Do you think morals are objective, or do you think morals are relative?

[Providence]

What makes "eye for an eye" morally justifiable and what makes vengeance as motive morally justifiable?

as opposed too? i could answer that question with another question, what makes them morally unjustifiable?

Why do you suppose that is? I think I know at least in part, but I wonder why you think there is a significant consensus on why certain actions are accepted and certain actions not?

Concerning also your statement "because what is right or wrong is based on person to person". This is incomplete. What people think is right or wrong are based on well, what they think. People rationalise all kinds of contemptible things as justified.

Just because a large portion of the populous has a similar opinion does not make it fact. A large portion of the world regards sugar as tastey, yet you cannot factually state sugar as tastey because A tastey is relative, B the opinion is subjective and C people will disagree, even if it's a small minority.

Just like you cannot state something is morally right or wrong as fact be cause A Right and Wrong are relative, B the opinion is subjective, and C people will disagree no matter how small the minority.

By this reckoning, all progress towards human rights was irrelevant. Those advocating it obviously couldn't come up with a factual reason for why they feel that they should be so they shouldn't have bothered.

Right?

Not exactly. If you can come up with enough compelling reasons on your opinion you can convince people. You can convince people that freeing blacks from slavery is a good thing, you could also convince people that killing 7 million innocent jews is a good thing.

I don't care that they thought it was right. I also don't care about the stupid excuses made for the militants in Libya and the pseudo-justifications I've seen for why the Chinese get to suppress and censor their population. It is wrong.

Both result in the restriction of people from living their lives as they choose and ultimately that is all that matters. We can all attest without exception to the inherent desire to live life as we choose, to be the architects of our own path. When this is restricted either by an individual, a state or an imposed authority it is a direct moral violation. This recognition alone is enough to ensure the relevancy of human rights, arguably one of the most important legal moral advances of history.

This is a funny thing about cultural morale. It really boils down to "we are right and they are wrong"

moral violation? yea maybe. What if this totalitarian state had to keep its power for the actual good of the nation? It's not impossible. If a society is running rampant and it takes an iron fist to keep people from killing each other then we have a situation where a militant nation may in fact be a good thing.

Without saying "because I believe it" (as it is redundant): Why do you think that your moral compass is accurate?

Without believing it, I have little else reason. Do you? Can you honestly tell me that, with some extensive in depth analysis, that your moral compass is nothing more than a personal belief? Can you find no paradox or quandary in which your moral compass begins to fade if but momentarily because your question on what life is becomes less clear cut? Can you find any instance where the term "Right" can accurately and unanimously be defined?

Probably not. My moral world-view though is based on a recognition of individual liberty and little else.

same to an extent.

People who say that aren't actually moral, they're simply following orders.

That's obedience, not morality.

except they believe that following gods word is the right thing to do. see the problem here?

A civilisation that allows for random murder is simply wrong. It is unsustainable and detrimental to everyone who lives under it. The same goes for a civilisation that allows theft (as in abandons all forms of property).

murder has existed for a very long time. much longer than law. In those times, if a family or friend was murdered, you exacted vengeance. Obviously those societies still managed or we wouldn't be here.

No, though if they were - what exactly has committing a war crime got to do with apostasy from Islam? Surely if you've committed a war crime, you should be held responsible for that alone.

I consider war crimes like mass murder of many innocent civilians to be a justifiable excuse for an execution.

[Borzo]

My point was that while you can probably determine what is the preferred outcome of a given situation as moral or 'desirable', or 'best for as many as possible', the means of getting there might change from situation to situation, requiring you to take action that strives against an absolutists definition of morality.

An absolutist in this sense might refuse to take action because his morals forbid him, no matter the result.
Morality for the absolutist is always the means of getting to a goal, while, for the 'objectivist' it's the goal that matters. Or so it'd seem, anyway.

