Some of the things I’ve read on different threads disturbs me when it comes to morals. I understand that some morals are relative, but I wonder how anybody can say that all morals are. For example, there was a thread about teaching morals in school. Somebody said we should teach the basics like no lying, steeling, cheating, etc… But somebody else chimed in and said that we shouldn’t even do that since there are situations where steeling might be ok, for example.
For those of you who don’t believe in any moral absolutes, tell me this, what is a justification for a man beating his wife or girl friend? When is it ok to rape someone? If my TV gets broken and I don’t have the money to fix it, can I just break into your house and take yours? If you’re a man who’s married and I have an affair with your wife and you find out, would you not be able to get mad at me because even though you may see the affair as wrong, if your wife and I don’t have a problem with it then wouldn’t it be you just forcing your morals on me?
Again, I’m not saying that all morals are absolute, but how can anyone believe that none of them are?
The man and woman and their children are both held captive by a saddistic enemy who tortures all of them daily. Then the husband finds out by overhearing a conversation that if he beats his wife just once, he and the woman and the children will be set free. The man knows that his wife would sacrifice anything for the welfare of the children.
If my TV gets broken and I don’t have the money to fix it, can I just break into your house and take yours?
No, you don’t have to break in.
If you’re a man who’s married and I have an affair with your wife and you find out, would you not be able to get mad at me because even though you may see the affair as wrong, if your wife and I don’t have a problem with it then wouldn’t it be you just forcing your morals on me?
Yes, I would be able to get mad at you. I am human and I have human feelings. But if you and my spouse had sex and my spouse did not see that it was wrong, then I would choose to change myself and my life circumstances. I wouldn’t force anything on you or my spouse.
Again, I’m not saying that all morals are absolute, but how can anyone believe that none of them are?
Our government justifies murder all the time. After that, in my opinion, everything else in tame by comparison.
i think like many people to whom i’ve talked about moral relativism, you’re misrepresenting the idea. no worries, though, even the “objectivist club” at the school i went to had very seriously misconstrued notions about the idea.
suppose you’re considering stealing something. a tv, say, as per your example. do you think of yourself as the type of person who would steal from someone else? if not, is that the person you want yourself to be? does taking the tv fit into your moral view of the world? do you like your neighbor? do you want him/her to be without a tv? what are the chances you’ll get caught? is it a worthwhile risk?
these are all things one considers when making a moral or ethical decision. it does not matter if any of these things is absolute, since you clearly have a basis for making the decision, i.e. the society in which you live. personally, i would not take the tv, because i like my neighbors, and i never wanted to be a thief, nor do i think the risk is outweighed by the benefits. if my mom found out i took it, for example, i would certainly wish i had just gone without a tv.
i see that you might object to this view, as though it is somehow not relative, but takes certain things for granted, such as you would feel guilty stealing it, where you might not if you lived in a society where such things were accepted. the response is, you do not live in such a society, and for many so-called “sins” (murder, stealing, adultery, etc.), there exists a reason why these are bad for the survival of the society, and it is my belief that they evolved to become reasons for making “moral” decisions as a result.
Hmmm…If she’s threatening him with a weapon, for instance?
I can’t think about any situation when it would be OK
Nope, but if I don’t have any food left and you happen to have a lot of it, I would certainly consider stealing yours.
I guess it’s quite natural to get mad in such a situation, but actually, from a moral point of view, you’ve not much ground to complain, IMO. You don’t have any authority on your spouse, nor any right to control her/his actions. If she wants to sleep with another man, you might be pissed off, but she has every right to do so. On the other hand, if she lied by pretending that she doesn’t have an affair though actually she has, that would be morally wrong.
I suppose the reasonning would be that any moral rule is arbitrary. For instance, you could find killing an old woman to steal her money abhorent, but there’s no objective reason not to kill people if you want to and can get away with it. The reasons why you don’t are feelings of empathy, values you have been brought up with and have made yours, fear of being punished, sense of a kind of social contract (you won’t do this to me and I won’t do it to you), religious teachings, etc…
And indeed the frontier between what is moral and what is not is quite often arbitrarily defined. I could think that not giving half of your income to starving children, or entering a store without queuing (I’m refering here to another thread), or sleeping with people of the same sex, or executing a criminal, or forcing someone to pay taxes is immoral. You won’t necessarily agree with me.
