Can There Be Absolute Morality

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Do you believe there is such a thing as absolute morality-ie morality which was applicable ten thousand years ago, applicable now, and applicable ten thousand years from now, which will not change as long as sapient life exists? I'm not talking just about morality. To give an example is murder always and always was and always will be?

[Beware of Doug]

I believe this question is, and must remain, one of the great mysteries.

Why must it remain so? Because there probably is an ultimate morality, if morality is to mean anything - but any attempts to set it down in stone forever are doomed to be imperfect. They will, occasionally at least, be found to go against the moral good.

[Wesley Clark]

Yes since most of our morals come from evolutionary traits that helped us survive. Morals that will likely be absolute include


Do not harm high ranking/valuable members of your group
People outside the group aren't as valuable as those inside it
Reciprocation is good

etc.

Murder isn't wrong on a variety of levels.

In our society murder of humans is wrong. Unless it is in self defense, capital punishment or warfare. Other societies disagree with one or all three.

Murder of non-humans isn't really seen as wrong (insects can be murdered with abandon. Dogs and cats not so much, but still not as big a deal).

Murder of humans itself isn't really wrong in various cultures.

So there is too much discrepency in who/why/when/how you can murder to say murder is wrong. But by and large murdering a high value human member of your group/tribe will always be considered wrong.

[Beware of Doug]

I put it to you that some of those "absolute" precepts will occasionally go against other "absolutes." And yet, that that doesn't necessarily invalidate them in all cases.

In moral principle, you can get the chair for murdering a Black janitor just as you can for assassinating Barack Obama. Both are held to be 100 per cent wrong. However, if mores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mores) (which "frame" morals in society and affect their use and even meaning) come into the picture, you might only get life for killing such a minority in a low station, or in a White supremacist society, you might even be let off scot-free.

Ie: let's be clear about mores vs. morality. The tribe functions mostly at the level of mores, whether it admits this or not. Most don't, and can't.

[John Mace]

"Murder", by definition, is wrong. Did you mean killing?

But you're making a big leap from the time window of +/- 10k years and "sapient life".

Different sapient life forms might have very different moralities.

At any rate, your OP is not well defined. You seem to making stabs at various things that are somewhat related, but that don't really coalesce into a coherent thesis.

[Frylock]

Yes since most of our morals come from evolutionary traits that helped us survive.

These traits helped our genes to propagate, which is a distinct phenomenon from that of our own survival.

There could be situations in which what is good for gene propagation is not good morally.

Even the evolutionary traits you're talking about function to help humans survive, this could only be a basis for "absolute morality" if human survival is an absolute good--and that's not obvious.

[Frylock]

Do you believe there is such a thing as absolute morality-ie morality which was applicable ten thousand years ago, applicable now, and applicable ten thousand years from now, which will not change as long as sapient life exists? I'm not talking just about morality. To give an example is murder always and always was and always will be?

What does it mean for a morality to be (or not be) applicable?

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I've posited my own moral code here before, and I believe that, unless there's an error in my logic, or unless logic itself is faulty, it's universal. That doesn't mean that every person or species follows it, but that for the common definition of "should," every entity capable of following it should follow it.

Briefly: I experience "should" as applying to those things that fulfill my desires. If I say something should occur, I mean that it meets my desires for it to occur. I believe other desires exist outside of myself, and those desires are functionally equivalent to mine, so logically "should" also applies to those desires as well. If I should do the things that meet my desires, I logically should also do those things that meet other desires.

That's the nutshell version. When it gets into conflicting desires, it gets tricky; but the above lays out the very bedrock of the morality.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

Do you believe there is such a thing as absolute morality-ie morality which was applicable ten thousand years ago, applicable now, and applicable ten thousand years from now, which will not change as long as sapient life exists? I'm not talking just about morality.
Morality is a human construct, so, no. And I don't just mean in the sense that humans differ in the way they define morality; humans are organisms, and organisms evolve (or more likely, go extinct). If our "biological impulses" change, so will our moralities.
To give an example is murder always and always was and always will be?
Murder (or at least, killing humans - note again the human-centricity of morality) has never been anything like absolute. See: manslaughter, self-defense, war etc.

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

I mean the planned murder of someone not in self-defence or war.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I mean the planned murder of someone not in self-defence or war.
Still not good enough--revenge fantasies are very common, and plenty of people have no problem at all with a good revenge story. There are also plenty of people who think that killing someone because of their race or religion is justified: look at mid-nineties Rwanda for a few million examples.