Oh, I agree with that mostly. Saying something like "killing is always wrong" is a stupid moral viewpoint. That statement groups all killing together and simplifies it to assume it's all the same, when it is obviously not. Humans are just lazy, and can't be bothered to look at individual situations individually.

[Skavau]

as opposed too? i could answer that question with another question, what makes them morally unjustifiable?

You could, but that's simply avoiding my question.

"Eye for an eye" is simply another word for vengeance, really. Vengeance is unjustified as it simply has no consideration for a proportionate or humane response. It simply is only interested in harming the perpetrator. It literally has nothing to do with rehabilitation, or civilisation. I can assure you that no-one would actually want to be subject to the judgement of someone only interested in setting the score even with you, or getting revenge on you.

So why is it or can it be argued to be justified?

Just because a large portion of the populous has a similar opinion does not make it fact.

Correct, and I've said this myself - but I want to know why you think that a massive consensus exists on so many actions.

A large portion of the world regards sugar as tastey, yet you cannot factually state sugar as tastey because A tastey is relative, B the opinion is subjective and C people will disagree, even if it's a small minority.

Of course, given that whether or not someone finds sugar tasty or tasteless or horrible has no impact on the lives of others....

Not exactly. If you can come up with enough compelling reasons on your opinion you can convince people. You can convince people that freeing blacks from slavery is a good thing, you could also convince people that killing 7 million innocent jews is a good thing.

But you said previously that it would be pointless to justify your moral beliefs because you can't demonstrate them as factual. Why is it now that "compelling reasons" are good enough?

This is a funny thing about cultural morale. It really boils down to "we are right and they are wrong"

Did you mean moral rather than morale? In any case, cultural elitism or superiority often leads to infringing upon the rights of others.

moral violation? yea maybe. What if this totalitarian state had to keep its power for the actual good of the nation? It's not impossible. If a society is running rampant and it takes an iron fist to keep people from killing each other then we have a situation where a militant nation may in fact be a good thing.

The state would only need to act to prevent people from inflicting upon others.

That said, do you disagree with my statement that every human wants to live their life without interference from any unwelcome authority?

Without believing it, I have little else reason. Do you?

That you believe it is a consequence of you being convinced by it. You have the nature of belief backwards. Why are you convinced by your moral beliefs?

Can you honestly tell me that, with some extensive in depth analysis, that your moral compass is nothing more than a personal belief? Can you find no paradox or quandary in which your moral compass begins to fade if but momentarily because your question on what life is becomes less clear cut? Can you find any instance where the term "Right" can accurately and unanimously be defined?

I never said that my own conviction is completely accurate. I'm always swayed by convincing arguments - I only take issue with the notion that I should pay any respect or consideration to the viewpoint of those I find evil.

Right (in a moral sense) is broadly what one ought to do in the context of the consideration of others. It has no other meaningful definition, and of course there are plenty of grey areas that make it very hard to determine what is the appropriate course of action.

except they believe that following gods word is the right thing to do. see the problem here?

No, they're simply wrong. They have no coherent definition of morality beyond following the orders of God which leads them potentially open to endorsing murder and rape or torture in the name of said God. That is pseudo-morality at its most convincing.

murder has existed for a very long time. much longer than law. In those times, if a family or friend was murdered, you exacted vengeance. Obviously those societies still managed or we wouldn't be here.

A society that allows, as in does nothing and legalises murder is a society that is one step ahead of anarchy. What societies are you even referring to though?

I consider war crimes like mass murder of many innocent civilians to be a justifiable excuse for an execution.

Uh, okay - though that wasn't what I asked. Why do you think a Muslim calling for an apostate of Islam to be executed is wrong?

[Lilcheeks]

Definitely relative. Every culture has different needs, different things are expected of people. Survival requires different things in different places. I think what might be universal is the moral concept of doing "the right thing". What constitutes this however is relative.

