Hacker News Reader

> Dear children, your silly worldview of objective rights and wrongs is outdated and wrong. Morality is purely subjective, a matter of taste. I provide no evidence or reasoning for my opinions but I do expect you to be challenged and wowed by their far-reaching consequences.

If you think that there is some objective morality that is inherent to the universe, the burden of proof is very much on you to show that, not on me to disprove it. (But if you need a disproof, here's as close as I can get: I am 100% certain that you cannot give a definition of "morality" that both meshes with what's expected of the term and that implies the existence of some fundamental objective framework for determining what's right and what's wrong. Just think about it for a while.

Or, alternatively [and not equivalently, but evocatively]: we're all just particles. You can give any brilliant argument you like about the morality of an action, and my particles are just gonna keep on doing whatever the fuck they want.)

As you discuss, lack of objective morality is horrible. It still makes me feel weird when I think about it, and I decided that "ethics" was bullshit when I was thirteen. My brain is hard-wired to believe that certain actions are "right" and certain actions are "wrong" in a sense that encompasses more than just my brain's response to those actions, so thinking about (what I see as) the truth about morality causes a dissonance between my conscious and my subconscious.

In the same way, my brain believes very deeply that everything has a cause, so it believes that there's a meaningful answer to the question, "Why does the universe exist?"

But that question doesn't have an answer. And objective morality doesn't exist. Sorry.

It should be pointed out that postmodern subjective ethics is not the simple opposite of objective reality. While postmodern subjective morality has fundamental contradictions (as I outline in my other post here), that doesn't prove the existence of an objective morality. It merely shows that for any given thing that may be worth calling a "morality" there will be an objective component. If there is "an" objective morality, it will have to come from some other source.

Why are you apologizing? Did you make reality this way? Are you God?! Or are you just condescending me?

If you think that there is some objective morality that is inherent to the universe, the burden of proof is very much on you to show that, not on me to disprove it.

I'm going to disagree with you on this point, because not only the existence of objective morality, but the existence of object truth of any kind depends on its falsity.

As you say, my brain makes certain a priori assumptions about reality. Among these, are the existence of object morality, the utility of the senses, and fundamental correctness of human reason. My belief in these are the default. If I am to doubt any of these things you must provide me with a concrete reason to do so.

All reasoning proceeds from assumptions and unless we make allowance for assumption, we must assent to solipsism (or something equally silly.) For, if we are to assume that all premises are false, unless proved otherwise, then what premises are true? People who hold the stance tend to make all sorts of assumptions that they don't realize are assumptions. Thus, I will maintain that rather than arguing from a 'nothing is true until proven' stance, that it is better to argue from a 'default brain state is true' until disproved stance.' Which, would then place the burden of proof on you.

* I am 100% certain that you cannot give a definition of "morality" that both meshes with what's expected of the term and that implies the existence of some fundamental objective framework for determining what's right and what's wrong. Just think about it for a while.*

As you state, expectations can be wrong. However, for the sake of sanity, it is better to presuppose that they are less wrong than more wrong. The people nearly universally agree that both theft and murder are wrong, that they disagree on whether lethal force is justified in defense of property can be attributed to bias of experience.

Or, alternatively [and not equivalently, but evocatively]: we're all just particles. You can give any brilliant argument you like about the morality of an action, and my particles are just gonna keep on doing whatever the fuck they want.

Except that I'm not a physicalist. If I were,I would already agree with you.

All right, I think I sort of screwed up my first post, because it failed to convey my most fundamental feeling about "morality": I think that the word "morality" (also "ethics") is, to a truly ridiculous extent, not well-defined.

That's why I asked you to define the word -- I can't argue about it otherwise. I really don't think there's any good definition other than, "A system of judging actions to be either 'right' or 'wrong,' such that actions that I am uncomfortable with are designated 'wrong'."

Well, there are variants of the above (change "I'm uncomfortable" to "some group of people, possibly directed by arbitrary external rules, is uncomfortable"), but the point is that I think any definition that roughly corresponds to the meaning we intuitively attribute to the word needs a lot of subjectivity in it.

