Moral absolutism or Moral relativism: Which one is more reasonable?

a reply to: windword

An unloving action is an action that shows selfish disloyal and malevolent concern for the good of another.

Good being defined as the benefit or advantage to someone or something.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: Pinke
Well the argument posed in the OP is an ontological argument. Epistemology of morality and "how you think of morality" are the same thing. Ontology deals with existence. The part you quoted from me was asking everyone to state their ontological moral view. Are the relative or absolute or not at all?

You appear to be trying to force people into a binary in an effort to make your argument easier.

Oh it most certainly does. As a moral skeptic claims there is no moral knowledge to be had. He cannot make moral judgements, but everyone makes moral judgments when they are the ones being wronged.

It's not a claim to objective moral knowledge when someone reacts to how they are attacked or hurt, sorry. Nor is it a complete 'release' of moral responsibility. You can lay doubt on moral truths whilst still running a Kantian 'according to my maxim' system of morality without falling into your poorly concealed philosophical pit trap.

With extreme skepticism you can argue that 'fairness' isn't a moral truth and people are violating it by expecting it ... but even then, gravity is often expected, it's not an objective truth in space is it? You can be skeptical about the state of gravity whilst knowing to accept it in certain circumstances. Same way, you can accept cultural morality without believing it's a fact.

I don't hold those views, but you haven't demolished them.

This statement makes absolutely no sense lol. You believe there are objective moral fact FOR most...I don't think you know what objective means. If something is objective true it is always true for all things.

Why do you think I wrote objective with these pretty little marks on either side: 'objective'

Sorry, but you're trying to pull this whole Moses of the highway routine but there is nothing Christian or enlightened about how you're acting. I know exactly what objective means, I added caveats because I'm basically saying that as far as our species in our time goes, for the most part we all agree that certain things are wrong. For most people in a lot of situations there 'may as well' be objective moral values.

The reason I didn't write a whole chapter defining terms and using precise language is because I'm not studying a university unit for you. Even if I didn't know what the word objective meant, for all you know I've come up with a whole new way of looking at something. I didn't, it's a known philosophical argument, but you would be too busy gazing at your navel and worshiping your own word salad to care. Enjoy eating that.

You are confusing belief with truth. Just because you believe the situation changes the truth of a moral fact doesn't mean your right.

No, this is a William Lane Craig (trademark) tap dancing effort to shift the burden of evidence onto other people, but it really amounts to another poorly concealed pit trap. The argument is basically:

1. There are objective moral truths
2. I'm not claiming to know what they are, that's ontological, and therefore you pointing out that I have no idea what they are doesn't mean you win! In fact ...
3. I win

The fact of the matter is, both you and Craig are Christians (or perhaps you're Catholic, I don't care) either you know what these truths are, or your religious world view is about as useful as an inflatable donkey in an ancient Roman Colosseum when it's time to feed the animals and you're lunch.

You don't know people can be conditioned to exist without any morals whatsoever . Second evil people does nothing to tear apart my belief in moral absolutism.

Actually, we know extensively which parts of the brain can be removed to cause people to lose their moral centering. We also know early life circumstances which are, by their vulnerable nature, outside of a child's control which will make the child much more likely to turn to a life of crime.

So I'd argue that yes, 'evil' humans cause a problem for your world view unless you're comfortable believing that your God sets up millions of people to fail every year. Some schools of Islam and Christianity get around that obstacle by claiming its because God 'hates' the people in those circumstances. I think that's reprehensible and I'm pleased most Christians don't follow that idea.

Anyway, I enjoy philosophical threads, they're lots of fun, and I've actually been pretty nice to you in the past ... but you're far too wrapped up in winning a conversation than actually understanding or experiencing one. I'm sincere when I say this, you're potentially shutting yourself off from new understandings of your topics by trying to just shut everyone else down.

Also I missed the bit in Jesus's letter to the Corinthians where he spake unto them, 'lol, I'm pretty sure ye don't know what that word means, therefore I posit God.'

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

A selfish act is NOT an unloving act. It's a self loving act.

Do you think there is a moral imperative to assist others? If so, does it require one to consider others BEFORE meeting one's own needs?

Does this objective morality extend to other species?

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

This implies moral Skepticism. Moral Nihilist produce the ontological argument of the moral Skeptic mentioned in the OP.

Thank you for putting words into my mouth, but I'd prefer it if they were the right ones. I'm not skeptical about the existence of what people call morals. If you want to call the emotions your body has to maintain social boundaries "morals", that's up to you. If you want to believe they have universal meaning, that's up to you. If you want to believe that anyone who doesn't believe they have universal meaning is going to burn forever, that is also up to you.

"Moral knowledge does not exist a person could not recommend any moral action above another which means that it could not be said that one must be tolerant of others’ moral opinions"

The moment you bring a moral charge against another person you lose this argument, because in that instance you claimed moral knowledge and acted upon it. I don't have to know you to know that you have already done that.

A moral charge? I'm not aware of any moral charges, but I AM aware of criminal charges, and their societal function. You seem to have mixed the two up.

Your human.

My human what?

Not only that, but the Moral Skeptics(Moral nihilist) argument is self-refuting. They claim to have the moral knowledge that no moral knowledge exist.

What moral skeptic argument could there possibly be?

1. I don't claim to know everything, but I do know that people are stupid and vulnerable to emotional manipulation
2. It follows that some of them might be stupid and emotionally manipulated.

1. I don't claim to know everything, but it seems like a bit of a stretch of the imagination to assume that just because everyone around me says this book is holy, that I should believe them, particularly taking into consideration that people are stupid and vulnerable to emotional manipulation.

1. I don't claim to know everything, but I could do this all night. I think my point has been sufficiently drawn out.

My argument (you know, the one in my head? Not the one that you imagined) goes like this:

1. You don't know what you're talking about.
2. Nihilism and skepticism are not the same thing. Nihilism doesn't concern itself with things that actually exist. It's the meaning that other people attach to those things that are questioned, or the meaning an individual personally has for such objects. Skepticism concerns itself with the truth value of the meaning; nihilism concerns itself with the sentimental meaning.

It seems to me that wanting to know 'good and evil' is what started the problems with humanity in the first place. I guess our human minds are too limited to know the full scope of the consequences of our actions, and pretending to know that we do know puts us in the place of God.

For example: you may get hit by a car tomorrow. Well that sucks right? An absolute system would have to qualify it as such. So you end up in hospital, and the day after your neighbourhood gets hit by an earthquake, and if you'd been there you would've died in your collapsing house. So now it's a good thing you're in the hospital recovering from being hit by a car. So was it good or bad?

Having said that, I think there are some general rules we can live by, as long as we don't have the full scope of God. There's the golden rule, for instance. Don't so to someone else anything you don't want to be done to you. Being able to put yourself in someone else's position really helps.

So I think it's hard to make the case for absolute morality. In general, killing someone isn't a good thing to do. But then again, was Jesus dying on the cross a good or a bad thing for humanity?