Health is not difficult to define: "The combined status of physical indicators that - without intervention - allow for the expected remaining lifespan appropriate for the age of the subject". Whatever is good or bad is much harder. There are plenty of examples in every textbook of philosophy.
Very well done! Thank you for this. Writing a paper that discusses whether morality is objective by comparing Sam Harris and Charles Taylor, and this helped lots! Unfortunately in Germany we dont seem to have this "overview" seminars, we often discuss mainly one author in a class about moral philosophy.
13:50 seems like a flawed tracing of the flow of logic. You don't recognize that their morals are EQUAL to yours, but rather, you can't say with complete confidence that any one moral system is correct, and therefore your own may be wrong, and so all moral systems must be given proper analysis.
One cant be certain of anything, right ???....the statement purports itself to be true...but if you cant be certain of anything, how can you be certain....that you cant be certain of anything ??? Its an anti concept....it refutes itself
Pojman makes an error. While evaluating moral relativism, he cannot avoid sneaking in moral evaluations - things that are intuitively "wrong" to him. In order to evaluate morals, you have to include the reason, the teleology why such rules are there. Teleology is by very definition arbitrary. You can choose to be tolerant - or you can choose not to be tolerant - depending on what you want to achieve. The hidden teleology that students have to be able to resolve a math equation is that they will need to apply those in their professional life. You don't want engineers that build bridges that cave in with the first breeze of wind. That's the hidden teleology of student having to have a math equation right. We can see this evolution in art. In the old days you had to have certain skills, because your main goal was to paint portraits of people. People won't accept a painter that will paint portraits that are unrecognizable. When photography was introduced, this skill was not required anymore, allowing for a more creative way of painting. In the end we got Jackson Pollock - and there was no more need to get the math equation right. Often, practices that were consider morally reprehensible have a similar "hidden teleology" - like killing old people or killing newborn baby girls. Sometimes the original teleology disappears while the moral rule remains, but that's how human culture works. As Hume so rightly asserts: "one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is"". Another point, not addressed here, is that (as Stephen Toulmin states) "nature is amoral". For the love of God, we cannot find *ANY* moral rule in nature. That means it is - by very definition - a construction. A means to some arbitrary, mostly forgotten goal. Another interesting observation in that regard is those moral rules apply *mostly* to members of the same tribe. You may not kill a member of your tribe - but it is okay or even encouraged to kill members of other tribes. A great source of so called "objective morality" is the Bible. "Thou shall not kill" - unless you're a member of the Amalekites, Canaanites, Midianites or Moabites: "Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey". I've always wondered what the oxes, sheep, camels and donkeys had done wrong. So we can conclude that even the strictest moral system is *not* by definition "universal". Hence - there cannot be a consistent system of "moral objectivity" - not even a limited one - that can objectively be defended without exposition of the underlying teleology.
I don't get why in ethical relativism we can't judge or act to change other culture values... What if nobody knows what is right and we just impose to others? Why would that be bad
13:50 This argument is besides the point. When it comes to physical facts as the video calls them someone can point at a fish and call it a tree and they would be wrong etc. etc. However, when it comes to morality nobody is right. There is no such thing as a moral fact as what is has no bearing on what ought to be, and therefore the mere idea of ethical diversity and ethical relativism implies a sort of objectivism which simply does not exist. So within this nonexistent objective moral system of course ethical diversity would not imply ethical relativism, someone may be right and someone may be wrong, but that is within this objective system and this system does not exist.
