I mean, I think I am a machine, for the most part I seek out pleasure for myself although I’m sure I try to create pleasure for others if it will benefit me even if not directly.
Agree. Good point.
I’m not sure where emotivists take this. Presumably they would hold different views. I imagine few would think we should agree on emotionality as this would suggest an objectivity they are repudiating. I guess they might say let’s build coalitions of agreement based on our collective reactions. But would this amount to morality as a popularity contest?
I guess my point is that there are two things: what I believe to be morally true (or what is true) and what a given group believes to be morally true.
It is the same for science. We could start a scientific group, but we would have to at the same time be cognizant of what the other members believe to be scientifically true. If a large number of the members believe that the Earth is flat then that thesis would need to be accepted as scientifically plausible within that group. Or if only two members believe such a thing then we might kick them out and make a rule/dogma for the group about the thesis that the Earth is flat. Either way the matter of communal belief is brought to bear.
In our day we tend to conflate these two different things and assume that intersubjective agreement generates truth.
I think it would amount to the same thing, unless there is no attempt to bring others into one’s own group.
More generally I think most emotivists would say that they do not engage in moral proselytization, and I think they are deceiving themselves in this. My old thread revolved around the idea that everyone is inevitably involved in moral claims. The idea that one can “sit out” morality requires very odd and unsustainable definitions of “morality.”
What, if anything, does “exist objectively” from your POV?
Is “true reality” just “atoms and void”? And then everything else is “just feelings” ? Are feelings less real ?
Is the point, for you, a sense of liberation from the mere preferences of others ?
I can empathize with this drive toward autonomy, but are you not appealing to norms of rationality in your OP ? If you ask for a case to be for or against your view of ethics, is not the norm of rationality living for you ?
Indeed. I don’t. And I also think that it may lead to Nazism or similar.
Agree. It would be very difficult, unless you were disengaged, not to. It’s also often the case that those people who argue that morality is subjective can be amongst the most dictatorial in their own moral positions.
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I daresay that despite your moral nihilism, you are still free, not imprisoned (judging by the fact that you’re discussing it here).
I think humanity has learned to solve the problem of moral nihilism in a practical way—the state counters moral nihilism with a criminal code and the inevitability of punishment, ensured by coercive force.
Therefore, society is generally indifferent to whether you are a highly moral person or, on the contrary, a nihilist. This is more of an individual problem than a societal one. How you cope with the oppression of rules and laws without feeling obligated becomes your own problem, and most likely condemns you to loneliness.
At the same time, I would note that your ability to speak, write down your thoughts, reason, and hold opinions is evidence that you are at least not a “radical moral nihilist,” since you had to interact with others in one way or another to acquire these skills. Others taught you. Essentially (in a broad sense), you have declared yourself a nihilist in relation to the social structure that created you (as an individual), that made you possible at all. Consequently, you first became someone by following morality, by engaging in interactions with others.
For someone who has lost all moral anchors, mentioning this might be helpful, if only to remind you of the expectations of those who invested in you, hoping to raise a virtuous person. If so, then you are not yet a moral nihilist.
But I’d also like to point out that you continue to experience moral nihilism while still being involved in morality itself—for if you admit that morality doesn’t exist, you can’t be a moral nihilist. Thus, morality and nihilism are two sides of the same coin. And yet you continue to be involved in the concept of morality, while declaring yourself a nihilist.
You’ve presented a surprisingly coherent account. I’m impressed.
How about those occasions when someone tried to give you pleasure, when it is clear that they are doing so not for your sake, but for their own? And at the extreme, if someone deceives you in order to please you, but for their own gain? You are pleased—then notice the deceit…
They behave towards you as you describe.
Would you find that duplicitous? Unappealing? Objectionable?
Ought they behave in this way?
You see where I am going here: I wonder if even with your Moral Nihilism, there remains a space in which there are truths about the sorts of things people should do, how they might best behave towards one another?
From the nastika (atheistic) tradition of Hinduism we have Purana Kassapa who didn’t believe in karma, that good and bad deeds were rewarded or punished; the universe was totally indifferent to morality. The other “heretical” teacher was Ajita Kesakambali who denied karma, the immortality of the soul and declared death to be final; he recommended hedonism.
