Philosophy meme

balderdash@lemmy.zip to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 296 points –

Not sure why this got removed from 196lemmy..blahaj.zone but it would be real nice if moderation on Lemmy gave you some sort of notification of what you did wrong. Like an automatic DM or something

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There is absolutely an objective right and wrong.

Could you point me to how I can meassure or otherwise empirically confirm these objective rights and wrongs?

Just because you cannot empirically measure something (at least at the moment), doesn't mean it can't be true.

Take consciousness, for example. We all know we have it. But we cannot empirically prove it. Does that mean consciousness doesn't exist? No, not at all.

Do we know that? No. We literally, truly, don't know that. We may think it exists - I do, and so do you - but without empirical evidence we can't know for certain.

Just because you cannot empirically measure something (at least at the moment), doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

I agree. However this is a very bad basis to start from if you want to find an actual truth. There is millions of ideas that were dreamed up by people that can't be empirically denied or confirmed, including all the gods.

Take consciousness, for example

I think that is a great example. Because if we understood consciousness, we'd probably also understand how we come up with ideas, like morality.

That's really the bigger point. Morality is an idea. It's like countries. We divide up the planet into sections on a map we made up and agree that those now exist. Then we build stuff along the border to make it exist. But there is no "true" or "correct" way to divide the planet into countries and nations. It's just a process that happens as an emergent property of a civilisation.

Just like consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. So ultimatly if you find out anything about how morality comes to exist, studying the brain is a good start.

But I doubt we'll ever find any objective moral truths, because we made up the entire concept.

Well, that’s the tricky part. There isn’t much in the way of empirical measurements for morality, which is why it tends to be so varied. But truth being difficult to find doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There is still right and wrong.

As another user here put it, “Moral judgement is subjective. Moral truth is not.”

I don't see the tricky part. If it can't be empirically measured, it's not objective.

So to put it correctly:

“Moral judgement is subjective. Moral truth is too.”

Truth isn’t subjective.

But "moral truth" is.

Two contradicting things cannot both be true. That’s literally just not how shit works.

What two contradicting statements?

Any two contradictory moral statements cannot both be true. Implying that morality is subjective would imply that they can.

For example: “being gay is wrong” and “being gay is not wrong”

Both cannot be true. One is right, one is wrong. This is objective. You can extrapolate this to every other moral stance. No two opposing ideas can both be true.

Therefore, if you were to extrapolate this to every moral stance, there would have to be a right and wrong statement for every one.

Morality is objective. Judgement is subjective, but judgement can be wrong.

For example: “being gay is wrong” and “being gay is not wrong”

Both cannot be true. One is right, one is wrong. This is objective

Ok, you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what "objective" means. Neither of these statements is true.

Objective means, something can be confirmed by observation. For example if we were in a room and there would be a rock on the table and you say "there is a rock on the table" that would be true. And everyone else in the world could look into the room and observe for them themselves that the rock is infact sitting on the table. That's objective truth.

However if you said "this rock is ugly", that is not objective. Differnet people will have different opinion on the prettiness of the rock, because it's an inherently subjective quality. There is not "true" value for the rock's prettiness that can be observed.

The same goes for all moral judgements. You can not observe or meassure a moral quality objetivily because it's a value that is assigned by the judgment of a human brain. It's not an intrinsic quality of nature.

You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding what “objective” means.

Objective (adj.)

  1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

  2. not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.

In other words: real, true, or factual

There is such a thing as objective morality, or moral truth.

Inability to determine what that is does not make it any less real.

So there exists an asbolute moral truth, but we have no way to determine what it is? I'm sure we can agree that morals don't have a physical form, so in what way does it "exist"?

The problem I see with that definition is that we are asking to judge an opinion without opinions without opinions the opinion doesn't exist so still no objective morality is still hogwash as it's still a oxymoron if you see morals with zero judgements then everything is newtral right and wrong doesn't mean anything how do you measure the morals of slavery without personal feelings you can't say religion is bad that's a opinion you can't say human suffering is bad that's a opinion you can't say human prosperity is good that's a opinion nothing is inherently good or bad as those are opinions without opinions you can only say you are blind as even saying it's newtral is a opinion granted newtral is a debatable point so even if objective morality exist I'd be the most useless consept ever

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