Objective vs Subjective Morality

[Greed and Death]

Both. Morality is subjective for me and objective for everyone else.

Everyone else's morality involves agreeing with me at any particular moment in time.

[36 Camera Perspective]

If two omniscient entities existed, they couldn’t have different moral prescriptions. Otherwise, one of them isn’t really omniscient.

Which is why either both know a single objective morality, or there is none to know. The presence of these deities in the argument changes literally nothing about it.

Your error is that you have failed to consider the role of omnibenevolence in the standard theistic account of objective morality.

[Cute Puppies]

Both. Morality is subjective for me and objective for everyone else.

Everyone else's morality involves agreeing with me at any particular moment in time.

How is it objective for others?

[Hakons]

God provides us with an objective morality in His commandments and statutes that He gave to us. The trouble is actually figuring out what that is, since some Christians emphasize certain parts while others ignore other parts.

[Big Jim P]

Both. Morality is subjective for me and objective for everyone else.

Everyone else's morality involves agreeing with me at any particular moment in time.

I disagree.

[Greed and Death]

Both. Morality is subjective for me and objective for everyone else.

Everyone else's morality involves agreeing with me at any particular moment in time.

How is it objective for others?

Because agree with my morality is simple and objective for others.
You either do, or you are to be flayed alive for disagreeing with my morality. Also for driving slow in the left lane.

[Sudardes]

How is it objective for others?

Because agree with my morality is simple and objective for others.
You either do, or you are to be flayed alive for disagreeing with my morality. Also for driving slow in the left lane.

edgy

[Infinite Coscotlan]

Which is why either both know a single objective morality, or there is none to know. The presence of these deities in the argument changes literally nothing about it.

Your error is that you have failed to consider the role of omnibenevolence in the standard theistic account of objective morality.

Benevolence is entirely subjective, and a meaningless term. One may consider infliction of torture and death the objective standard of morality, as easily as anything else, and the usual god of human myth seems to do just that.

No, you certainly have not. Try again or concede.

lmao at the idea of me conceding to somebody as philosophically illiterate as you are.

The fact that two omniscient entities couldn't have different beliefs is true whether or not morality is objective. They must share the same beliefs because they both know everything that there is to know. This would remain the case whether or not there is anything to know about morality in particular. So, no, my statement was not true "If morality is objective", as you put it. They could have different preferences (I don't actually think god could have anything similar to what we call a preference, but I'll play along), but a preference is a very different thing from a belief.

Gods certainly have a bearing on this argument. The fact that you think they don't only demonstrates your illiteracy on these kinds of questions. Anybody who made this claim at an ethics conference would be laughed out of the building. In case you haven't realized, throughout thousands of years of human history and philosophy, god has been posited as the foundation of human ethics, so indeed, god has very much to do with it after all. As a matter of fact, the very question I have been addressing in this thread is "If god existed, would his moral prescriptions be objective?" (spoiler: the answer is yes), so you claiming that god has nothing to do with it is....rather strange at best.

You said that morality is either objective or subjective, so god has nothing to do with it. This is one of the worst arguments in the history of western thought. Everybody agrees that morality is either mind-independent or mind-dependent. How does this logically entail that god has nothing to do with our accounts of ethics? Please don't answer this, because whatever you answer will necessarily be wrong.

Flex more, it only reveals how little you lift.

Morality is either mind-independent, including of the mind of any omniscient creature, or mind-dependent, in which case even an omniscient creature has nothing objective to know about it. Let us posit the existence of five omniscient gods - from which of them does objective morality stem, if it is indeed dependent on gods?

And appeal to history is a tired trope, at best. You can spend millions of years arguing a case, and it will be for nothing if the notion is logically overturned in a single day.

[West Leas Oros]

I believe in an individualist morality, in that one determines their own idea of what's good, but it's immoral to force your morality onto someone else. To kill or steal from someone would require you forcing your belief (that murder and theft is okay) onto them.

That actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe mix that idea with limited utilitarianism and you have a moral system supported by much of the world.

[Infinite Coscotlan]

I believe in an individualist morality, in that one determines their own idea of what's good, but it's immoral to force your morality onto someone else. To kill or steal from someone would require you forcing your belief (that murder and theft is okay) onto them.

That actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe mix that idea with limited utilitarianism and you have a moral system supported by much of the world.

Being supported my much, or even theoretically all, of the species has no bearing on its objectivity or subjectivity, however.

All of the above axioms are entirely arbitrary.

[West Leas Oros]

That actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe mix that idea with limited utilitarianism and you have a moral system supported by much of the world.

Being supported my much, or even theoretically all, of the species has no bearing on its objectivity or subjectivity, however.

All of the above axioms are entirely arbitrary.

Yeah, but this is essentially Kantian ethics in a nutshell, which in my opinion, is a good moral philosophy.

[Theris Carencia]

There is more to metaphysical analysis, introspection, and direct perceptual experience than just "feels."

I know you've already put a lot of time into this thread already, but since you appear to have a good grasp of the ins and outs of metaphysics at least in general, what would the 'non-feels' analysis methods be?

As you can probably guess, I'm not exactly knowledgeable in the field and am just wondering. If you don't have the time or inclination though, that's cool.

Sorry for the wait.

So, first some caveats. I myself adhere to a system of philosophy known as Scholasticism. It was a medieval European way of thinking about things inspired by interaction with Aristotle's Muslim commentators. One of its most influential figurss was Thomas Aquinas, who helped wean the Catholic Church off of Platonic anti-materialism and "hard" dualism.

Why is this significant? Well, since it means that the focus of my reading has been on pre-modern and early modern Western philosophy, that I have little respect for thinkers like Descartes and Hume (let alone more contemporary movements), and that I have little knowledge of Eastern ways of approaching the subject. In other words, I'm biased, I'm still learning things myself, and I have no real way to correct for those facts. That doesn't mean my answer will be useless. But I does mean that you should probably take what I say with a grain of salt, look for other perspectives, and think for yourself.

That out of the way, I will now get around to actually answering your question.

The first thing worth bearing in mind is that, prior to Descartes, Western philosophy was more preoccupied with questions of "What is there?" rather than "How do we know?" I would suggest that, in order to do metaphysics well, one needs to shift attention back to the former question.

This isn't to say that metaphysics is methodless. It does, however, mean that the method follows from the subject matter, rather than the other way around. In physical science, the subject matter is the quantitative aspects of observable reality, so a method involving precise measurements, detailed mathematical models with specific consequences, and powerful statistical tests will be appropos.

In metaphysics, the subject matter is what the early Greek philosophers called "archai" - meaning "firsts." The metaphysician is after first principles: the fundamental categories of reality and the ultimate reasons behind change and existence. It should be obvious that, while dialogue with the natural sciences will be useful or even vital to doing metaphysics, expecting detailed predictions, mathematical models, or statistical tests to be useful here is fundamentally wrong-headed.

So what sorts of ways of thinking will be useful for doing metaphysics? To a certain extent, I would say that doing metaphysics relies on a willingness to treat our mental faculties and everyday experience in a "trust but verify" manner. This doesn't mean blind acceptance of a proposition just because it feels true. It means having a kind of trust in reality, a conviction that the truth shines to the intellect as light does to the eye. The basic idea, then, is to rely on this process of "insight" to get a hold of true propositions, which can then be used as premises in deductive arguments. The process, in broad outline, isn't far from that used by mathematicians. The difference being that the propositions are often more qualitative than quantitative.

But the people here seem to be concerned with correction mechanisms. When doing science, they get dropped into your lap. Does your model make good predictions, or doesn't it? Does it pass the statistical tests or not? In metaphysics, things are more complicated.

When trying to "see" a physical object, there are two main ways of checking that you're seeing things correctly. One way is to develop better tools, like telescopes and microscopes, allowing you to increase the resolution of what you see. The other is to look at the thing from a different perspective. Metaphysics makes use of similar techniques: analysis and dialectic.

Analysis is the examination of the tools we use to express our concepts - ie, words - in order to make sure that they are suitable for describing the things we want to talk about. If the language we're using isn't right for describing the things we want to describe, we can change it. If there's a distinction that we can make that might help us work things out, we can make it. If we need a new word to express a key concept, we can coin it. And so on. In this way, we can ensure that we are thinking - and therefore seeing - clearly.

