PureX
Veteran Member
So you think the exception disproves the rule.
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Is Atheism (et al) a Worldview?
- Thread starter SalixIncendium
- Start date
PureX
Veteran Member
Yes, a kind of confirmation bias. If I want this to be true, then I have to assume that to be true to support this being true. Eventually creating a kind of house of cards that I have to defend from the slightest breeze coming from any direction.
We are all the same, and we are all different. At the same time. It's just a matter of perspective and circumstance.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Although it seems that scientific materialism is more common among explicit atheists, I wouldn't call other views "exceptions." If something is an exception, it is a rare thing. I think there a LOTS of Buddhists who are atheists and not materialists.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
It isn't difficult, maybe he poisoned it and got it wrong intentionally.
My point is, that you can keep adding stuff to these moral questions until they become so absurd, to which point we are not addressing the moral issue anymore because it is so mudded with obscure circumstances.
Because your obvious reply to me saying he poisoned it, would be to add that he didn't do it, he simply got the order wrong and he is also the friendliest and most caring person to have ever lived and is giving all he earns to the poor. But this removes what the moral question is about, is killing immoral?
The only way to address these questions is if you make equally obscure opposite examples to see if you reach the same moral conclusion.
So, there is no objective morality here, is that what you're saying?
I tend to agree, although I think evaluating the morality of something would also have to be viewed in a larger context. Those who tried to assassinate Hitler had to face similar questions, even if they agreed as a matter of moral principle that Hitler was a monster who needed to die. Any plan to kill Hitler would have required them to neutralized Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering (and possibly others), otherwise it could have turned out worse. It wasn't a question of deciding in a vacuum "let's just kill Hitler and everything will be alright."
In the realm of politics and war, morality seems measured more in terms of national interests and strategic advantage. National leaders have to think in terms of what's good for their own constituents, not necessarily a greater good for all of humanity. Morality is not measured in black-and-white terms, but various nuanced shades of gray - the lesser among many evils.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
Im simply making an argument that subjective morality is the case and that objective morality doesn't exist. Whether that is correct or not, I don't know. But it seems to me that a lot of people answering me, get caught up in very specific examples, rather than the overall concepts of objective vs subjective morality.
Whether killing Hitler would have made things better or not, is irrelevant. Since we are talking about whether there is a moral justification for killing someone.
These are the differences between objective and subjective morality.
1. Basis of Morality:
- Objective morality holds that moral values and principles exist independently of human beliefs, opinions, or perceptions. These moral truths are considered to be universal and immutable.
- Subjective morality posits that moral values and principles are dependent on individual beliefs, opinions, cultural norms, and societal standards. Morality is seen as relative and variable across different perspectives.
2. Source of Morality:
- Objective morality typically derives moral values from sources such as religion, natural law, or rational philosophical principles. These sources are considered to provide a foundation for moral truths that apply universally.
- Subjective morality sources moral values from personal experiences, cultural upbringing, societal norms, and individual perspectives. Morality is viewed as constructed by human beings within specific contexts.
3. Nature of Moral Truths:
- Objective morality suggests that moral truths are discoverable through reason, revelation, or observation and are applicable to all individuals regardless of their beliefs or circumstances.
- Subjective morality views moral truths as contingent upon subjective experiences, cultural contexts, and individual interpretations. What is considered moral can vary from person to person and culture to culture.
4. Universality vs. Relativity:
- Objective morality implies that moral principles are universal and apply to all individuals in all situations. These principles are seen as immutable and not subject to change based on personal preferences or cultural differences.
- Subjective morality asserts that moral values are relative and can vary based on cultural norms, personal beliefs, and situational factors. What is considered moral or immoral may differ between individuals and societies.
5. Moral Guidance:
- Objective morality often provides clear moral guidelines and absolute standards for behavior, as derived from religious texts, philosophical doctrines, or natural law theories.
- Subjective morality tends to offer more flexibility in moral decision-making, recognizing the diversity of perspectives and the need for individuals to navigate moral dilemmas based on their own values and circumstances.
6. Evaluation of Actions:
- In objective morality, the morality of an action is judged based on its conformity to objective moral principles or standards, irrespective of individual beliefs or societal norms.
- In subjective morality, the morality of an action is assessed based on personal beliefs, intentions, consequences, and contextual factors, which can vary from person to person.
7. Critique and Challenges:
- Objective morality may face criticism regarding the identification of the source of moral truths and the possibility of conflicting moral claims from different religious or philosophical perspectives.
- Subjective morality may encounter challenges related to the absence of universal standards and the potential for moral relativism, where all perspectives are considered equally valid regardless of their ethical implications.