That’s why the courts enforce the law, and not the moral.
So, how one feels about something determines its morality or not? Crack dealers selling to kids don’t feel bad about it, does that make it ok then, if they don’t feel bad and aren’t worried about being caught? What about the theif who don’t care, isn’t worried about getting caught, and gets away with it, does that make it ok?
Torturing babies for fun is always, always wrong. Ditto for a man beating his wife when there is no external compulsion involved.
'Course, the last time I raised the baby torture example, one moral relativist exclaimed “Forget about the babies! Leave them alone!” Interestingly enough, nobody could offer any coherent reason why such actions could be legitimately justified.
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Originally posted by Joel
For those of you who don’t believe in any moral absolutes, tell me this, what is a justification for a man beating his wife or girl friend?
A stuggle to get the weapon out of her hand is not the same thing as spousal abuse.
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When is it ok to rape someone?
So there’s at least one moral absolute you believe in?
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If my TV gets broken and I don’t have the money to fix it, can I just break into your house and take yours?
Steeling food for survival isn’t the same as taking something that’s not needed for me to live simply because I can’t afford it.
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If you’re a man who’s married and I have an affair with your wife and you find out, would you not be able to get mad at me because even though you may see the affair as wrong, if your wife and I don’t have a problem with it then wouldn’t it be you just forcing your morals on me?
Unless you have a totally non traditional wedding, ever hear of marrage vows? Why do you think it’s called cheating? The whole point of marrage, unless you specifically enter into an “open marrage” is monogamy.
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Again, I’m not saying that all morals are absolute, but how can anyone believe that none of them are?
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what is a justification for a man beating his wife or girl friend?
Read the definition of murder:
The death penalty isn’t murder.
well, do you think that the crack dealer would deal crack to kids if they didn’t think it was ok? also, do you think the people who consider it bad for children to have crack think it’s ok?
same thing with the thief. you’re bringing a lot of perspectives into this. it’s almost like assuming there is a moral absolutism, which you can’t do if you are arguing for that point. assuming everyone has the same beliefs and that those beliefs were against selling crack to children, those things wouldn’t happen. but that is not the case, and some people do it, and others think it is wrong.
-d-squared
i wasn’t a part of that last discussion, so here goes…
suppose there exists a society in which babies are not considered with such high regard as they are in ours, but are in fact looked down upon as dangerous, due to overpopulation or some such (assuming that this is impossible is essentially eliminating the relativistic aspect). suppose, further, that someone enjoys torturing the little critters.
who then would tell him that he is wrong? i suppose i would, since i live in a society where it is clearly bad for society to torture babies. i suppose you would, since you do, too, and you have authoritative moral reasons for objecting to those actions. but we do not experience it relatively; we are not part of his society. who could tell him that he is absolutely wrong?
-d-squared
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Originally posted by Joel
So, how one feels about something determines its morality or not? Crack dealers selling to kids don’t feel bad about it, does that make it ok then, if they don’t feel bad and aren’t worried about being caught? What about the theif who don’t care, isn’t worried about getting caught, and gets away with it, does that make it ok?
I don’t even know how to begain to reply to this. Ok, let me try this, If you had a kid, and I sold him/her some drugs, they got addicted, and died of an overdose, you wouldn’t be able to say that what I did was wrong?
i would be able to say it was wrong in my context, i would not be able to say that it was absolutely wrong.
so, yeah, i’d come after you. but i cannot simply assume there are no situations in which i would not.
-d-squared
quote:
Originally posted by Joel
So, how one feels about something determines its morality or not? Crack dealers selling to kids don’t feel bad about it, does that make it ok then, if they don’t feel bad and aren’t worried about being caught? What about the theif who don’t care, isn’t worried about getting caught, and gets away with it, does that make it ok?