Dialectic is an even more powerful tool. By dialectic, I mean rational dialogue between disagreeing parties with the express interest of discerning the truth. It's all too easy for a person to talk themselves into or out of an idea, necessitating a reality check. And in the absence of sources of precise data with direct bearing on the questions of interest, the best way to handle the problem is by encountering alternative perspectives. Such contact, even when it doesn't result in a radical change of view for any participant, almost inevitably results in clearer thinking and more coherent positions for both of them, at least when done right.

Metaphysics progresses by means of debate, and especially by means of engaging with the ideas of prior thinkers. Plato and Aristotle built their philosophies by engaging with the ideas of the pre-socratics. The entire medieval Scholastic institution was centered around elucidating the views of earlier thinkers, searching for contradictions, and attempting to resolve them. The result was a powerful synthesis of Aristotle, Plato, Islamic philosophy, Christian tradition, and Christian innovation.

As a result of its reliance on language and dialectic, metaphysical progress is much slower and more sensitive to cultural changes than scientific progress is. The radical skepticism, and resultant intellectual isolation of the individual thinker, introduced by Descartes not long before the rise of modern science has had a detrimental impact on the ability to successfully use dialectic, and the result has been four centuries of palpable nonsense masquerading as ontology.

In light of this, the modern distrust of metaphysics - and, by extension, of the intelligibility of the world in which we live - is quite understandable. But it is also misguided, and doubly so if it tries to shut down lines of metaphysical reasoning simply because they are metaphysical. The limits of the world's knowability - if the idea of a merely partially intelligible world is even coherent - can only be determined by attempting to venture a little way past them into the unknown. In other words, the only way to be certain that metaphysical progress will not occur is to refuse to engage with metaphysical arguments on their own terms. Robust and sincere dialogue is the key to progress in this particular field. No technique works if it isn't used. The process is slow, but it is far from impossible, and with positivism's fall from grace in serious philosophical circles, it is beginning to pick up in pace once again.

There is one more test that I would advocate, but taking it seriously will practically force you into accepting some kind of Aristotelian viewpoint. That would be to bring your views back down to Earth, and attempt to contextualize them in the world we all actually live in - the world of communicating, personal agents in a larger society. This is the world for which God and/or Nature designed our faculties - if we can't trust the sight of the intellect here, where it has constant and diverse exposure to the objects of interest, we can't trust it anywhere. Thus, I would contend that commonsense notions of what it means to be human have something of a privileged status amongst other insights.

Using this as a "shortcut" leads to a number of interesting theses, especially regarding the "being vs becoming" debate and the philosophy of mind. The result is a strongly holistic view of the person, opposed both to reductionism (because I am more than just a standing wave in a collection of quantum fields) and "hard" forms of dualism (because my body is an integral part of the "real me"), but highly consistent with more sophisticated and subtle ways of approaching the individual - such as that employed by Thomistic metaphysics. But this sort of "populistic empiricism" isn't universal in the West, and I haven't seen much of a sign of it in the East, so it isn't a characteristic of metaphysics in general, and you would be wise to take my endorsement of it with a grain of salt.

[Theris Carencia]

Ah, the Euthyphro dilemma! "Is a thing pious because the gods hold it dear, or do the gods hold it dear because it is pious?"

Yes, the original was about piety specifically rather than about morality in general. And if you skeptics bothered to read the dialogue past the little magic bullet, you'd find a line of questioning that bites to the heart of the very notion of organized religion. But you never do.

Thanks for making things easy for us religious folks!

Actually no that is not what I was pointing to at all. The definition of objective is "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." A god dictating morals is thus not objective because the god's opinions and feeling are what determine what those morals are and thus by definition it is subjective.

I have no idea how you got to the Euthyphro dilemma from my original comment.

When I've run into the "if God makes up morality, doesn't that make it subjective?" line of argument, I've always seen it called the Euthyphro dilemma.

Next time try not to act as smug when responding.

Given that the Dialogue (which is traditionally cited when arguments of the variety you presented are brought up) has a much more cutting challenge to the notion of religion than the mere dancing around with "what the gods love" at the beginning, I felt it justified to give you a bit of a hard time about it.

