Can morality be objective?

Ethics
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Hi all, first time poster and new to Philosophy. Reading this forum has inspired me to write down some thoughts that have been boucing around my head for a couple years now. The concept of objective morality is of interest to me, mainly personally, as I am quite an anxious person. Whether I am doing the “right” thing is a very common thought. It does also leak into my political leanings/thinking etc which you’ll read towards the end. I’d love to hear all of your thoughts on this! Again, first time poster so please go easy on me.

Objective and subjective morality. What is fact?
The Truism/Convention scale, the individual’s local optimum compared to the objective global optimum, and rationalising opinions.

When I think about the world, and the conflict that accompanies religion, capital, war, and justice, I wonder: where do rules end and facts begin? And can any of those rules be objectively moral? Can objective morality be uncovered on the basis of scientific fact?

As someone who views communism favourably and much of the current political system of capital less so, I ask: which opinions does the latter rationalise as fact, and where does the former disallow those opinions as what they may be, opinions?

This text is my own attempt to define objective morality by grounding it in science.
On my scale of human experience, each of the following fields is applied to create the field above it.

Politics
↑
History
↑
Culture
↑
Psychology
↑
Biology
↑
Chemistry
↑
Physics
↑
Maths

I propose that this sequence, which builds from the most basic truism of mathematics to the convention of politics, can help explain how a person rationalises their own subjective morality, and, possibly define some form of objective morality; by building first from objective fact.

When rationalising your own political, philosophical, and social beliefs, you must decide where to draw your own line between Truism and Convention, or your subjective morality.
I propose the “local optimum” (a term I’m borrowing from mathematics, the most basic truism) as the location at which any individual draws said line.

Beneath the local optimum are both fact (truisms) and your own interpretation of those facts (practical truisms). Above it, you may build your own conventions based on this logic.
A modern traditionalist may find their line higher up the scale, towards convention, by treating cultural practices as sacred, whereas a nihilist may draw their line lower, closer to Biology, or fact.
But what is fact?

In order to define objective morality, we must address the hinge between the subjective and objective morality/fact. The Axiom. Human survival and wellbeing matter.
Everyone who builds a morality crosses this gap. To cross it objectively, the fewest, most basic and most widely shared premises must be used.
Human survival and wellbeing matter. Can objectiveness be found from this statement? Or is it just opinion? I’m not sure. I am however, sure, that if my, or another axiom can be objectively moral, that the lower limit of the global optimum’s placement can be higher than basic Biology.
But as it is my view, I would employee the following points from Hart’s “minimum content of natural law.”

(Summarised)
Human vulnerability: we can easily hurt and kill each other, so rules against violence are needed.
Approximate equality: no one is strong enough to dominate everyone for long, so cooperation beats domination.
Limited altruism: people aren’t purely selfish or purely generous, so rules help keep us in check.
Limited resources: there isn’t enough for everyone to take whatever they want, so some form of property is needed.
Limited understanding and willpower: not everyone will follow rules voluntarily, so some enforcement is needed.

These are not inherently truisms, but rather “practical truisms”: largely agreeable solutions to problems that stem/build on truisms (Such as the biological need to survive and reproduce). A practical truism built on fact could then be rationalised as objectively moral. I would guess that the overwhelming majority of people would place their local optimum above these practical truisms (which I would place in Psychology, relating to our own inner sense of justice and kindness).

However, crucially, a person may argue that their own truisms, and practical truisms must be believed, followed, and enforced, but no person has the right to enforce their own conventions merely because they are, conventions.
When settling on your own local optimum, or where you place the end of truisms on the scale of your own beliefs and leanings, you must rationalise the foundation of your own beliefs as practical truisms.

Consider Chesterton’s Fence: if you find a fence in a field and don’t know why it’s there, find out before you tear it down. It can work differently, but why did it end up this way? Do you see your own imaginary fence as a convention, or as a practical truism that you must build your beliefs on? If your belief is a convention, it must be supported by a practical truism beneath it, no matter how many layers must be peeled away.

For me, this sits somewhere inside the Psychology field.
I believe I would land with the following practical truisms supporting my own local optimum’s placement within Psychology, as well as objective morality, the global optimum.

