Angra Mainyu
Veteran Member
Okay, no problem. But my issue was with the claim about what "subjective morality" means, not with "subjective evaluation of morality". While I don't find the latter clear, as long as it's not about objective or subjective morality, it's not the issue I was trying to address.dx713 said:Yes, I changed my vocabulary because I realized "subjective morality" was unclear, given that it could be taken as me supporting cultural relativism if read in isolation without my discussion about the standards for declaring mental illness and how I evaluate some as reasonnable or not. "Subjective evaluation of morality" seemed clearer, in that it does better reflect my sense of being agnostic on the existence of an objective morality we might one day converge to if it exists, while still making clear that I don't believe it can be revealed to us by some external or supernatural entity.
Sorry for not making that vocabulary shift clearer, but I'm not a philosopher, and neither a native English speaker, so I'm winging it as the discussion progresses.
As for how to figure out moral truths, that's an epistemic matter, rather than an ontological one. While there are theistic metaethical epistemic arguments as well, the ones I was discussing here are theistic metaethical ontological ones (i.e., arguments involving moral ontology, not moral epistemology).
Okay, so you're not making a claim I would like to challenge there - unless you're suggesting that social debate is the only means of discovering moral truths if morality is objective, but you've not claimed that in the sentences quoted above.dx713 said:So, let's try to clarify my points:
On the OP: I was disagreeing with the points I believe the OP presented, i.e.
- that an objective morality must imply god (I believe there could be an objective morality that is discovered through social debate),
- and that there is necessarily such a thing as an objective morality (I'm agnostic on the subject, but at the very least I'm sure there's no revealed objective morality).
But I didn't participate much in that discussion because plenty explained that better than I did)
1) I agree about lying. But that's not related to the issue of whether morality is objective.dx713 said:More generaly, on the morality subject, I have two basic idea that I follow in my life:
1) I don't believe there is an objective morality already written somewhere that I just have to find. I don't believe in Kant's categorical imperative or things like that - a similar act can be moral or not depending on the exact situation. (like, lying to save a life would be moral)
2) I don't believe in cultural relativism either. I believe I can judge other cultures' notions of morality by applying basic rules like the golden rule and see if I consider their notions of morality really moral, just different from mine due to differing circumstances, or immoral and to be challenged (to get back to the beginning of our discussion, for example, religious prejudice against homosexuality).
2) I don't believe in the Golden Rule - I believe it's false -, but that aside, you do seem to be talking as if you believe morality is objective now, at least in the ordinary sense of "objective", when you say you would judge whether their notions of morality are "really moral" (i.e., whether their moral beliefs are true), or immoral (i.e., their believes are false); implicitly, you hold that there is an objective fact of the matter as to whether their beliefs are true, so it's objectivity and not culturally relative objectivity.
Morality would not be not-objective just because, say, in some situations, it's immoral to lie, and in other situations it isn't, or because in some situations, it's immoral to drive at 90kph, but in other situations it isn't, or because in some situations, it's immoral to shoot someone in the head, but in others situations, it is not, etc.
Okay. While I disagree about mental illness, it's a side issue and I've already made my point on the matter clear in my replies to your posts, so I'll leave it at that.dx713 said:That's when the discussion about the evaluation of mental illnesses started that I decided to put my grain of salt, because I realized that the modern psychiatry practice of declaring an illness or not based on the effect on the patient quality of life stroke me as relevant to my point of view.
If I got it right, it seems to be.dx713 said:Hoping that's clear enough.
Last edited: