder is wrong and they codify this opinion in the law, it is a statistical fact (and thus quite objective) that murder is "wrong" within the boundaries of that locality, even though it started with a group of subjective opinions.

Good thing you put "wrong" in scare quotes. It may be illegal in that locality, but "illegal" and (morally) "wrong" are two different things.

[GE Morton]

Lucky, I'd call that intersubjectively wrong. There is not certainty if everybody in a defined location hold murder is wrong everybody will in that location will think it wrong. True, there is a time dimension that might be a statistic. So let's say absolutely everybody is interrogated, houses searched,open spaces thoroughly searched, hidey holes, every conceivable place a person might be hiding at a specified time. And everyone says murder is wrong, on oath. There is no way even with a closely monitored observation such as that there can be absolute certainty. For practical purposes we'd say "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." This would then be the highest possible degree of compliance. But it's still not grasping that mirage, objective.

Oh, it's more radical than that. Even if every hidey-hole was found, every person polled, and all agreed murder was wrong, it still may not be wrong. That's because whether an act is morally wrong has nothing to do with how many think or say it is.

[Sculptor1]

Not even sure you can say stats are objective, since which stats to gather and which to ignore are based on preconceived assumptions and categories.

Yes, but the preconceived assumptions and categories are not the stats themselves. The stats are just numbers.

um - there are no such things as "just numbers". And they have to be presented.
Take yesterday's graph for Corona deaths. What they ought to be doing is showing a bar-chart for each day. Instead they use a cumulative line graph that shoots up towards the sky - that is scare tactics- propaganda.
Just numbers?

[Sculptor1]

Lucky, I'd call that intersubjectively wrong. There is not certainty if everybody in a defined location hold murder is wrong everybody will in that location will think it wrong. True, there is a time dimension that might be a statistic. So let's say absolutely everybody is interrogated, houses searched,open spaces thoroughly searched, hidey holes, every conceivable place a person might be hiding at a specified time. And everyone says murder is wrong, on oath. There is no way even with a closely monitored observation such as that there can be absolute certainty. For practical purposes we'd say "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." This would then be the highest possible degree of compliance. But it's still not grasping that mirage, objective.

Oh, it's more radical than that. Even if every hidey-hole was found, every person polled, and all agreed murder was wrong, it still may not be wrong. That's because whether an act is morally wrong has nothing to do with how many think or say it is.

Murder is DEFINITIVELY wrong, as it is defined as an illegal act of killing.

Nonetheless scratch the surface and any one could describe circumstances where they would consider murder morally correct, even though it was illegal.

In the end what is or is not legally or morally wrong is based on what people THINK and feel. There is no objective case - people and how they feel is exactly how morals are formed.
No people - no morals.

[Belindi]

GEMorton, the utterance:

"At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." is not a claim about the moral content but a claim about a sociological fact.
Please analyse the sentence:

"Murder was wrong" is the main clause, and it is modified by "at location ABC at such and such a time".
The modifier thus identifies the meaning the transmitter intended.

[Peter Holmes]

GEMorton, the utterance:

"At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." is not a claim about the moral content but a claim about a sociological fact.
Please analyse the sentence:

"Murder was wrong" is the main clause, and it is modified by "at location ABC at such and such a time".
The modifier thus identifies the meaning the transmitter intended.

But the issue is whether the adverbial modification establishes the truth of the whole clause. How about the following?

In the whole world, at such-and-such a time, the earth was flat.

Surely this can only mean '...everyone thought the earth is flat'. And, pari passu, with 'murder was wrong'.

[GE Morton]

GEMorton, the utterance:

"At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." is not a claim about the moral content but a claim about a sociological fact.

If your sentence is meant to state a sociological fact, then it is misleading. It should read, "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was illegal."

Laws are sociological facts; whether something is or is not moral is not.

[GE Morton]

Or it could be, ""At location ABC at such and such a time murder was generally considered to be wrong." What people believe at a given time and place is also a sociological fact. But, again, whether something is moral is not.

[LuckyR]

Lucky, I'd call that intersubjectively wrong. There is not certainty if everybody in a defined location hold murder is wrong everybody will in that location will think it wrong. True, there is a time dimension that might be a statistic. So let's say absolutely everybody is interrogated, houses searched,open spaces thoroughly searched, hidey holes, every conceivable place a person might be hiding at a specified time. And everyone says murder is wrong, on oath. There is no way even with a closely monitored observation such as that there can be absolute certainty. For practical purposes we'd say "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." This would then be the highest possible degree of compliance. But it's still not grasping that mirage, objective.

