How the fuck does morality work anyway? How can you say that a character is definitely good or definitely evil...

>plus there isn't a non-religious argument for objective morality

there certainly are. not good arguments maybe, but arguments.

This 2 b h

>good = comfort
>evil = pain
>lawful = code
>chaotic = feeling

It's really that simple. The trick is trying to quantify each action and dealing with moral-relativety autists.

>Implying that reason is inherently valuable rather than coincidentally useful

>MercykillerPhilosophy101.jpg

You're right, I should have clarified

He's mostly talking about meta-ethics or the grounding of morality though. You can have a nice, internally coherent system but without an outside source that grounds said morality, it's just your own opinion.

>Inb4 "muh Eutyphro"
Good job misunderstanding what it leads up to. It leads up to an eternal, timeless and immaterial eidolon of The Good. Rather than lead us away from it, Plato actually moves us deeper into the realm of metaphysics.

He's not wrong though. The abolition of the death penalty is one of the greatests insults of the sanctity of life for that reason.

>How the fuck does morality work anyway?
In DnD it is ab objective battle between good and evil. Your actions don't directly effect your alignment your place in the cosmic battle between good and evil, and law and chaos effects your alignment.

In reality? No morality is subjective and even with objective morality no person is pure good or evil. However if you want a rule of thumb whether a person is mostly good or mostly evil, ask this question "if my daughter wanted to move across the world with this person to marry them would I be okay with that?"

>Hey, Pelor?
>Yo whaddup?
>Am I evil?
>Nah homie, you good.
>Cool thanks dude.

Tah-dah!

>good = comfort
Ewww, utilitarianism is garbage.

I mean, under that system of thinking, it's ok to exterminate an entire race of people if it means that other races willlive in harmony as a result.

For example and not that I ACTUALLY believe this one could look at FBI crime statistics and come to the conclusion that blacks are the overwhelming source of violent crime against themselves and others. With that knowledge I could make a utilitarian argument that it would be better and more efficient to exterminate their entire population using covert methods as doing so would maximize the the comfort (and happiness) of other ethnicities, and decrease the discomfort (and unhappiness) of the negro.

Furthermore, 'happiness' is such a subjective term, that a supposedly 'objective' system such as utilitarianism, who's entire basis surrounds the idea that we can "maximize" happiness as though it were a mathematical measure is self-defeating.

I'm going to assume we're talking about D&D.
If it's a version of D&D where alignment is *that* explicit then it has VERY little to do with morality.
You're also born with your alignment set in stone as a servant of metaphysical forces in a way that you will likely never comprehend. And yet despite that obliqueness you also are born knowing of all of this, as well as knowing a secret language and secret handsigns that only people of your alignment(s) can comprehend.
To make it even WEIRDER everybody knows other people have these alignments but it's considered incredibly rude to ask about or even openly discuss.

D&D alignment is a very strange thing and originally had nothing at all to do with morality.The first D&D alignments were simply the Law-Neutral-Chaos axis and the good/evil axis was added years and years afterwards.

If it's not a version of D&D where it has those special alignment strange details then it's typically meant to be a DESCRIPTIVE thing rather than a PRESCRIPTIVE thing, though regardless every edition (aside from 4e and 5e) are very much contradictory on what alignment is actually meant to be. Certainly it *is* fuzzy and interpretive.
If it seems arbitrary that's because it is in a very literal sense, and arbitrated solely by the DM outside of any edition's few specific notes on it (which are themselves often setting specific rather than universal things, and any inclusion of each is itself up to the DM).

So to put all of this in the context of your question, "morality" works exactly as your DM says it does. No more, no less.

Genocide creates pain, that pain would have to be worth the gain in comfort. Besides, why generalize the whole race for some of their bad-apples? Wouldn't removing the bad-apples in each race be far more efficient?

>people aren't at max comfy doing their favorite evil
>there aren't pains involved with good
Sounds like someone whose never lived

>He thinks religion supports objective morality

By definition they believe in subjectivism, even if they wont admit it to themselves.

Just do your Duty. It'll be fine. Or it won't, who cares? Just do your Duty.