@@RickJaeger I couldn’t disagree with you anymore. It is not begging the question. Unless our understanding of reality is completely and utterly false there is absolutely no connection between objectivity and morality on a fundamental level. You can have objectively moral things within some moral framework but that framework is based on nothing but feelings. Although I do accept that it is possible we truly don’t understand our reality, but as things stand I don’t see how I’m begging the question
I taught mathematics and physics for a dozen years at a small community college. I was a very good teacher and delivered some beautifully crafted lectures. I know what a good lecture is. You have produced here a superlative lecture. Thank you. I am going to watch it again. I like your concept of ethical objectivism. However, it is not really objective in the sense that I would normally associate with the word objective. Consider the case of an interaction between a hungry polar bear and a human being. The polar bear will simply kill and eat the human being. Human beings are just warm meat to a polar bear. That is an objective fact. As far as I know, there is no observational evidence in the universe that there is anything special about human beings. If there were indeed a god or gods that had a preference for human beings and their well-being, then one would expect to observe them actively protecting us from viruses, poisons, polar bears, pain, and suffering. This is not the case. However, I would argue that virtually every human being regards themselves and at least some others as being more than just food for hungry predators. This general consensus among humans is also an objective fact. It seems reasonable to me that such a fact and other similar facts can provide at least part of a foundation for a moral system that is "objective."
Conventional relativism is more in touch with reality from an egalitarian model. Equality in the sense that living demands exerting pressure relative to all species within their capacity to do so contrary to their environments,prey,or each other. Practical for the sake of the beholder and group to which they belong. This is the most natural and effective way to exercise moral relativism in terms of projects and objects under moral scrutiny.
"Hitler is as moral as Gandhi" is not necessarily an absurd consequence of believing morality. It may be a natural consequence of accepting the view that morals are subjective and relative. If you watched the video you have already seen the difficulty/impossibility of assessing whether serving at a soup kitchen or building a house for humanity is more or less moral. Hitler's and Gandhi's personal moralities are much further apart in their flavour but they both tried to justify them by referring to what they professed to be correct/right/good based on their own biases and imperfections. That is to say they were both expressing a morality. Surely the question 'who is the most moral' is a question of whose actions most closely aligned with their moral values? The Hitler Gandhi statement is only absurd if you take the view you are able to achieve clearer, less biased thinking, and are somehow able to assess correctly what is objectively right and wrong. Hitler's and Gandhi's moralities both seem absurd to me, but only to the extent that my own mental faculty and personal bias will allow. That is all I have to go on at the moment. Would very much appreciate help in widening my understanding on this topic.
Hitler and Gandhi are similar to the drano and apple juice example it's difficult or impossible to assess whether the soup kitchen is more or less moral than building a house for humanity, but you can recognize both are good, regardless of which is better. splitting hairs between which 2 goods are better isn't really relevant when it comes to what's good or bad
@@DistantKingdom That's a pattern you find in subjective realms rather than objective. For example, we might not be able to agree on exactly what temperature is ideal for a room. But I'm sure we'll start to agree if we crank up the heat way too high that it's too hot. We might not be able to agree on the perfect amount of salt for a dish, but we'll soon start to agree when it's way too salty for both of us that this, at least, is too much. We might not be able to agree on our favorite song, but both of us would likely find any random and arbitrary collection of sounds to sound like noise rather than music.
5:05 What if a relativist said that, genocides contribute positively towards the preservation of the planet? The Earth is overpopulated, hence we need to reduce its population
I'm late. But why can't they just argue there are other and more ethical ways to reduce population. And the suffer genocide can and does cause is not ethical even if it leads to something you find ethical. Like killing someone to stop a thief. Tbh I didn't put to much thought into this. There are issue here with what I said. But I dont see how what you said always holds to true in ethical relativism.
2:14 No, the question is not are our moral judgements connected to anything real. They could be so, without being objective. Our notion of unicorns is connected to real things: horses and horns. That doesn't mean unicorns are real. In the same way our moral judgements can connect to real things but that doesn't mean they themselves are objective. What is needed is a tighter definition. Do our moral judgements reflect or represent an objective morality. Or, is there a morality in reality which our moral judgements can reflect or not reflect.
2:30 Moral relativists are not people who merely believe there is nothing connecting our judgements with reality. They believe morality is real, but only exists relative to particular things. It's possible to be a non-objectivist without being a relativist. Relativism actually kind of assumes an objectivity, just a non-singular one. Looking at it another way round, the language you've used is "our moral feelings". This presumably refers to everybody. If everybody's moral feelings connect with something real, they are all objective. But since different people have many different moral feelings, the objectivity cannot be singular, but must be multiple. This is actually a picture of moral relativism you're building up, while imagining it to be moral objectivism.
