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SvetlanaButosky t1_j3m2r83 wrote

Has anyone actually solved the Objective Vs Subjective Morality debate?

A lot of people are on the objective camp (with various arguments) but more and more people are jumping to the subjective camp.

Some say morality must be objective because we have biological needs like good health, which is universal, so anything that promotes good health in life should be objectively moral?

I believe Sam Harris uses the same logic.

What say you? Morals are objective or subjective? What is your argument?

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oryxmath t1_j3n9ir6 wrote

Nobody has solved it.

The most important thing to have when approaching this debate (or any other major philosophical debate) is epistemic humility. If you think that moral truths are obviously objective, or obviously subjective, consider the possibility that you're missing some of the complexity of the arguments on the other side.

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One thing worth doing here is laying out out the universe of major debates in meta-ethics, because a lot of times "subjectivism" gets conflated with a lot of different views.

Moral Realism is the view that there are some true moral facts. Say, murder is wrong.

Moral Anti-Realism is not just "subjectivism" but could be divided into some different views:

  1. Non-cognitivists believe that moral statements are not the sorts of things that can be true or false. They may just be expressions of approval or emotion. So "murder is wrong", according to a non-cognitivist, might just mean something like "boo murder!". They key here is that moral statements are not beliefs. "murder is wrong" is neither true nor false on this view.

  2. Error theorists believe that moral statements ARE beliefs that could be true or false, but that they are never true. So "murder is wrong", according to an error theorist, is false. It is false not because murder is good, but because the property "wrongness" doesn't exist in the world.

Subjectivism is technically a moral realist position by my definition. But Traditional moral realists are objectivists, believing that the truth or falsity of moral statements are mind-independent. So "murder is wrong" is either true or false no matter what I happen to think about murder. Non-objectivists believe moral truths are somehow mind-dependent. Subjectivism would say "murder is wrong" means something like "I disapprove of murder". But there are other non-objectivist positions. Cultural relativism, for example, would say "murder is wrong" means something like "my culture disapproves of murder".

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I'm not taking a view on any of these questions, I just wanted to lay out the landscape for you for further reading or maybe help you pinpoint your own views. Very important to remember that anybody who is giving glibly confident answers to these questions probably doesn't understand all the nuance because this stuff is not easy.

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Symsav t1_j3yjgc8 wrote

Arguments like Sam Harris’ have been refuted for decades in many ways. One is the is-ought gap - principally, you cannot logically derive what you ought to do (moral actions) from what is (biology, pleasure, happiness, etc).

Other notable refutations of objectivist morality like these are the Open Question Argument, and the Naturalistic Fallacy. So to answer your question, as with every debate in philosophy neither side has ‘solved it’, but the subjectivist side has never really had a problem entirely refuting arguments from the objectivist side

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j406c84 wrote

But how do you refute the objective and universal nature of biological needs?

We are genetically compelled to fulfill our biological needs, its literally mind and axiom independent, it doesnt matter what we believe in, we still have to obey our biology if we are sound of mind.

So any moral values developed from biology should be objective, right?

Its not like we can do anything else, we'd literally die if stop fulfilling our biological needs.

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Goonerlouie t1_j4isoee wrote

Reproducing is a biological need. The ways some will satisfy that need is immoral (talking about non consensual relations).

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j4kczc4 wrote

Rape is not fulfilling the need to reproduce, its an unintended side effect of hormones.

Biology is objective, but evolution is not perfect, that doesnt disprove the objectivity of biology and the morality developed based on it.

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Goonerlouie t1_j4kjnud wrote

I don’t know, there must be a link between hormone and biological needs. Hunger is triggered by a hormone is it not? I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss it as an unintended side effect of hormones.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j4l7gx1 wrote

As said, biology is evolution and evolution is never perfect, its trials and errors, adaptation to survive.

But once it has found a formula that works, it will become universal and spread among the species, becoming its objective foundation, survival of the best biology.

The link is trials and errors with side effects, biological evolution is not a factory made precision machine, lol.

But its still totally mind independent, meaning its objective.

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Symsav t1_j4rnznb wrote

I don’t need to refute the nature of biological needs. To claim we have biological needs is a descriptive claim, to claim we ought to act in accordance with them is a normative claim. To derive a normative claim from a descriptive claim is inherently illogical.