A better critism of utilitarianism is that small inconveniences can scale up to be considered morally equivalent to bigger evils, for example it would be ethical to torture someone to death to avoid a sufficiently large number of toe stubbings

Disorders will always exist
Sacrifice will always be necessary

>He's not wrong though. The abolition of the death penalty is one of the greatests insults of the sanctity of life for that reason.
It sure is great that courts operate at 100% efficiency and innocent people are never sentenced.

Religion does support objective morality when those religions are centered around verifiable entities that are the supreme arbiters of these sorts of things. We are talking about fantasy, after all.

If you are certain that such genocide would mean an improvement in the overall happiness then I don't see why not. The problem is in measuring comfort/happiness and no absolute certainty of the consequences of the action. Would people really be happier living in a world where unwanted elements are summarily killed? If not, your utilitarian argument in favor of the genocide would fall apart.
There's also something like rule utilitarianism, which claims actions are morally correct if they adhere to a rule that in general leads to greater good (e.g. do not kill, do not steal). The problem with "normal" act utilitarianism is that it can be used to justify pretty much everything as long as you have imperfect knowledge. But for an omniscient being, acting in a strict utilitarian fashion is entirely defensible.

Could you clarify your example because right now it makes little sense.

If the an omnibenevolent being existed, disagreeing with it on morality would be objectively wrong

>He's not wrong though.
I do agree with Ditko's conclusion, that the Guilty wish for Mercy the same way Victims wish for Justice, but I find he leaves out a lot of mitigating factors.

Under his conclusion, we can surmise that 'Justice' belongs to the victim. There's nothing wrong with that. However, he ignores several possibilities.

Firstly, if justice belongs to the victim, they could theoretical choose-from their own free will- to grant mercy to their injurer. That's basically the entire belief of Christianity- in that, we mortals committed a crime by rebelling against our Creator, and deserved to have justice inflicted upon us, but the injured party- here being God- decided to grant mercy the guilty from His own free will.

The second situation is where justice could be better served by granting a measure of mercy. For example, say there's a man who vandalized another's property. Now the victim could receive justice by seeing to it that the culprit loses his hands so that he will never vandalize again. Or he could grant him mercy, and still receive a good measure of justice by making the culprit into his indentured servant. In that way, the victim could make back his losses through free labour, and the culprit avoids losing his hands.

And of course there are several other mitigating factors. What if the crime was an accident? What if the culprit was ignorant of the law? What if the culprit was ignorant of the crime (in that he had no idea his actions broke a law he was aware of). What about the intent of the crime? There's the cliche trope of the theif who steals a loaf of bread to feed himself and his family out of desperation (iirc that is one of the loopholes in Mosaic Law, that a theif who was found to steal out of absolute desperation could be forgiven in certain circumstances).

Of course Ditko goes to the absolute extreme in his comic, depicting a situation that anyone would say is unjust, but it ignores nuance.

Basically A sufficiently large number of people stubbing their toes generates more suffering than a single person being tortured to death so under utilitarianism given the choice between the two you should torture the person to death

I disagree. The whole idea of euthanasia comes from utilitarianism. A 'good death' in that death is a salve to pain. Euthanizing a population in the right way could be argued to avoid pain. And ultimately utilitarianism has to come to the paradox that happiness for some means pain for others. I might enjoy my heroin trips, but it will cause pain for my family.

>Moral Relativism

Morality is a physiological response that humans evolved to maintain social cohesion.
You are biologically inclined to understand that anything that is damaging to reproduction, safe child rearing and maintaining a working society is immoral.

When you see someone acting immorally you, completely unconsciously, understand that if everyone acted like that then your family, town, city, state, country would stop functioning and instinctually abhor it.

I don't really consider that example a good criticism in itself, but it does hint at the larger problem of utilitarianism which is "happiness calculation".

I agree with your interpretation.

it doesnt work that way in every system anymore.

pretty much just tells you if they're fiends, fey or undead in 5e for example

It doesn't and d&d is stupid

I'm still having trouble seeing a connection here. If a man is going around stubbing toes then at some point he should be stopped. If it's reasonable to believe that tourturing this man with an equal amount of pain he's caused will fix his toe-stubbing fixation then it should be done to save countless amounts of pain.

that and some other things like relaxing restrictions for classes based on alignments makes me think that they're slowly moving away from the alignment system in general.