If there is an absolute morality, proving it based on the actions of the masses will be impossible. I think that it's more analogous to mathematics than it is to science.

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Still not good enough--revenge fantasies are very common, and plenty of people have no problem at all with a good revenge story. There are also plenty of people who think that killing someone because of their race or religion is justified: look at mid-nineties Rwanda for a few million examples.

If there is an absolute morality, proving it based on the actions of the masses will be impossible. I think that it's more analogous to mathematics than it is to science.

Well revenge for what and what is the nature of the revenge? Revenge for a Mafia boss who murdered your family's pretty different from revenge for a guy who humiliated you at the prom. And a lot of the revenge is theoretical-if push comes to shove can they really kill a human being?

But I agree with the actions of the masses having little to do with whether something is moral or not but consider that most of the world reacted with horror to the Rwanda genocide.

[The Hamster King]

Asking "Can there be absolute morality?" is similar to asking "Can there be absolute money?"

Money has value because we collectively act as though it has value. If we stopped treating dollar bills as valuable, then they would cease to be so. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world because we all agree to treat him as the richest man in the world. His enormous power is derived entirely from our collective consent.

Morality exists when we collectively act as though there is a difference between good and evil. It, like money, is a convenient fiction for organizing human society in useful ways. There is no absolute morality, only a pragmatic recognition that living together requires shared rules, and that certain shared rules dovetail nicely with our evolutionary psychological heritage as tribal hunter/gatherers.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Asking "Can there be absolute morality?" is similar to asking "Can there be absolute money?"
I disagree: I think it's similar to asking, "Is there such a thing as two?" No, you can't hold "two" in your hand. No, you can't design an experiment to falsify the equation 1+1=2. But you can reach certain conclusions from certain beginning principles, and you can find that the conclusions reached thereby bear strong relevance to what happens in the world.

Morality is math. Etiquette is money.

[Bryan Ekers]

No, you can't hold "two" in your hand.

You can, however, have two in the bush.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Objective morality, no, absolute morality, yes.

[Acid Lamp]

No such thing. Beyond the law of reciprocity nothing seems to be truly universal in terms of human behaviour. Even that very basic rule is broken often and hard in all societies when it is convenient to do so. You could perhaps derive a system of "good" and "bad" based upon the most socially and biologically bland of concepts shared by the state state of being human; but such a system will always have those exceptions.

[Kinthalis]

This is a strange question IMHO.

Morality is a human construct. It's a human model of social behavior based on some low level set of impulses that stem from our biological evolutionary history and more complex behaviors based on our social evolution.

It's like asking: Is there any such thing as "perfect" art? What does that even mean? Perfect for whom? And how do you define perfect? How do you objectify/quantify it?

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Morality is a human construct.
No more so than math.

[Acid Lamp]

No more so than math.

Apples and oranges.

Math is a human construct used to describe natural interactions and quantify things objectively. Morality is purely a social construct that has no physical world analogue.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Apples and oranges.

Math is a human construct used to describe natural interactions and quantify things objectively. Morality is purely a social construct that has no physical world analogue.
Morality absolutely has a real-world analogue: the experience of desire, as I stated above.

[Beware of Doug]

These traits helped our genes to propagate, which is a distinct phenomenon from that of our own survival.

There could be situations in which what is good for gene propagation is not good morally.There are, however, many essentialist arguments that genetic propagation is survival, and that civilizations founded on anything less essential are going to be compromised in their survival ability.

Of course, the essentialist defense usually involves proposing to kill the questioner, then his children, then drag his widow off to be impregnated by force. So YMMV. ;)

[LouisB]

Morality cannot be dictated nor legislated no should it be. No, there is no such thing as absolute morality and never will be.

Why do you ask about absolute morality in your OP and then qualify it by mentioning murder? I can think of several instances where murder would be a moral act and where murder of an individual would be beneficial to the common good. In fact, in another of your off-the wall debates, you stated that you personally would murder Hitler if you had whatever it would take to transport you back in time by 100 years. It seems to me you have already answered the question posed in this OP.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

"Murder" is low-hanging fruit. Change it "murder of an innocent person for trivial personal gain."

[RitterSport]

"Murder" is low-hanging fruit. Change it "murder of an innocent person for trivial personal gain."

