At first glance, morality looks as though it should work objectively. The mere fact that we praise and condemn people’s moral behaviour indicates that we think a common set of rules is applicable both to us and to them. We can say that something is good-to-Mary but evil-to-John, but we cannot act on that basis, because someone is either in jail or they are not. To put it another way, if ethics were strongly subjective anyone could get off the hook by devising a system of personal morality in which whatever they felt like doing was permissible. It would be hard to see the difference between such a state of affairs and having no morality at all. The subtler sort of subjectivist (or relativist) tries to ameliorate this problem by claiming that moral principles are defined at the societal level. Although this constrains individuals to societal norms (as do legal systems), similar problems the get-out-of-jail objection re-occurs at the societal level; a society (such as the Thuggees or Assassins) could declare that murder is OK with them.
The foregoing assumes a rational or explicable relationship between the doing of right and wrong, and the subsequent allocation of praise and blame, reward and punishment. It could be argued that we can do without this, and just punish arbitrarily, and not bother reasoning things out. Since are not all in agreement on a single objective morality, that is to some extent the case. In democracies, punishment and reward are decided by an averaging out of opinion, and in other societies by the whim of the powerful. However, this is no a desirable state of affairs even if it is an inevitable one. It is desirable that people behave well based on their own understanding. rather than threats, and it is desirable that justice should be explicable and not arbitrary. That neither standard can be completely fullfilled is not justfication for abandoning them; some reasoning-based ethics is better than none.
These considerations are of course an appeal to how morality seems to work as a ‘language game’ and as such do not by themselves put ethics on a firm foundation. They make a prima facie case for the objectivity of morality, but the “language game” could be groundless. The epistemology and metaphysics of the issue need to be considered as well.
I was afraid of this: getting into a morality debate when all I wanted to do was identify a quick and simple parallel. The reason I was afraid of it is that I don’t have the answers, I don’t like standard philosophical terminology (objectivism, relativism, etc.) since I can’t translate it, and I’m not very good at arguing in-depth through time-delayed text.
Why Objectivism?
At first glance, morality looks as though it should work objectively. The mere fact that we praise and condemn people’s moral behaviour indicates that we think a common set of rules is applicable both to us and to them. We can say that something is good-to-Mary but evil-to-John, but we cannot act on that basis, because someone is either in jail or they are not. To put it another way, if ethics were strongly subjective anyone could get off the hook by devising a system of personal morality in which whatever they felt like doing was permissible. It would be hard to see the difference between such a state of affairs and having no morality at all. The subtler sort of subjectivist (or relativist) tries to ameliorate this problem by claiming that moral principles are defined at the societal level. Although this constrains individuals to societal norms (as do legal systems), similar problems the get-out-of-jail objection re-occurs at the societal level; a society (such as the Thuggees or Assassins) could declare that murder is OK with them.
The foregoing assumes a rational or explicable relationship between the doing of right and wrong, and the subsequent allocation of praise and blame, reward and punishment. It could be argued that we can do without this, and just punish arbitrarily, and not bother reasoning things out. Since are not all in agreement on a single objective morality, that is to some extent the case. In democracies, punishment and reward are decided by an averaging out of opinion, and in other societies by the whim of the powerful. However, this is no a desirable state of affairs even if it is an inevitable one. It is desirable that people behave well based on their own understanding. rather than threats, and it is desirable that justice should be explicable and not arbitrary. That neither standard can be completely fullfilled is not justfication for abandoning them; some reasoning-based ethics is better than none.
These considerations are of course an appeal to how morality seems to work as a ‘language game’ and as such do not by themselves put ethics on a firm foundation. They make a prima facie case for the objectivity of morality, but the “language game” could be groundless. The epistemology and metaphysics of the issue need to be considered as well.
I was afraid of this: getting into a morality debate when all I wanted to do was identify a quick and simple parallel. The reason I was afraid of it is that I don’t have the answers, I don’t like standard philosophical terminology (objectivism, relativism, etc.) since I can’t translate it, and I’m not very good at arguing in-depth through time-delayed text.
I’m sorry; I don’t have any answers for you.
Downvoted for disagreement, I presume