2:56 The analogy with health is ridiculous. Nothing in this analogy establishes that moral judgements are objective. It just shows that they have some factors similar to health questions. Specifically: that there can be different scales of difference between different options, that the questions are intelligible, etc. It doesn't even establish that health questions are objective.
@@boredtolife7879 I'm a non-realist, non-objectivist, non-cognitivist. I also don't believe in emotivism, prescriptivism, subjectivism in its realist/cognitivist sense, Mackian error theory, relativism or universalism. I broadly follow Hume and am closest to Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism, and certainly agree with moral projectivism which is at the heart of that. I'd identify as a moral sceptic, not a moral nihilist, which is too extreme and denying; the scepticism is of a Pyrrhonian kind, not Academic.
Seems you've done just as much research on the subject as Michael Jones of InspiringPhilosophy has. He noted quite a few similar details in his own video critiquing the same topic of Moral Relativism. He also noted a similar thing about certain moral systems being wrong due to a gap in the knowledge of that culture, or as he aptly calls it, a factual error.
I have a hard time having a discussion on ethics without laying ground work on epistemology and metaphysics. If your epistemology is a primacy of consciousness then inevitably your morality will be relative, it's just a question to what scale you accept the relativity (at an individual level or societal level). Only an epistemology based on primacy of existence has the sufficient axioms to perceive and value objective morals. Objectivism fully grapples with this through it's entire philosophy. A is A in reality and with morality.
I'm not really a philosophy student, but I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean when you say an epistemology based on existence provides sufficient axioms for moral objectivism. In my eyes, the core of human survival within a society is mostly a function of wealth of resources, ease of access and security. When we set these as axioms, we understand simple human behavior, such as social interaction, sex and gathering food. But, given our social nature, different ideologies and perceptions arise relative to what resources are available and how that community has evolved in terms of social acceptance (tolerance). The example given for cultural relativism stands out. Culture B may promote killing elderly people, because there are not enough resources to go around for that population. Now from this, the community and the victim can view this act as morally righteous, given the social acceptance within the community to adhere to such rules. Since, culture A and B adhere to different moral principles wouldn't that make morality a mere socially constructed protocol. Making relativism the clearly supported conclusion.
@@poponoria7300 " the core of human survival within a society is mostly a function of wealth of resources, ease of access and security." Exactly. And where does wealth come from? It's from what make's humans distinct and superior to all other creatures - our ability to use our minds to conceptualize. Sociologists and even evolutionary psychologists often overlook this fundamental key that philosophy drives behavior and instead try and reverse engineer observations as a function of nature or nurture. They reach wrong conclusions because they don't value philosophy
The question at 4:30 "Which is more moral, working for HUD or volunteering at a food kitchen." I'd say these are poor examples of "morality" questions. The drano example was good regarding health, one option was extreme and had extreme consequences, making it an instructive example. Asking "Oj vs Grape juice" wouldn't have been a good example, and that is what this example sounds like.
Rand made a point about how many philosophers try to define a philosophical premise with Catastrophe Situations. ie, 2 men in life raft and only enough water for 1 ...a burning building with a stranger's child and your child in it = who do you save first. Shipwrecked on a deserted island, ect ect ect. The point she made was Life is not lived in Catastrophic Situations. Catastrophes require special temporary methods of conduct. Once the emergency is brought under control and normal life resumes, should we still use the same code of ethics ??? My best analogy is “Is it ok to lie” ???....under normal situations, no. But if a madman had a gun to your childs head, would it be ok...IMO yes.
