"Morals are Subjective." (ethic, school, compare, elect)

[njquestions]

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Murder is variable in the extreme, it's not that long ago that perfectly legal killings would now be considered murder. Philip Hamilton (Alexander's son) was killed in a duel in New Jersey by George Eacker no charges were filed (dueling being legal in NJ but illegal in NY), Hamilton himself died in a duel, but Burr was charged (but the charges were ultimately dropped). Today both Eacker and Burr would be considered murderers.

Killing people in a duel isn't murder because both parties agreed to it. If you schedule it and arrive with an assistant and have rules beforehand, you can hardly get upset about it.

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by njquestions

Killing people in a duel isn't murder because both parties agreed to it. If you schedule it and arrive with an assistant and have rules beforehand, you can hardly get upset about it.

I agree, that said I'm not the one claiming moral absolutism on the killing of other people.

[njquestions]

Originally Posted by Gungnir

I agree, that said I'm not the one claiming moral absolutism on the killing of other people.

Ah, but that's not the claim. The claim is that morality is objective. That does not therefore mean that the objective morality means you can't kill. That's how people are interpreting it. Morality can be objective and I can kill in self-defense and those aren't mutually exclusive things.

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by njquestions

Ah, but that's not the claim. The claim is that morality is objective. That does not therefore mean that the objective morality means you can't kill. That's how people are interpreting it. Morality can be objective and I can kill in self-defense and those aren't mutually exclusive things.

Then you're presenting a false equivalency in your thread opening. All instances of intentional killing must be examined contextually to determine whether or not the killing is "moral" or "immoral". Making any comparison about murder or any other form of causing the death of another entirely meaningless.

[njquestions]

Originally Posted by Gungnir

Then you're presenting a false equivalency in your thread opening. All instances of intentional killing must be examined contextually to determine whether or not the killing is "moral" or "immoral". Making any comparison about murder or any other form of causing the death of another entirely meaningless.

No, nobody said "morality is objective, therefore it means nobody has to think about anything." All it means is that you can't change it.

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by njquestions

No, nobody said "morality is objective, therefore it means nobody has to think about anything." All it means is that you can't change it.

The threadstarter did,

Originally Posted by dog8food

If morals are truly subjective, then murder can only be illegal in a legal context.

Which is true. Murder can only be illegal in a legal context. If morals are not subjective then they are...?
Using your arguments the killing of a person can only be moral or immoral in its own context, making comparisons meaningless. Thus the morals would be at best contextually objective (which would be an oxymoron).

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by dog8food

Given their position then, they must believe murder is okay for those people who consider it to be okay

I will ignore the attempt to conflate a single position with partisan politics given that people who are NOT "liberals" can also hold the view you describe. So let us just drop the partisan nonsense and look at the claim itself.

Thinking morals are subjective does not necessitate thinking murder is ok. If all the people in the world but me thought murder was ok, I would still hold MY position that it is not. I would of course defer to democracy, but in a true democracy I would be also free to campaign for my position to be at least heard on the matter.

Saying morality is subjective just means that there is no objective set in stone morality, or at least no evidence for one. But our morality is still constrained by that objective reality. So a subjective morality is not free of objectivity at it's core.

The majority of people do not want themselves or their loved ones to be hurt or killed. Therefore we construct a moral consensus based on those facts about the human condition.... and we build a society where the morality says humans should not be hurt or killed.

So pedantically what you say is technically correct.... that in a subjective morality murder would be ok if everyone was ok with it....... but when you stop navel gazing to find what is pedantically true.... you realize you are describing a fantastical situation that is not likely to actually occur. And even in societies or histories where people have been ok with other people being murdered..... you will find that they had to dehumanize them in some way first in order to parse it through their morality.

Originally Posted by njquestions

If morality is subjective, then by definition there is no morality.

By YOUR definition maybe, but not by any I have seen to date. Love of music is subjective, does that mean "by definition" there is no love of music? Being subjective does not mean being non-existent.

Originally Posted by njquestions

Regarding abortion, there will always be people who value their own personal convenience over anyone or anything else. People come up with very inventive (and usually stupid) arguments to justify terminating a life.

The problem however is you make it something of a core MO to merely call peoples positions "stupid" and then run away without actually rebutting those positions in any way. Perhaps someone can get away with that once or twice, but when you literally do it in almost every post in pretty much every thread you post on..... people will start to notice the cop out tactic.

Read MY position on abortion sometime, I have posted on it a lot, and see if you can identify what is "stupid" or even "wrong" about it. See if you can drop your usual veil of "Call it stupid then run away fast" and actually stop for 2 minutes to explain HOW and WHY my position is wrong. As with your complete demonstrable inability to back up your evolution claim on another thread however.... I think we both know you will come back with no rebuttal at all. Just some one liner cop out dismissal that you think (wrongly) covers up your cop out.