[sisk]

I think the best way to distinguishing if moral is objective or relative, is to look at our best attempt of making it objektive, written laws. Every time we try and make moral objektive we write it down, every country/state in the world has a law that is diffrent in many ways, we have the "UN human rights" that are suppose to be the basic right all humans should have in our oppinions... but to inforce this we have to break some of the rules we have made.

But back to my first point... Law = our wish to have an objective set of morals
You can say it started with the 10 commandments but it didn't take long untill we realized something like that wouldn't be sufficient in every situation, so we had to evolve the law, and it still keeps beeing this fluent ever changing thing, with new bills beeing passed and removed every day, all over earth, because despite the human need to have objective morals, thats not even close to beeing realistic.

We look back in history and think that people 2000 years ago was savages for killing people for religious purposes, but the fact is that they thought they were helping humanity and saving people from damnation. Who knows mabey in 2000 years from now they will look back at us and think we were savages for killing people for political believes like democracy in wars, even tho we at the moment think it's the only and truely right way of living...

The objective set of morals we have right now, is only a snapshot of the state the world is in and what the people with power think would serve the world the best. When i say people with power in a democracy, that would meen the majority of a population in a nation that has the ability to enforce their believes of the perfect world onto others. Even tho we like to think that people have the same morals as eachother, since that gives us comfort in a otherwise caotic world, it should be blatently clear, that is simply not the case, and must therefor be relative to each person.

[Ambush]

Morality is relatively objective.

[FathomFear]

Definitely relative. Every culture has different needs, different things are expected of people. Survival requires different things in different places. I think what might be universal is the moral concept of doing "the right thing". What constitutes this however is relative.

I agree, and I say that as someone who has a degree in Philosophy.

People make the mistake of seeing this as a dichotomy. Either a moral statement holds true 100% of the time, everywhere, or it's "relative" and arbitrary. In reality it's a lot more complicated than that.

Even the distinction of subjective/objective comes out of a certain school of though (particularly modern Enlightenment thought). When you ask the question "Is X subjective or objective?" you're already making assumptions. It's sort of the equivalent of asking "Is your cough due to an imbalance in your yellow bile or black bile humors?" The question only makes sense if you're buying into the underlying metaphyics of "humors".

[hellosaltygoodness]

i don't believe at all in moral relativism and i view anything that causes harm to innocent people as being universally immoral, and anything that doesn't cause harm is universally not immoral. i don't care what culture has to say about anything, hurting people is immoral and things that do not hurt people are not immoral. if your culture says otherwise, that doesn't change basic facts.

[Knight Gil]

Relative, obviously. It's human's judgement that creates morality. As such, there is no universal truth, because every system, from a culture to a single person, has their own moral code.

HOWEVER

Just because I aknowledge morality is relative, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop defending my moral principles. It doesn't mean anyone should stop defending points of view that makes the world better and more just. Because even if morality is relative, different moral codes have different effects on a civilization

[Ettan]

Morals are beyond doubt culture relative.
Take this old example King X something something from persia invites people from 2 diffrent cultures, the greeks and some tribe to the far east.
The greeks burnt their dead, the other guests found this utterly despicable and morally wrong.
Likewise was the greeks horror when they learned that the guests ate their dead.
They both despised one and another, what is right for you is not necessarily right for someone else.

To find morals that apply universally is near impossible, even murder has been acceptable to certain cultures in the past.

---------- Post added 2012-02-18 at 03:30 AM ----------

""Eye for an eye" is simply another word for vengeance, really. Vengeance is unjustified as it simply has no consideration for a proportionate or humane response. It simply is only interested in harming the perpetrator. It literally has nothing to do with rehabilitation, or civilisation. I can assure you that no-one would actually want to be subject to the judgement of someone only interested in setting the score even with you, or getting revenge on you.

So why is it or can it be argued to be justified?"

It may not be the right approach or cut out for our time but vengeance is justice. The law of retaliation is the only true justice to this date.
One eye for one eye, one hand for a hand, a life for a life. No matter how gruesome or unproductive the result is in its core it still is 100% just.