All people deserve to live free from physical, and to some extent emotional/psychological/mental, harm.
Building on a few of Hart’s practical truisms (equality, altruism and availability of resources), if people have a right to these resources, I will make the logical extension that they also have a duty to share their excess, as well as a moral obligation not to impede others’ access to them.
I specify “to some extent” because emotional harm could be subject to interpretation, and the location of said interpreter’s local optimum will affect that interpretation.
I argue that this thought is objectively moral, as it is a logical extension of scientific fact.

Culture and convention cannot be regarded as sacred, or as law, if they contradict any truism or, less sternly (I need to find another word here), a practical truism.
As Religion and Culture sit firmly on the convention side of the scale, religious and cultural ideas that contradict truisms (perhaps the patriarchal nature of Abrahamic religions) cannot form the basis of moral authority.
Because religious morality is formed on the basis of convention, rather than truism, it is subjective morality and therefore cannot be rationalised by fact.

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Welcome to the seemingly insoluble problem of morality, and how to get others to hold the same values as you do. :wink:

I’m probably not a believer in objective morality, and I’m not even sure what that means. Are there moral truths that are true independently of what any individual or society believes or values? I’m not confident there are.

Not sure what that means. I’m not aesthetically attracted to appeals to science to support a particular worldview. The history of this model veers from eugenics to biological determinism, so I’m wary of treating scientific claims about human nature as if they can easily settle questions about how we ought to live.

My question to you is: why should we care? You can make any argument you want about the reasonableness of a given approach to morality, but why ought we follow any of it?

The ultimate problem for morality isn’t finding perspectives that support this or that account of morality. It’s having a reason to be compelled to follow it.

Thoughts?

I oscillate between emotivism and the view that we can pragmatically construct moral systems aimed at promoting wellbeing and minimising suffering. But even if we can establish fairly obvious cases, say, that poisoning the water supply is harmful to most, perhaps all people, the concept of wellbeing itself isn’t straightforward.

How do we resolve moral disputes over homosexuality, trans rights, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, and so on? Once you introduce teleological accounts and competing conceptions of what constitutes human wellbeing, the moral significance of these issues can look radically different depending on the framework you adopt.

When you wrote this -

I found myself thinking that this leads to an emotivist account of morality: the view that moral judgments express our attitudes or emotions rather than describe objective moral facts.

And what could be more natural than trying to use science to recast our values as objective truths?

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Paraconsistent logic was invented for such occasions where there’s differences like in the following scenario: X steals medicine to save Y. Is X good/bad? X is both good and bad. There’s no requirement for objective morality at all. Life’s full of inconsistencies and it would do us a whole lot of good to accept them.

Nevertheless I can appreciate your motivation for an objective morality and your noble attempt to ground morality in science. Science is known for being able to settle matters one way or the other with a level of certainty elsewhere. Science has (in accordance to your no-harm thoughts) figured out how our body works and that can surely help us and guide us in our quest for morality, objective/subjective.

If you have any specific questions on what you see above, please ask. :smiling_cat_with_heart_eyes:

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This topic resonates with me. I would like to share a few thoughts, though I am not sure if they will be of use to you.

As for the facts, I am inclined to accept as a fact that wherever people live, some form of morality emerges. Another fact, in my view, is that what we call morality arises only through interaction between at least two people. A third fact: morality generally emerges where there is undesirable behavior and the possibility of consciously choosing a certain good—including a choice that might be disadvantageous to the person acting. A fourth fact is that, while situated within morality (that is, as a moral being), it is impossible to fully study morality, since doing so would require an external perspective. Finally, a fifth fact: “morality” appears to be one of the defining characteristics of what we call a human being.

I regard these points as facts (though I cannot be entirely certain).

Your model is interesting and likely possesses some explanatory power. However, in my view, the more significant issue you are addressing is the search for a starting point—ideally an “objective” one—at which a person gains the right to stop justifying their beliefs.

I also find it interesting to consider how one distinguishes something that is truly factual from something that is merely so deeply ingrained in human thought that we no longer perceive it as a convention.

If you manage to find such a point and substantiate it convincingly, I would be very interested to hear about it.

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Not at all what I intended here! Although I see how my ideas could end up as a bit of a “Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche” kind of thing…. eugenics and biological determinism are far from my position, which I cannot stress enough as a (radical?) leftist.

I guess my intention here was to say, on my tower of science to convention, a person would draw a line where they believe facts end and convention starts. A fascist would draw their local optimum very high on this chart, as they believe their political environment to be morally correct, therefore are supportive of the historical origins, (maybe something related to colonialism) therefore their culture/religion etc. down to the bottom.

