I mean, if you want to consider perceived reality as an “authority”, then…I guess so.
So you don’t know?
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Does anybody?
Why do you keep asking questions?
Is this your style of argumentation meant to assert dominance on a topic?
Continually ask questions, rhetorical and otherwise to indicate that you have some kind of intellectual upper-hand?
What is life?
Yes.
To get answers.
No.
No.
Are you paying me? I don’t remember being hired to teach you.
So you’re refuting your prior statement here:
If the statement “everyone’s morality is subjective” is itself, subjective, then the statement cannot actually be true, since declaring a maximum or minimum (everyone in this case) leaves no room for subjectivity.
Setting aside the incoherence of this situation, let’s accept the idea that all things are subjective. If all things are truly subjective, then there is no such thing as truth as it is all endless recursion in both directions. This includes the idea that “all things are subjective” itself, rendering it a non-truth statement… and thus self-defeating.
Moral subjectivity is incoherent.
Don’t just name a fallacy… particularly informal ones.
If you declare all morals to be subjective, you are claiming:
- All morals are subjective
- Morals can be defined as oughts
- Therefore, all oughts are subjective
- 1 is itself an ought regarding morals themselves
- Therefore, 1 is itself an ought regarding oughts
- Therefore, if 3 is true, then 1 must be subjective
- If 1 must be subjective, 1 and 3 can be false
- If 3 is false, then 1 must be objective
- If 1 must be objective, then oughts are not necessarily subjective
- If 9 is true, 1 must be false
This will just keep going as you bounce between statements being rendered true and false based on objectivity and subjectivity as mutually exclusive qualities. An endless recursive loop that cannot resolve itself just destroys the axioms. You can’t rely upon an axiom that is simultaneously true and false as this violates the law of noncontradiction, and since the axiom has to cycle between being true and false to prevent the logic chain from breaking… it is a false premise.
Metaphysical statements about morals are themselves moral statements. You don’t get to play fast and loose with what is and isn’t logically grounded simply because we’re talking about metaphysical concepts. Any rule that dictates how morals behave or function is itself a moral rule. If moral rules grounded in a higher order meta rule violate the foundational rule’s qualities, then the whole structure collapses.
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You you don’t have to teach me. You can just answer a question related to previous statements. Or you don’t have to. You responded to me first and I was just continuing the conversation. You’ve already said you were going to ignore me and continued responding regardless.
You’ll probably do the same here.
You’re speaking on the wrong terms here.
You’re focusing too much on the viability of the statement/idea that morality is subjective, because you lack any evidence whatsoever to convince anyone that there is objectivity existent within it.
Maybe morality is objective, because I could die today, and find out angels are real, and low and behold God has been a thing the whole time, and yeah, he gave me my morals.
Except you have no evidence of this.
So appealing to the infinite universe of possibility is just about the weakest (and lamest) foundation for an argument you can utilize, and pretty much the same exact thing you were doing in the topics on dual spec so I’m pretty much seeing the pattern here.
Nah, once you’ve asked like the 10th question in a row without providing anything of substance, you cease being a participant in a debate, and you’re just wanting to be schooled.
Get your wisdom elsewhere.
If a statement can’t even be true within the sterilized and perfect logic of a simple syllogism, it cannot be true when we pepper in a bunch of known and unknown variables.
2 + 2 != 5 no matter how much evidence you try to throw at it, it is just flatly incorrect as is, and needs no further proof.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. We didn’t discover black holes because a probe bumped into one and snapped a photo, we discovered black holes by noting a lot of unique phenomena that could theoretically come from one or many sources of unknown and undiscovered celestial bodies. That we could even look for a black hole came because the most plausible explanation was that a single entity was responsible for all the phenomena, and straightforward, non-experimental math and logical proofs verified they could coexist. That’s how we eventually got the picture of one not that long ago, because the order of events was raw math and logical proof first, evidence second.
As I said above, if your baseline logic breaks down, I don’t need to proceed to an evidence step since there is no reason to look for something that is proven to not exist.
I’m not. /boggle
Objectivity and subjectivity are mutually exclusive, like something being true or false. If something cannot be subjective, it must be objective, or vice versa. This isn’t appealing to some remote probabilistic potentiality, but rather the only other logical outcome.
A statement can either be true, or it can be false. There’s no in between or alternative.
Except there is a literal endless list of questions you lack a definitive true or false answer to.
The answer exists somewhere, but you have no idea what it is. So given the fallibility of our collective human knowledge, you are forced to retreat from the utterly ridiculous stance that you are in any position of authority to assert that a concept as metaphysical as morals has a definitive origin.
You changed the definition to suit your need. Then pontificated ad nauseam. Which is why its hand waving.
A moral is not defined as an ought. That would be a supposition on a moral. A moral is the belief that something is right or wrong. Not to be confused with correct or incorrect mind you.