Time for the open question argument. Let’s use, for example, ‘maintaining one’s health’ as our biological need. For this to be reducible to good, asking ‘is maintaining one’s health good?’ has to be a closed question (the answer must be yes in all instances - as it would be to ask ‘is good good?’) The answer is yes sometimes - most of the time, even - but what about when sacrificing your food so that your child can eat? (or any other instance of an answer which is anything but ‘objectively yes’).

Therefore, although biological needs are universally experienced and usually what we navigate towards, they are far from objectively moral.

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SmorgasConfigurator t1_j3mfom3 wrote

No solution, only more or less convincing arguments.

I do not think the question is as clear cut though as objective vs subjective. It is possible also to argue that morality is a social property. To see morality as a matter of the individual subject would then be wrong. However, neither would the morality be founded in a universal nature. The social laws and conventions are then imitated, adopted, reproduced through the individual human. In a sense that is an objective morality, not a choice or something individual, but neither is it universal.

If we accept this one can debate depth. For example, if our moral intuitions about who or what to blame for an unprovoked murder, or different moral status of children, can be traced back to some conventions from millennia ago, what does that imply for the present? Can we elect to switched the moral system that plays out within us or not? There is a bootstrap problem here, which I know some philosophers like Agnes Callard are thinking of. Questions about the truth in traditions are also found here, truths that are not simply matters of scientific scrutiny.

I find that many deeper debates about morality end up in questions about purpose or telos. Is everything arbitrary, or has the human creature been imbued with some purpose. Even the Sam Harris approach to look at biology and survival and reproduction ends up there, attributing meaning to suffering. It makes the God question also inevitable. Alasdair MacIntyre has looked into telos and why some given feature of the universe we live in is likely to have granted us with an objective purpose.

Lots more can be said, my point merely is that once we look deeper into the question you pose, another set of issues are encountered, which challenges the question and what morality is or can be.

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[deleted] t1_j3m8sut wrote

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j3mb4v6 wrote

Psychos are not sound of mind, I doubt we can use their behaviors as an argument.

Even psychos want a healthy life too, they just dont mind getting it at the expense of other people.

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[deleted] t1_j3ml5yl wrote

Morality is a phantasm, an illusory figment of the human imagination. For morality to be objective, there would need to be some universal independent standard to refer to, but no such thing exists.

Let's consider a car, which is travelling along a road. That car is going at a certain speed. As bystanders, we might guess at what speed the car is traveling, and we will have either a correct answer or an incorrect answer. The only reason that our answers can be correct or incorrect is because the car is traveling, and thus will be moving at a certain speed. It provides the standard by which our answers can be adjudicated. If there was no car, then to ask at what speed the car was traveling would not make sense.

In the case of morality, there is no car, which is to say, there is no standard. Taking your example here:

>Some say morality must be objective because we have biological needs like good health, which is universal, so anything that promotes good health in life should be objectively moral?

You haven't actually resolved the moral question. Why is it right to fulfill those biological needs? What makes that correct? By what standard, and by what authority is that standard applied to everyone? You can ask the same slate of questions of every purported moral system out there, and I, for one, have never seen convincing answers.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j3n19t2 wrote

>You haven't actually resolved the moral question. Why is it right to fulfill those biological needs? What makes that correct? By what standard, and by what authority is that standard applied to everyone? You can ask the same slate of questions of every purported moral system out there, and I, for one, have never seen convincing answers.

  1. We have universal and objective biological needs to be healthy and free from harm, people are just born with these needs. (animals too)
  2. We ought to do things that maintain our biological needs, because they are innate to our existence. (due to evolution).
  3. Therefore we ought to develop morality based on biological needs, which are universal and objective.

Would this be a good premise and conclusion for moral objectivity?

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[deleted] t1_j3ner63 wrote

>We ought to do things that maintain our biological needs, because they are innate to our existence. (due to evolution).

But, why should that be the standard, and not something else? Why should I be held to what is innate to "our existence," and not just my own pleasure, or what is innate to the existence of squirrels, or iron? Ultimately, all moral systems/claims rely on bare axioms, but there is no reason why one must accept any given axiom; they are essentially arbitrary. Therefore, the moral system which relies on them is, essentially, arbitrary.

