I have decided there is actually no convincing argument for objective morality.

[EvangelionZeta]

Having given this question thought for several years, debated it, and done half a semester's course on it (where the lecturer rather desperately tried to justify objectivism) I cannot see a persuasive argument for morals existing in any objective sense.

What are some arguments that people have in favour of them?  I'm really curious.

[DetteAmelie]

Oooo, I was doing some reading on this a couple of weeks ago.I have to leave for school, but I'm interested to see what others have to say. I might chime in later.

[Lolly]

Ask me this after year 12 is over

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean that in a harsh way. I'd be interested to hear what others think. I just haven't had a lot of time to think about philosophy stuff just lately

[slothpomba]

Before we go any further (and to help alleviate the probable confusion of 99% of the forum members), how about you tell us why you think it's important or an issue to begin with?

[brenden]

If a personal God exists, there are objective moral facts.
A personal God exists.
There are objective moral facts.

I've actually never tried to justify it without the use of intuition, which I guess is pretty poor of me. Isn't it kind of inescapable though? Like, couldn't we say there's an objective fact about nihilism; nothing is inherently good/bad, or that there is an objective moral fact that only consequences matter, and so on?

I've been looking into social contract theory (minimally) recently. When holidays arrive I think I'll check it out in earnest.

[slothpomba]

If a personal God exists, there are objective moral facts.

Could you explain this line a little more? I don't see the immediately necessary connection between the existence of a God and the existence of objective moral facts.

Much more towards my area, you run into the problem of the Euthyphro Dilemma:

Are things good because God commands them [A] or does God command things because they are good [ B ]?

Both have their problems:

[ A ] This suggests that morality is somewhat arbitrary and if God commanded that murder was good one day, it would be good.

[ B ] This suggests God has nothing important to do with morality.  Just like Moses had nothing important to do with the 10 Commandments (he only transmitted them), God is in a similar position here, he's only transmitting what are supposedly true moral facts from a source outside himself. I guess you could argue he's transmitting the true moral facts which are a part of the universe but then you wind back up to square one because you can't use God as a grounding and at least on a very quick inspection, it looks like moral facts have no independent (from humans) base again.

Either way, it kinds of calls into question the idea that God can be a basis for some kind of objective morality. There are many solutions to this problem, it'd be a lie to not mention that many people think it's been solved (i lean a little towards this camp), so, it's definitely not crucial but it really does show a problem with using God (or any being i guess) as the objective basis of morality.

[EvangelionZeta]

Before we go any further (and to help alleviate the probable confusion of 99% of the forum members), how about you tell us why you think it's important or an issue to begin with?

I think it's an important question because it helps us understand what we are actually doing when we apparently pass "moral judgements".  Are we tapping into some sort of higher level of being, or is it (as I suspect) more that we are just expressing our own emotional responses to individual occurrences?

[EvangelionZeta]

If a personal God exists, there are objective moral facts.
A personal God exists.
There are objective moral facts.

As kingpomba said, why does personal God=moral fact?  More importantly, if the God is personal, why are said facts objective?

I've actually never tried to justify it without the use of intuition, which I guess is pretty poor of me. Isn't it kind of inescapable though? Like, couldn't we say there's an objective fact about nihilism; nothing is inherently good/bad, or that there is an objective moral fact that only consequences matter, and so on?

I've been looking into social contract theory (minimally) recently. When holidays arrive I think I'll check it out in earnest.

I think you'll have to clarify re: the inescapable point - it's confusing to me!

Re: social contract theory, tbh it doesn't really engage with meta-ethical issues, more that it creates a model that tries to justify why we ever afford people "rights" in any sense (although the "rights" it deals with are basically just social constructs).

[Stick]

Having given this question thought for several years, debated it, and done half a semester's course on it (where the lecturer rather desperately tried to justify objectivism) I cannot see a persuasive argument for morals existing in any objective sense.

What are some arguments that people have in favour of them?  I'm really curious.

I literally have no idea here, but there was something that I was wondering.

What are you looking out for in order to consider an argument as 'persuasive' or 'convincing'? Is it one at which you cannot throw a direct rebuttal at? Is it one which you can agree with? I think that with something as philosophical as this that there probably are valid alternative perspectives, but since none of this is really concrete, I'm not too sure what it would take to prove something as right or wrong.

My brain hurts. I probably should continue to keep away from these sorts of discussions and just observe.

[brenden]

I think you'll have to clarify re: the inescapable point - it's confusing to me!

Re: social contract theory, tbh it doesn't really engage with meta-ethical issues, more that it creates a model that tries to justify why we ever afford people "rights" in any sense (although the "rights" it deals with are basically just social constructs).

I'll answer this first, mostly because I don't know what to think about the other questions yet

Well, what I mean is, some theories could be perceived to just be asserting different interpretations of objective moral fact(s).
I'll just show with an example (I apologise to anyone trying to follow this that hasn't looked into or studied moral Phil before, but here's something that will help you - http://plato.stanford.edu/ - use the search bar).
*I'm not saying this is what X group holding X moral philosophy would say, I'm just showing something that sort of puzzles me

Consequentialism  - "There is  one objective moral fact; only consequences matter", and if we want to branch:
Preference utilitarian - "There is one objective moral fact; we should do what leads to the max utility and the least suffering, where utility is fulfilled weight preferences and suffering is frustrated preferences"
Or,
Relativism - "There is one objective moral fact; morality depends on societal standards"
Nihilism - "There is one objective moral fact; nothing is inherently right or wrong"
I'm not really making an argument here - I'm confident I'm missing something - I'm just throwing it out there.

But can't rights explain the nature of moral judgment? (Or, couldn't you try to use rights as an explanation?, re SCT and meta-ethics?)


So, are you guys saying that if God is the basis of moral facts, then objective morality doesn't exist because moral facts are just dependent on God's personal opinion? That's actually pretty cool.