This is true in the biggest sense of the word. But it's also false. We all have things that matter to us and the various communities that we belong to. In some ways, to me anyway, it's very liberating: life as a blank canvas to imbue it with the meaning we want on.
That won't resonate with everyone or even most people, but it's motivating for me.
Albert Camus wrote a beautiful (IMHO, at least) book about it, The Myth of Sisyphus. His point, as I understand it, is that nothing matters in the sense that the universe is vast and empty does not care what happens to you or me. But that also means we get to choose what matters to us.
Life has no meaning, but it has meaning to us, and we can, in a way, choose what we want it to mean. I agree, I find this perspective very liberating and positive, but I can see how some people might find it bleak.
In this framework, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il created their own meaning and no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice.
Either you are twisting my words, or I phrased what I said very badly. Let me rephrase what I said, hopefully more clearly:
First, from the perspective of "the universe", the very concept of meaning is meaningless (sorry, no pun intended). From THAT perspective, Stalin or Pol Pot or Hitler or Djenghis Khan killing millions of people is no more or less meaningful or morally good or bad than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
But you and I are not "the universe". Nor is any other human being. To us, it DOES matter, a lot, what choices Stalin, Djenghis Khan or Napoleon make. As well as the choices you and I make, every minute of every day.
From a cosmological perspective, life is quite likely nothing more than a chemical curiosity. From our perspective, it is pretty much everything. The sun doesn't care if you are happy or sad or angry or scared. It cannot care (at least as far as we know). I can. So can anyone else who is reading this.
Ethics, I am trying to say, does not exist outside ourselves the way gravity or time does. But to us, it is just as real, maybe even more real, than any force of nature. This is what makes us human.
Thank you for trying to clarify your thoughts. I understand that you think ethics exist inside human minds and not anywhere else.
I still don't see why Stalin, Pol Pot, and company don't get to decide that they value mass murder to achieve their personal goals, in absentia transcendence.
I find their choices appalling, but it seems they did not.
It's the meaning they chose to make in their life.
If that's their code of ethics, and those ethics exist solely inside our heads, then there's nothing to be said beyond "I hate that," as far as I can see.
Sure they do -- I can pick any basis I want for saying their ideas are worse.
I can make that basis arbitrary (because I don't like their names), or I can ground it in appeals to things that people value widely. One can get lost in the idea that things are meaningless on a purely narrative/mental basis, but you're embedded in a biological matrix that will very likely re-orient you on the idea that some things matter if you pay attention to it. If nothing else, everyone acts as if suffering matters and acts to reduce it personally and in their close circles, so that's a pretty solid baseline to engage. There are questions about what it means to reduce suffering and perhaps even people like Stalin thought they were reducing it, but once you've agreed that reducing suffering is meaningful then you have a standard and can talk in terms of observed results and dynamics around it.
Sure, but if someone doesn't grant that they want to reduce suffering for others, you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should. You get to pick your meaning and they get to pick theirs.
In each of your responses, you're saying there needs to be a shared base of ethics.
> you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should
> There's no shared basis I can legitimately use to argue with them
> you could not legitimately argue to them that their choices are wrong, philosophically speaking
But you're not answering these questions: Which values are included in that shared basis? Where do those values come from? How do we know that those values are correct?
The idea that values are arbitrary isn't saying you can't criticize other people's values. It's acknowledging that you don't have some authoritative source of ethics. How do you try to convince people that something is worthwhile or wrong? Do you appeal to this authority of ethics, or are you making some other argument?
Thanks for replying even after a few days. It took me some time to think through your responses as well, so I hope you forgive my own delay.
> I was trying to explain why many humans are not at all comforted by this "choose your own values" system.
> there's nothing to be said beyond "I hate that," as far as I can see.
> I'm saying that if one doesn't, there's no basis for arguing that someone else's ethics are wrong.
This makes sense. You aren't saying that people won't condemn Stalin's and Kim's action. You're not saying that you or others couldn't be wrong about condemning those two. You're saying: how can anyone judge anyone else if there isn't some objective source of morality?
I dunno though, this seems very juvenile. Are you really saying that there's no way for people to condemn killing if there isn't some objective morality? How would you even be confident that killing is objectively wrong? I'd rather acknowledge that I can change my morals based on good arguments and reasoning. Saying that morals are objective or subjective doesn't really matter to individuals if we can't know for certain what the objective moral guidelines are. We should always consider whether our ethical guidelines are actually good or if they're doing harm.
> It comes down to "ethics" by mob rule and democracy
You don't have to agree with the majority with your own ethical beliefs. Sometimes being in the minority is a signal that your own reasoning is faulty and you should listen to others, and sometimes it's because other people aren't thinking ethically.
No worries about slow replies. Obviously I'm not greased lightning myself. I appreciate your civil, thoughtful responses.
> Are you really saying that there's no way for people to condemn killing if there isn't some objective morality? How would you even be confident that killing is objectively wrong?
People can absolutely condemn killing for any reason they like.
When I'm reasoning from the framework of materialist humanism, I don't see any reason killing is objectively wrong. I see no basis for any objective moral statements at all from this perspective.
If there is no transcendence, nothing outside of our heads that actually defines what good is, then I see no basis for saying anything is "right" or "wrong".
Put another way, "right" and "wrong" become synonyms for "liked" and "disliked".
> Saying that morals are objective or subjective doesn't really matter to individuals if we can't know for certain what the objective moral guidelines are.
I think I disagree.
Certainty is something it's very hard for a human mind to have legitimately.
You can still sometimes piece things together enough to have confidence, though.