Put a different way: while the moral system might rely on objective realities in its formulation, such as basic biological needs, the decision to consider those realities as the basis of right and wrong is ultimately an arbitrary choice. We might, all of us, inherently value something, but that doesn't make it right.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j3vzpj2 wrote

Because biological needs are things nobody can reject and they apply to everyone regardless of their personal preference?

Unless you are not sound of mind, I doubt anyone would deliberately self torture for fun, biological needs always take over in the end.

You can say its the objective foundation of our existence, which means we have an objective reference to build our morality.

It is basically mind independent.

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[deleted] t1_j3yh0cu wrote

>You can say its the objective foundation of our existence, which means we have an objective reference to build our morality.

But why should that be the reference in the first place? We could make any number of things the reference, all of which might be objective to a greater or lesser degree. But why should that be the standard and not something else? We might prefer one option over another, but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily right.

To say that something is morally right or wrong carries the implication of an obligation that commands our obedience in some sense. If we do not adhere to that obligation, then we have errored in some way.

Yet, how can someone be said to have errored if they simply take on a different axiom than you do? Your axiom here seems to be something like 'we ought to fulfill our basic biological needs,' but someone else could as easily say that 'we ought to serve god,' and their axiom has as much proof that it is the correct one as your axiom does.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j405aqm wrote

Because you either fulfill your biological needs or you die?

That's a very strong and objective "right".

In fact, its so strong that we cant even stop ourselves from wanting it, its in our genes, the biological need to survive and spread.

Even people who "wanna serve god" must have their biological needs fulfilled, they wont be alive to serve god otherwise, lol.

Isnt this the most objective standard/reference/right thing to do?

Its literally axiom independent.

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[deleted] t1_j40xniq wrote

You will eventually die regardless, that’s inevitable. The decision to make it later, rather than sooner, is a matter of preference. It might be a very strong preference, but it’s still essentially a preference.

As I said previously, just because we might all inherently want something does not mean that it is morally right. It’s not about what we want to do, or even what we are instinctually driven to do; it’s about what we ought to do. That ‘ought’ needs to exist as a thing in itself, and provably so, for there to be an objective morality. Otherwise, you’re just forwarding one values system among many.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j41c1xw wrote

So nothing is morally right then?

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[deleted] t1_j4359ee wrote

No, nothing at all. There’s no right or wrong, just choices and consequences.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j4505pr wrote

So Hitler was an ok guy?

If I follow this line of thought.

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[deleted] t1_j46tz7p wrote

Two things can be true at once. You can think, as I do, that what Hitler did was abhorrent and cruel, you can hate him, all without saying that his actions were morally wrong. Preference and opinion are utterly divorced from whether or not something is wrong or right. Just because I don’t believe in objective morality does not mean I am automatically best friends with Hitler, or Mao, or Stalin, or any other homicidal dictator; as far as I’m concerned, they were all abhorrent and cruel.

What is even the point of saying it was wrong? Do you think that would have stopped him from doing what he was doing, if only someone had told him it was wrong? I highly doubt it.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j472cht wrote

The point is so kids dont grow up confused and following in his footstep.

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[deleted] t1_j47edsf wrote

Children aren't taught how to behave by moralizing. We teach children how to behave by imposing negative consequences on them for engaging in behavior which we disapprove of. This prepares them for adult society, where the only rules are those which the people with badges and guns enforce. Choices and consequences, "if you chose to do this, these will be the consequences, and it's up to you to decide if it's worth it."

The same sort of approach can be taken with a figure like Hitler, or Mussolini, or any such individual. Forget about right and wrong, is that the sort of life you would want to have? Dictators don't have happy existences; it's a lot of paranoia, constant stress that your cronies, who you have no choice but to rely on, might be planning to kill you and usurp your position, and also constant fear that an opposition faction might be able to gather enough support in the military or the population to overthrow you and kill you in some horrible way. There are plenty of simple, hedonistic reasons why you don't want to try to be like those guys. It sucks!

Ultimately, I don't think there are a lot of people who want to do that sort of thing anyways, but we can ignore that for now. Why moralize, when you can just present clear consequences for the choices made? The latter seems like a much more effective way of influencing human behavior towards desired outcomes than the former.

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ColoringFrenzy t1_j3n7zkp wrote

You say “due to evolution” as if it’s the only belief people have, which is untrue. We very well could have been put on earth in another way which would tear your theory down

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