My hope was that, with a little bit of poking from myself, you would consult the original, notice the (rather obvious) fundamental challenge to religion which I was referring, and come back armed for a serious debate with a raised standard of discourse. That presumed that you'd a) take my flippant comment as good natured ribbing rather than flame baiting, and b) be interested in taking up the more fundamental question of whether piety even makes sense as a virtue.

Obviously I was mistaken about a, and so I apologize for any offense I have caused.

How do you feel about b?

Oh also funny thing, this was my opinion even when I was a theist.

I'm still a theist, and it's my opinion as well. You'll note that most of my arguments regarding the nature of morality take a "natural law" approach rather than a "divine command" approach.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

Actually no that is not what I was pointing to at all. The definition of objective is "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." A god dictating morals is thus not objective because the god's opinions and feeling are what determine what those morals are and thus by definition it is subjective.

I have no idea how you got to the Euthyphro dilemma from my original comment.

When I've run into the "if God makes up morality, doesn't that make it subjective?" line of argument, I've always seen it called the Euthyphro dilemma.

Then the people you've seen called it the wrong thing (or you misunderstood). Neutraligon's point was just an objection to a certain concept and could go any number of ways. It can't be a dilemma until you bring up the alternative--namely, that God is subordinate to some other standard of "good" or "piety".

[Infinite Coscotlan]

Being supported my much, or even theoretically all, of the species has no bearing on its objectivity or subjectivity, however.

All of the above axioms are entirely arbitrary.

Yeah, but this is essentially Kantian ethics in a nutshell, which in my opinion, is a good moral philosophy.

Fair enough. As long as you remember that you subjectively chose it due to personal preference, and not discovered something inviolate that needs to be spread to everyone.

The latter is a perplexingly common issue with all kinds of religious and ideological thought.

[36 Camera Perspective]

Flex more, it only reveals how little you lift.

Morality is either mind-independent, including of the mind of any omniscient creature, or mind-dependent, in which case even an omniscient creature has nothing objective to know about it.

This is a common misinterpretation I see in ethical discussions. You don't actually understand what "mind-independent" means in philosophy. Hint: it doesn't mean "unrelated to mind in any kind of way". A proposition can be mind-independently true and still cognized through a subject; mind-independence just means that this proposition would still be true regardless of whether or not the subject cognizes of it or not. We can speak of "mind-dependent" in the subjective sense of "generated by a mind's activity", like pain, or we can speak of "mind-dependent" in the sense of "its existence indicates the existence of a mind". God's morality is not mind-dependent in the first sense because god's morality is not generated by his mind's activity, but by his very nature. God's morality is mind-dependent in the second sense, but this is not the subjective sense of mind-dependence. Many things indicate the existence of a mind yet still possess objective reality.

Let us posit the existence of five omniscient gods - from which of them does objective morality stem, if it is indeed dependent on gods?

First of all, my contention isn't that objective morality depends on god. My contention is that if god existed, his moral prescriptions would be objective. I don't know why conditional statements can be so challenging to some people, but anyway..let's not posit the existence of five omniscient gods, because god contains an infinite number of attributes with an infinite number of modes, so there can only be one god at the end of the day. But regardless, I'll still play along with your embarrassing, poorly constructed argument (?). You are still failing to consider the role of omnibenevolence in the standard theistic account of ethics. God's omniscience alone isn't what makes his prescriptions objective.

And appeal to history is a tired trope, at best. You can spend millions of years arguing a case, and it will be for nothing if the notion is logically overturned in a single day.

I didn't know you had such a dim view of history. But while it is possible to overturn years of argument in a single day, the history of the discussion on this issue will show you that you yourself haven't come anywhere close to that.

[Albrenia]

-snip-

Many thanks for your response. I'll have to take a deeper look into metaphysics now, if just to broaden my selection of intellectual tools and options when considering stuff.

[36 Camera Perspective]

Why is this significant? Well, since it means that the focus of my reading has been on pre-modern and early modern Western philosophy, that I have little respect for thinkers like Descartes and Hume (let alone more contemporary movements),

You didn't focus on them, so you don't respect them?