Morality is objective and moral absolutism is truth. It is simply a matter of learning whether by instruction or experience. Morality is not about right and wrong as most suggest, it is relative to the definition and intrinsic value of the individual human being. In the case of Hitler vs Ghandi, the moral distinction lies in the two different definitions of the intrinsic value of the individual. Ghandi values all human life while Hitler, not so much. As human beings, we either honour each other or we dishonour each other. This determines the answer to the moral question of ought, or ought not and is the guiding principle to discern cases of moral conflict. To murder a person is to dishonor them. Therefore, it is morally wrong. That's easy. But, killing an attacker while defending your family is not as simple. Killing the attacker is not morally wrong due to the facts that, (a) the attacker has dishonored themselves (obviously by attacking), (b) you honour your family by defending them The moral question is this: do our actions uphold the honor and intrinsic value of others or is it a dishonor to that intrinsic value? The application of justice is morally right Defending the rights of others is also morally right Abusing a child a morally wrong, etc
Who the bell is Pojman? You want to talk about Objectivism, hear it from the greatest American Philosopher Ayn Rand! Her philosophy, Objectivism, is the greatest philosophy ever! Because it is the only philosophy that is correct.
I was really hopping someone would challenge me; I will never know what it is like to be incorrect morally or intellectually. When all ceases to exist, I will be the only thing that exist. If only moral objectivism were true and not just a fact.
Your videos are fantastic! I'm currently taking a class on ethics, and you just clarified a lot of confusion I've been struggling with, thank you!
Health is not difficult to define: "The combined status of physical indicators that - without intervention - allow for the expected remaining lifespan appropriate for the age of the subject". Whatever is good or bad is much harder. There are plenty of examples in every textbook of philosophy.
So far the best I've seen. Comparing it with health did work well there. Keep up the good work.
Very well done! Thank you for this. Writing a paper that discusses whether morality is objective by comparing Sam Harris and Charles Taylor, and this helped lots! Unfortunately in Germany we dont seem to have this "overview" seminars, we often discuss mainly one author in a class about moral philosophy.
13:50 seems like a flawed tracing of the flow of logic. You don't recognize that their morals are EQUAL to yours, but rather, you can't say with complete confidence that any one moral system is correct, and therefore your own may be wrong, and so all moral systems must be given proper analysis.
One cant be certain of anything, right ???....the statement purports itself to be true...but if you cant be certain of anything, how can you be certain....that you cant be certain of anything ??? Its an anti concept....it refutes itself
@@rudiekazu bullshit
@@cookingman8709 whats BS...that its an anti concept or that one cant be certain of anything ???
@@rudiekazu but we are talking about moral relativism, not just "relativism/general relativism" my man
What's a "proper analysis" if moral can't be rationally defended?
Pojman makes an error. While evaluating moral relativism, he cannot avoid sneaking in moral evaluations - things that are intuitively "wrong" to him. In order to evaluate morals, you have to include the reason, the teleology why such rules are there. Teleology is by very definition arbitrary. You can choose to be tolerant - or you can choose not to be tolerant - depending on what you want to achieve.
The hidden teleology that students have to be able to resolve a math equation is that they will need to apply those in their professional life. You don't want engineers that build bridges that cave in with the first breeze of wind. That's the hidden teleology of student having to have a math equation right.
We can see this evolution in art. In the old days you had to have certain skills, because your main goal was to paint portraits of people. People won't accept a painter that will paint portraits that are unrecognizable. When photography was introduced, this skill was not required anymore, allowing for a more creative way of painting. In the end we got Jackson Pollock - and there was no more need to get the math equation right.
Often, practices that were consider morally reprehensible have a similar "hidden teleology" - like killing old people or killing newborn baby girls. Sometimes the original teleology disappears while the moral rule remains, but that's how human culture works.
As Hume so rightly asserts: "one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is"". Another point, not addressed here, is that (as Stephen Toulmin states) "nature is amoral". For the love of God, we cannot find *ANY* moral rule in nature. That means it is - by very definition - a construction. A means to some arbitrary, mostly forgotten goal.
Another interesting observation in that regard is those moral rules apply *mostly* to members of the same tribe. You may not kill a member of your tribe - but it is okay or even encouraged to kill members of other tribes. A great source of so called "objective morality" is the Bible. "Thou shall not kill" - unless you're a member of the Amalekites, Canaanites, Midianites or Moabites: "Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey". I've always wondered what the oxes, sheep, camels and donkeys had done wrong.