I don't see how you can say there is an absolute morality, equivalent to math, when it's all in a human context. Do you agree that math is correct or provable, or whatever, whether or not there are humans?

Assuming you do, do you agree that morality (in terms of, say, murder) only makes sense in a human context?

I've tried to flesh this out before, I think on this board, but my view is that if we had evolved from a non-social species or from an insect species or something other than primates, our sense of morality would be quite different.

For example, if it were necessary for a female to "murder" her mate in order to successfully propagate the species, we would think there's nothing wrong with that.

Or, if the queen of a society decided to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of sterile drones in order to steal the cows of a rival society -- that might be fine if we were descended from ants.

Closer to home, polygamy might not only be accepted, but expected if we were direct descendants of gorillas.

Anyway, my view is that there is no objective morality. It's possible that there's an objective human morality (although I doubt it), but not an objective universal morality.

[kanicbird]

I believe there is a ultimate subjective morality and that is Love.

Love as best as you can and know how to do. Leave the mistakes up to Love to correct as you learn the ways of Love.

As such it's not, nor can it ever be a hard ruled written moral code, Love knows no rules or bounds as Love is God. Being one with Love means your one with God, and as God as much so as Lord Jesus Himself.

This 'morality' is timeless, has always been always will be, and is always personal and subjective.

[Really Not All That Bright]

No. Morals are social constructs.

I mean, sure, we can all agree that slavery is wrong, but people 2,000 years ago clearly didn't see it that way, so that particular moral is so irrelevant as to be a nullity.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Assuming you do, do you agree that morality (in terms of, say, murder) only makes sense in a human context?
Not exactly. It only makes sense in a context of an entity who is capable of understanding that other entities have desires and is capable of making decisions that take this understanding into account.

I believe an objective morality is something that is discovered, not invented; as such, other nonhuman entities capable of this understanding might discover objective morality just as we have. They might realize the implications of desires held by other entities, and change their behavior accordingly.

They might not--but since objective morality is wholly prescriptive and not descriptive, whether they discovered it is irrelevant.

[cosmosdan]

I think there is an absolute morality.

I'm rather fond of my girlfriend's morality after she's had a few of those.

[RitterSport]

Not exactly. It only makes sense in a context of an entity who is capable of understanding that other entities have desires and is capable of making decisions that take this understanding into account.

I believe an objective morality is something that is discovered, not invented; as such, other nonhuman entities capable of this understanding might discover objective morality just as we have. They might realize the implications of desires held by other entities, and change their behavior accordingly.

They might not--but since objective morality is wholly prescriptive and not descriptive, whether they discovered it is irrelevant.

I think your first statement reflects the thoughts of an entity that evolved in a social context, with extremely complex conventions regarding social status, entity interactions, and close-knit groups.

Also, it seems like you only refer to an absolute morality when it comes to murder. What other areas do you think it applies?

Take slavery, for example. I can easily imagine a species where some large proportion of the members of the species would want nothing better than to serve the rest of the species. For example, while dogs are a separate species, and they are not as sapient as humans, they just love to be slaves to humans, they just aim to please. It's not hard to imagine a situation where members of the same species interact the way humans and dogs do.

Or, for example, I think there is some species of fish where the male is basically absorbed into the female, and spends the rest of its days as a sperm-making machine, basically a reproductive slave.

Now, don't get me wrong -- slavery as practiced by humans was definitely wrong. However, other species, depending on how they evolve, could find it perfectly fine, even if they reach human-level intelligence.

All of this argues, to me, that there is no objective morality. Maybe (just maybe) there is one for humans and other species sufficiently like us.

[Thudlow Boink]

Even the evolutionary traits you're talking about function to help humans survive, this could only be a basis for "absolute morality" if human survival is an absolute good--and that's not obvious.Would it be fair to say that there is absolute morality if and only if there are absolute values/goods—i.e. if anything is valuable in and of itself, and not just as a means to some other end?

[RitterSport]

LHOD -- I'm about to go on vacation for a week, with little access to the web. So, I may not respond for a while if you decide to reply to my post.

Anyway, this is a subject that interests me, so if all of you could go ahead and resolve it in my absence, I'd really appreciate it. I look forward to this great philosophical question getting figured out in the coming week :)

[CurtC]

Yes since most of our morals come from evolutionary traits that helped us survive.