You are approaching it incorrectly. I didn't stipulate that 100% of the citizenry agreed (I wrote 95% for a reason). I specifically implied that 5% are fine with murder. That 5% is exercising their subjective opinion ie moral code, that murder is AOK. Almost no one disputes that morality is subjective. I am speaking of a different animal, namely a group's ethical standard. A group's consensus on ethical standards absolutely does NOT require 100% agreement, 50% + 1 will do. True, you refer to the time issue. Yes, I agree that an ethical standard will change over time, thus it is (obviously) not objective in the sense of "never changing", rather it is objective in the sense of "quantifiable and reproducible".

[LuckyR]

Sounds good on paper, but in the Real World if 95% of a locality agrees that murder is wrong and they codify this opinion in the law, it is a statistical fact (and thus quite objective) that murder is "wrong" within the boundaries of that locality, even though it started with a group of subjective opinions.

Good thing you put "wrong" in scare quotes. It may be illegal in that locality, but "illegal" and (morally) "wrong" are two different things.

I put "wrong" in quotes because it is such a vague word, so open to interpretation that it has more of a chance of confusing than clarifying. As it has in your case, specifically.

To delve deeper into the example we are using, murder is (subjectively) against most, but not all of folk's moral codes, we all agree, right? It is also a violation of essentially all society's ethical standards (no matter if we can find some where it doesn't, the same issue applies). The reality that within those societies, there are individuals where murder is not against their moral code doesn't change the, I would call: objective fact, that murder is still a violation of that society's ethical standard.

[Terrapin Station]

Good thing you put "wrong" in scare quotes. It may be illegal in that locality, but "illegal" and (morally) "wrong" are two different things.

I put "wrong" in quotes because it is such a vague word, so open to interpretation that it has more of a chance of confusing than clarifying. As it has in your case, specifically.

To delve deeper into the example we are using, murder is (subjectively) against most, but not all of folk's moral codes, we all agree, right? It is also a violation of essentially all society's ethical standards (no matter if we can find some where it doesn't, the same issue applies). The reality that within those societies, there are individuals where murder is not against their moral code doesn't change the, I would call: objective fact, that murder is still a violation of that society's ethical standard.

Sure, but it's not wrong to be unconventional, even highly unconventional.

It would be an objective fact that most people in the society feel that murder is wrong (or rather an objective fact that they say such things), and an objective fact that the society has laws against murder, but that doesn't equate to it being an objective fact that murder is wrong (even just in that society). In other words, it's not an objective fact if we don't make the qualifications re "This is what most people say," "There are laws against this," etc.

You can see this sort of thing more clearly if you make an analogy to, say, music that's popular but that you don't like. "Most people say that artist x is great," "Radio stations plays artist x at least once every two hours," etc., but those facts do not equate to saying that "Artist x is great (unqualified)."

[Belindi]

GEMorton, the utterance:

"At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." is not a claim about the moral content but a claim about a sociological fact.

If your sentence is meant to state a sociological fact, then it is misleading. It should read, "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was illegal."

Laws are sociological facts; whether something is or is not moral is not.

Indeed but people seldom pick their words carefully, and we usually try to judge the social context so as to understand what the person means.

Philosophers should try to be unambiguous however philosophy is an art not formal logic.

[Belindi]

Lucky, I'd call that intersubjectively wrong. There is not certainty if everybody in a defined location hold murder is wrong everybody will in that location will think it wrong. True, there is a time dimension that might be a statistic. So let's say absolutely everybody is interrogated, houses searched,open spaces thoroughly searched, hidey holes, every conceivable place a person might be hiding at a specified time. And everyone says murder is wrong, on oath. There is no way even with a closely monitored observation such as that there can be absolute certainty. For practical purposes we'd say "At location ABC at such and such a time murder was wrong." This would then be the highest possible degree of compliance. But it's still not grasping that mirage, objective.

You are approaching it incorrectly. I didn't stipulate that 100% of the citizenry agreed (I wrote 95% for a reason). I specifically implied that 5% are fine with murder. That 5% is exercising their subjective opinion ie moral code, that murder is AOK. Almost no one disputes that morality is subjective. I am speaking of a different animal, namely a group's ethical standard. A group's consensus on ethical standards absolutely does NOT require 100% agreement, 50% + 1 will do. True, you refer to the time issue. Yes, I agree that an ethical standard will change over time, thus it is (obviously) not objective in the sense of "never changing", rather it is objective in the sense of "quantifiable and reproducible".

I understand now. Is this what the original poster was seeking, or was he asking if God exists?