A more reasonable person could decide that “fact” cannot be built upon past Human Biology. Although they’d argue that there is objective morality higher than this, they probably couldn’t prove it (making it subjective morality). They’d probably respect others’ politics, or at the very least culture, and wouldn’t enforce their own on others.

But most importantly, nobody is drawing the line below Biology (or at least any reasonable person)
in the past, we did, too much yellow bile in you making you hateful and if we let some out you will be less hateful (more moral?) etc. I think we can all agree that this kind of stuff is well and truly in the Psycology field, with our current understanding of the mind. I just think that in the future, that line could move even higher!

I want to be very clear that I do not claim or believe that an axiom between truth and convention at the top of the chart is moral, but I do believe that there could be some way to bridge the gap to Psychology. Then we could find objective morality?

Does that make sense? I’m not sure! I’m not much of a writer but I’m trying my best hahaha

I think that is a totally reasonable critic, and in the absolute nicest way possible, I’d say that wouldn’t be super relevant to me in this moment? I think many people could still do the wrong thing even in a world where there’s a magic objective morality dictated to us.
But still, maybe my energy would be better directed in understanding my own internal reasoning for my moral beliefs, without dipping into Biology. Scary…

I need to read a little more on this. I don’t quite understand the emotivist position yet. The Boo-Yay theory for me could be pretty biologically motivated for survival? Again, I know very little on this, maybe I can get back to you!

I do want to sincerly thank you for your reply! I really hope none of that came off as argumentative in any offensive way. You’re just another person like me trying to find meaning, and I respect that!
:slight_smile:

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Thanks for the post

A substantial part of what the ancients called morality is explained by

A) Kinship

B) Co-operative and reciprocal behaviour

C) inclinations that support groupishness and empathy

Taken together they do not appear to provide strong foundations for a radical left project based purely on morality.

I was interested in Hart’s minimum requirements for natural law. I had not seen these before. I do think that these would be consistent with what John Rawls would call “Liberal Democratic Socialism” but they do not provide much support for “State Socialism with a command economy”.

Thats not to entirely dismiss the radical left project. I just don’t think the case for it, if there is a case for it, can be simply derived from a conception of morality.

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Fwiw, an alternative to the likes of “divine command theory”, (an/the) objective basis for moral judgment / moral reasoning (not to be confused with either jurisprudence or public policy “dilemmas”) …

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I agree with this entirely, and reject that the concept of objective morality as incoherent.

That said, I’ve been pulled to accept that there are “true” moral statements, but these are descriptive or observational rather than some kind of metaphysical statement.

I also feel like i should say, I personally don’t see the issue with eugenics. I see the issue with centralised eugenics.

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Along with deliberate (knowing) action, where the actor accepts responsibility for the action (agency), I agree that morality only arises where two deliberating, responsible agents interact. The two people is the more fundamental thing - because I’m just saying what a person is in this context, namely a knowing, choosing agent of action.

So there is at least a subjective component of private deliberation or intentionality to be the moral actor, and then there is the objectifiable, public component of the act itself, in the world, where another deliberating, judging person feels that act. So the interaction itself must have an objective component to it (the other person in the world, not just inside my deliberations).

If we take out the objective node in the morality model, while trying sustain a moral universe, we’ve reduced this universe to one person’s head. And that removes the fact of interaction, which disables morality (since we said morality involves at least two people).

Meaning, why be moral or discuss morality if not to impact other people’s behavior? And once you are impacting the world, you are distinguishing a subjective world (your deliberating mind/soul/personhood) from the objective world (your neighbor who you see breaking the law, or who you want to beat up or steal from).

“They believe…”

I think my point is, if we each get to draw our own lines to establish the starting point for a morality, we are ignoring what happens in our universe. The point of a moral law, like “murder is wrong” is not to simply think moral thoughts. The law is to justify physically stopping the murderer in the world, by grabbing him and jailing him for his wrong-doing, not because of my personal judgment of his actions.

If the wrong is in the world, the law that recognizes this wrong has to be in the world.

(Don’t ask me to prove the physics or ontology of a moral law. But just because I can’t see gravity, doesn’t mean something isn’t there.)

But if we think morality is grounded in a subjective place, how could one ever justify grabbing someone else, stopping them and jailing them for an “immoral act”? That other person could have just drawn his own line of where morality begins and just not ruled out murder as immoral.