It's kind of an unneeded system at this point anyway

Then why does modern society find it ok to be gay? By your measure homosexuality is both damaging to reproduction, and makes it hard to maintain a working society (seeing as the homosexual community is a source of disease).

Also, if everyone in my society was gay, it would die out in a generation.

And yet we find no moral issues with it apparently outside of religion.

He's not the one responsible for the toe stubbing, basically the point is that a sufficiently large number of inconveniences eventually outweigh one horrible action under utilitarianism so theoretically you would rather torture a random innocent person to death than stub a sufficiently large number of toes of toes

Then simply up the burden of proof for capital offenses. It's not that difficult m8.

>Firstly, if justice belongs to the victim
That's not how criminal works though (at least in Civil Law countries). Ever since Roman days the idea behind criminal law is that the victims give justice out of their own hands and allow the state to pursue those who interrupt the legal order. In civil cases (such as damages) you have a point, and in such cases one can always opt to not press charges for damage suffered.

>For example, say there's a man who vandalized another's property. Now the victim could receive justice by seeing to it that the culprit loses his hands so that he will never vandalize again.
Now we're dealing with the issue of proportionality, and in a civil case to boot. Even the 'merciful' solution could be deemed disproportionate where damages (ie. through a monetary sum making it as if the violation of property never happened) would suffice as a sufficient and just punishment.

>What if the crime was an accident?
Then we're dealing with an entirely different crime in many cases. Compare murder, manslaughter and death by fault for example.

>What if the culprit was ignorant of the law?
Since Roman times this was deemed an insufficient excuse.

>What about the intent of the crime?
Most legal systems (when dealing with criminal law) already have provisions regarding intent. See above once again: manslaughter vs death by fault. Death by fault does not require intention.

>There's the cliche trope of the theif who steals a loaf of bread to feed himself and his family out of desperation (iirc that is one of the loopholes in Mosaic Law, that a theif who was found to steal out of absolute desperation could be forgiven in certain circumstances).
Alright, there's an actual justice vs mercy problem.

Is this ignoring that a huge portion of people do think being gay is immoral, and a good portion of older folks think not having children is immoral?

Presumably it is because the people that don't see being effete as immoral don't see it as being a threat to people reproducing, a threat to people raising children, or as a threat of causing the seams of society to fall apart.
Kind of like how nobody looks at old maids or people posting on Veeky Forums as immoral because they're effete.

Because evolution isn't hyper efficient, morality evolved because it helps with group cohesion but it isn't fine tuned enough of an instinct to always support the optimal choice for your and the communities continued survival

>Morality is a physiological response that humans evolved to maintain social cohesion.
That neither dismisses the possiblity of a metaphysical basis for morality (genetic fallacy), nor does it in itself provide grounds for objective morality in the absence of a metaphysical foundation. I'm certain you yourself can think of many examples where an individual or a group does not find certain immoral actions distasteful (don't force me to apply Godwin's law here).

This attitude at best leads to intersubjective morality, where a certain culture more or less agrees on what is and isn't distasteful but can utterly disagree with another culture, with both being equally right (and therefore equally wrong).

Again, I'm missing the connection here. If the tourture doesn't solve the toe-stubbing problem then why is it even considered? Why produce more pain simply because an equal amount of pain is being produced else-where?

I'm gonna nitpick the example here by stating that scientifically there is a qualitative difference between mild pain and strong pain. Sudden strong pain might be traumatic, many mild pains won't be.

Realistically there wouldn't be a situation where you would have to make this choice but in this example the torture stops the toe stubbing

Both of those statement are true but you still haven't given an argument for the existence of metaphysics that justify morality

Then, in this pretend scenario working on flawed logic, there must be a solution that works on the same flawed logic, in pretend-land.