[Theris Carencia]

Why is this significant? Well, since it means that the focus of my reading has been on pre-modern and early modern Western philosophy, that I have little respect for thinkers like Descartes and Hume (let alone more contemporary movements),

You didn't focus on them, so you don't respect them?

I see the problem. Descartes was an early modern philosopher - one of the ones I have read up on. I've also looked into Hume's philosophy. I've managed to make about as much progress into Hume's works as I have into the works of Thomas Aquinas - which is to say, not as much as I would like, though perhaps more than is typical. What I have seen has colored my views regarding contemporary philosophy.

Descartes decided, "Hey, let's assume that everything we know is a lie, and see what survives the absolutely ridiculous levels of skepticism." He then proceeded to attempt to show that belief in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul were some of the things that made it through the sieve of doom. Needless to say, the relevant arguments were lackluster at best.

As for Hume, he started from the assumption that all mental phenomena can be reduced to mental pictures of various kinds, including concepts like "causation," "goodness," "existence," and the like. As a result, he came to nonsensical conclusions - skepticism about causality, skepticism about the persistence of the self, and so forth. And all his arguments were flawed from the get go, because he started with a demonstrably false premise.

Since subsequent Western philosophy was heavily influenced by both of their mistakes, with their paradigms and arguments almost always taken for granted, I've considered my time better spent delving deeper into pre-modern philosophy and trying to discover what Eastern philosophies are supposed to be about. The lack of interest in contemporary philosophy stems from my knowledge of, and disrespect for, the figures that have shaped it.

I hope that clarifies things.

[36 Camera Perspective]

I'm just gonna speed by your points real fast, even though I think you deserve a longer response.

1) I don't think that Descartes is as skeptical as you portray him as. While he was certainly very skeptical, he also emphasized a practical component to his radical doubt, where even though one may refuse to assent to dubitable propositions from an intellectual standpoint, they continue to work with those ideas as soon as they get up out of the armchair and engage with the practical world. I don't see radical doubt as a 'sieve of doom', as you hilariously describe it, on the consideration that Descartes was able to find a place for sense experience somewhere in human knowledge despite his skepticism. As for his arguments, well...we all know the Cartesian circle.

2) I don't agree with Hume's epistemology at all, but he kept the ball rolling, which is an act worthy of respect in my view. I think you are correct to say that Hume wants us to see categories like causality as nothing more than contingent associations of sense experience, and that this eventually leads to absurdity. However, Hume's erroneous empirical deduction set the stage for Kant's transcendental deduction. Without Hume, we would have been stuck on Locke.

3) To what extent have Hume and Descartes' mistakes influenced the Western tradition? I mean, it's abundantly clear that they have in some kind of way, but I'm unsure if they've so greatly corrupted the Western canon as you seem to think they have. For one, they all had their contemporaries who were keen to disagree with them on particular issues; Spinoza had an entirely different account of substance, mind, and body than Descartes did, even though they were both in the rationalist school. Secondly, even those who like Hume have to consider him in light of later criticisms, like Kant. When has been taken for granted?

4) Where do you get your epistemology from? I imagine, based on the time period you're focused on, and based on your previous statements, that you believe in something like traditional rationalist metaphysics. I don't think that's the future of metaphysics. I'm very Kantian.

[Neutraligon]

Neutraligon:

Your definition of "morality" is too vague and carries a great deal of philosophical baggage with it.

Given I have yet to hear a clear definition of morlaity, and all definitions of it carry philosophical baggage this is hardly a surprise.

Morality pertains to something much more specific than how people and society interact with other living organisms. Morality does not pertain to any kind of action (or interaction, as you prefer to call it) between people, society, and other living organisms, but to actions by moral agents that contain moral content., and to determining what kind of entities are worthy of moral consideration, if any.

You already have an issue of using the word in the definition. What is moral content?

Of course, if you define morality as "one's opinion", then morality will turn out to be an opinion. The whole question of the thread is whether or not morality can be defined in this way in the first place. The question at hand is "Can moral prescriptions be mind-independently true?", so defining morality as "one's opinion" simply begs the question.

