Is morality absolute or relative? Discuss your stance and what that may entail in how we look at literature

there are no moral truths

however, not all moral positions are of equal importance/relevance

the problem with moral relativism is that it commits the sin of assuming all moral positions are inherently equal to one another

Sam harris -the moral landscape

Sam Harris is also a utilitarian.

Utilitarianism is trash.

There's no third option, m8

This is the third option:

Human beings think and behave as moral objectivists, like it or not. Per se it doesn't imply that morality is objective, but it provides good arguments for moral objectivism.
Also it's disappointing how most moral relativists don't understand that moral relativism literally means that might makes right. This is really common in modern atheism. They are moral objectivists when criticize and moral relativists when criticized.

how stirner is not a moral relativist?

Have you read it?

youtube.com/watch?v=6s98Z4tlunA

Book of Job. Morality is for our sake. There are absolute rules, but they are rare and something that we all agree on.

Whether or not people agree on something has no bearing on whether or not truth exists. Everybody in the world could say 2+2=5 but that wouldn't make it so.

relative, unless of course you're able to show me a universal law in which our understanding and everything included is contingent upon.

If 5 is defined by 2+2, it would absolutely be correct

If morality was truly relative we would expect see radically different systems of ethics throughout history. There has never been a single society that praised cowardice and reviled bravery.

The symbols people use to demonstrate that 2+2=4 are irrelevant. If people switched the 4 symbol for the 5 symbol it doesn't negate the fact that there is an objective answer.

So what is 4, then?

It's whatever you want it to be. No matter what symbols or meanings that you ascribe to them it will never negate the objectivity of it. There will be right and wrong answers.

>It's whatever you want it to be.
That doesn't sound very objective

That's because you're not understanding what I'm saying. I don't know if it's purposeful or you're just stupid.

Fun fact: Statistically, the more educated you are in philosophy the less likely you are to believe in moral relativism.

Freshmen philosophy students most likely believe in moral relativism, philosophy grad students are less likely too, and most philosophy professors don't.

If we're talking modern-day universities, the same thing applies to progressivism
Is that a good argument for progressivism?

All that tells us is that philosophical education actively makes people more retarded.

Well you can't really spend years studying something that you think is bullshit and completely relative. You can either stop studying it or change your opinion.
Not saying that morality is relative, but your post is not much of an argument.

Societal morals are as relative as the environment allows. Cowardice quickly gets crushed by the surroundings, and bravery makes it easier to guarantee the survival of a society, meaning only the second is praised.
In matters of continued existence, most present societies share similarities because they are the ones that survived with the most desirable traits.
However, the stability guaranteed by such traits generates safety which leads to the quedtioning and defying of such values, which eventually leads to the breakdown of such a society.
See: the West

Shhh.

One way out would be a natural moral law. In other words, nest morality inside of biology.

Morality could be built on some principles which promote cooperation.

Are you saying philosophy professors are more likely to be progressives than freshmen? Not in my experience (The following, unlike my previous claim which has statistical evidence, is based off my own experience).

My experience is that while better educated people are more likely to be progressives, they're less likely to be progressive when it comes to their own field. So an art professor might believe morality is relative, but they're less likely to believe that artistic quality is relative.

I think I'll pass on scientism, thank you though

morality is a social construct

That's like saying "medical researchers must only believe viruses are real because they spend so long studying them." If viruses weren't real then doctors would just study something else. Same for ethics and philosophers.

What does that mean for you

The world as will is the only correct moral interpretation of being and existence in general.

Damn, so close.

There is indeed a natural moral law, but it's based on metaphysical natures, not merely biological ones (note that a metaphysical nature still takes the biological nature into account).

So... We agree?

It doesn't matter what the symbol is.
Whatever you use to describe the number of fingers on your hand (supposing you aren't missing any) whatever that number is it is exactly the same as the number of fingers on your other hand.

Moreover, you do not even need to know how to count in order to say that one of your hands has the same number of fingers as the other. All you have to do is put your hands together and see that there is a one-to-one correspondence which covers all fingers.

This

Evolution or biology may explain why we act a certain way but it doesn't explain why we should or should not act a certain way. If moral truths are the product of evolution, they are not commandments we are bound to obey but merely helpful suggestions that can assist our "herd" in survival. There has to be a transcendent foundation for moral truths for them to mean anything.

