This is a thread about the debate between moral nihilists, who think there is no such thing as objective moral facts, and humanists, which I'm using as shorthand for people that share many metaphysical beliefs with moral nihilists but do believe in objective moral facts.
Let assume I were to renounce my faith, and embrace Atheism today. Along with rejecting my former Theism, I also reject all of the moral lessons that I learns alongside my Theism. I choose to not embrace Humanism, and land squarely among the Nihilists. I now proceed to go about my life being an amoral asshole while loudly proclaiming myself to be an Atheist. The problem is that other Atheists have no grounds to tell me I am doing it wrong, because I am, in fact, an Atheist. At best, you can say that I am not the same kind of Atheist as you.
this is pretty naff
an atheist might tell another atheist to behave differently based on moral or ethical reasoning, just as christians might do to one another. Why do you choose to embrace a nihilist framework vs. a humanist one? Let's talk about that.
I've been thinking about this for a couple days, and this seems like a really interesting conundrum. Let's assume we have two folks who are not just atheists but also naturalists, physicalists, and existential nihilists, which I think describes many members of the forum. The moral nihilist's half of the argument seems pretty straightforward:
I believe in the principle of parsimony: we should choose the simplest beliefs that are consistent with the available evidence. This is why I don't believe in deities or any unphysical beings: no one is able to supply me any evidence for them. Likewise, no one can supply me with any evidence of right and wrong, good and bad, or categorical imperatives. It seems to me that describing murder as wrong is no different from describing country music as bad: it's a personal preference, socially indoctrinated and dressed up as a universal claim. Moral nihilism is simpler than positing some bizarre, nonphysical, universal moral law, and I find on adopting nihilism that my belief system is still perfectly internally and externally consistent. Moreover, just as with theism, one cannot simply end with supposing that objective moral facts exist; one must then pick from a menagerie of specific moral beliefs, which vary widely with place and time and seem curiously to resemble the products of random cultural evolution.
I'm struggling with the humanist's response to this, however. In fact, the first humanist response I found while googling was really a
straight-up admission that nihilism is true and humanism is hypocritical. Here's
another person who describes themselves as humanist and yet seems to take moral nihilism as true.
Is there a better response possible for humanists? Can it be logically consistent to accept the nihilist's line of argument when applied to God, fairies, and immortal souls, but not to the notions of good and bad?
Account not recoverable. So long.
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Unfortunately, parsimony is probably a central tenet to the philosophy you want to keep.
What exactly bothers you about executing someone for making a bad movie? Is it sanctity of human life? You can say, parsimoniously, that there is no reason to kill someone over something with no higher meaning, but you have to find out why it's not okay to kill them anyway if humans aren't special either. But that you should have an answer to if you're a humanist.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Now, the solution to "Why don't moral nihilists devolve into a genocidal cannibal orgy?" is firstly that humans are psychologically / socially conditioned against such things, for the most part, and the second is that it's entirely possible to have a rigorous and selfless moral code that you don't demand is built into the very fabric of the universe as objectively true.
If you're asking, "How can someone live their lives by a moral code that isn't objectively true?" Well, ask any religious person. There is no god, and even if there was, he doesn't care about you eating shellfish. The difference is that moral nihilists are more honest with themselves.
As pointed out by Paladin, the principle of parsimony does not lead to the truth per se. While simplicity is a good practical reason to adopt a view it is not an actual truth claim. "The most simple theory that is consistent with the available evidence is true." is not the claim made.
But it seems like even for an Atheist with no concept of objective morality, there are still mountains of subjective evidence that you shouldn't kill people for making bad movies. The entire history of human civilization is an object lesson on all the good things that can happen to you when you renounce certain forms of barbarism in favor of community and civilization. You don't have to believe in god to understand why people killing each other over meaningless disputes is wrong, you can just note that every society that has allowed for such things is terrible to live in, and that societies which do not allow such things tend to be massively better for everyone living there, including the would-be murderers.
Certain ethical principles (such as charity and self-sacrifice) are a little harder to derive from purely subjective evidence. But murder seems like a pretty easy one.
8. We practice our ethics in a living context rather than an ideal one. Though ethics are ideals, ideals can only serve as guidelines in life situations. This is why we oppose absolutistic moral systems that attempt to rigidly apply ideal moral values as if the world were itself ideal. We recognize that conflicts and moral dilemmas do occur and that moral choices are often difficult and cannot be derived from simplistic yardsticks and rules of thumb. Moral choices often involve hard thinking, diligent gathering of information about the situation at hand, careful consideration of immediate and future consequences, and weighing of alternatives. Living life in a manner that promotes the good, or even knowing what choices are good, isn’t always easy. So when we declare our commitment to a humanist approach to ethics, we are expressing our willingness to do the intensive thinking and work that moral living in a complex world entails.