Also, it’s wrong to say that a statement can only be true or false.
A statement (the same one) can be true and false depending on context or time:space, even regarding the same object/person.
Oooh boy, you may not know who you’re speaking to just yet.
…none of which matter in this regard.
We’re talking about a very simple statement:
“All morality is subjective.”
This is either true, or it is false. Because the statement is itself at an extreme end of logic (the use of all and subjective), we can actually prove this statement to be true. A single example of a moral being objective defeats the statement. That’s the beauty of zeros and ones, and why we can ontologically prove a LOT of different concepts (or disprove them).
I need not know every moral example to prove that morality is objective, I need only prove that morality being necessarily subjective is false, which renders moral objectivity true.
You’re arguing there is a distinction between truth and goodness, as if something can be good but lack truth. This doesn’t follow whatsoever, as something being good can only be good if it is true.
If all morality is subjective, then necessarily both goodness and truth are subjective. If truth is subjective, we need not continue further because logic ceases to be and all that remains isn’t even irrationality, but just sheer will.
No it isn’t.
If context is missing then the error isn’t in the statement, but the missing context, which makes the statement UNPROVEN, which is a separate quality from true/false. Unproven statements can be true, they just haven’t been proven yet.
“I am sitting in my office chair” is a true statement. It is also unproven as I haven’t offered anything more than just the simple statement of fact.
This whole paragraph is a mess.
Truth is not always good. Morality does not, for every single culture and context, promote a “good” result (that which would be defined “good” by all).
Just because goodness is subjective doesn’t mean the concept of goodness doesn’t exist. It simply exists as we apply it (subjectively).
Goodness is indeed subjective.
Truth is not, but truth is not always good.
Morality is still subjective, regardless of either.
Strawman much?
I am making no arguments about goodness or truth.
A moral is the belief something is right or wrong.
Please tell me what that belief is based upon, for any given moral.
“Morals are subjective” is not a moral. One can have a moral that believing in the statement is wrong. But the statement itself is not a moral.
Didn’t say it was. I said goodness must be true to be good.
Truth is a quality of goodness, since morality is a directive given to a moral agent in how to act accordingly. If such an ought is not true, it cannot bring about good.
However, truth is not the ONLY quality of a moral ought, so plenty of truth things are amoral. Truth cannot be bad, but truth can be wielded in harmful ways which wouldn’t make the truth any less true or less good, but the action using it evil.
Without a standard, whatever you want to call “goodness” is on equal footing to whatever I call “goodness” as it is to whatever that drooling psychopath over there calls “goodness” and so on. If everything can be goodness, the word has no meaning, so whatever it is we’re talking about needs a better definition, or the word just doesn’t need to be used since the concept is indistinguishable from literally anything else.
Taking your statements and following their logical end does not make it a strawman. YOU claimed there was a distinction between right/wrong (goodness) and true/false (truth).
This is goodness. Something is morally right because it is good, and goodness requires truth.
I don’t think you understand this argument.
“Morals are subjective” is a statement of truth regarding morals writ large. This is A.
Any moral presented, would be a subjective one, assuming A is true. Any such moral presented would be B.
Any action taken as a result of a moral presented would directly follow. Any action taken would be C.
A → B → C
A is necessarily a moral rule because it determines an integral part of any morals (B) that get acted upon (C). You can’t act morally (C) without looking to a moral rule (B) that is strictly dictated by a foundational rule (A).
If you remove A entirely, you’re left with the very obvious question any child could ask when told they ought to behave a certain way: “Why?”
A is the “Why” for all of morality, since it has declared all of morality is fixedly subjective, and without a “Why” the moral agent need not follow the moral unless forced or otherwise compelled. Not all rules and laws are moral ones.
So you can’t just deny A as not a moral rule, since that’s explicitly what it defines and supports.
And since A is a moral rule, it is self-defeating, as it is declaring a non-subjective moral rule that all moral rules must be subjective. If you violate the law of noncontradiction, you’re either committing yourself to something worse than irrationality, or you haven’t actually thought through the problem.
Lol no. I said dont confuse right and wrong with correct and incorrect.
Right and wrong. Can maybe be conflated with good/bad.
The said not to confuse right/wrong within the scope of the context of morality with correct/incorrect. As in they are different concepts. Right does not mean correct. Wrong does not mean incorrect.
2+2 = 4 is correct it is not right in a moral sense.
2+2 = 5 is incorrect it is not wrong.
You can however have a moral that says correct things are right. And incorrect things are wrong. But you are not required to have such a moral.
Ironically you then confused them.
And I haven’t…
/headdesk
If moral right/wrong is not the same as moral good/bad then what on Earth do you mean by something being “wrong” or “right”?
You communicating very badly isn’t my problem, especially since you’re contesting the very meaning of right/wrong but refusing to define right/wrong in a way that actually contradicts anything I’ve said.
Define your terms.