Originally Posted by MPowering1

I don't think morality is subjective. What is at odds in the abortion debate, is the question of when does life begin? I believe it occurs at conception, and so, abortion is murder to me.

Having said that, I realize not everyone believes that's when life begins, and it's not up to the Catholic Church to decide what women can do with their bodies.

Well I think the problem is not that people do not agree that is when "life begins" so much as we are using the word "Life" in many ways interchangeable.

Biologically what do you even mean life "begins" at conception for example. The sperm and egg are alive in many ways too. So conception is not a "beginning" so much as a step in the human life cycle.

There are some philosophies that "life" only began ONCE and that each conception of a child is not a "new life" but merely a new expression of the whole "life". Kind of like watching a lava lamp. Often bits split off the "lava" and have their own brief existence and then some of them are lost again. There might be more "individual bits" of the lava are different times, but it is not "new" but just an individual expression of the whole. There is still the same about of "lava" (life) the whole time, it just takes on different forms and different quantities of individuals.

Think also of how twins are formed if life begins at conception. Very often LATER after conception the developing entity splits into twins. More often than you think. What has happened here? Has a new life popped up AFTER conception? When did THAT life "start" then? It can not have been "at conception" because there was only "one life" then right?? Where did the second one come from?

This kills the "all life is at conception" idea. Or has the life of the one become two halves? I would love to see you tell twins they are only half-alive!

But if my scientific claim is true then why are there not more twins then if this happens so often?

Well because often, for no reason we know yet, one twin REABSORBS the other. What happened here? Did half alive twins become one? Did one murder the other? Is one life that "began" at some point suddenly dead, or if you are religious cast into eternal limbo as an un-baptised soul?

Clearly this arithmetic of souls makes no sense and makes the "life begins at conception" position troublesome at best.

But all of that has it's relevance challenged too. Why is biological "life" starting grounds for moral and ethical concern, and the assignment of human rights? That would seem arbitrary at best. Convenient of course.... as it is an EASY line in the sand to draw. But not really an intellectually or philosophically robust position to hold.

Originally Posted by whogo

Life begins at conception. That is a biological fact. As certain as CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The debate is over when that life should be protected.

Declaring a debate "over" is usually the move made by a person who can not engage in it. As I described above the biological "facts" may neither be as accurate OR as relevant as you want them to be.

For me it is not enough to merely declare when life "begins" or that it IS life. "Life" is obviously not something many of us hold all that dear. We happily chop down trees to make our paper or slaughter animals to make our food. Clearly we do not worry about their "life" so equally clearly there is something more than mere "life" in play here.

So what is it. Well "Human life" you could say. Not just life but "Human life" specifically. But why is that important? Why is one piece of DNA important when another is not? There must be something specifically ABOUT "human life" to elevate it.

I think I know what that is, and wonder if you do. The problem there however is that the thing I think it is.... is entirely ABSENT in a fetus from 0 weeks up until probably even 24 or 26 weeks. But certainly it is absent in 0-12 weeks when well over 90% of abortions-by-choice actually occur.

So not only is it crass to declare a debate over when you have not even engaged in it.... it would seem FAR from over out here in reality at all.

Originally Posted by njquestions

Not at all. That's why, for example, Christians know that they sin. If they were like liberals, they'd just believe everything they did was right.

Errrr most liberals, like most conservatives, ARE Christians. You make it sound like you think they are magically separate groups in your on going desperation to parse everything into partisan extremism.

[kayanne]

Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo

I will ignore the attempt to conflate a single position with partisan politics given that people who are NOT "liberals" can also hold the view you describe. So let us just drop the partisan nonsense and look at the claim itself.

Thinking morals are subjective does not necessitate thinking murder is ok. If all the people in the world but me thought murder was ok, I would still hold MY position that it is not. I would of course defer to democracy, but in a true democracy I would be also free to campaign for my position to be at least heard on the matter.

Saying morality is subjective just means that there is no objective set in stone morality, or at least no evidence for one. But our morality is still constrained by that objective reality. So a subjective morality is not free of objectivity at it's core.

The majority of people do not want themselves or their loved ones to be hurt or killed. Therefore we construct a moral consensus based on those facts about the human condition.... and we build a society where the morality says humans should not be hurt or killed.

So pedantically what you say is technically correct.... that in a subjective morality murder would be ok if everyone was ok with it....... but when you stop navel gazing to find what is pedantically true.... you realize you are describing a fantastical situation that is not likely to actually occur. And even in societies or histories where people have been ok with other people being murdered..... you will find that they had to dehumanize them in some way first in order to parse it through their morality.



By YOUR definition maybe, but not by any I have seen to date. Love of music is subjective, does that mean "by definition" there is no love of music? Being subjective does not mean being non-existent.



