Fragment wrote: Sat May 24, 2025 5:03 am
I almost couldn't sleep because I was thinking about my reply to this post. There's a lot to get through.
Sorry about that. Even if I disagree with your perspective, I like you as a person. I should have been less inflammatory.
First of all I never dismissed metaphysics as a discipline. Obviously I have a metaphysical viewpoint.
Fair enough, it was probably unfair stereotyping on my part. I've seen a lot of people say similar things about Kantian metaphysics being arbitrary or "religious." There are certain kinds of dismissals of metaphysics (e.g. positivism, nominalism, Stirner, Heidegger) that I feel people default to without further reading or further thought.
My viewpoint is basically global skepticism in a Humean sense. Objective facts may exist, but we can never know them because we only have epistemic access to subjective experience. Even rationality is bound in finite, human bodies, so it's unclear if things that seems tautological would actually be so if we could step outside of our experience.
The first part sounds Kantian to me (phenomenon versus noumenon). The second has issues, in my view.
* Universal human subjectivity. The experience of pain, for example, exists in this tier. It's not objective in any real sense, but as embodied subjective creatures we've evolved it and it's shared across almost all humans.
That sounds a lot like the concept of "transcendental subjectivity," by the way.
So when you are talking about objective morality it feels to me like you're talking about the top tier. That's what Kant was aiming to do. He felt that reason alone was enough to derive moral law. I think the very fact that different observers see morals differently, and that different ethical theories claim different moralities as objective is enough to disprove the notion that morals exist in a metaphysically objective sense.
Yes, that's basically my view. I think moral conflict either arises from confusion, or from dishonesty (particularly self-interested dishonesty), and that a more clear-headed and honest society would eventually reach a consensus on morality. However, you don't need consensus for something to be true.
We're not there yet, though. I think there are a lot of layers of imaginary things that prevent that (e.g. legal formalities you have to assent to even though you don't necessarily agree with them) and social pressures that mean being honest and clear-headed means you end up being taken advantage of by others.
Your claim seems to be that if morality doesn't exist in the first (or second) tier that it must only exist in the fourth tier- pure preference. It seems to ignore the existence of the third tier- that is, naturalism.
Morality is something that can be universalized across human experience, but only because we’re the kinds of creatures we are - not because it’s etched into the fabric of the universe. Moral laws fundamentally depend on our nature as finite, embodied consciousnesses. Many of our "obvious" moral laws aren't actually obvious if we change fundamental parts of human nature.
Take "murder is wrong". Seems universal, right? But why? Because humans are mortal, emotionally attached, socially embedded beings with finite lives and unique, unrepeatable subjectivity. Killing someone is irrevocable. If humans were immortal, or reborn after death with memory intact, the meaning of "killing" would shift. You’re not removing someone from existence- you’re delaying or inconveniencing them. It might still be rude, or disruptive, but it wouldn’t carry the same moral weight. Even our most obvious moral rules depend on the kind of creatures we are. I don't think there's a single ethical theory or moral rule that doesn't rely on emergent properties of "what it is to be human". But universalizable subjectivity is not the same as objectivity- unless you want to use the latter as shorthand for referring to the former.
Sure, but how can we say whether the judgements about those things are valid or invalid? I think, independent of the empirical particulars of humanity, there has to be a foundation in deontic logic.
As for David Wong, he's actually one of the people that's most influenced my thinking in terms of how relativism can still make serious moral claims and why it's not actually arbitrary. His concept is called "pluralistic relativism" and it argues we can have serious moral commitments that have cross-cultural variation without appealing to what Stirner would call "spooks". Our judgements are grounded in shared human needs- the need to avoid suffering, sustain trust, build flourishing. But convergence does not mean objectivity, and expressions of universal human values may differ culturally. As one clear example (and this isn't necessarily a moral value), we can think about "respect for the dead"- it's a universal across human cultures- but how respect for the dead is shown is pluralistic- in some cultures it means cremation, in some it means burial, in others it means leaving the body on a mountain for the crows to eat. From one culture's point of view a different expression could be seen as immoral or distasteful, but they all rely on a shared human value. This is not objectivity, nor is it arbitrary.
From my perspective, this seems like all the more reason to look at the form of moral judgement rather than it's content. Interesting idea, though.
While some, like Stirner or Nietzsche, might support "anything goes" relativism, that's not what I support. And it's frustrating that people see it as a binary choice.
I can see where you're coming from, since I disagree with "folk" moral realism too. People acting as though they know something is objectively moral, is usually a sign of dogmatism rather than thought.
It's like the debate over free will. People suppose you have to be either a hard determinist or believe in metaphysical free will. But they deny strong compatibilist arguments like those advanced by Daniel Dennett (my favorite living philosopher).
Here's a curveball. What do you think about functionalism versus mechanism regarding causality?
I'd even say that a naturalist approach to morality is even stronger than an objective one because it is grounded on a shared reality. As much as you might call an ethical system "objective", the very fact that it's being advanced by a human makes it subjective.
I mean, you could say that about every claim, mathematical or scientific.
I feel that objectivity is basically just relativity wearing a mask and pretending to be more than it is.
Interesting, I kind of feel it's the inverse. People like Foucault hide global moral claims behind a critique of universality, in my opinion.
The other thing I don't like about (most) ethical theories claiming objectivity is that they are single variate- reducing moral reasoning to a single dominant factor.
I aim towards that; I prefer if theories are elegant.
But Aristotle still assumed a supernatural telos and that there was some kind of Platonic, or objective eudaimonia that exists outside of human experience.
What do you have in mind when you say "supernatural?"
I dislike Kant, but only because of his excessive prescriptivism. Kant's categorical imperative, if framed more moderately, as one moral value- based on a rational understanding of human experience- and to be weighed against other values, is actually a damn good piece of philosophy.
Fair enough. By the way, you might quite like WD Ross' idea of
prima facie duties, if you haven't already heard of it. It's a kind of pluralistic deontology that combines elements of Aristotle with Kant. If I wasn't so concerned with theoretical elegance, I'd probably be a follower of Ross.
If you still have an aesthetic preference for the seeming consistency of objective framing, or believe that it has more pedagogical power, then that is a preference I can respect.
I aim towards objectivity because I do think objectivity is possible, but I don't claim to have the complete picture. I kind of feel like Socratic questioning requires the assumption that there is objective truth beyond opinion.
But I hope you can see that there is, in fact, a third option- which I see as both more realistic, more accurate and more powerful- between objectivity and nihilism.
I still find it a little confusing, but I don't feel like fighting about it. I'll try to avoid appealing to objective morality on Mu for the time being.