So unless “murder is wrong” is believed by each subject in a community to be objectively true, and authoritative over all people in the community, laws have no function, morality has no function, and morality itself (I think) doesn’t come to exist.

Why debate “raping kids is wrong” with anyone who thinks “morality is a subjective construct, like ‘wrongness’ or ‘goodness’ are merely constructs”? Maybe two people even both agree that raping kids is wrong, but the rapists don’t, so who cares what anyone thinks if morality is just an academic exercise in subjective judgment - none of that ever gathers to posse to actually stop the rapist, at least not until all agree on the objective moral law that “raping kids is bad, so rapists must be stopped”.

I don’t understand how anyone thinks otherwise. It’s hard to find an absolute or an objective, eternal truth. But so what? It seems impossible to make morality function without objective facts. It’s hard to find an absolute moral fact, which is why people resort to “murder” and “raping kids” because it’s easier to let them slip past. But if you think morality only needs subjective lines to draw up something meaningful, and communities of subjective line makers coming to temporary consensus, then we honest, academic thinkers have to leave room open for the good, upstanding child rapist who sells a convincing subjective argument.

My basic position is that, we can doubt the existence of truth, or doubt that even if truth exists that we will ever grasp it, or doubt that if we grasp it we will ever grasp it with enough certainty to codify it into law, or if you think we can be to some degree true knowing agents, we can doubt we are truly free agents, and responsible for our actions. But if we doubt some or all of these things, why move on to morality? All the tools and components of a moral community have been stripped away. There is no good or bad behavior if there is no truth, and certainly, there is no resisting the “bad behavior” in others - there are just competing strengths (justice becomes the will of the strongest). So we aren’t playing morality games, just power games.

We may disagree on the specifics (and should, and should debate them), but we all have to agree that some things are objectively bad for all people, or else there is no sense in ever listening to any rule or moral judgment that you don’t like (and there would be no sense trying to morally justify arresting a criminal, or stopping a crime).

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At some point here you switch from describing what is to saying what matters. Where exactly does that switch happen, and what justifies it?

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I misspoke in my previous post. I was laying down his options, not advocating moral relativism/nihilism.

From the perspective of the author of The Moral Landscape the OP is right to seek a moral foundation in science. Science is objective and deals in facts that are demonstrable and binding. No one can argue himself out of a gravitational field :grin:

It may not be possible to derive an ought from an is but clarity on the ises will greatly enhance our moral reasoning and that falls within the purview of science.

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Didn’t mean to suggest that was your intention. I was really pointing to the history of using science as a foundation for values

Maybe. I’m not so sure I would care if I weren’t living in a supermarket of ideas and values. If it were just me on a farm, with limited contact with other people, I don’t think I would take much interest in these questions. It’s because people are shouting their values at you all day that I feel compelled to make sense of what’s out there. At heart, I think I’m an existential nihilist.

I’m not really sure I understand your project, though that may be my failing. As far as I can tell, morality is a code of conduct that societies use to regulate power relationships and facilitate social cooperation. In that sense, it’s no more mysterious or objective than a set of traffic lights, which helps to navigate traffic safely and efficiently (for the most part).

Many people seek to ground morality in either science or theism, as though there exists an ideal way of behaving that reaches beyond human experience into a realm of Archimedean certainty. I’m skeptical that such a standpoint is available but I’m open to ideas.

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Imho, morality is

(e.g.) clinical medicine, public health or human ecology.

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Do you think we develop further as moral agents over time? Is morality a fallibilist enterprise, in which our moral beliefs and values are progressively revised and improved? (And looking at the present era it’s also clear it can go backwards.)

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Objective morality is laid out in Kant’s universal laws in his Kingdom of Ends and spark the French An American Revolutionary War’s.

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Objective morality and subjective morality.

In my view, these terms—and the concepts behind them—are inadequate. I agree with you that if only subjective morality existed, it would amount to an absence of morality. Yet, settling on the idea that something is “objectively good” is not entirely ideal either. If we all accept the existence of an “objective” truth, the question arises: who exactly possesses it? Disputes would ensue—disputes in which, once again, the strongest would prevail. And if no one possesses objective truth, then what use is the concept to us?

Thus, I maintain that neither objective nor subjective morality is what we need.

There is a useful term: “intersubjective truth”—or simply “intersubjectivity”—referring to a truth shared by a number of subjects.