[Skavau]

It may not be the right approach or cut out for our time but vengeance is justice. The law of retaliation is the only true justice to this date.
One eye for one eye, one hand for a hand, a life for a life. No matter how gruesome or unproductive the result is in its core it still is 100% just.

It rather depends on the motivation and the crime. Raping a rapist is in itself deliberately sadistic whereas executing a murderer is not (so long as it is done painfully). What does retaliating in kind though have to do with rehabilitation, might I ask?

[Ettan]

It rather depends on the motivation and the crime. Raping a rapist is in itself deliberately sadistic whereas executing a murderer is not (so long as it is done painfully). What does retaliating in kind though have to do with rehabilitation, might I ask?

Nothing but then rehabilitation has nothing to do with justice either.

[Skavau]

Nothing but then rehabilitation has nothing to do with justice either.

What do you view as justice - eye for an eye and that's it?

[Tenver]

Purely subjective. There seems to be an correlation between what humans find morally right or wrong compared to other species' morals. Monkey's sure aren't much bothered by privacy or onlookers... drinking their own pee sometimes? No problem.

In relation to justice and mercy, I think society needs both. An extreme of either will turn out bad.

It's normal for us humans and everything else living on this planet to feed on other creatures, same species or different species. We kill eachother sometimes to progress for the victor.

[Grizzly Willy]

Purely subjective. There seems to be an correlation between what humans find morally right or wrong compared to other species' morals. Monkey's sure aren't much bothered by privacy or onlookers... drinking their own pee sometimes? No problem.

In relation to justice and mercy, I think society needs both. An extreme of either will turn out bad.

It's normal for us humans and everything else living on this planet to feed on other creatures, same species or different species. We kill eachother sometimes to progress for the victor.

Good thing we're no longer mere apes then, huh. And I have a question. Are you saying that killing is justifiable because it leads to progress?

[Tenver]

Well, justifiable. What does justifiable mean to who?

Nearly all humans are killing other animals in one way or the other sometimes, f.ex. insects, and the time I spent on my PC may be creating CO2 that help generate global warming and increase the flooding and harm people in poor countries lying on a shallow ground, f.ex. some Islands.

It is normal for humans to kill other humans as large groups versus each other. In the Libya conflict, many people died both on the governmental and revolutional side. Now Gaddafi is gone. Is that for better or worse?

Humans feed on other living plants and animals. We cannot gain any food nutrition from non-living things. We have to kill plants or animals to eat with any use.

If you give up your power to physically dominate and physically hurt humans and therein also kill, then people who do not give up that power will dominate you and inflict their philosophy on you for better or worse.

If everyone around the world who were faced with the attack of the Nazi regime of Germany, said oh no worries, we won't hurt you, come right in, then we would be marching around saying Heil and people would go to concentration camps in the years after. Luckily, the united Western world + Sovjet fought the Nazi and opportunistic countries joining in. War is always horrible, but sometimes it is necessary if you want to impose a culture you believe in or stop another from imposing that you don't believe in. Many people got killed on both sides and many civilians even affected by WW2. Was that for better or worse?

When there are people who go on killing sprees in the city or some place, is it better or worse that police kill them? Is it for better or worse that the person kill whoever people he does?

All the animals and meat we eat. Is that for better or worse? All the plants same.

Pure pacifism dies. It either meets resistance and pick up weapons or dies.


Everything in the universe is subjective because whenever someone or something perceives something then the perception is influenced by the perceiver. You cannot talk about, describe, think about, perceive or have the notion of anything without doing so with that that is the perceiver, you f.ex. or me.

Humans are biological robots. There is no right or wrong. There are many who think something is particular right or wrong and that maybe helps the biological robot that are humans. Humans are a species on this earth and share some of the same morals because they are of the same species and are quite similar because of the way evolution works on here.

[crica]

There is no right or wrong.

agreed

there is cause and effect and like or dislike of either, however