Atheism is a theistic position in the same sense that "foreign" is a nationality (i.e. not at all).
I don't call myself "foreign" when I'm in the US. Do you not identify as an atheist when you're not interacting with a theist?
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That is a pretty good question that doesn't necessarily have a clear, stable question.
Much of the role of atheism is to not be there demanding our attention. In many situations the point is for it to have no consequence and be undetectable.
It is a theistic position in the sense that it establishes how we relate to other theistic positions and to the concept that theist positions revolve around. But it turns out that the relationship is of at least one of the various possible levels of estrangement to the idea of revolving around that concept.
So, yes, atheism is a theistic position. Of refusing to have a theistic position.
Very Taoistic IMO.
The analogy isn't perfect. My point was that the term "atheism" is a catch-all for everything beyond a given category (theism).
The term "atheism" points away from theism rather than to something specific.
Do you have a source or author? I wonder who established these criteria.
This I find to be a bit confused about the nature of morality. Morality is all about what sentients (not necessarily humans) perceive and decide to be worth pursuing or avoiding. Moral truth can IMO be objective, but it makes to sense to call it "immutable", because it can only exist in relation to circunstances and situations that might potentially be changed. Not just individual actions and omissions, but also the cultural and societal possibilities, which do change across cultures and along with the change of time periods and other circunstances.
TLDR: Objective morality may well exist (and IMO exists), but definitely not in the sense of "universal and immutable values", which would be a direct contradiction of ideas.
Similar situations occur in the other items of that list. Morality probably should be subjective in the sense of arbitrarity (when it is avoidable, at least), but it must be informed by specific situations and circunstances if it is to exist at all. It is not immoral to jaywalk if you can see that there are no traffic coming from any direction.
This calls moraliy "subjective" while apparently failing to notice that criteria for morality can be rational and objective and, indeed, use some form of universal principles without necessarily refusing to consider the specifics of each situation.
I have similar comments about #3-6.
Apparently the author of this list has an understanding of "objective morality" that I can't agree with. Obedience to laws and rules is just obedience; it ain't no morality no siree. Morality can not exist without some form of ability to discern and evaluate possibilities and be aware of new possibilities as circunstances change. It is a discipline and a practice for sentients, not a rulebook for machines or AIs.
It is not that morality is (necessarily) subjective; it is rather that this description of objective morality does not understand what morality is in the first place.
Similarly, this is a bit short-sighted about the nature of morality and confused about how objectivity and relativism might exist in relation to morality.
These understandings of "objective" and "subjective" morality are both well divorced from reality.
Murder is generally defined as illegal homicide, and what's legal can vary considerably in different jurisdictions.
As for homicide itself, our species, for most of its formative history, lived in small, hunter-gatherer bands. Loyalty, self-sacrifice and altruism were strong within the band, but of no particular utility without. Extending moral obligation to those outside this 'in-group' is an unnatural thing, and a novelty in hominid history.
The extended rules of moral obligation in modern, multicultural societies is a new thing, with shallow roots, as is demonstrated by the ease by which the social veneer is stripped away, by military training, for example.
No.
In this case the Bible is historically incorrect. There is no evidence, outside the biblical narrative, that the Egyptians kept significant numbers of slaves, Hebrew or otherwise. Nor is there any evidence of any mass exodus.
The defense of murdering Hitler is consequentialist speculation; that more harm would eventually result from letting him live than from killing him before he became socially consequential.
This remains speculation, though. The morality of the actual act of killing a then innocent and unthreatening individual remains an issue. The extermination, by the Nazis, of physically or, what they judged, socially defective individuals, was also done for the good of society and future generations.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
I don't have a single source these are summaries of the difference in meaning between them.
This is what objective means.
1. Expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
It is the opposite of subjective, where things are viewed from the perspective of a subject, in this case, that would be a human. You could compare this to physical laws, these are objectively true, and we have no say in the matter. In objective morality, this means that moral truth comes from something beyond us, which could be God. This also means that whatever God says is morally wrong is morally wrong regardless of what you think, because it is beyond you.
Because it is the objective view. This means that if killing is considered morally wrong, it is wrong universally because something (God, natural laws) states that it is.
This is not about obedience it is the very definition of objectivity. It is no different than when doing science and you imagine that someone believes that a certain test should give a different result, so they simply choose to interpret the result in whatever way that fits them. This is obviously unacceptable in science, the results we want have to be as objective as possible. We are not interested in people's opinions about gravity, but rather how gravity works.
