What should Morals and Ethics be?

Roboramma said:
Well, I’m using accepted terminology. Those regions are causally disconnected from us.
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They're not causally connected to us here. But if you move further you'll see more. So it's causally connected to other parts of the universe that are in range. I'm talking about things that are not causally connected to our universe at all i.e. other universes, so that there is no way to detect them even in principle, regardless of where you are in our own spacetime.
 
I'm still not getting where we're supposed to go intellectually or argumentatively after the very core idea that a specific question has an answer (not just rejecting any accepted answer or even arguing that it's impossible to answer practically) has been soundly rejected.

"Morality" needs to have an answer we can at least agree on socially or there's gonna be a lot of human misery we're going to "and then?" ourselves into.
 
I Am The Scum said:
In your view, is 2 + 2 = 4 objectively true? And if so, what are the consequences for getting it wrong? What if I don't care about mathematical accuracy?
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Well, the consequences of getting it wrong are that your calculations aren't going to match reality, which you'll certainly notice. Furthermore, what do we mean by "objective morals", exactly? What does it mean for something to be "wrong"?

Sorry, the concept just doesn't make sense. It just sounds like people trying to give their own values more weight. At least math, as a construct, can be applied to real things objectively.
 
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Belz... said:
They're not causally connected to us here. But if you move further you'll see more. So it's causally connected to other parts of the universe that are in range. I'm talking about things that are not causally connected to our universe at all i.e. other universes, so that there is no way to detect them even in principle, regardless of where you are in our own spacetime.
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There really is no way to interact with them, even in principle. The universe is expanding. If you travel toward some other part of it in hopes of observing something over the horizon, the expansion will outpace you.
 
Roboramma said:
There really is no way to interact with them, even in principle. The universe is expanding. If you travel toward some other part of it in hopes of observing something over the horizon, the expansion will outpace you.
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There's great.

Hey here's a question... what in a blue blazer's button hole does any of this have to do with little Timmy getting his cancer medication to ease his suffering?
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm still not getting where we're supposed to go intellectually or argumentatively after the very core idea that a specific question has an answer (not just rejecting any accepted answer or even arguing that it's impossible to answer practically) has been soundly rejected.

"Morality" needs to have an answer we can at least agree on socially or there's gonna be a lot of human misery we're going to "and then?" ourselves into.
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I agree. If there is no objective morality, then what exactly are we having subjective opinions about? If we want to have moral discussions we pretty much have to at least start with an axiom that moral questions have answers.

I couldn't help but make this reply, but as I said, I'll try to spend some time to understand the subjective morality viewpoint before commenting further.
 
JoeMorgue said:
There's great.

Hey here's a question... what in a blue blazer's button hole does any of this have to do with little Timmy getting his cancer medication to ease his suffering?
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Well, I think it's basically what you said: we have to agree to start from somewhere in order to just move on and deal with real world problems. And saying "moral questions have answers" seems like a pretty fundamental starting point.
 
You can "and then" any objective statement into subjectivity, to the point where I'm almost over "objective/subjective" as anything meaningful in this context.
 
Belz... said:
Well, the consequences of getting it wrong are that your calculations aren't going to match reality, which you'll certainly notice.
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Sorry, that doesn't add anything. "Not matching reality" is just another way of saying "getting it wrong."
 
I Am The Scum said:
Sorry, that doesn't add anything. "Not matching reality" is just another way of saying "getting it wrong."
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You wouldn't be equivocating two definitions of the word "wrong", would you?

Morally wrong and factually wrong are not the same thing. That's why the idea of objective morality doesn't make sense: it's logically contradictory.

2+2 = 4 is provable by adding 1 four times and getting the same results. Of course, numbers are a made-up thing that just represent objects, so it's true by definition. Perhaps you should have picked the acceleration of gravity at ground level, or something similar which is true because it's a physical fact.

But so far no one has managed to explain what an objective moral value would look like, or even how we'd be able to determine them.
 
Roboramma said:
If we want to have moral discussions we pretty much have to at least start with an axiom that moral questions have answers.
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Moral questions have no answers and that is exactly why moral discussions between people with substantially different beliefs about morality so complicated. When speaking about morality, they are simply not talking about the same thing.

The best one can hope for with such discussions is that people gain a better understanding of what our people are believing, and for that reason discussions on morality are a very important thing; we may even find similarities between moralities so that people with very different views can peacefully coexist. We should not deceive ourselves into thinking that this is akin to discovering "moral truths". It isn't. It is the opposite; it is letting go of the idea of objective morality and substituting it for an intersubjective one.
 
Belz... said:
There is if you live on another planet further away. For them the observable universe is different, but it's still the same cosmos.
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There are regions of this 250 hubble volume space that are inaccessible to any part of our observable universe. If you only want to consider those regions separate universes, I'm okay with that.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah we heard people the first 100 times.

What we're all waiting on where the discussion is supposed to go now when all possible answers have been pre-rejected.
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Appeals to enlightened self interest, and hopes that the person you're appealing to shares something like your idea of self interest.

Most people like to take care of themselves, so even if you don't share their moral code, you should still be able to negotiate some kind of moral agreement.

On the other hand, there are limits. Some people get a kick out of the idea of future generations. Me? Not so much. So moral appeals to my interest in future generations will generally fall flat.
 
Roboramma said:
There are regions of this 250 hubble volume space that are inaccessible to any part of our observable universe. If you only want to consider those regions separate universes, I'm okay with that.
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I believe I've been very clear on what I consider to be a different universe.

Can we stick with moral questions and lay off the theoretical physics and cosmology?
 
Belz... said:
I believe I've been very clear on what I consider to be a different universe.

Can we stick with moral questions and lay off the theoretical physics and cosmology?
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Why? What do we have to go to (g)your recursion and stop?

It's turtles all the way down and all the turtles look the same from where I'm standing.
 
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Belz... said:
I'm sorry, what? What's your question?
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I'm saying his recursion is exactly as valid as yours.

If we're not allowed to start at "suffering is bad and should be reduced" as self defining then "What is the nature of reality" is no further down the turtle poll then "Prove to me suffering is objectively bad."
 
Belz... said:
I'm going to sound like a broken record but I have no idea how even that would work. And then what? It'd be entirely hypothetical.
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I have seen it argued here many times that science cannot decide what is right and what wrong. Science can inform your choice and help you achieve it, but a person has to make the subjective moral choice.


Why not make morals a science then?



Build your morality on a objective base, founded in reality, universally applicable, and then use science, logic and reasoning to develop the structure and see where it leads.
 
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