We have nine people - A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. Persons A and B take action Z that has a direct effect on persons C and D. Person A and Person B both judge action Z to be good. The two persons directly affected, Person C and Person D, both judge the action Z to bad. Person D and E observe action Z but are not directly effected. They both judge the action to be good. Person F and Person G hear about action Z and judge it to be bad. Person H and Person I observe the action and judge it to be bad.
Now looking at the people:
Person A’s observations are correct and his premises on objective matters are correct.
Person B’s observations are correct but premises on objective matters are incorrect.
Person C’s observations are correct and his premises on objective matters are correct.
Person D’s observations are correct but his premises on objective matters are incorrect.
Person E’s observations are correct and his premises on objective matters are correct.
Person F’s hears the correct facts about what happened correct and his premises on objective matters are correct.
Person G’s hears the correct facts about what happened correct but his premises on objective matters are incorrect.
Person H’s observations are correct and his premises on objective matters are correct.
Person I’s observations are correct but premises on objective matters are incorrect.
Looking at this hypothetical example we can see that individuals that are both correct on objective matters and their premises on objective matters may disagree on their subjective moral judgment toward an action even if this action affects other people. We can also see that those with false observations (or false reports) on objective matters and/or false premises on objective matters can agree with those with totally correct observations (or reports) on objection matters and totally correct premises on objective matters. Those that have incorrect observations (reports) on objection matters and/or incorrect premises on objective matters are not really wrong since they could still come to the same conclusion if they corrected their observations (or reports) and/or their premises on objection matters. The reason that morality is subjective is that individuals with the same (correct) objective observations and the with the same (correct) premises on objective matters can reach different judgments on the morality of actions.
Without establishing that there is an objective and absolute moral position that actually exists in reality there is no way to say to judge if the people above reached the right conclusion on the morality of action Z.
But how could such an objective and absolute position ever exist? We can see the conflict between the nine moral positions above. How could there ever be a position that can judge which of the moral judgments above are correct and which are incorrect?
It sounds like your answer to your question is no. I agree, and I have another argument. (Though I agree with yours also.)
Any absolute morality must maximize goodness. Now obviously, no morality can maximize happiness or any other goodness measure for all players - there must be some optimal trade-off. The problem is in figuring out what that is. Now, to compare the goodness for two people, we must have some sort of weighting function. Not all actions are symmetric - we’d agree that a millionaire stealing a hundred dollars from a poor person is worse than a poor person stealing $100 from a millionaire. Who is totally unbiased and can set these weights fairly?
I’m assuming no god here - there are problems with god-given morality also.
Another issue, featured in the recent movie Charlie Wilson’s War:
"A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how wonderful.’ But a Zen master who lives in the village says, ‘We shall see.’ The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how awful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’ The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, ‘Oh, how wonderful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’ "
Even when an act is quasi-officially good or bad, the consequences can’t be accounted for, potentially for hundreds of years, if ever.
Your scenario merely addresses the question of whether people can agree on matters of morality. It does not address the issue of whether objective morality exists, which is a different matter altogether. Objectivity is not the same as agreement.
Consider the laws of probability, for example. If you flip a quarter 11 times in a row and it lands heads up each time, what are the chances that it’ll land heads up on the 12th try? A great many people would claim that it’ll probably land tails up, invoking the so-called “law of averages.” The objective truth, however, is that the outcome is independent of any previous results. People may disagree on what the truth is, but that does not make the truth anything less than objective.
Similarly, pointing out that people disagree on matters of morality simply demonstrates that they, well, disagree. It does not prove – or even imply – that there are no morally absolute principles. That conclusion simply does not follow.
Yes, I think it could exist, but in a much blander sense than what most people want in an objective morality. I would say that objective morality exists if there are moral tenets (broad things like “don’t kill,” “don’t steal,” etc.) that all possible civilizations agree on. By “possible civilization” I mean anything composed of intelligent creatures with advanced languages that could have evolved naturally–no beings that would require special creation or violate any known natural laws.
Clearly we cannot prove that such a thing exists, but I believe that we could get good evidence for it. In evolutionary psychology some people try to use game theory to explain the origins of morality. If such work prospers by making only some minimal assumptions about the agents involved (possessing language, basic biology with evolution and genetic inheritance, self-interest consistent with the biology) then this would be evidence for an objective morality.
Always? I appreciate the fact that all moral codes draw a distinction between an ingroup and an outgroup, and most are much more restrictive in their inclusion than we are, but they still have the moral rules. Moral systems can also recognize that two moral goals can come into conflict and allow one goal to supersede the other, such as when we allow killing in self defense. I am not aware of any society that has no prohibitions against murder or theft (unless they have no notion of property). If the theory can explain why the dividing line is placed where it is and the mechanics of its motion, then the case for objective morality would be that much stronger.