Tell me a definition or morality that does not beg the question.

You ignored my distinction between a moral prescription that flows from god's nature and a moral prescription that's just an opinion, forcing me to reiterate it once more.

I did not ignore it, I responded with wondering why the nature of god matters? It is equally within my nature to have certain opinions on things, simply by being human, but that does not make them any less my opinion. For instance due to being a social animal, it is my opinion that I should not harm those within my group.

You are using the word "opinion" rather loosely.[/quote] I disagree

God's moral prescriptions are not his"opinion".

Yes they are.

God's moral prescriptions are necessarily true given his omnibenevolent and omniscient nature;

I repeat again how does one determine if god is omnibenevolent? If you name god as omni-benevolent because he is moral then you are literally doing what I did above with my definition of what morality.

therefore, they are certainly not "opinions", which 1) can be changed, and 2) aren't facts that even purport to describe the world.An opinion is essentially a whim, a preference, an inclination, a temporary idea of something.

An opinion need not be temporary, and it need not be a whim. It is a preference.

This hardly describes a prescription stemming from the logical necessity of one's nature.

See above about definitions.

How does one determine that god is omnibenevolent? In the same way that one determines the principle of non-contradiction, or that all bachelors are unmarried; these are all analytic truths that already belong in our conception of what god would be like if he existed. These are a priori analytic truths.

Funny that you mentioned the issues with definitions, and now you are doing the same thing...over and over and over again

Everything is constrained by the logic of its own nature, but not in the same sense as god. God is constrained by his perfection; he can't do something imperfectly. As a human being, I am constrained by my imperfection; my will can foolishly surpass what my reason offers me. We are constrained in an equivocal sense. Additionally, other things are also constrained by external objects, whereas god is not.

And how are the two constraints truly different, they are both constraints based on the nature of the being.

[36 Camera Perspective]

@Neutraligon

Objective morality exists if there is a mind-independently true proposition with normative content. In other words, objective morality exists if there is a proposition, the content of which describes the way the world ought to be, and that statement is true regardless of whether or not any rational agent cognizes of that truth or not. (See my earlier post for a clarification of the distinction between mind-independent and mind-dependent truths). This is a non-circular, non-question begging account of the truth conditions of objective morality. While all definitions may carry baggage to some extent (especially the subject-object distinction), some carry more much more baggage than others, and your definition was on the far end of the spectrum. You seem to think that the word "morality" cannot be defined in a non-question begging way, but this account does not beg the question at all, for it is just a general statement about what kind of form any objective morality must take, not an affirmation that there is an objective morality or that one particular moral theory is correct.

I didn't need to use the word "moral content" in my definition of morality. I could have said "normative content" and accomplished the same goal. Moral content is essentially normative content; a proposition with moral content affirms the world should or should not be a certain way. This contrasts with descriptive content, which affirms that the world is or is not a certain way. To make a statement with moral content is to make a statement about the way the world should be.

You've made an analogy between your nature and god's nature. These two concepts are actually incredibly disanalogous. God's nature is such that he is an omnibenevolent entity, which allows him to constitute the barometer of "the good" itself. I think it's pretty clear that this is diffferent from the kind of nature that you possess, and how that difference would impact the objective validity of your moral prescriptions.

As for definitions, you are trying to create a false equivalency between us. Analytic truths are predicates that are found in the subject concept itself. For example, we don't need to look beyond the concept of a triangle to know that its made of three sides. Synthetic truths are predicates that we "add" onto this concept from somewhere outside the concept itself. For example, "the ball is red" is a synthetic truth; we had to go beyond our concept of what a ball is and attach the predicate "red" to it synthetically. This is essentially the difference between my definition and your definition. I claim that my definition of god as an ommibenvolent entity is an analytic truth, and in response, you claim that this is no better than defining morality as "one's opinion". However, decribing morality in such a way is clearly a synthetic truth, not an analytic truth.

[Theris Carencia]

I'm just gonna speed by your points real fast, even though I think you deserve a longer response.