So we can conclude that even the strictest moral system is *not* by definition "universal".
Hence - there cannot be a consistent system of "moral objectivity" - not even a limited one - that can objectively be defended without exposition of the underlying teleology.
I don't get why in ethical relativism we can't judge or act to change other culture values... What if nobody knows what is right and we just impose to others? Why would that be bad
Moral relativism is cancer and I will never trust or be friends with a moral relativist.
One of the many flaws of moral relativism is something you just pointed out here.
Why Hemingway?
13:50 This argument is besides the point. When it comes to physical facts as the video calls them someone can point at a fish and call it a tree and they would be wrong etc. etc. However, when it comes to morality nobody is right. There is no such thing as a moral fact as what is has no bearing on what ought to be, and therefore the mere idea of ethical diversity and ethical relativism implies a sort of objectivism which simply does not exist. So within this nonexistent objective moral system of course ethical diversity would not imply ethical relativism, someone may be right and someone may be wrong, but that is within this objective system and this system does not exist.
You're begging the question, by saying that there is no such thing as moral facts.
@@RickJaeger I couldn’t disagree with you anymore. It is not begging the question. Unless our understanding of reality is completely and utterly false there is absolutely no connection between objectivity and morality on a fundamental level. You can have objectively moral things within some moral framework but that framework is based on nothing but feelings. Although I do accept that it is possible we truly don’t understand our reality, but as things stand I don’t see how I’m begging the question
I taught mathematics and physics for a dozen years at a small community college. I was a very good teacher and delivered some beautifully crafted lectures. I know what a good lecture is. You have produced here a superlative lecture. Thank you. I am going to watch it again.
I like your concept of ethical objectivism. However, it is not really objective in the sense that I would normally associate with the word objective. Consider the case of an interaction between a hungry polar bear and a human being. The polar bear will simply kill and eat the human being. Human beings are just warm meat to a polar bear. That is an objective fact. As far as I know, there is no observational evidence in the universe that there is anything special about human beings. If there were indeed a god or gods that had a preference for human beings and their well-being, then one would expect to observe them actively protecting us from viruses, poisons, polar bears, pain, and suffering. This is not the case. However, I would argue that virtually every human being regards themselves and at least some others as being more than just food for hungry predators. This general consensus among humans is also an objective fact. It seems reasonable to me that such a fact and other similar facts can provide at least part of a foundation for a moral system that is "objective."
@Michael Berhow
Could you please do a video on virtue ethics? Thanks for this one!
The argument for moral relativism may be correct, but is it useful?
Conventional relativism is more in touch with reality from an egalitarian model. Equality in the sense that living demands exerting pressure relative to all species within their capacity to do so contrary to their environments,prey,or each other. Practical for the sake of the beholder and group to which they belong. This is the most natural and effective way to exercise moral relativism in terms of projects and objects under moral scrutiny.
"Hitler is as moral as Gandhi" is not necessarily an absurd consequence of believing morality. It may be a natural consequence of accepting the view that morals are subjective and relative. If you watched the video you have already seen the difficulty/impossibility of assessing whether serving at a soup kitchen or building a house for humanity is more or less moral. Hitler's and Gandhi's personal moralities are much further apart in their flavour but they both tried to justify them by referring to what they professed to be correct/right/good based on their own biases and imperfections. That is to say they were both expressing a morality. Surely the question 'who is the most moral' is a question of whose actions most closely aligned with their moral values? The Hitler Gandhi statement is only absurd if you take the view you are able to achieve clearer, less biased thinking, and are somehow able to assess correctly what is objectively right and wrong. Hitler's and Gandhi's moralities both seem absurd to me, but only to the extent that my own mental faculty and personal bias will allow. That is all I have to go on at the moment. Would very much appreciate help in widening my understanding on this topic.