There are objective moral facts that we can reason to using a priori synthetic logic. Read your Kant

Meta ethics has offered nothing to ethics except intuitionism, Kant reigns supreme

It's relative, newfag

>continentard in denial

External reasons for action do not exist.

Russel's paradox.

This kills Kantian morality.

No. Your argument would apply if we were talking about philosophy as a whole, but it's not necessary that philosophy considers ethics, just like it's not necessary that medical research studies viruses. They do so because they have reason to think those are real things. The fact that experts are more likely to believe a thing in their field of study is real is prima facie evidence that it's real. Not conclusive evidence, but evidence.

If moral truths are a product of evolution, then they of course would not be commandments.

These moral truths however would be sets of principles which have a necessary result. They are mere suggestions, however they suggest that certain anomic behavior results in the destruction of a given society.

They might not have intrinsic meaning, but the question becomes this

What do you want society and therefore your life to be like in the future?

I don't know what you're talking about or what you're asking. The Reddit spacing is obnoxious too. Why can't you write like a normal person?

What is moral to us is absolute. What is moral to them is absolute. What is their morality to ours but relative. And what our morality is to theirs is absolute.

Explain Yo self Cracka

But I can question my own moral understanding, user!

No. Please summarize.

Moral relativists maintain that there is such a thing as morality, but that the only universal moral truth is that there are no universal moral truths. Stirner does not even adhere to this absoluteness of non-absolutes.

>Stirner does not even adhere to this absoluteness of non-absolutes
So he's an agnostic in metaethics?

Morality is not.

Even if god exists, he would simply be another body giving us demands. Like our parents or the government.
His existence would make his word less powerful, as it would give him an objective quantifiable presence.

What the fuck are you going on about?

With a God and religion it's absolute without those it's relative.

Morality being absolute just doesn't make any sense. All arguments for it require unfalsifiable metaphysics or a subjective stance that human suffering is "bad."

Morality is at least in part absolute. If you disagree, please explain how, for example, torturing a two-year old to death for fun is anything other than evil.
Some would object as follows: what if, somehow, by torturing the two-year old to death you can save a million people from being tortured to death? What then? And sure, that's a fair point -
However, the actual act of torturing the two-year old to death is still evil. It's just that in this scenario, it's somewhat excused by the fact that it prevents a greater evil.

Cont...
The very fact that the act of torturing the two-year old to death, in this hypothetical, receives a justification from its preventing a greater evil already implies that there is something evil about it. That which has no evil in it requires no justification.

Note: when I use the word "evil" I do not mean it in a theological sense, but more in the sense of "there are many evils that befall mankind", and so on.

He disdains them totally. "Morality" is another name for the spook (like "God" or "State"), and to inquire as to its nature (whether that nature is absolute or "relative") is a waste of a person's time.

How IS it evil, exactly, though? The integrity of the collection of chemical reactions constituting a two-year old has no notable impact on the function of the universe.

what if it's a palestinian baby and you're blasting it with white phosphorus to secure a future homeland for your people? maybe a coupe people will bitch about it, but the nytimes will be cool with it

First, define what you mean by "unfalsifiable metaphysics." Why should every philosophical position be falsifiable? Knowledge must ultimately be grounded on non-falsifiable premises e.g. the law of non-contradiction.

>but it provides good arguments for moral objectivism.

Give them, then.

>most moral relativists don't understand that moral relativism literally means that might makes right

This isn't close to being true.

Artistic quality being relative isn't progressive. The subject experience of art has been accepted as a given for at least 200 years in the art upper echelons.

Philosophical positions that claim to have a path to concrete truth or knowledge are garbage.

You can only increase your level of confidence that you're not wrong about something, while being fully prepared to discard any level of certainty if contradictory evidence points strongly enough to a different interpretation.

It's absolute.

Well first of all you're talking about two different things; whether or not a person can have perfect certainty and whether or not a position can itself be certain. Even if no human being can ever be perfectly certain there can still be truths that are perfectly certain.

Besides, there are truths that we CAN be perfectly certain of, such as the law of non-contradiction. For example, I am completely certain the the number 3 is not NOT the number 3. Are you going to claim that such a belief might be false?