1) I don't think that Descartes is as skeptical as you portray him as. While he was certainly very skeptical, he also emphasized a practical component to his radical doubt, where even though one may refuse to assent to dubitable propositions from an intellectual standpoint, they continue to work with those ideas as soon as they get up out of the armchair and engage with the practical world. I don't see radical doubt as a 'sieve of doom', as you hilariously describe it, on the consideration that Descartes was able to find a place for sense experience somewhere in human knowledge despite his skepticism. As for his arguments, well...we all know the Cartesian circle.

Yes, I exaggerated. But I managed to get a broadly accurate picture of Descartes' major contributions and legacy, while simultaneously making you laugh. In an online debate with variable standard of discourse (often within the same conversation!) it can be hard to tell where to shoot: absolute accuracy, or memorability and "gistiness."

[/quote]2) I don't agree with Hume's epistemology at all, but he kept the ball rolling, which is an act worthy of respect in my view. I think you are correct to say that Hume wants us to see categories like causality as nothing more than contingent associations of sense experience, and that this eventually leads to absurdity. However, Hume's erroneous empirical deduction set the stage for Kant's transcendental deduction. Without Hume, we would have been stuck on Locke.[/quote]

Hume did indeed keep the ball rolling. In my opinion, he kept it rolling in the wrong direction, which is manifestly not worthy of respect. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Kant is one of those philosophers I haven't learned much about. The "Hume awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers" quote, combined with his reputation for being hard to comprehend (and thus potentially requiring more effort to understand when compared to other thinkers I could be learning about), has sort of kept me away from him. Any information you can provide, especially as regards the precise nature and interpretation of the noumena/phenomena distinction (which terminology struck me as odd - "nous" meant "intellect" in Greek, why use it as the term for something that can't be known?), would be quite welcome.

3) To what extent have Hume and Descartes' mistakes influenced the Western tradition? I mean, it's abundantly clear that they have in some kind of way, but I'm unsure if they've so greatly corrupted the Western canon as you seem to think they have. For one, they all had their contemporaries who were keen to disagree with them on particular issues; Spinoza had an entirely different account of substance, mind, and body than Descartes did, even though they were both in the rationalist school. Secondly, even those who like Hume have to consider him in light of later criticisms, like Kant. When has been taken for granted?

To a considerable extent, Descartes' redefinition of the philosophical project as a search for a method, rather than a search for the natures of things, has gone unquestioned by his successors. Hume's nominalism and anti-realism have also been hugely influential, especially in anglophone philosophy. Descartes set a bad paradigm, and Hume contributed to a bad atmosphere.

I will concede that there were some decent thinkers among the early moderns. Leibniz springs to mind as the best of them, though Spinoza wasn't that bad all things considered. Even so, both of them had their faults. In truth, they did well because they took metaphysics seriously, and came closer to the Scholastics in spirit than their contemporaries, but they didn't escape major mistakes. In part, that is because they continued to assume that the recent "paradigm shift" regarding the nature of mind, matter, and causality was every bit as justified as the one regarding the motion of the earth.

4) Where do you get your epistemology from? I imagine, based on the time period you're focused on, and based on your previous statements, that you believe in something like traditional rationalist metaphysics.

You are correct. More precisely, I count myself among those derisively labeled "the Schoolmen" by the early moderns. It is an epithet I wear with no small measure of pride.

As such, I don't have an epistemology per se. I have a logic, a theory of cognition, a predilection towards philological shenanigans, a set of first principles (including the principle of non contradiction and the principle of proportionate causality), and a robust faith in the power of dialectic as a means of approaching philosophical problems. If I can't find a robust syllogism on the subject I'm interested in, I'm not ashamed to turn to good ol' Reverend Bayes. But I don't try to set terms on what is or isn't "valid method" before beginning my investigation. I let reality dictate that.

I don't think that's the future of metaphysics. I'm very Kantian.

I don't know what the future of metaphysics has to do with truth. I'm more interested in knowing what is than in trying to "keep up with the times" or "end up on the right side of history." History has made mistakes before, will make mistakes again, and is in all probability still making them now.

In case it isn't obvious, I don't have much patience with the "Enlightenment" narrative of progress.

[Radadimocric]

God provides us with an objective morality in His commandments and statutes that He gave to us. The trouble is actually figuring out what that is, since some Christians emphasize certain parts while others ignore other parts.