thank you for this comment. Exactly what I was thinking
Hitler and Gandhi are similar to the drano and apple juice example
it's difficult or impossible to assess whether the soup kitchen is more or less moral than building a house for humanity, but you can recognize both are good, regardless of which is better. splitting hairs between which 2 goods are better isn't really relevant when it comes to what's good or bad
@@DistantKingdom That's a pattern you find in subjective realms rather than objective. For example, we might not be able to agree on exactly what temperature is ideal for a room. But I'm sure we'll start to agree if we crank up the heat way too high that it's too hot. We might not be able to agree on the perfect amount of salt for a dish, but we'll soon start to agree when it's way too salty for both of us that this, at least, is too much. We might not be able to agree on our favorite song, but both of us would likely find any random and arbitrary collection of sounds to sound like noise rather than music.
5:05 What if a relativist said that, genocides contribute positively towards the preservation of the planet? The Earth is overpopulated, hence we need to reduce its population
The relativist would say the 'over population ' is a relative term
Then the relativist doesn't know what he's talking about. That's someone simply being factually wrong.
I'm late. But why can't they just argue there are other and more ethical ways to reduce population. And the suffer genocide can and does cause is not ethical even if it leads to something you find ethical. Like killing someone to stop a thief. Tbh I didn't put to much thought into this. There are issue here with what I said. But I dont see how what you said always holds to true in ethical relativism.
@@NonNon-nb6ih touche hahaha
2:14
No, the question is not are our moral judgements connected to anything real. They could be so, without being objective. Our notion of unicorns is connected to real things: horses and horns. That doesn't mean unicorns are real. In the same way our moral judgements can connect to real things but that doesn't mean they themselves are objective. What is needed is a tighter definition. Do our moral judgements reflect or represent an objective morality. Or, is there a morality in reality which our moral judgements can reflect or not reflect.
2:30
Moral relativists are not people who merely believe there is nothing connecting our judgements with reality. They believe morality is real, but only exists relative to particular things. It's possible to be a non-objectivist without being a relativist. Relativism actually kind of assumes an objectivity, just a non-singular one.
Looking at it another way round, the language you've used is "our moral feelings". This presumably refers to everybody. If everybody's moral feelings connect with something real, they are all objective. But since different people have many different moral feelings, the objectivity cannot be singular, but must be multiple. This is actually a picture of moral relativism you're building up, while imagining it to be moral objectivism.
2:56
The analogy with health is ridiculous. Nothing in this analogy establishes that moral judgements are objective. It just shows that they have some factors similar to health questions. Specifically: that there can be different scales of difference between different options, that the questions are intelligible, etc. It doesn't even establish that health questions are objective.
are you a relativist, an objectivist, or a nihilist?
@@MatthewMcVeagh agree. Good comment sir
@@boredtolife7879 I'm a non-realist, non-objectivist, non-cognitivist. I also don't believe in emotivism, prescriptivism, subjectivism in its realist/cognitivist sense, Mackian error theory, relativism or universalism. I broadly follow Hume and am closest to Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism, and certainly agree with moral projectivism which is at the heart of that. I'd identify as a moral sceptic, not a moral nihilist, which is too extreme and denying; the scepticism is of a Pyrrhonian kind, not Academic.
thanks! awesome video, very well explained and helpful.
Very clear presentation. Thank you.
Seems you've done just as much research on the subject as Michael Jones of InspiringPhilosophy has. He noted quite a few similar details in his own video critiquing the same topic of Moral Relativism. He also noted a similar thing about certain moral systems being wrong due to a gap in the knowledge of that culture, or as he aptly calls it, a factual error.
thank you so much. it helped me a lot!
I have a hard time having a discussion on ethics without laying ground work on epistemology and metaphysics. If your epistemology is a primacy of consciousness then inevitably your morality will be relative, it's just a question to what scale you accept the relativity (at an individual level or societal level). Only an epistemology based on primacy of existence has the sufficient axioms to perceive and value objective morals. Objectivism fully grapples with this through it's entire philosophy. A is A in reality and with morality.
@Jake Galler You don't introspect your epistemology, but it still determines your morality whether you're conscious of it or not.