Just because this is only theoretical doesn't mean it's not a valid criticism of utilitarianism
is a valid criticism, not this is unrealistic so therefore it's wrong

I in no way represent all those who uphold objective morality and there are almost certainly others that can uphold more structurally sound arguments, but my belief is that it's one of those a-priori assumptions we *must* make, much like the existence of logic or mathematical truths. The thing is that moral relativism simply does not 'work', and even the most outspoken moral relativists do not lead their lives as if there's no objective morality. Their reaction to being mugged isn't the same as their reaction to having a dog shit on their fancy new shoes, for example. That's because we all hold one accountable for his actions (according to a certain standard we presume he has a-priori knowledge of) and don't hold the other accountable.

I reject moral relativism because it's an untenable position.

Sure thing, Vishnu

>aren't you most probably just a completely insane asshole?

That sounds like a question and evil person would propose.

I don't know, I think 'observable medical evidence that morality is a result of your brain releasing chemicals in response to stimuli' is a pretty solid evidence that there isn't a metaphysical basis for morality

All the more intricate applications of morality are just abstractions of human's evolved need to maintain social order.

Then theoretically, it should be disreguarded until it can be solved with real live logic.

Depends if on your setting there is objective morality. If there is, it's what the setting defines it to be.

But a good measure is comparing altruism and egoism. Good is selfless and evil is selfish.

Just because no one lives according to moral relativism doesn't mean an objective metaphysics exists, there are multiple ways that humans could be psychologically incapable of moral relativism without it being wrong.
You could have both a biologically explanation for morality as well as a metaphysical source of morality, they aren't mutually exclusive

Imo if your setting has objective morality you have to put a lot of thought into how that changes how the world works

Also I recommend that you either choose or make a moral system that you and your players mostly agree with

Hence my mention of the genetic fallacy, or judging the validity of a belief based on how came to hold that belief. For example (I really wish I could find a source right now but my google-fu eludes me) when looking at dogs, when covered with a blanket some of them more or less believe the outside world stops existing (comparable to a child believing he's invisible because he covers his eyes) and will make no effort to remove the blanket. The more intelligent breeds on the other hand maintain a hardwired belief that the outside world remains and will attempt to shake off the blanket. The hardwired beliefs of these dogs have no impact on the existence of the outside world (especially with the less intelligent breeds, whose instincts are flat out wrong in that scenario).

And then there's also the question of "defective" humans (psychopaths). Does the absence of their disgust reflex to unsavory actions mean morality does not exist for them, or is morality something that remains even if defective humans do not have an instinctive reaction to immoral actions?

Old maids don't have high rates of disease transmission.

>arguing ethics and morality
>on an Indo-European equine husbandry forum

>There's an entire field of philosophy tying to sort that shit out.
They've pretty much figured it out already, they overwhelmingly conclude morality is objective.

That would help society to chill out wouldn't it...

>Veeky Forums - Ethics & Morality

Good, I'ma drive this chariot over there, and you just start murdering everyone you can reach.

I just follow my intuition (or "heart", whichever you prefer to call it) at these questions

No because they haven't overwhelming figured out what is and isn't moral, It's two completely different arguments on a philosophical level.

It isn't like philosophy is a relevant field of research any more anyway, they have next to zero ability to influence real-world thinking or actions.

Maybe it's because I've only read garbage but I've never run into a convincing argument for objective morality

This is really he moral objectively best board on Veeky Forums. Not that I like you or anything Veeky Forums

>A group of immunodeficient people that regularly contact other groups of immunodeficient people don't have high rates of disease transmission
Old people fucking spread disease like plague carriers, user.
The Flu is a bit more infectious than GRID is.

Biological imperative to not kill and otherwise fuck up your species.

I'm not even religious and the most convincing argument for me is that you don't wanna get on the bad side of whatever God you don't worship, It ain't worth it nigga.

Only if you turn off that True Form crap, shit's weird

This is my favorite thread on Veeky Forums right now since everyone's relatively calm so far, it could be more relevant to Veeky Forums though, maybe we could talk about world-building ethical and theological systems?

We should throw old maids off of roofs like the degenerates they are. Desu

Simple, because two gay men can still work, fight and die for your right to reproduce, long-term ensuring YOUR genes and YOUR family were given a higher chance of survival. Giving a few fags the right to fuck is a small price to pay for their potential contribution. On the other hand, giving a Nazi as much as two pints of oxygen is wasting air that could've gone to someone else.

