Subject classification: this is an Philosophy resource.

In practice, morality varies from place to place and time to time. But should it? Is there some universal moral code which applies to all persons in all places, or is custom king?

Morality is objective

Arguments for

  • Argument for Although there are some differences in moral practice, there are substantial similarities in what many cultures think should be correct behavior and there are also some taboos which are very common in practice. These can form a basis for a cosmopolitan morality.
    • Objection If morality were objective, one would expect all of morality to be objective, not just that part of morality which the vast majority of human cultures tend to agree on. How could "is murder bad?" have an objective answer while "is premarital sex bad?" does not?
      • Objection Such is a false standard. There are substantial similarities, but we did not say equalities. Humans are dumb at times.
    • Objection It is possible that humans evolved to feel that some acts are repulsive while other acts are good. Thus, there are other explanations for these similarities.
    • Objection A cosmopolitan morality is not an objective morality. Objectivity is completely independent of sentient beings, by definition.
    • Objection Humans are about 99.9% genetically similar to each other. We cannot argue that humans coming to the same conclusions implies that they are understanding an objective reality, when it is likely their genetic and ultimately cultural similarities influence these relative manifestations of morality.
  • Argument for Humans decide actions based on what they call 'morality'. All of human psychology is an objective part of the Universe. Therefore morality is an objective part of the Universe.
    • Objection A decision made based on human psychology is by definition a subjective decision.
  • Argument for Objective morality exists under the guise of modern game theory.
    • Objection Game theory describes strategic decision making, not which decisions are morally wrong or right. You would need a morality which says that acting rationally is good while acting irrationally is bad to call game theory a morality. And that would of course be a subjective morality. Rationality does not call itself morally good.
  • Argument for We can arrive at an objective ethical norm by universalizing the duty that exists intrinsically in interests: (1) "My interests should not be frustrated"; (2) "The interests should not be frustrated"; (3) We add the consideration of the omissions: "A priori, the interests should not be frustrated".
    • Objection While it may be possible to logically derive moral rules from axiomatic claims about interests, these particular axioms are unproven and there is no objective reason to accept them.
  • Argument for Morality is promoting happiness, well-being and health, while immorality is promoting harm, suffering and pain. All of these phenomena are rooted in objective, measurable biological processes. Therefore, morality is objective.
    • Objection By this logic, if everything we do that promotes unhappiness is immoral, then a lot of arbitrary daily activities would be deemed immoral. Even working at a job you are 'unhappy' at would be immoral. The moral thing to do would be to provide everyone with enough money to simply pursue their hobbies. The pain one goes through to train for something would be immoral. Defining morality as a measurement of the aversion of pain, and therefore, an objective measure would mean that a large percentage of our own actions towards ourselves would be immoral in nature even if we do them out of a sense of commitment or duty. Pain aversion doesn't define morality as objective, that's using an evolutionary mechanism as a definition of morality, which causes it to fail. E.g Sexual activities are pleasurable to most people but yet deemed immoral in a lot of religions outside certain context. You can argue that this is to avoid things such as STD but this is not contextually reviewed. It doesn't say it is morally right as long as you avoid STD, the activity itself is defined as morally wrong. This subjectivity in various definitions and the very nature of this conversation and its varying views already present an argument against objectivity. Objective truths are not determined by subjective experiences. Regardless of your cultural upbringing, if you jump off a high enough vantage point, a calculated force can kill you, that's objectivity. If it is determined by our preconceptions, it is subjective. The clue is in the term, 'subject' and 'object'. One is intertwined with the 'subject' and the other is independent of it - as an object.
  • Argument for Morality is sometimes objective and sometimes not. Objectivity in this context does not refer to inerrancy but to the description of whether the moral suggestion made can be independently reproduced and agreed with by at least two people, versus a subjective morality which would be incommunicable, which is often the case with implicit core beliefs about morality that people know not to say aloud, such as expecting people to take an hour or more prior to a reasonable arrival time at a destination so as to ensure they are not late, which is commonly felt but has no defense and cannot be set upon any algorithmic basis for independent agreement. There are multiple objective moral systems, so long as they are reducible to first principles and are expressible. I would argue as well, that there is some sort of universal morality, and that it would be best found by the comparative analysis of many moral systems to determine what between them is an aspect of the cognitive human instinct for fairness and cooperation. The aggregation of such an effort, would not immediately be a universal morality, but only evidence of one. Such a morality would also require a substantially greater flexibility to material circumstances than is often given by more rigid thinkers. This would make it a stronger, rather than a weaker, moral system, as it would provide instructions for more situations, and be flexible to the innovations of accretive human thought.