I'm not really a philosophy student, but I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean when you say an epistemology based on existence provides sufficient axioms for moral objectivism. In my eyes, the core of human survival within a society is mostly a function of wealth of resources, ease of access and security. When we set these as axioms, we understand simple human behavior, such as social interaction, sex and gathering food. But, given our social nature, different ideologies and perceptions arise relative to what resources are available and how that community has evolved in terms of social acceptance (tolerance). The example given for cultural relativism stands out. Culture B may promote killing elderly people, because there are not enough resources to go around for that population. Now from this, the community and the victim can view this act as morally righteous, given the social acceptance within the community to adhere to such rules. Since, culture A and B adhere to different moral principles wouldn't that make morality a mere socially constructed protocol. Making relativism the clearly supported conclusion.
@@poponoria7300 " the core of human survival within a society is mostly a function of wealth of resources, ease of access and security."
Exactly. And where does wealth come from? It's from what make's humans distinct and superior to all other creatures - our ability to use our minds to conceptualize.
Sociologists and even evolutionary psychologists often overlook this fundamental key that philosophy drives behavior and instead try and reverse engineer observations as a function of nature or nurture. They reach wrong conclusions because they don't value philosophy
The question at 4:30 "Which is more moral, working for HUD or volunteering at a food kitchen."
I'd say these are poor examples of "morality" questions. The drano example was good regarding health, one option was extreme and had extreme consequences, making it an instructive example. Asking "Oj vs Grape juice" wouldn't have been a good example, and that is what this example sounds like.
Rand made a point about how many philosophers try to define a philosophical premise with Catastrophe Situations. ie, 2 men in life raft and only enough water for 1 ...a burning building with a stranger's child and your child in it = who do you save first. Shipwrecked on a deserted island, ect ect ect. The point she made was Life is not lived in Catastrophic Situations. Catastrophes require special temporary methods of conduct. Once the emergency is brought under control and normal life resumes, should we still use the same code of ethics ??? My best analogy is “Is it ok to lie” ???....under normal situations, no. But if a madman had a gun to your childs head, would it be ok...IMO yes.
Applied ethics
it is objective
Morality is objective and moral absolutism is truth. It is simply a matter of learning whether by instruction or experience. Morality is not about right and wrong as most suggest, it is relative to the definition and intrinsic value of the individual human being. In the case of Hitler vs Ghandi, the moral distinction lies in the two different definitions of the intrinsic value of the individual. Ghandi values all human life while Hitler, not so much.
As human beings, we either honour each other or we dishonour each other. This determines the answer to the moral question of ought, or ought not and is the guiding principle to discern cases of moral conflict.
To murder a person is to dishonor them. Therefore, it is morally wrong. That's easy. But, killing an attacker while defending your family is not as simple. Killing the attacker is not morally wrong due to the facts that,
(a) the attacker has dishonored themselves (obviously by attacking),
(b) you honour your family by defending them
The moral question is this: do our actions uphold the honor and intrinsic value of others or is it a dishonor to that intrinsic value?
The application of justice is morally right
Defending the rights of others is also morally right
Abusing a child a morally wrong, etc
Waffle
Who the bell is Pojman? You want to talk about Objectivism, hear it from the greatest American Philosopher Ayn Rand! Her philosophy, Objectivism, is the greatest philosophy ever! Because it is the only philosophy that is correct.
Now I like Ayn Rand, but this is a real load.
What a terrible communistic quote devoid of all sober reality
My behavior and thoughts are always moral. I have never had an immoral thought or preformed an immoral act. I am 56; impressed? You are welcome.
I was really hopping someone would challenge me; I will never know what it is like to be incorrect morally or intellectually. When all ceases to exist, I will be the only thing that exist. If only moral objectivism were true and not just a fact.
mrdave2112 Nobody could possibly challenge you as morals are subjective.
Swampy, I totally agree with you. But I was hopping someone would have challenged me :)
"If only moral objectivism were true and not just a fact."
If it is a fact, how is it not true?
I am the smartest, most attractive, richest, talented person that's ever lived and will ever live. Impressed? You're welcome.