I think it's important to remember that mere intellectual agreement with moral nihilism isn't sociopathy. You can still empathize with, feel compassion for, and genuinely enjoy helping others in and of itself.
I think Kant's idea of a universal maxim is useful. You perform charity both because it's a nice thing to do, but also because you benefit from a society in which charity is common. If everyone is charitable and community minded, then you also tend to benefit, both directly and indirectly.
Tell us how you really feel.
The truthfulness of their assertions is somewhat irrelevant because as a tool for decision making the later is nothing more than a coin flip, and the former uses an non-existent coin for the toss. It's like listening to a doctor whose only advice is 'it doesn't matter everyone dies sometime', technically true and practically useless.
Additionally humanism is a pretty broad net, that includes philosophies that explicitly define what 'good' is. For example utilitarianism is a humanist philosophy. When making a utilitarian argument one generally doesn't account for pleasing or displeasing a god. Being constructed around a stated set of axioms doesn't undermine a philosophy in my view any more than it undermines mathematics.
Kant is explicitly a moral realist and universalist and doesn't care about the benefits or the niceness of morality. You must act moral because reason itself tells you to regardless of the consequences or your desires.
I think that moral nihilism is useful in that it allows us to discard moral arguments that are invalid.
Like let's say we are building a boat. I want it have one engine and you another. You say "this engine is closer to the perfect ideal of a boat".
If I say "that concept doesn't exist" and you could say that it doesn't get us closer to a finished boat but if you let go of your idea we can start talking about the trade offs for our different ideas.
Same with morality.
If you let go of the idea that there is some absolute definition out there of murder we can talk about the trade offs that come with the different definitions.
Yeah, I should have connected some dots there. I think the idea of a universal maxim, or similar, but not exactly the same, golden rule approach to morality is correct because it will tend to produce better consequences than the alternatives. In a hypothetical case where nothing good would come from one's actions, either in the short or long term, I'd say there is no moral weight to said actions, whereas Kant would say you should do the right thing regardless.
@Rizichard Rizorty This is the one time when your project will help an actual human being. Do not fail him!
As for why I don't eat babies, I have this little thing called empathy. I care at least a little about every living thing, especially people. I don't need right or wrong to want to help or protect others, and on occasion I've risked bodily harm for complete strangers.
I don't actively work against morality in society because many people lack a decent sense of empathy, but it isn't necessary to be a functional or helpful member of society.
I don't know how you could evaluate what would be 'better' or 'worse' consequences for adopting some maxim other than appealing to some further (perhaps unstated) set of moral claims which determine what consequences count as better and which count as worse.
To use the quote in the OP, wouldn't saying country music is bad require an absolute standard of good music that all music could be judged against?
Not that I can see. I can say country music is bad, and by doing so just mean to express my own distaste for the genre. So far all fine. The problem comes when we try to say something further, that there is some standard which my disliking the genre satisfies well (and which other choices wouldn't). If such a standard exists, then what is it but the 'objective' aesthetic or moral standard we started out denying the existence of?
Dub Step exists.
The point being that we make value judgments all the time about non "moral" things without an absolute standard to so why couldn't murder be the same?
What you lose is the ability to resolve disagreements. In the OP @Alinius133 claims atheists forfeit the ability to convince other atheists that a given action is wrong - that they give up not just the existence of a divine moral authority, but any moral authority. @Eat it You Nasty Pig. disagrees and says there is some basis remaining for disputing about fundamental moral claims without a religious text.
I don't think people who lack a decent sense of empathy are all that apt to be moral anyway, unless out of fear of divine punishment. But there are many acts one can perform which would be immoral but not engage empathy at all. For example, say you were convinced you could cheat on an important test and not get caught. Would you do it?
So are all non absolute things impossible to argue about?
And are people that claim an absolute moral standard able to convince people with (theoretically) the same moral standard that what they are doing is wrong?
Well sure it's possible. Isn't that the reason the forum has a ban on anime threads? What I'm asking is whether it's possible to argue with someone who rejects morality in some sense that doesn't reduce to monkeys throwing poo at each other.
"I dislike chocolate ice cream." is a value judgement. "I dislike murder." is a value judgement.
Most people think they are saying more than "I dislike murder" when they say "murder is wrong".
