tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10407988.post2760303496765683449..comments2023-08-05T21:48:58.831-04:00Comments on Philochristos: my moral epistemologySam Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15884738370893218595noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10407988.post-81495517453954787932012-12-04T22:05:05.750-05:002012-12-04T22:05:05.750-05:00For Sam or anyone interested, there was a recent s...For Sam or anyone interested, there was a recent segment on 60 minutes on a related topic on how babies seem to have morality hardwired at an early age:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57551557/babies-help-unlock-the-origins-of-morality/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57551557/babies-help-unlock-the-origins-of-morality/</a>Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10407988.post-86585119774117487502012-12-02T17:27:59.502-05:002012-12-02T17:27:59.502-05:00The only way there can be a right answer to the qu...The only way there can be a right answer to the question of whether we should help old people or float them out to sea on ice bergs is if there is some standard of behavior that exists independently of the subjective preferences of you and the other person.Sam Harperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15884738370893218595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10407988.post-88455227429035034702012-12-02T17:27:52.306-05:002012-12-02T17:27:52.306-05:00Ben,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I agre...Ben,<br /><br />Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I agree with most of what you said. Games like chess work by something similar to social contract. The players agree amongst themselves to operate by certain rules, and they hold each other to those rules. Morality can be relative in the same way if we consider life to be analogous to the game. But just as nobody is obligated to partipate in chess, and just as there are no transcendent rules that force a person to agree to the rules of chess, so also would there not be any transcendent rules that obligate people to keep their social contract or to play by society's rules at all. All of this is perfectly consistent with moral relativism.<br /><br />I'm using "relativism" here instead of "subjectivism," since <i>subjectivism</i> is usually used in the context of individuals, whereas <i>relativism</i> is usually used in the context of groups.<br /><br />Where I disagree is when you said, "Nor is it the case that one who reacts negatively to immorality is behaving 'as if' morality is objective." Holding somebody to the rules of a game is not the same thing as behaving as if those rules were objective. People often do talk and behave as if morality were not merely a social contract, but an obligation everybody has to abide by whether they've agreed to any social contract or not. In <a href="http://strplace.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/challenge-response-intuition-cant-prove-objective-moral-values/" rel="nofollow">the discussion</a> that gave rise to this blog post, I went through some of the things Doubting Eric had said in one of his blog posts that I thought showed he thought morality was objective, and not merely an implicitly agreed upon set of social conventions.<br /><br />Also, I <a href="http://philochristos.blogspot.com/2005/11/conversations-with-god-part-11.html" rel="nofollow">reviewed a book</a> that also claimed morality was not objective, and I showed how the author contradicted himself throughout the book on that issue.<br /><br />I also participated in a <a href="http://philochristos.blogspot.com/2009/02/morality-debate-part-1-of-11.html" rel="nofollow">debate on morality</a> in which I gave five reasons that I think show people believe in objective morality (or at least percieve it as if it were objective). Some of these you may be able to fit into a social contract theory, but I doubt that social contract explains why people think and behave in these ways. Like games, social contracts are only operative when people have agreed to play by them. Unless there is some obligation to play chess, there is no recourse for dealing with a person who says he just doesn't want to play. In the same way, if there are no transcendent moral obligations that stands outside of social contracts, there is no obligation to play by the rules of the social contract. But we all behave as if there were. We behave as if morality is an obligation that people cannot get out of simply by opting out.<br /><br /><i>You claim that, if morality really is subjective, then the morality perceived by some agent A won't apply to a different agent B. But how does that follow?</i><br /><br />By the nature of being subjective, morality is only a perception. It's only something that goes on inside somebody's head. One person is not obligated to live consistently with what goes on in somebody else's head just because it's going on in that person's head. After all, two people may feel differently. Maybe you think we should help old people and another person thinks we should put them on ice bergs and float them out to sea. If another person's subjective feelings about morals carried with it an obligation that extended to other people, then you'd be obligated to float old people out to sea, and they'd be obligated to help them.Sam Harperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15884738370893218595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10407988.post-22675630992921417532012-12-02T00:46:50.287-05:002012-12-02T00:46:50.287-05:00Sam,
Interesting post.
Recall that moral values ...Sam,<br /><br />Interesting post.<br /><br />Recall that moral values are said to be <i>objective</i> when they exist independently of human opinion. But subjective morals need not be independent of <i>collective</i> human opinion. So for example, human beings collectively agree on the rules of chess, even though those rules are the product of the opinions of their human developers. When two people sit down to a game of chess, they naturally expect each other to follow those rules. When a rule is broken, they react negatively. However these expectations and reactions hardly imply that the rules appear to be objective in the sense of having independence from human opinion. We all understand that chess is a human creation, and that once upon a time its rules were decided by human preference. But we also understand that, in order for the game to work, we have to agree to play by the same rules.<br /><br />Of course, morality is much more than just a game. But nevertheless I think the analogy is appropriate here. You correctly note that we expect (to some extent) others to behave morally. But such behavior we would expect regardless of whether morality was objective. All we need in order to have that expectation is the past experience of seeing people behave morally on a regular basis. In other words, if people tend to behave morally, then it follows via induction that people will continue to behave morally, quite apart from whether or not it has some kind of nonhuman origin. The inductive inference to future behavior doesn't depend on the ultimate origin of morality.<br /><br />Nor is it the case that one who reacts negatively to immorality is behaving "as if" morality is objective. I don't need morality to be objective in order to want to stamp out immoral behavior. It could be that morality has its origin in human opinion, but that nevertheless I refuse to tolerate immorality.<br /><br />You claim that, if morality really is subjective, then the morality perceived by some agent A won't apply to a different agent B. But how does that follow? Why shouldn't agent A hold agent B accountable to the moral code he prefers? If that's what agent A wants to do, and if it doesn't violate his own moral code, then what is to stop him from doing it?Ben Wallishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00131358613835119782noreply@blogger.com