Is Morality Subjective?
Morality is subjective. Or at least most of us here think it is.
As for laws, laws at least in the western world do not have a basis on any sort of objective morality.
As for their application, when it comes to judgment, it's arbitrary.
blah, I'm speaking gibberish again.
I appreciate your admission that you're speaking gibberish.
You state as a principle that "morality is subjective". But it therefore follows that the principle you stated that is subjective must itself be subjective. That is enough to at least introduce a glimmer of skepticism in your assertion.
May I suggest an objective foundation to morality-- your existence and the existence of other humans. To quote Shakespere's Shylock: "I am a person, too. Hath I not eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as you are? If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me, do I not laugh? If you poison me, do I not die?" Thus, our reality as sentient beings gives us a commonality from which to derive ethics, and these ethics are consistent through time and in every culture. Through time and in every culture, there are applications that are different-- the tolerence of slavery and the subordination of women, for example. But foundational concepts of "right" and wrong" or "truth" and "falsehood" are not arbitrary at all, deriving as they do from objective concepts of pleasure, pain, individual, family, tribe, life, and death.
And nor do I accept your claim that law is arbitrary. Whether it is the law of Micronesia or the Supreme Court of the United States, it is anything but arbitrary as it flows out of precedence (or tradition) and competing arguments. No judge or tribal chief rolls a dice, for the moment they did that, they would cease to be a judge or a tribal chief. Jurisprudence is inherently rational and thusly a non-arbitrary and an objective process. We may not care for the rulings or the laws, but we are merely expressing our opinion in contrast to the weight of law that jurists have formulated over time.
As for laws, laws at least in the western world do not have a basis on any sort of objective morality.
As for their application, when it comes to judgment, it's arbitrary.
blah, I'm speaking gibberish again.
I appreciate your admission that you're speaking gibberish.
You state as a principle that "morality is subjective". But it therefore follows that the principle you stated that is subjective must itself be subjective. That is enough to at least introduce a glimmer of skepticism in your assertion.
May I suggest an objective foundation to morality-- your existence and the existence of other humans. To quote Shakespere's Shylock: "I am a person, too. Hath I not eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as you are? If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me, do I not laugh? If you poison me, do I not die?" Thus, our reality as sentient beings gives us a commonality from which to derive ethics, and these ethics are consistent through time and in every culture. Through time and in every culture, there are applications that are different-- the tolerence of slavery and the subordination of women, for example. But foundational concepts of "right" and wrong" or "truth" and "falsehood" are not arbitrary at all, deriving as they do from objective concepts of pleasure, pain, individual, family, tribe, life, and death.
And nor do I accept your claim that law is arbitrary. Whether it is the law of Micronesia or the Supreme Court of the United States, it is anything but arbitrary as it flows out of precedence (or tradition) and competing arguments. No judge or tribal chief rolls a dice, for the moment they did that, they would cease to be a judge or a tribal chief. Jurisprudence is inherently rational and thusly a non-arbitrary and an objective process. We may not care for the rulings or the laws, but we are merely expressing our opinion in contrast to the weight of law that jurists have formulated over time.
posted by My Mall and News at
9:31 PM
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