Well, what do you consider to be "the number 3?"

Doesn't matter. Whatever it is, I know that it isn't also NOT what it is. You can use any other example you want, if numbers are too loaded. A tree is not not a tree. A law of physics is not not a law of physics, etc etc.

Now, see, this is what I'm talking about.

You're assuming you can just make absolute statements, following an absolute law. I can be extremely confident, probably more confident than anything else, that a tree is not not a tree, but there could be a chance that reality only appears to follow that chain of logic while not actually doing it behind the scenes, and I have to be prepared to accept that.

Morality is an understanding about acceptable social behavior shared by a group of people. It is subjective in the sense that there is no one objective morality, but several competing systems.

The subjective nature of morality causes ideological problems because they are metaphysical in nature and there is no accepted standard to judge the merit of one system over another. Religions circumvent this problem by declaring their core moral principles the will of God. This works as long as people actually believe in the religion.

Moral systems usually evolve over time, even religious doctrine based systems, as demonstrated in the evolution of the Christian value system. People just started reinterpreting the doctrine to make it conform to their moral sensibilities.

Morality is objective but not absolute.

There are objective fundamental moral laws that abide with the flow of nature. Belief in God is not necessary to understand this, but it is a completely valid way to do so. Nature expends no effort to remain in equilibrium because it abides by nature. Any moral decisions are subject to the flow of nature, and as such there are those decisions that abide by nature and those that do not. Whether we have an understanding of these natural moral laws is another question, but it is a metaphysical a priori truth that some moral decisions are more compatible than others.

You're not even making sense. Your position is a snake that eats its own tail. If everything can be false then so can your position, in which case my position is correct.

I mean you're not only not making sense, your very position is attacking the notion of making sense itself. I just don't think you've thought what you're claiming through very far, not the least of all because you're not even making any arguments, just claims. I don't say this to be insulting but almost no one with a philosophical education agrees with your position and there's a reason for that.

If you don't believe me look at this:

philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP

It's a paper polling philosophy professors on what they believe. Most issues see a lot of divide, but then you get to:

>Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?

Only 1.7% even LEAN towards relativism, and only 1.2% actually accept it.

Fascistic morality is the only truly benign morality by only allowing that which benefits the whole and the individual, all morality that strays from this will inevitably create conflicts of interests that harm one or the other.

Wittgenstein

If morality is objective, why do animals not act morally?

>implying contextualism is not a form of relativism

Saying moral truths don't exist because some people (or animals) act immorally is like saying objective math doesn't exist because some people get the calculations wrong.

But its not that just some animals dont act morally, there are very few, if any, animals that DO act morally.

So? The inability of animals to add and subtract isn't a good reason to believe that objective math doesn't exist. Likewise, the inability of animals to know right and wrong is not a good reason to believe objective morality doesn't exist. If every being in the universe acted immoral this still wouldn't be a good reason to believe that objective morality doesn't exist, it would only mean that everyone is acting immoral. It says nothing to whether or not there is an objective good or an objective evil.

There are many animal species that require the death of others to survive. Life as we know it wouldnt exist if bacteria didnt consume and kill other bacteria. There are animals that are obligate carnivores. They cant survive if not at the expense of other species. Many species only live and thrive by stealing resources from other species. Youre saying theyre undeniably, objectively wrong in doing so?
This is where your math comparison breaks down, nobody has to do calculations wrong to survive, but many have to do "immoral" acts to survive. And even if every living thing in the entire universe died, if you add 2 things to 2 other things, you would have 4 things. But morals would no longer exist.
Morals arent inherent to the universe, which is why every culture has different moral codes, but you know what isnt different from culture to culture? Math. 2 things plus 2 things will always be 4 things, regardless of viewpoint.
Math is objective, morals are subjective

Well this got stupid in a hurry.

[citation needed]

Ayn Rand solved philosophy decades ago.

How can something that is constructed when you grow up as a child be absolute exactly?

I mean, children learn to play games and learn rules of conduct by being around other people.

And the rules that they learn are in some sense arbitrary and bound by the times.

You're confusing moral epistemology (how we know right and wrong) with moral ontology (what makes thing actually right or wrong.) What people do or think is irrelevant to the question of whether or not there is an actual objective right or wrong because the question is ontological in nature.