Hiram wrote:I believe what is of concern is, from what source does morality arise, and does it belong to the subject/consciousness or to the objective physical world. There seems to be a certain degree of confusion here. My own belief is that it belongs to the subject, morality being, as a creation, biological extension. So, in essence what I am saying is morality arises out of the nature of humanity as a means to self interest and social cohesion. Whatever subjective/moral judgments decide, good bad or indifferent, can only be subjective, as ALL meaning is subjective, again, the physical world in the absence of consciousness is utterly meaningless. It is biology/consciousness that bestows meaning upon a meaningless world.
Morality: A collective agreement on a body of thoughts and sentiments intended to make social cohesion/civilization possible by establishing justice for the individual as well as for the collective.
"MORALITY AND AUTONOMY ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE." NIETZSCHE
Your characterization of the issue has several highly contentious assertions built into it. If you say that the only objective things belong to the physical world, then that is going to end up being a pretty extreme philosophical position to take -- even among atheists (although it is quite common to see among atheists). I would even say that one could be a materialist (thinking that the only things that can be said to "exist" are things of the physical world) and
still not adhere to the view that the only objective things are about the physical world.
What about logic, for instance? That is so clearly a priori, that to say otherwise I think virtually anyone would admit they have a heavy burden of proof to do so. Yet, is it not true? Or, is that just a matter of personal preference and we just all tend to strongly prefer it? What about mathematics? That is another a priori subject. Sometimes people will try to argue otherwise, but such arguments are usually predicated on a generally false impression of just what the math is when we take out all of the things they customarily see with it (i.e. the science, engineering and business applications that it is usually taught with). The fact is that for centuries (ever since the Platonist geometers) has been done by a priori reasoning and not by any empirical methods. One does not prove mathematical theorems by taking measurements and doing experiments. Mathematics is a priori and not of the physical world but precedes it.
These are two examples of very nontrivial subjects that are both exemplars of objectivity as well as are about things not of the physical world. Even still, one might argue that they are analytic and not synthetic (to borrow a distinction from 18th century philosophy). And, in this vein, arguments might be made that I would like to cut off at the start as really just beside the point. The fact is that they are nontrivial subjects that we must examine and discover truths of. Moreover, finding the correct definitions (yes, that's right, definitions can be wrong) for things in them is itself a process of
discovery not an arbitrary process of personal preferences or even collective preferences. We don't vote on it or form a consensus. The only consensus that is formed is over interest in a topic and over whether or not someone has answered the questions or proven the theorems (and even in the latter, it doesn't mean that they haven't -- just that we don't think they have). The definitions get figured out based on the requirements of the questions being posed.
Morality and, indeed, most of philosophy works exactly like that. It is largely an a priori subject. The consensus is over whether a topic is interesting and over whether someone has finally gone and solved it by setting forth just the right definitions and deriving from them the answers. Unlike math and logic, most of philosophy addresses topics with a lot of philosophical vagueness in them which causes it to be informal while mathematics is mostly formal. We embrace mathematics as being objective because it is difficult to argue with its formality and ability for people to be summarily and unequivocally proven wrong. But, because people can keep arguing on philosophical topics and the problems generally take centuries to even begin figuring them out, we often like to think those topics cannot be resolved and are really, in the end, matters of "personal opinion" (which really just means personal preference when we use it that way). But, in reality, it is just informal not subjective.
Another highly contentious point in your characterization of morality is that it
requires agreement. That might be necessary to conceive of it in the subjective social manner that you are, but it certainly isn't prima facia true at all. Most of our popular experience with morality is by way of disputes, after all. We become aware of a moral dilemma through disagreement not agreement. And, in any case, the requirement of agreement seems arbitrary. You might conclude that this must happen if you conclude that morality is really an intersubjective consensus or some such thing as that. But, you certainly cannot
define morality that way. That would beg the question.
August 2nd, 2012, 12:40 pm