The same if you set moral claims as breeches of etiquette. Putting forks on the right side of a dinner plate is a breech of etiquette. Most people take murder to be different in kind than misplacing forks.
I wouldn't say that theological arguments are particularly civil or fruitful. At least with Christianity they have been at some pretty basic questions for 1700 years or so without figuring it out.
True but just in degrees.
Like a fed interest rate change is a much bigger deal than lying to your spouse but for one we need an absolute moral compass to make headway on.
Or you could say they are both moral questions but then what isn't a moral question.
Let's start by granting the nihilist's point: there is no arbitrating locus of independent values. There may have been once, but further inquiry showed us this was a trick by the confidence-men we call priests. The values so presented kept us weak and afraid, and this fear kept us in line. But now God is dead and we have killed him.
Who did this? We did.
Nihilism is often mistakenly presented as a discovery, a finding-out that there never was objectivity. Not so. There was objectivity insofar as we held ourselves in thrall to something that was not us. And now there's not, because we can no longer make sense of this hierarchy: the world does not present to us a plan for what it is to be good, and insofar as it does, we see this as the tricks of those who would be our contemporary priests. We have moved on from that order of moral knowing. So what's left?
We are.
The OP characterizes humanism as believing that there are objective moral facts or values. Not so. Rather, it is a belief that in the void left by spurning the priests, human things matter. This should not be understood as all human things mattering, or that all human things matter in the same way. Rather, it stands as a toe-hold, an insistence that if there is to be value, it will be ours; after all, it always has been.
Modernity gave us the idea of individuals who can know, judge, and shape independently of anyone else. This is fantasy, and an important one at that. It helped us to kill God, and then it endangered our sense of ourselves together. It helps us to forget our histories, both individual and social. It helps us to forget our biological basis. And it helps us to think of moral judgment as only "personal preference." This account fails to give an account of our commonalities and plays up only the differences. It disregards the great stability at the core of most contemporary humanists' moral thinking: we're all liberals, we all favor justice, and we all want the future to be better than the past.
But we dispute the bounds and meanings of these categories. We accept there are no ready-made answers, and yet we hope to get along together. Objectivity has ceased to be a name for what binds us and became a name for what we hope: that someday the pushes and pulls of our lives together will resolve in agreement about what should be done. Until then, as always, morality is to be found in what's to be done. By whom? As ever, by us.
Though also a bunch of people are making it clear that they're talking about moral nihilism and not the generic dictionary definition of nihilism.
Also definitions and English in general are screwy.
Some people can get pretty freaked out over moral guilt even if it's not enforced by external punishment.
Things like cheating on tests tend to be more of a social contract thing, but empathy often still applies. "If I cheat on this test I'm lying to the test taker and whoever bases decisions about me on this test, which may result in me being picked over someone who has put more who worked harder for it and was honest about their work" and so on.
Our choices usually do affect other people, even if not in the most obvious ways. The visible difference between someone who uses morals and someone who uses empathy will usually come down to really private things like "Adultery is bad" vs. "Adultery without consent by all parties is potentially hurtful" or really trivial things like which TV shows you watch.
You can interpret religious texts however you want.
Quakers and Fundy Southern Baptists both base their beliefs in the Bible.
The very same arguments that moral nihilists use against moral facts apply equally well to non-moral facts (i.e. logical - the law of non-contradiction - and empirical facts - there is a cat on the mat, it has sat).
If they are not sufficient reason to reject non-moral facts then why would we reject moral facts upon that basis?
If the statement "murder is objectively wrong" it is wrong, according to your argument not because it isn't objective but because it isn't sufficiently nuanced to take into account the situations in which murder is permissible (though there's also a case to be made that murder is by definition those cases where killing is not permissible).
Also, I don't understand what you mean by "subjective" in the second paragraph, because it seems like it is objective in principle.
That's too concise for me. Can you expand?
This is a twist on an argument that goes back to Nietzsche: all apparently moral behavior is the consequence of selfishness, just selfishness with motives like guilt included. As an actual explanation of behavior I don't find it convincing. The prospect of guilt is one of the feeblest motivations imaginable. And yes, you can construct a hypothetical person who might hypothetically be hurt by your cheating, but it's not a terribly convincing scenario, is it? I can believe empathy can prevent you from bludgeoning someone to death, but cheating on a test? Again, psychologically implausible. I think a moral nihilist has to characterize broad swaths of moral behaviors as irrational, fitting her conviction that the underlying moral beliefs held by those people are also irrational.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I have a different take on what's left without object morals: the strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must.