Can Morality Be Objective?

[Feliks]

Claudia wrote: "I would appreciate commenters' definitions of "objective." To the extent definitions are based on scientific inter-observer verifiability, as far as I could tell from browsing, everyone commenting ..."

I personally don't believe that Eastern beliefs do anything but 'muddy the water'. It's a sort of 'displacement' they're practicing, a 'delegating' or 'relegating' of the precise-edged factors in the equation. Reference to our "faulty faculties", over-deference to inexactness and illusions, and priority given over to mysticism ---all this conveniently abdicates away responsibility for known, testable procedures. Lack of scientific tradition 'hobbles' the East--this is an easily-ascribed cause; but I'm not interested in assigning blame. Suffice to say that they are 'standing on the sidelines' rather than engaging on the field laid out before us.

The test of any philosopher is that he must answer the premises of the men who have come before him, and supply a coherent account of how his own philosophy advances further than what they conceived. Putting everything down as 'ultimately unknowable' is a cop-out.

[Andrej]

The best answer to objectivism in morality is developed by Ayn Rand objectivism. Which paradoxically states that the only objectivity of morality is egoism.
Paradox lies in the fact that she disavows eastern ideologies, but fails to recognize that buddhism is the most evolved version of egoism that provest that only after you reach egoism you can really perform as conscious and responsible individual.
What is even more interesting is that she disavows Kant even more for his subjectivism. And in this she was correct since Kant places the rule outside a man. Paradox? Not really. In morality what is subjective is really something placed outside a man!

[Mark]

I'd say no. There will always be a strong element of subjectivity in ethics. But I believe it is possible to keep subjectivity "at bay" when analysing ethical issues. The final verdict, however, will have to be made against subjective benchmarks, and an individual will have to decide, in good faith, whether an action is 'ethical enough for me".

I call this process "Ethical Hypothesis Testing", in deliberate analogy to "Statistical Hypothesis Testing", and describe it in full in my book Happiness Rules . If anybody was interested, let me know what you think!

Best, Mark

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

[A Tidal Wave]

I have read various comments here and I wanted to ask a question if morality is similar to or same as logic ? When you typed out the following what did you consider morality to be as ? and what distinctions do you make otherwise ?

[A Tidal Wave]

Don't you think the need to have morals makes would make morality objective ? But then what is the need to have morals if we have the choice to go by what "feels" right instead of eliminating the wrong and doing the right that can go against what one feels, considering it often feels hard to do the right thing like telling the truth for example. I guess it's more relative then if we put it in this sense right ?

[A Tidal Wave]

Also guys just a thought, can moral education if taught in schools help prevent crime or even reduce crimes ?

[A Tidal Wave]

I actually agree with you. In my country India we value morals a lot and it does come along with the dominant religion followed here that is Hinduism and people often think about crimes here from a moralistic perspective when you ask them why a certain thing is illegal though what's legal may not be necessarily considered moral. So it made me wonder.

[Jack]

Probably two different questions being answered. Morals per se vs it practical effect on legal moral behaviour in society are probably two separate things. Morals themselves, are they objective? There may be one or two obvious instances e.g torture of innocents, genocide where the circumstances are not likely to affect the moral demand. However for the most part, as existentialists would argue - whether there is a God or not - we have to create our own moral values - and I believe this is correct. So whether there are objective moral laws or not is incidental almost. One position I also like, is that there is room for saying that morality is neither objective or subjective, they are a special language, where they have extra force beyond e.g mere aesthetic demands - I.e i like this or that as a preference, but they are not absolute eg Kantian ethnically demands.