What happened to "There is no such thing as objective morality or right and wrong?"

Wasn’t there at some point a philosophy that claimed something to the effect of, “There is no such thing as fixed and certain morality, no such thing as right and wrong?”
Nowadays, it seems like **everyone **- atheist, religious, liberal, conservative - argues on the basis of morality and right vs.wrong. So, what happened to the “there is no such thing as objective morality” philosophy? Did it just die out?

It’s still around; I’ve seen it on the SDMB.

You can talk about things being right or wrong in your opinion without insisting that their rightness or wrongness has any independent objective reality.

I suspect some people who claim to hold “there is no such thing as objective morality” in theory don’t really consistently think that way in practice.

Note that, in some forms, the position is self-refuting. I’m thinking of the people who claim (or seem to claim) that it’s objectively wrong to insist on an objective morality.

Not only is it still around, it seems to be default. People will argue that something is a matter of right and wrong and someone else will come in and say, your right and wrong are misplaced, this is what is really right and wrong. The battle will be who gets their version of right and wrong accepted by the other.

As a philosophical movement, you may be thinking of something like situational ethics, a term most associated with Joseph Fletcher. Fletcher didn’t exactly argue that “there is no such thing as right and wrong,” so much as that when evaluating the ethics of a particular act, we must take into account the context in which the act is performed, rather than weighing the act against some absolute scale of moral standards.

While often disparaged by more conservative religious commentators, Fletcher himself based his work on the Christian idea of agape, and argued that actions were moral only to the extent that they served love in the given situation.

Okay, but they are still claiming that there is right and wrong. I’m referring more to the notion that there is no such thing as right and wrong.

No such thing as “absolute” right and wrong. I would argue that when people debate over which right and wrong are to be used, they are implicitly accepting the framework that right/wrong creations are subjective. Well, unless you are a fundamentalist - in which case the arguments goes - that’s what it is, this is right and that is wrong; and that’s the extent of the argument.

It’s easy to uncover the hypocrisy in those who proclaim no belief in an objective morality by punching them in the nose. Avoiding that the argument tends towards return in kind by pointing out the hypocrisy in objective morality. So if you argue that killing people is wrong and the vast majority of people agree to that then the subjective moralists will point at war and capital punishment.

It’s the usual thing, my actions are governed by my subjective morality, yours should be governed by the objective morality that I approve of.

As a conservative religionist, I fully understood the essential problem with “situational ethics” even while also understanding its validity. We Christians use it all the time in dealing with the ethical paradoxes between Old & New Testaments.

Heck, I embrace what will keep intact (or at least not harm) the society to which I have become accustomed. Abortion rights okay. Gay marriage okay. Gun rights meh. Capital punishment, I like but don’t want. Religion-based laws, fuck that… and so forth.

Nothing happened to it, its around and everyone takes it for granted. We talk about what we like per our beliefs. When someone comes in with an objective view, usually religionists, they get smacked down.

It’s a similar situation to arguing all other matters that are fundamentally based on assumptions, and not on faulty logic (all attempts to justify basic assumptions as being objectively true).
*If you and I share in assuming a similar set of axioms, such as valuing the health and happiness of the greatest amount of people, etc., then I can tell you you’re objectively immoral if you contradict those according to logic.
*If we don’t share the usage of logic in common, then there’s no reason for us to continue discussing anything.
*If we don’t share in those basic assumptions, then I have no basis for telling you how you’re wrong.
It’s probable that a lot of moral relativists these days are just unaware of some of their basic assumptions, or at least they get hidden, or pushed aside, because of the vitriol common between the religious and non-religious, and political groups you’re talking about. Hostile debates don’t foster that kind of introspection, and there’s a good possibility your opponent will construe your admission as some sort of surrender even though their alternative is also worse.

I’m not sure I understand what that means.

Morality and “right and wrong” are just what a person thinks should be done in a situation. They’re inherently an opinion, so in no way could be objective (unless you start with some axioms such as it’s taken for granted that increasing well-being is the goal).

But everyone has an opinion about what should be done in some situations; everyone has ideas of right and wrong, I would think.

I don’t think there was every any widespread belief in such an extreme version of moral relativism. And the less extreme version - that argues that there are not absolute moral rules but that morality can change based on circumstances - is still around and being used all the time.

To give one significant example, consider the groups you mentioned in the OP: atheists and religious and liberals and conservatives. And look at the way they judge people whose views oppose theirs vs how they judge people whose views they agree with. You’ll certainly see moral flexibility at work.

Why? That would only establish that they subscribe to a subjective moral code.

Moral nihilism? It exists, but has never been anything mainstream or widespread.

[Quote=Hamlet]
…nothing is really good or bad in itself—it’s all what a person thinks about it.
[/Quote]

Act II, Scene 2

I think the idea that there is no objective morality is constrained in society by people assuming that it would lead to the breakdown of law and society or whatever. I’m not sure how that necessarily follows. Just because there is no objective morality doesn’t mean that people can’t elaborate one, get others to agree to it, and enforce it.

That. I believe there’s no objective morality, and I’ve strongly held moral beliefs.

The issue here has largely to do with how you want to define right and wrong. The fact that we need to do that in the first place is a strong indicator of the problems with “objective” morality.

That said, I’m a strong proponent of Matt Dillahunty’s approach. What he does is basically look at what can be done to make things as good as possible for humanity, and uses that as his guidelines for “right” and “wrong”. He makes the analogy to the game of chess - there may not be an “objective” right and wrong outside of the framework of the game, but as long as we are within that framework, we can construct better or worse moves. We apply a consistent framework based on our biological imperatives, and use that as an “objective” morality.

I’m not aware of any moral system that doesn’t have paradoxes given certain thought experiments.

That’s like saying you can uncover the hypocrisy of those who proclaim no belief in objective taste by giving them a bowl of garbage instead of ice cream. There’s nothing inherently disgusting about garbage. Flies love it.

You can have objective morality by describing the preferences of the population. The preferences may change over time and in different places, but the measurements could be objective. There are no recommendations or precepts, just a description.

You can be a utilitarian and say if you want to achieve X sort of outcome then the best way to do that is if everyone behaves in Y way, or to follow a certain strategy like tit for tat with forgiveness. That’s an objective solution that can be analyzed mathematically in comparison to other strategies, in a game theory sense. More of a theoretical construct that something practical in the messy real world, but one can imagine it. Notice the objectives/axioms are still subjective.

Other than those examples, it’s never been clear to me what “objective morality” even means. God doesn’t solve anything since his decrees are his opinion, no more relevant than anyone else’s (and you can add in the Euthyphro dilemma for fun). There’s no platonic morality in the framework of the cosmos waiting to be found. Given the differing moral values of people living in the same society, given the evolving zeitgeist across time, and given moralities of non-human species whether animal or extra-terrerestrial, the entire idea of objective morality strikes me as pure faith.