We could never show development of a moral code for all possible civilizations, but we can try to gather some evidence for a large number of them (also, I agree with JThunder that it is not necessary for all individuals to agree). We can try to get around this by abstracting away from as many details of evolution as possible and then see if the same morality still develops.
Perhaps we could simplify even further. Since the framework for our morality was laid down by evolution we may need only to discuss the equivalent of a hunter-gatherer society, where an agent is likely to make contact with only a small number of individuals, many of who are his/her kin. Social structures composed primarily of family are seen quite often in nature.
Regarding sociopaths: I stated above that objective morality does not require that all individuals agree with the moral code. Sociopaths might be considered a special case of the free rider problem, which has been studied in depth in economic theory and I’m sure other fields as well. I don’t see how this may be a threat to an empirical moral theory.
Me, I figure that that which is good is that which fulfills desires. I reason that, by nature of what my desires are, I think they ought to be fulfilled; that’s practically a tautology. I see nothing special about my own desires: what I observe about them seems equally applicable to those desires held by other entities out there.
When desires come into conflict, you gotta figure out which ones to weigh most heavily, and that gets all complicated; but everything is founded on two observable facts, namely, that you believe your own desires, broadly speaking, ought to be fulfilled, and that there’s nothing special about your own desires.
I certainly believe an objective morality exists, but it would not be a shopping list of moral prohibitions - it would be something a lot closer to the Golden Rule, a principle arrived at independenlty in a number of different formulations in different civilizations and cultures.
The New York Times has an article about morality from Steven Pinker.
Even if there are morals (or a moral grammar) shared by all humans, how does that make it absolute? If our evolutionary history had been different our morality would most likely be different. Look at taste. Most people dislike the taste of feces and aluminum. Does that mean these things absolutely taste bad? No. Other creatures can like the taste of feces. If natural selection pressures are put on humans to consume feces and extract energy out of it in a few millions people might love the taste of feces. The same may be true for aluminum.
The fact that it is widely shared doesn’t make it absolute, it just provides evidence that the realization is not culturally-specific.
I do not think that morality is subjective like taste. Whether shit tastes good is indeed a matter of taste, and is I suppose somewhat subjective, as one could easily imagine a concious being liking the taste of shit; whether treating others like shit is good … is not.
If one asks “what makes the Golden Rule an aspect of objective morality”, I’d say it was inherent in the very nature of being a concious being to recognize other concious beings as “others” with rights and needs, and in particular the right not to be treated as things - that is what being “moral” is all about, in the end.
I just finished the article. I’ve read some of Pinker’s work before, but I had forgotten some of the exact points that he makes. His arguments are similar to (and one of the sources of) the points that I made before.
The more specific you make the moral system the more likely it is to be different under a different evolutionary or cultural history. If I assert that it is objectively wrong to rebuckle one’s knickerbockers below the knee I would almost certainly be wrong. But if I put forward the 5 moral themes from Pinker’s article (harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity) it becomes much easier to defend morality as a forced move in evolution. Morality is the set of behaviors that must evolve along with social living. While we cannot reject completely the idea that some intelligent social species can evolve without adopting rules reflecting each of the moral themes, we can come up with good arguments for why each theme would be developed.
For a bit more evidence (Pinker mentions the rhesus monkeys), here is an article about social amoebas that comments on the development of altruism in very primitive life.
No, I was trying to point out (unclearly, apparently) that a subject was making claims about the status of matters held to be outside of, and/or independent of, the subject.
J. G. Herder summarised this argument - each culture can be assessed against its own internal moral code, but one cannot judge a given culture by the norms of another.
This makes the term “morality” useless, and is contradictory. If a culture’s morality allows it to judge other cultures, who is this Herder schmuck to tell that culture that they can’t judge other cultures? He only has standing to do that if there’s some objective morality of which he is a master.
As Pinker notes, the malleability of viewpoints is central to many moral systems, including the one I broadly sketched above. If you assume that you’re not that special, then the things you consider to be good for yourself ought to be broadly applicable. An objective morality may derive from that and from the observation that other folks have desires, too; morality derives from the twin sources of personal desire and objective observation of the universe. Since your personal desire may be objectively observed, there is such a thing as an objective morality.
Okay. Are you suggesting that this is somehow wrong?
If so, are you not making a claim about a matter that is independent of your own existence? The veracity of this statement is, after all, independent of you or your viewpoints.