If we agree that there is such a thing as objectively right and wrong behavior, we can engage in discussion, research, thinking, and debate which may bring us closer to a shared understanding of what that good might be.
If morals are subjective, then you can still have that debate, but there's no basis for it nor a real reason to have it. It boils down to arguing about what the people involved like, as far as I can see, which doesn't really make sense to me.
This could just be my perspective preventing me from understanding what you're getting at.
1) What's the point of discussing ethical matters if they're not objective?
2) We can objectively discover what's morally "good".
3) We lose legitimacy making ethical judgments if moral values aren't objective.
(1) There is a lot of value and objectivity in ethical discussions even if there are no objective moral values.
Why would there be no reason to discuss ethics if moral values are subjective? You can discuss all of the factors influencing an ethical judgement with people who don't share your ethical values. You can also change your judgement of an action without changing your ethical values because your understanding of the situation can change.
You are asking whether killing is objectively wrong. This is an incomplete question. What does it even mean to "kill" someone? Stalin's political executions directly killed people, but can we also blame him for the deaths from malnourishment? What if the killing is accidental? When you say that killing is wrong, you have to first define what you even mean. Discussion will help you decide what the ethical value even is.
Secondly, would killing being objectively wrong mean that every action involving killing is wrong? Is it wrong for soldiers to fight in wars? Is it wrong to kill someone in self-defense? What if you only thought it was in self-defense? Every situation is technically unique and *relative* to the situation. Discussion will help you decide which ethical values are involved in each situation.
You can have an objectively wrong ethical judgement of actions even if values are subjective. You can be objectively wrong about the consequences of different actions. You can be objectively wrong in applying your values.
(2) Whether there are objective moral values depends on what you define as a moral value.
Everything I discussed in (1) concerns objective reasons we can base ethical judgements on. Note that everything I discussed were possible contributing factors in our ethical judgment. These are objective outcomes of our actions, and we can legitimately base our ethical judgment on any of these outcomes. These are all statements about what "is" true. When we are making a value judgment though, we are asking what "should" happen.
To make this clearer, let's assume that we can objectively decide which outcomes we "should" aim for. We can objectively say that it's bad when people die, and we can objectively say that it's bad to steal from others. What happens when these values come into conflict? What if someone is going to die if they don't steal food from a shop? You have to compare different ethical values against each other when you decide what "should" happen. Each ethical decision depends on how things are ethically values _relative_ to other ethical values. I can't think of any _absolute_ ethical values because there can always be a more important ethical value.
This is why I don't think we can objectively ethically value things. I don't know of an objective way to compare ethical values. I don't know of an objective way to say you "should" prefer one value over another. You can objectively say this action will result in these outcomes which seem good or bad, but those are also ethical value which also need to be compared to each other. This definition of a moral good, as something you "should" do, makes it incompatible with objectivity to me. We can objectively discover what "is" objectively true about the world because we can observe things which "are". I don't know how to observe what "should" happen, so I have to conclude that values come from us individuals and are thus subjective.
I should note that there are some actions which I think are very obviously bad. We can objectively list all of the bad parts which contribute to the entire action have it be obvious to most people that the action was morally wrong. I'm saying that "obviously bad" is different from "objectively bad", even though they are very close in practice.
(3) You're right that we lose the type of legitimacy which you're arguing for. However, I think that you're making the alternative to objective ethics worse than I think they are.
To start with, where are we using objective ethics? We use ethics to decide how we should behave and how others should behave. What you're saying is that you can tell other people how to behave because there is some objective source of morals backing you up. I can believe there are objectively outcomes of actions which seem bad. But, I don't know what outside of our heads can be telling us what we "should" and "shouldn't" do. Without some external source, it seems like our morals must be internal.
So why do we need to be objectively correct to ethically judge others? I feel okay saying that it seems bad to kill a lot of people unnecessarily and we should try to prevent people from killing others. I don't feel the need to say that killing people is objectively wrong, I feel okay saying it is obviously wrong and we should work together to prevent it. I think that it keeps us humble to realize that we are ultimately the ones deciding the morality of our actions.
That's what it's always been. Even if there were a moral framework that's provably true, people could still choose to act against it (assuming some kind of free will, even if it's compatibilist). What do you do when someone hears all your arguments and says "so what"? The same thing you have to do in a universe where meaning/morality is not intrinsic: convince those you can, and force those you can't, if it's important to you.
You allocating a particular meaning to your life's actions does not mean that other's allocate that same meaning; you're making an unjustified logical leap.
I'm not trying to say others have to accept anyone's chosen meaning.
I'm saying you could not legitimately argue to them that their choices are wrong, philosophically speaking.
You can say "tons of us hate this", but that doesn't get you much of a leg to stand on, really.
They still get to choose what they want their meaning to be, and if it's in violent conflict with yours, there's nothing further to be done but avoid each other and fight when the situation and your respective values make it unavoidable.
>>no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice.
Of course they do! If your parents were killed by Stalin you probably have an opinion one way or the other. That is exactly what this thread is talking about.
That is true. You can't debate everyone on an even playing field, because not everyone has the same baseline views of morality and reason.
More and more, I have come to think that debates are better for convincing undecided bystanders than convincing the other person you're debating with. At least for arguments or debates held online or in a public space.
One-on-one you might be able to show someone a new value system if they're willing to sit down and talk about it, though.
This is true in the biggest sense of the word. But it's also false. We all have things that matter to us and the various communities that we belong to. In some ways, to me anyway, it's very liberating: life as a blank canvas to imbue it with the meaning we want on.
That won't resonate with everyone or even most people, but it's motivating for me.