However, even if you and I agree that human life is a good—thereby finding common ground on that point—we might still diverge on other issues, such as whether to say grace before a meal or where to draw the line between the private and the public spheres.

This is where “ideology” comes to the rescue: a coherent set of ideas regarding the common good. I would even define ideology as an intersubjective conception of an objective good. Rules are derived from ideology and subsequently reflected in the legal system. Yet, as history shows, no ideology lasts forever; each is eventually replaced by another. Why? Because nothing remains identical to itself the very next moment; things evolve and form new connections. There is no such thing as the “end of history”—or rather, it will only occur with the extinction of humanity, at which point we will no longer care about the future, truth, or morality.

All in all, I am satisfied with the way things are currently arranged. “Priests” invent a set of ideas about the good (an ideology) and instill these ideas in the masses; the masses, in turn, agree to maintain order; institutions derive the law from this; then the ideology declines, the coherent whole shatters into fragments, and a new ideology is forged from those shards.

Why do we dislike this course of history? I think it is because we do not want to admit we were wrong. We do not want to accept that our notions of truth were actually delusions. So, we posit “objectivity”—in an attempt to immortalize them. But then we die, and new people take our place—people who couldn’t care less about our truths.

A woman has the right to wear trousers. To many of us, this seems like a truth. But try traveling back to the 19th century and proving it there. Or take another example: a man has the right to urinate while standing up; yet in Switzerland, they think otherwise (it is forbidden there after 10 p.m.).

Morality arises wherever there are two or more people. But what form it takes—that is an entirely different question.

Despite my disagreement with the term “objective morality,” I am compelled to admit that the concept performs a vital function. After all, if everyone were to declare tomorrow that morality is merely intersubjective, our social order would collapse (incidentally, that is the direction in which we are currently heading). Knowledge should remain the province of priests, philosophers, and a handful of the initiated. Not just anyone should be pondering morality. Fortunately, most people don’t; they simply grumble that things used to be better and believe that everything is going to the dogs.

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Maybe we do, but unevenly across varying environments.

I think of morality as an adaptive enterprise by which best practices for (e.g.) harm-prevention / reduction, injustice-mitigation, nonreciprocal care, etc are, at best, reflectively exercised as a way of life (P. Hadot).

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Oh, I like that.

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Negative utilitarianism sounds good. I recall the UN Millennium Development Goals which I encountered in my younger days.

  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Halve the number of people living on less than $1.25 per day and those suffering from hunger
  2. Universal primary education. Ensure children everywhere, boys and girls, complete their primary education
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women. Reduce gender disparity in primary and secondary education.
  4. Reduce child mortality. Cut the under-5 mortality rates to 2/3 of its 1990 levels
  5. Improve maternal health. Reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters and provide universal access to reproductive health
  6. Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases. Halt and begin to reverse the spread of major diseases
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability. Integrate sustainable principles into policies, reduce biodiversity loss and halve the number of people without access to sustainable safe drinking water and sanitation
  8. Develop a global partnership for development. Build and open, rule-based trading and financial system, address the special needs of LDCs (least-developed countries) and make technology available
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To follow up on my previous answer:

Let me cite an interesting example that relates directly to the law. Consider the Code of Civil Procedure of any Soviet republic alongside the Code of Civil Procedure of a modern post-Soviet state.

The former code was grounded in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which posits the existence of an objective reality independent of human consciousness. The code was premised on the idea that an objective truth exists and can be discovered. Consequently, the court was granted broad powers to establish the truth independently. That code empowered the court to request documents or compel parties to produce specific evidence on its own initiative. The court was expected to actively ascertain the circumstances of the case. This aligned well with the general Soviet critique of “formal-bourgeois” law—the view that formal procedure could mask substantive injustice.

The current code is built on the adversarial principle. There has been a shift from objective truth to “adversarial truth.” Truth is now established solely based on the facts presented by the parties. The court is assigned the role of managing the proceedings. It is not merely that the court refrains from requesting items; it often lacks the authority even to suggest that a party obtain specific evidence, as doing so would violate the adversarial nature of the process.

Is this good or bad? I do not know. The Soviet model of the court could be considered fair—after all, knowing what actually happened is crucial for a just decision. Yet the modern court is also fair, as one must forge one’s own destiny and substantiate one’s own claims and objections. It all depends on one’s perspective.