Again you don't have to agree with the objective moral views, I don't either, I agree with you from what I understand. But this is the argument that supporters of objective morality will make. Obviously, you would have to look into the arguments that people supporting this view make to reached the conclusion that this is the case.
These are the definitions of objective and subjective.
being objective
1. expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
Objective morality is the idea that right and wrong exist factually, without any importance of opinion. It's the concept that some actions and beliefs are imperatively good or inherently bad, and that the goodness or badness of those things holds true no matter who you are or what else you believe in.
being subjective
1. judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts
Subjective Morality: Subjective morality is the belief that moral principles and values are dependent on individual opinions, personal beliefs, cultural norms, and societal contexts. In this view, what is considered right or wrong can vary from person to person and culture to culture.
I tend to agree, although it seems that, with this list here, you're defining certain aspects of objective morality. So, perhaps objective morality can exist theoretically, with the understanding that it's impossible for humans to ever be truly objective. The best we can do is reach some kind of shared consensus, yet never 100%. One could also argue that objective morality is impractical, based on the assumption that our competitors or adversaries are playing dirty, so "we have to play just as dirty" in order to prevail. But that's where one might need to be careful and have greater clarity of thought and a coherent objective in mind.
I suppose the example of killing Hitler is perhaps a bit too obvious. But it got me to thinking about other examples, such as in the Pacific Theater and the American anger against Japan over Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and the Bataan Death March. There were stories of American prisoners being brutally mistreated by the Japanese, and Americans were out for their pound of flesh. There were incidents of Americans killing Japanese who had been taken prisoner. I remember one guy telling a story about his father, who was serving in the US military, and he was racked by guilt about an incident where they had some captured Japanese prisoners, who were completely disarmed and just standing there. He apparently just decided to take his pistol and shoot all of them, one by one. None of the other guys in his unit did anything or reported him. Those kinds of things were kept as "family secrets" apparently. Admiral Halsey also took a kind of "kill 'em all" attitude.
Of course, a lot of people back then might have argued, "Well, look what the Japanese did to our people" and justified it as a matter of retribution. There's this idea "If you mess with us, then you take the consequences," even if it means having nuclear bombs dropped on your cities. Some people saw that as immoral, although others have argued that it was the lesser of two evils.
I wouldn't see that as morally equivalent to the choice humans make when killing each other.
Apparently we will have to agree to disagree. I won't accept those propositions for "objective" and "subjective" morality. They are both inherently self-contradictory.
It also needs speculation that killing is the best option: killing in defense of others is only ethical when less extreme measures are unavailable to save the people who are being threatened.
If we're talking about changing events in the past, maybe other actions would be just as effective as killing him.
Maybe WWII never happens if, say, Hitler sold a few more paintings and decides to stick to art or if he got 20 years in prison for the Beer Hall Putsch instead of 5 years.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
But who decides that murder is immoral?
Slavery in Egypt existed up until the early 20th century. It differed from the previous slavery in ancient Egypt, being managed in accordance with Islamic law from the conquest of the Caliphate in the 7th century until the practice stopped in the early 20th-century, having been gradually abolished in the late 19th century. Slave trade was abolished successively between 1877 and 1884. Slavery itself was not abolished, but it gradually died out after the abolition of the slave trade, since no new slaves could be legally acquired. Existing slaves were noted as late as the 1930s.
During the Islamic history of Egypt, slavery were mainly focused on three categories: male slaves used for soldiers and bureaucrats, female slaves used for sexual slavery as concubines, and female slaves and eunuchs used for domestic service in harems and private households. At the end of the period, there were a growing agricultural slavery. The people enslaved in Egypt during Islamic times mostly came from Europe and Caucasus (which where referred to as "white"), or from the Sudan and Africa South of the Sahara through the Trans-Saharan slave trade (which where referred to as "black").
Whether there was a mass exodus I think is missing the point, the mere fact that slavery as a concept was known by people at the time, to the degree that at least the Jews thought that laws about it were needed, witness that it was not an unknown thing. Again times were different and based on Wiki at least:
The word translated as "slave" from the Egyptian language does not neatly align with modern terms or traditional labor roles. The classifications of "servant," "peasant," and "slave" could describe different roles in different contexts. Egyptian texts refer to words 'bꜣk' and 'ḥm' that mean laborer or servant. Some Egyptian language refers to slave-like people as 'sqrw-ꜥnḫ', meaning "bound for life".[5] Forms of forced labor and servitude are seen throughout all of ancient Egypt.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
Sure, I don't think we are in any position to change definitions. Again I didn't make them up, this is what they mean if you look them up.