The problem however is you make it something of a core MO to merely call peoples positions "stupid" and then run away without actually rebutting those positions in any way. Perhaps someone can get away with that once or twice, but when you literally do it in almost every post in pretty much every thread you post on..... people will start to notice the cop out tactic.

Read MY position on abortion sometime, I have posted on it a lot, and see if you can identify what is "stupid" or even "wrong" about it. See if you can drop your usual veil of "Call it stupid then run away fast" and actually stop for 2 minutes to explain HOW and WHY my position is wrong. As with your complete demonstrable inability to back up your evolution claim on another thread however.... I think we both know you will come back with no rebuttal at all. Just some one liner cop out dismissal that you think (wrongly) covers up your cop out.



Well I think the problem is not that people do not agree that is when "life begins" so much as we are using the word "Life" in many ways interchangeable.

Biologically what do you even mean life "begins" at conception for example. The sperm and egg are alive in many ways too. So conception is not a "beginning" so much as a step in the human life cycle.

There are some philosophies that "life" only began ONCE and that each conception of a child is not a "new life" but merely a new expression of the whole "life". Kind of like watching a lava lamp. Often bits split off the "lava" and have their own brief existence and then some of them are lost again. There might be more "individual bits" of the lava are different times, but it is not "new" but just an individual expression of the whole. There is still the same about of "lava" (life) the whole time, it just takes on different forms and different quantities of individuals.

Think also of how twins are formed if life begins at conception. Very often LATER after conception the developing entity splits into twins. More often than you think. What has happened here? Has a new life popped up AFTER conception? When did THAT life "start" then? It can not have been "at conception" because there was only "one life" then right?? Where did the second one come from?

This kills the "all life is at conception" idea. Or has the life of the one become two halves? I would love to see you tell twins they are only half-alive!

But if my scientific claim is true then why are there not more twins then if this happens so often?

Well because often, for no reason we know yet, one twin REABSORBS the other. What happened here? Did half alive twins become one? Did one murder the other? Is one life that "began" at some point suddenly dead, or if you are religious cast into eternal limbo as an un-baptised soul?

Clearly this arithmetic of souls makes no sense and makes the "life begins at conception" position troublesome at best.

But all of that has it's relevance challenged too. Why is biological "life" starting grounds for moral and ethical concern, and the assignment of human rights? That would seem arbitrary at best. Convenient of course.... as it is an EASY line in the sand to draw. But not really an intellectually or philosophically robust position to hold.



Declaring a debate "over" is usually the move made by a person who can not engage in it. As I described above the biological "facts" may neither be as accurate OR as relevant as you want them to be.

For me it is not enough to merely declare when life "begins" or that it IS life. "Life" is obviously not something many of us hold all that dear. We happily chop down trees to make our paper or slaughter animals to make our food. Clearly we do not worry about their "life" so equally clearly there is something more than mere "life" in play here.

So what is it. Well "Human life" you could say. Not just life but "Human life" specifically. But why is that important? Why is one piece of DNA important when another is not? There must be something specifically ABOUT "human life" to elevate it.

I think I know what that is, and wonder if you do. The problem there however is that the thing I think it is.... is entirely ABSENT in a fetus from 0 weeks up until probably even 24 or 26 weeks. But certainly it is absent in 0-12 weeks when well over 90% of abortions-by-choice actually occur.

So not only is it crass to declare a debate over when you have not even engaged in it.... it would seem FAR from over out here in reality at all.



Errrr most liberals, like most conservatives, ARE Christians. You make it sound like you think they are magically separate groups in your on going desperation to parse everything into partisan extremism.

I believe you misread the person you were responding to. He/she did not "declare the debate over" (as in finished). He/she said "the debate is over when that life should be protected," meaning the debate is ABOUT when that life should be protected.

[kayanne]

Originally Posted by kayanne

Morals are indeed subjective. Laws vary greatly in different countries, and in different periods of time throughout history, so legality and morality are definitely two different things.

Interesting topic.

Originally Posted by njquestions

Oh, so there are no "bad" societies, just ones that are misunderstood.

I don't know how you came to that conclusion from my post.

I was simply pointing out that what is considered "ok" (legally and/or morally) in some societies/time periods is not considered "ok" in others.
Examples:
Child labor
Female genital mutilation
Pre-marital sex
Teaching a black person how to read
Hiding a Jewish child in your attic
Smoking marijuana
Brewing one's own beer
A woman driving a car

[whogo]

[quote=Nozzferrahhtoo;46483633]Well I think the problem is not that people do not agree that is when "life begins" so much as we are using the word "Life" in many ways interchangeable.

[quote]

It was a basic fact taught in biology classes up until pro-choicers decided it was not a politically correct fact.

Life begins at conception that is a fact.