So what’s ok or what isn’t is determined by the majority of a society? In that case, nobody had the right to tell the Germans that the concentration camps were bad, right? The slavery that existed a couple hundred years ago, and in fact, still exists in some African countries can’t be concidered wrong? If a society doesn’t have a problem torturing the weak and helpless then that would be ok?
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Originally posted by Joel
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I don’t even know how to begain to reply to this. Ok, let me try this, If you had a kid, and I sold him/her some drugs, they got addicted, and died of an overdose, you wouldn’t be able to say that what I did was wrong?
Why would you come after me? Because you wanted to force your morals on me? What would give you that right?
ok, now you’re misrepresenting history. who exactly were the majority in WWII that thought the nazis were ok with their concentration camps? it seems to me that there were many people in many countries that thought they were wrong. if the majority of germany thought it was ok, it seems as though that only points out why they allowed it.
for slavery, again, do you think the majority of the people in the world find it acceptable, and that is why it is still allowed in some places?
i’m beginning to think that i shouldn’t even argue with you. you’ve misrepresented me and history now. i said nothing about majority. i said that your beliefs are relative based on the society in which you exist. if your beliefs differ from those of the majority, then most people will think you are wrong. it’s that simple.
-d-squared
how does me believing i’m right and justified in coming after you equate to me forcing my beliefs on you?
why do you assume that there is moral relativism when you argue for it? if there wasn’t, why on earth would i have to have the “right” to force my beliefs on you, so long as i thought it was ok? why would it matter whether or not the rest of society thought i was justified?
-d-cubed
If they actually don’t care, then obviously they don’t consider it immoral. And if you think it’s not OK, even if 99,5% of people agree with you, it’s still arbitrary. Or at least the general rule you refer to to decide whether something is moral or not (say : “harming people is immoral” ) is.
Morals change. Common examples : owning slaves wasn’t immoral for much of our history. And homosexuality was. And perhaps tomorrow eating meat will be considered by most people immoral and will be forbidden by law, while selling drugs will be a respectable and legal job.
There are extremely few things which have been viewed at all times and by all cultures as immoral. One of the most commonly example cited is the prohibition of incest, which is quite universal.
Morals people hold have usually much more to do with feelings and ingrained values than with a with a well thought reasonning, anyway. That’s why it’s extremely difficult to change people’s views on morals. If there was some sort of logical and universal standard, there wouldn’t be one thread a week here about homosexuality, taxes or the death penalty. At some point, people would have to agree (except if they were deliberatly dense).
But such debates are never resolved because even when people reason logically, their opinion is always derived from an arbitrary basic assumption , like : “killing people is always wrong”, “god says so”, “individual freedom is more/less important than the collective interest”, “a 17/13/6 y.o. can’t give a valid consent”, “killing animals is wrong”, “we have a responsability to take care of other, less lucky, people”, “a foetus is a human being”, etc…
That’s why, once again, we have laws. Stating that a 18 y.o. can give consent and a 17 y.o. can’t, that drinking alcohol is OK but smoking marijuana is not, that an abortion can take place after X weeks of pregnancy but not after X+1 weeks, etc…Because otherwise, if we relied upon common sense and morals, every trial would be essentially a lottery. These laws are still arbitrary, but they constitute an external reference frame we can refer to to operate in a society. My point is that if morals were absolute, we wouldn’t need laws. We would just hire a moralist, who would tell us what is right and what is wrong, in the same way a phycisist can tell us what speed is needed to land a robot on Mars.
Nope. It means that there are things I feel/think/believe aren’t moral. Like you. But the fact I believe something is wrong doesn’t mean it’s an absolute. It’s only my feeling, my opinion. I can argue about it and defend my point of view, but there’s nowhere these “absolute moral laws” could be found. Contrarily to the laws of physics, you can’t prove them.
Nope. But it shows that stealing isn’t always wrong. It depends on the circumstances.
And let’s suppose I promised you I will work for you until retirment when I was 20. Should I feel compelled to work for you all my life even if I change my mind later? Nope. That would be slavery. You don’t own your spouse. She can do whatever she wants with her body : play tennis or sleep with another man. You can’t force her to do something, or forbid her to do something. But I think that lying to you is wrong. She has to let you know what is going on, in order to allow you to make an informed decision about the marriage. You see…obviously we disagree about what is moral and what is not.