You can be a physicalist, atheist and still be a moral realist (re The Moral Landscape, Utilitarianism, Deontology, Buddhism).
Moreover, Judaism has ethics (the decalog, etc.) while lacking belief in an afterlife. There’s only 1 life and it is best spent on God (Judaic orthopraxis vs. Christian orthodoxa).
It doesn’t matter if you’re a moral nihilist because you still have that morality gene that got humans thus far.
Needless to say Christianity was dead against existentialism. With its rejection of authority, affirmation of autonomy and auto-defining life, it threatened to undermine the Christian top-down arrangement.
That suggests moral nihilist also has a moral view, which implies asserting morality exists. Therefore moral nihilist is a moral realist.
What if one were to argue that constituting any situation is a preferred and a non-preferred dimension, and one has no choice but to ‘choose’ what is preferred? In other words, one always does what one ‘ought’ to do. In such a scenario, what you’re calling ‘ought’ is superfluous.
Isn’t this already a moral shape? Nihilism implies we can’t even extrapolate morals from biology.
I also don’t think there are any objective morals, because morality is a human concept. But as such, this concept had to form from something, and the biological drives we have that shape our social constructs and behaviors do tend to shape similar moralities in separated cultures.
So morality do seem to exist as a tangible dimension within the experience of what it means to be human.
And it rather seems that cultures which produce cultural norms which goes against these naturally forming moral grounds, are the very behaviors and doctrines that are made-up constructs, not the basic morality they suppress.
So my conclusion is that the the fact human social groups gravitate towards similar moral norms as others, proves there is a foundational morality to our species beyond any made-up constructs.
And that the problems with defining morality is the problem of reconciling these basic drives with the increasing complexity of modern life and modernity.
In religion, the priest or text tells the crowd how to act in moral ways, it uses the authority to force them. But this also means they can manipulate and invent new concepts which overwrites the basic drives and hijack people’s intuition.
And outside religion, the people are left to accept morality for what it is, which returns them back to their original intuitions in opposition or alignment with society’s laws.
Beyond the problems of religion in this regard, modern conversations about morality usually revolves more around reconciling the fundamental morality with what society has written into law.
And all of this has confused people. The solution is to return back and register what basic morality we humans gravitate towards and study what further complexity we can build from it.
In that regard you are right about the appeal to the majority. But the majority needs to be honest with what they promotes, is it from the intuition at the core of our experience as humans or is it stemming from some corrupt indoctrination?
No, but I am not saying that these intuitions actually have truth values; it’s just ways we tend to behave that, in society, we would call morals. Just because I can admit we have intuitions doesn’t mean I am saying some inuitions are right and others are wrong.
The issue I have is just with the ought. I’m not sure an “ought to” exists. If the deception causes more negative consequences to my life than the pleasure, I am sure I would want them to act differently, but from their point of view, they wanted to act that way, and from an objective standpoint, I don’t know why my want would carry more weight than their want. From the 3rd person, we are both just machines doing what we want. There aren’t oughts involved.
Truth values are subject to change depending on the era, culture, political upheavals and societal values. However, the existence of the intuitions don’t change. They always do exist as long as humans exist.
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make with this reply.
Whether morality exists or not, and real or not is based on the existence of moral intuition and judgement system within the society and people. Not on the truth values or moral right or wrong in someone’s belief. Is this making sense?
Up to now, you have chosen life over death. Moral situations, however, exist when you are living. This means that you need to make certain moral decisions sometimes. So you have to accept a set of principles that help you to decide in moral situations; otherwise, you cannot live. Therefore, you cannot be a moral nihilist!
No, I think you are mistaken. I make decisions that involve what you would call morals, and I make these decisions based of instincts I have from how I was raised, and my behavior as a human, but as a moral nihilist I just don’t think these morals can actually have right or wrong values objectively.
This is a somewhat ambiguous claim. There are true statements about how we do act in relation to others, and there are true statements about we can successfully act (to achieve some goal or follow a rule) in relation to others, but whether or not there are true statements about how we morally ought to act in relation to others is the very thing being questioned. A moral nihilist would say no.
How could you possibly be neither right nor wrong? You chose those principles that help you to decide in a moral situation. You cannot decide without those principles. Those principles exist for you. Therefore, you cannot be a moral nihilist since you derive what right action is from those principles!