Originally posted by carpedm9587
View Post
No, but you seem to continually come back to these little gems. I'm not sure why you feel a need to do that, but...
Jim...if I value life, and I conclude that randomly killing people is moral, it stands to reason that something is badly flawed in my reasoning; the moral position does not align with the underlying valuing. Someone can help me trace the path of reasoning and identify the flaw. As soon as I see it, my moral stance will change. The same thing will happen if the valuing changes. I too once valued god, and that valuing drove many of my moral positions. When I realized that there is no such being, my valuing shifted. Some of my moral positions shifted as well. I have never held any other position...or expressed any other position. Nothing has been moved.
The fact is you don't know for sure when or if your positions will shift again, especially if the shift is due to a change in your factual beliefs. You stopped believing in God, which some would say was a change in a factual belief about the nature of reality. Factual beliefs are always subject to change and can always alter our moral beliefs.
Yes - the objective reality of the laws of reason. Most of us reason to our moral positions. The alternative is to hold moral positions without reasoning to them. But since the moral positions are rooted in what we value, and what we value is subjective, the resulting moral framework is subjective. Unless you'd like to argue that we can arrive at an objective moral framework on the foundation of subjective valuing?
I'm sure some people do indeed base their morality on unreasoned feelings. If someone does not reason to a moral position, then there is no way to reason with them about their moral position, leaving us with ignore, isolate/separate, and/or contend. And the attempt to assign differing levels of "validity" in a subjective moral world is meaningless. It suggests an objective framework from which to make that assessment, and none has been shown to exist.
No - it means my valuing has changed, and with it my subjective moral position. From the perspective of my new framework, I will assess my own framework as "wrong" just as I would assess ANY moral framework that does not align with my current one as "wrong."
Yes- they can, though shifts in what we value at our core are not easily shifted. They are fairly well established by the time we enter adulthood, and it usually takes a significant event or paradigm shift to alter them thereafter - but they can and do change.
You have slipped back into objective thinking. What "permanent position?" Our morality is what it is at the moment it is - and may shift at some future time. There is no objectively true ultimate destination or we would be back into the world of objective moralizing, which has not been shown to exist.
Ahh... there it is...the "it can't be subjective because then it wouldn't be objective" argument. Jim, there is no "objective right" or "objective wrong." But we know that because morality is subjective. There is a "subjective right" and "subjective wrong."
If you believe pre-marital sex is immoral, and I do not, then we have moral disagreement. That our moral positions are subjective does not change this reality.
I frankly don't see how your rewording changes anything. "X is immoral to Seer" and "Seer believes X is immoral" are equivalent statements, AFAICT. Both are perfectly consistent with subjective morality.
The burden of proof rests with the person who wants their view to be accepted. If you are expressing a view, and have no desire for me to accept your view as accurate, then you have no burden of proof. If you express a view and want me to accept it as true, then you have a burden of proof to achieve that. The same is true for me in reverse.
Jim - morality is about differentiating between "good" action and "bad" action. Or "right" action and "wrong" action. But an assessment of "good" or "bad" requires a metric by which that assessment is made. It is the selection of that metric that is subjective. This is the point being made earlier to JimL. He thinks morality is about "what is good for society." He wants to argue that there is some "objective good" that is at the basis for morality. But you cannot say "X is good" without including HOW that is measured and from who's perspective it is measured. Ergo - moralizing is a subjective act. It is a function of the sentient mind reflecting upon its own choice of actions.
If you want to attempt to refute that, you are going to have to do better than "it cannot be subjective because then it's not objective." There is no demonstrable, external, objective, moral framework. No one has shown one to exist. No one has ever made a case against subjective moralism (to me) that doesn't reduce to "it cannot be subjective because then it's not objective." As I noted before, there is no "proof" possible for subjective moralizing. I know of no way to prove what I value or why I value it. I also know that no one has ever been able to express a single objectively true moral proposition that does not trace back to their own valuing.
For me - that is more than adequate evidence that morality is subjective.
Comment