I also see no reason why marriages should be necessarily monogamous. I would have no issue with polygamy and polyandry. Not allowing them is in my opinion perfectly arbitrary and has nothing to do with morals. We not only disagree about what cnsequenbces a marriage implies, but also about what the whole point of marriage is. Once again, no obvious absolute.
What makes a moral absolute? You can for instance decide that all things which result in an unecessary harm to another human being are immoral. But you would have to explain what exactly means “unecessary”, what means “harm”, and even what means “human being”. And some people are going to strongly disagree with any of your points. And then, you’ll have tons of issues when trying to apply your rule to actual situations. And it will be the same fore every definition of morality you’ll come up with.
And more importantly, why do you decide that harming people is wrong? There’s no possible answer to this question, apart from “because I/most people feel it’s just wrong”. Will morals, at some point, we necessarily crash into a wall. There’s necessarily at least one basic assumption which must be accepted without further justification. That’s the main reason why I say morals aren’t “absolute”.
And the secondary reason is that even if we arbitrarily agree on some basic assumption, we’re going to disagree about its consequences; At each step of our reasonning, we’re going to introduce new arbitrary concepts and moral rules.
Say we agree that killing a human being is wrong. But does killing a foetus count? and whatever could be your answer, why? It will be necessarily an arbitrary choice. Same for “except he the guy is raping your child” , “Except in case of war” “except if he’s a serial killer”, “except if he broke into your house”.
If “not killing” was an absolute rule, there would be no exceptions. Or at least the exceptions would be obvious, clearly defined, and we would all agree about them. But there’s no such thing. To decide on moral issue, at each step, from the very beginning, we’ve to make arbitrary choices. There’s nothing absolute here.
The key word here is legitimately. What does “legitimately” means? Obviously, legitimately according to…morals. You’re presupposing an existing moral while try to prove there are moral absolutes. It’s a little like the believer stating “the bible is true because it’s written in the bible”. Your stance is “torturing babies is always morally wrong because there’s never a moral justification for it”. That’s plain tautology.
So what kind of justifications can I come up with about torturing babies? That’s easy : I enjoy torturing babies. Plus my vision of the world is that “the strongest does as he pleases”. What are you going to tell me? That torturing babies is wrong? you’re the one trying to prove it. That the well-being of the baby is more important than my enjoyment? I just disagree.
So, why do we say that torturing babies is immoral? Because it goes against the accepted conventions. Because essentially nobody enjoy torturing babies, and the overwhelming majority is revulsed by this concept. Either because we’re harwired to dislike harming other people (empathy) and to be protective of babies, either because we’ve been brainwashed all our life we the concept that torturing babies is a very, very bad thing. Probably both. Also, as someone pointed out, a society which would allow such things (do unto others whatever you feel like as long as you can get away with it) probably wouldn’t last long.
So, we feel distress, hanger, hate, etc…when we think about someone torturing babies. Especially since we’re affraid it could happen to our baby. That’s why we say it’s immoral. Since essentially everybody everybody is revulsed, nobody is going to argue in favor of baby’s torture. That’s why it appears as an absolute.
But change some elements in the sentence. For instance replace “torturing babies” with “having sex with babies” or “torturing ennemies” and you’ll begin to have some people who will argue for it. Change it to “spanking babies” or “torturing a terrorist in order to get infos” and there will be many people who will argue for it. All thinking they’re morally right.
The difference is in the numbers. There are many people who would want to torture criminals, and extremely few who would enjoy torturing babies. How wrong and immoral an action is considered to be is dependant on the number of people who dislike this action and on the strenght of this feeling of revulsion. Not about some supposed “absolute” which would make torturing a baby objectively worst than torturing an adult criminal.
It would be up to ramanujan to answer, but it seems to me you’re mistaking the fact that someone thinks morals aren’t absolute (ramanujan rightly pointed out that obviously there are crack dealers who don’t think selling crack is immoral) and the fact that he personnaly thinks this action isn’t wrong.