Neither of these work as objective morality user mentioned biology doesn't provide the basis for objective morality without an outside source of morality

As for whether or not to worship a god that's not exclusively about morality depending on the god and other stuff

It's only calm now because /leftypol/ is doing damage control on other boards because everybody is denouncing them, If you want to see some real action inform the D&D threads that Gary was a ultra-conservative Christian and Christian morality is objectively the best platform to base the alignment system on a la Dragonlance.

Okay sorry.

I like you user. I was going to half ass about the groundwork for metaphysics of morals, but making jokes about mythology was a way better plan. Thanks.

We'll that seems good then I'm tired of all the politics on this site. Life tires me enough I don't wanna be constantly reminded of it.

>I reject moral relativism because it's an untenable position.

What if I told you, perhaps, there was a scientific, empirically demonstrable basis for an objective morality that has no connection to metaphysics of any kind?
Furthermore, you're assuming the initial point anyway, which makes your argument a tautology. If there is an objective morality, you argument nonetheless doesn't support it in any way, shape or form.

I'm gonna risk it and point out we've long past the time where It's simply about the legality of homosexuality, liberals are now fighting to force people and religions to perform services for people in direct opposition to their beliefs.

If anything you're the one trying to start shit, no one has really brought up politics until now

Also while I wouldn't mind a setting based off christian theology and morality, you can definitely do more than that even with how limited DnD as a system is in particular

That's institutional and not related to individual homosexual. That's political not moral.

That's not really relevant to the conversation but I'm not going to crucify you for it

What happens around homosexuals politically isn't necessarily a moral argument against homosexuality though

>Also while I wouldn't mind a setting based off christian theology and morality
We already have that, it's called real life, It's kinda boring desu senpai.

>If anything you're the one trying to start shit
I don't like your insinuations!

Freedom of religion isn't moral? oh my.

It is but people pushing for the violation of freedom of religion in the name of homosexuals isn't a criticism of homosexuality itself

I've always found the idea of the Cthaeh from kingkiller's chronicle fascinating and want to put it in some setting somehow. For those who don't know:
>the Cthaeh is poisonous, hateful and contagious. It can see all possible futures with perfect accuracy and clarity, branching out from a single moment. It uses this knowledge to cause the worst possible outcomes for as many people as possible. In doing so it often reveals information that will hurt and traumatize those who speak to it.
An omniscient, anti-utilitarian that lives in a tree within the Fae and knows the exact words to speak to whoever listens as to cause the greatest evil. It might be nice for it to have a counterpart: an omniscient good. Or have both in the same abode, never knowing which one is speaking and whether its advice will cause untold suffering or salvation. Just something I was thinking about and is kinda Veeky Forums.

Whatever, marriage should be banned for everyone and all Christian churches reconfigured as Anthropocentrism Study Commissariat Centers where individuals can sign up for civil unions via the Department of Registration of Civil Statuses as far as I'm concerned. My point is there's nothing immoral about homosexuality because it doesn't represent a psychological anathema to the human mind and is completely tangential to society in a practical sense.

Nigga I meant that the city punishing the minister was on the administrative end and for political reasons. I was making a statement that the actions of a governing body does not represent that of an entire culture of people. I never said no insinuated a personal problem worth freedom of religion. Relax.

The only freedom of religion is freedom from religion. That city and its officers are protecting YOUR freedom to be free, freeman.

That's just the demiurge from gnosticism renamed.

Alignment should've never been brought into the game mechanics in the first place. The less focus put in it the better.
Here's hoping 6e drops alignments entirely.

If anything Alignment needs to enforced more mechanically, Or don't you remember the "I'm a lawful good character who regularly bathes in demonic blood harvested from tieflings children" drama?

>That picture
Show me the numbers: terrorist attacks by muslims vs terrorist attacks against muslims.

Also
>Bisexual trans woman of color
Islam is more dangerous to her than SD.

And then there's the biggest issue:
>I know this neighborhood is unsafe, to the point where I'm nearly pissing my pants thinking about walking through it, but I'm gonna do it anyway rather than take a small detour or public transportation
There's a good reason why Detroit has no tourists and why a Chinese tourist guide to London recommended avoiding immigrant neighborhoods