I didn't realize that evolutionary survival of genes was the standard! I need to go get me a mistress and impregnate her.



Morality cannot be dictated nor legislated no should it be.
I think that pretty much every piece of legislation is someone's take on morality.


Regarding the OP, I've heard theists assert that morality can't be relative, it has to be based on the ultimate authority of God. However, it seems to me that this argues that morality really is relative - they just place more value on what they think their God's opinion of the matter would be. The fact that my opinion might be different from their God's is demonstration that morality is relative.

[Thudlow Boink]

Regarding the OP, I've heard theists assert that morality can't be relative, it has to be based on the ultimate authority of God. However, it seems to me that this argues that morality really is relative - they just place more value on what they think their God's opinion of the matter would be. The fact that my opinion might be different from their God's is demonstration that morality is relative."God's opinion"? Isn't the God that these theists believe in all-wise and all-knowing?

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I think your first statement reflects the thoughts of an entity that evolved in a social context, with extremely complex conventions regarding social status, entity interactions, and close-knit groups.

Also, it seems like you only refer to an absolute morality when it comes to murder. What other areas do you think it applies?
First, I maintain that morality in at best tangentially related toward what comprises a successful evolutionary strategy. Morality sometimes dictates behaviors that impede evolutionary "success." More often it points toward a direction of success, inasmuch as it encourages cooperation, but that's not the proper metric for whether something is moral.

As for what areas it applies in, I believe it applies in any situation in which there are conflicting desires. I know I'm being really, really vague here, and that's because I don't think we've developed a very robust theory of morality yet, one that resolves all difficulties through an elegant mechanism. We haven't developed that for many different areas of thought, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there.

At its heart, morality indicates what course of action one ought to take when confronted by conflicting desires. Do you desire a tasty steak, but the cow desires to live? Morality helps you figure out the answer here (for the record, I come down on your side in many cases). Did you want to stay out and have fun, but your spouse wants you to come home? Morality helps you decide what to do. Do you want medicine to cure your lethal illness, but the store wants to save the medicine for someone who can pay for it? Again, morality will tell you what you ought to do.

Morality doesn't tell you what you will do. It doesn't predict the most successful course of action. It has no built-in inherent consequences for not doing what it recommends. All it does is answer the question, "What should I do?"

[scamartistry]

absolute morality is a human construction, its like saying there should be absolute architecture, absolute comedy or absolute beautifulness. nothing backs this up. it is all based on emotions and of course a well known bronze age book.

[Candyman74]

Do you believe there is such a thing as absolute morality-ie morality which was applicable ten thousand years ago, applicable now, and applicable ten thousand years from now, which will not change as long as sapient life exists? I'm not talking just about morality. To give an example is murder always and always was and always will be?

Murder is unlawful killing, not immoral killing. Conceivably a case could exist where murder is moral - if the state made a moral killing (such as clear undisputed case of self-defence) illegal.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Murder is unlawful killing, not immoral killing. Conceivably a case could exist where murder is moral - if the state made a moral killing (such as clear undisputed case of self-defence) illegal.This is a little pedantic, don't you think? And also incorrect: the word is used to mean both killing someone unlawfully and killing someone brutally.

[Candyman74]

This is a little pedantic, don't you think?

Not really, when the proposed example is that murder is always immoral. One can murder in a non-immoral way if the legal structures renders the moral act illegal.

[Czarcasm]

There may or may not be an absolute morality, but if there is, it is a personal morality.
I believe that what the OP is really asking about is universal morality-morality that is the same for every person in every place and at every time. This, of course, is impossible. Try to name a moral imperative that you believe to be universal, and a situation where it would not apply can easily be found.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Czarcasm: you shouldn't torture an innocent person to death against their will, simply because someone offers you a candy bar to do it.

[Czarcasm]

Czarcasm: you shouldn't torture an innocent person to death against their will, simply because someone offers you a candy bar to do it.But that's the candy bar with the Golden Ticket!

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Heh :). The point is that, if the bedrock principle holds true (desires ought to be respected, absent compelling conflicting desires), it's trivial to come up with examples in which morality points away from a particular course of action. Pointing out that vaguely-worded general examples don't hold true is irrelevant.

Anyway, if you torture someone to death to get a Golden Ticket, Wonka is going to feed you to the marshmallow piranhas. Seriously, dude's a candymaking psychopath. The book was a precursor to the Saw franchise.