Arguments against

  • Argument against Philosophers, religion reformers, and legal theorists have argued for millennia about what objective morality should be, but they haven't come to a conclusion yet.
    • Objection Problem of induction! "This question has never been definitively answered in all of human history" was once true for every question that has been answered definitively by philosophy, logic, mathematics or science.
  • Argument against It is hard, if not impossible, to find any moral issue on which every culture agrees. If morality were objective, we could expect to have at least some basic agreement, like with basic chemistry. But we don't have such agreement, so morality must be subjective, or intersubjective, but in any case not objective.
    • Objection This argument aims to ground ethics in existing morals. All existing morals could be wrong. Other people defend that ethics is based on reason, independently of existing morals.
    • Objection Although there are differences in moral practice among cultures, that doesn't imply that there should be differences (see is–ought problem).
  • Argument against The matter of which is applied is always subjective. Any standard deemed objective, if applied to moral, would surely give rise to an objective moral standard. But surely other equally objective standards can be applied, so there is no single objective standard.
    • Objection If there is an objective set of moral rules, then no set of rules that contradicts said rules can be objective since such a set would be wrong. Any set of rules that complements said objective moral standard without contradicting it could just be included in that moral standard. Thus, if morality is objective, then there are no sets of objective rules that meaningfully differ from each other; there is simply one set of rules.
  • Argument against The question "Why should I act morally?" cannot be answered. If it is answered along the lines of "because it is the nature of morality" then you are justifying morality with morality, which is circular logic. It is like a law that says "you must adhere to the law". If I don't care about the law then I won't care about the law that tells me to adhere to the law. If it is answered with anything other than morality itself then that reason is a ulterior motive, and needing ulterior motives to act morally goes against the definition of morality.
    • Objection This doesn't actually answer the question. "Why should I act morally?" Is a different question from "what is moral?" Or "is morality objective" In the same vein (to use the stated analogy), "why should I follow the law?" Is a different question than "what is the law?" Or "is the law objective?" Notice, the first question does not have an answer, yet laws can be objective. Therefore, morality can be objective even if there is no reason to be moral.
  • Argument against Morality, as defined by humans, is meant to determine the goodness or badness of an action or intention. To consider if an action is good or bad objectively, then there must be some objective end-goal so that we can measure the extent to which this action pushes towards or away from it. Humans may have very similar end-goals baked into our biology related to species survival, but that does not constitute a universal end-goal. Even if someone were to make the claim that the universal end-goal is space expansion, or any other claim, there is no possible proof for these claims.
  • Argument against Nothing is objective. We must first define a concept before we are able to observe it in the world. There is no single way to define a concept that does not exist until we define it.
  • Argument against For morality to be objective, it must by definition be true uniquely a priori. Knowledge of objective moral principles, if such knowledge can even be considered objective in itself, would necessarily result in the application of such objective moral principles in relation to experience in the external world, since the inherent purpose of morality is its application in actuality. By the examination of the consequences of its application, we can derive the objective moral principles from that experience. But this would inevitably render the objective moral principles subjective, in the sense that human understanding necessitates interpretation, and since deriving a principle a posteriori establishes the principle inherently and inescapably dependent on experience unknowable by reason alone, and therefore subject to human bias. Objective morality is objective only insofar as it exists independently of human understanding, and becomes subjective forthrightly as it is begun to be understood or grasped. But, the objective moral principle is still a priori unchanged, whereas its essence a posteriori goes fundamentally changed. Thus, objective morality fundamentally necessitates that identical moral principles can be simultaneously both subjective and objective. The law of noncontradiction prohibits this. Therefore, it is not logically possible for objective morality to exist.
  • Argument against Imagine I make up a concept, "blorg". Can science automatically denote how much "blorg" one thing has compared to another? Not without a definition of "blorg". Can science create a definition for "blorg"? No. If I make up a universal definition for "blorg", then science just comes after to apply that definition to situations. But science does not figure out what "blorg" is. Similarly, we need to decide what morality is before we can use math to apply morality to situations. If we decide what morality is, then it is not objective.

See also

Notes and references

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