That's the way of the world.

[Neutraligon]

@Neutraligon

Objective morality exists if there is a mind-independently true proposition with normative content.

Agreed, that is the definition of bjective, now you must show that this exists for morality

In other words, objective morality exists if there is a proposition, the content of which describes the way the world ought to be, and that statement is true regardless of whether or not any rational agent cognizes of that truth or not. (See my earlier post for a clarification of the distinction between mind-independent and mind-dependent truths).

Problem, the term ought in this context is itself a mind dependent proposition.

This is a non-circular, non-question begging account of the truth conditions of objective morality.

Except as stated above the term ought is not mind independent. In this case ought means a desirable state, but desirable to whom?

While all definitions may carry baggage to some extent (especially the subject-object distinction), some carry more much more baggage than others, and your definition was on the far end of the spectrum.

I disagree, and also feel that your definition carries the baggage you claim mine has.

You seem to think that the word "morality" cannot be defined in a non-question begging way, but this account does not beg the question at all, for it is just a general statement about what kind of form any objective morality must take, not an affirmation that there is an objective morality or that one particular moral theory is correct.

Actually I don't, it is just that I think that your claims make it out that it cannot be defined in a non-question begging way. I think I defined it in a non-question begging way. That is, I have defined morals as opinions on how people and societies "ought" to interact with each other and the environment (a simplified definition to be sure).

I didn't need to use the word "moral content" in my definition of morality. I could have said "normative content" and accomplished the same goal. Moral content is essentially normative content; a proposition with moral content affirms the world should or should not be a certain way. .

I fail to see how this is much different from my definition, especially since should and should not are not mind independent.

This contrasts with descriptive content, which affirms that the world is or is not a certain way. To make a statement with moral content is to make a statement about the way the world should be

You have essentially defined a god a certain way, that is you have stated that god can be described as perfectly moral (this is descriptive content based on the above) and then stated that if such a god existed of course morals would be objective since god is defined as moral. Hence you have the same issue you claimed I had earlier.

You've made an analogy between your nature and god's nature. These two concepts are actually incredibly disanalogous. God's nature is such that he is an omnibenevolent entity, which allows him to constitute the barometer of "the good" itself. I think it's pretty clear that this is diffferent from the kind of nature that you possess, and how that difference would impact the objective validity of your moral prescriptions.

I disagree Hence why I said you face the same issue you claimed I did, that is you have defined objective morality into existence should a god defined as moral exist.

As for definitions, you are trying to create a false equivalency between us.

Nope

Analytic truths are predicates that are found in the subject concept itself. For example, we don't need to look beyond the concept of a triangle to know that its made of three sides.

Ie we have defined all shapes that have the trait of having three sides as being triangles. I guess similarly the omni-god has been defined as being moral, thus anything that has the traits defined as moral (with the other additions as well) would thus be god.

Synthetic truths are predicates that we "add" onto this concept from somewhere outside the concept itself. For example, "the ball is red" is a synthetic truth; we had to go beyond our concept of what a ball is and attach the predicate "red" to it synthetically.

In the example of god, the omni-god is not defined as moral and instead saying that omni-god is moral is a trait we are assigning to that god (in which case my question of how did we determine that the trait of that specific god being moral can be applied to that god)

This is essentially the difference between my definition and your definition. I claim that my definition of god as an ommibenvolent entity is an analytic truth, and in response, you claim that this is no better than defining morality as "one's opinion". However, decribing morality in such a way is clearly a synthetic truth, not an analytic truth.

In the case of the synthetic, you would need to show that the god actually exists for there to be objective morality. In the later you would need to show that the trait of moral can be applied to that particular god. So when you said if the omni-god exists where you have defined god as moral then objective morality exists is no different then saying if a triangle exists then a shape with three sides exists. It is a tautology.

As a note I think you are misunderstanding what I was doing. I was giving my definition for what morality is and then stating due to that definition is is subjective. It is no different then your triangle example, where triangles have been defined as shapes on a flat plane with three sides. If you use a different definition for morality then it is possible that yes they can be objective, but then we are talking about two different things.