As long as "morality" stays undefined, I obviously can't refute your premise that objective morality exists. I mean, it's your fucking premise.

I think that the word "morality" (also "ethics") is, to a truly ridiculous extent, not well-defined.

Or rather, people are dreadfully inconsistent about what they call morality. I can give you a definition of ethics, morality is trickier so I may be able to only summarize a few points.

Ethics is a system of determining right action for individuals and groups of individuals from a set of commonly held values. For example: if equity is a value, then preferential treatment becomes a wrong. Ethics works by finding common values and working from them. The fact that value is subjective has no bearing; ethical systems merely look for a common denominator and work from there. Different ethical systems are the product of applying different philosophical methodologies to different values sets.

Morality is very different. It is the object of the assumption that there is a universal set of rules and values to which all human beings must, for some reason or other, assent. What this universal code consists of, isn't necessarily universally accepted, but what is universally accepted, or nearly so, is the assumption that there is a universal code. That a physicalist, or mechanistic account of the universe cannot account for this is evident. That very few human beings actually accept a physicalist or mechanistic worldview, even if they claim to do so, is also evident. It presupposes some kind of telos, or universal purpose.

So what morality is, is this: an objective standard of behavior that is (instinctualy) assumed by everybody, agreed (in total; the vast majority hold a large number of principles in common and differ only on application, hence the need for ethics) upon by few, and can only be fully accounted for by some kind of metaphysics.

Edit: spelling and word usage

I don't understand how you claim that your sense of objective morality is on the same footing as utility of the senses and the fundamental correctness of human reason in terms of accepting them as a foundation for reasonable argument.

humans from different cultures will sense many things the same way. a small black dot will be a small black dot and so forth. likewise, i can believe that ancient japan would have invented a computer if given sufficient time in some alternate reality. once the appropriate questions had been asked and answered of course.

I don't see the same thing for morality though. Or at least not to anywhere near the same degree.

I can believe that ancient japan would have invented a computer if given sufficient time in some alternate reality. once the appropriate questions had been asked and answered of course.

The real issue is not whether Japan would have invented a computer in an alternate reality, but whether we have invented it in ours, and whether what we call a computer really is what we perceive it to be. If human reasoning was fundamentally incorrect, we wouldn't be able to detect it.

One of the great accomplishments of mathematics in the 20th century was to establish that the self-referential paradox ("This sentence is a lie") was not merely a clever word game or unimportant paradox to be waved away as irrelevant, but a deep and profound true paradox with implications that challenged mathematics to the core and changed it forever. Merely reading a bit about Godel's proof isn't enough; you need to read enough history to realize that what was amazing about Godel's proof isn't what it proved, but instead the fact that it was a proof. Mathematicians and even "normal people" have of course known about the paradox for millennia. What Godel did was truly, finally make it inescapable. You can not have a nontrivial consistent theory while still waving away the self-referential paradox.

I wish this style of proof would penetrate through to postmodern philosophers. If everything that one person chooses to believe is true for them, and that person chooses to believe that there is an objective truth that precludes this statement, then you have a problem. This is not wordplay or an irrelevant point, any more than Godel's proof was. Either there are false statements about morality, or your claim that everything is subjectively true is also false. It's not a trivial point.

And I find that in practice, what gives is that postmodernists do in fact believe in absolute morality and it's all just a game to fool themselves and you into thinking otherwise. I see no reason to play that game any more, especially as I think most people would be repulsed if they took the time to work through what postmodern morality really is, instead of what it claims to be.

(This doesn't mean that we automatically know what the objective morality is, or whether there is one or many. It simply means that true subjective morality is fatally and irretrievably flawed. I say "true" because the moment you introduce an absolute, it is no longer subjective. Any absolute will do. Moralities can be quite complicated and nuanced, like utilitarianism, even as a utilitarianist must inevitably take their utility measurement as an absolute axiom. There isn't much "absolute" there, but it is non-zero.)

That said, reading the original article, I'm not sure that David Brooks would necessarily disagree with what I just wrote. I'm not sure he's advocating total relativism so much as observing that whatever concretes may exists seem to bear no particular relationship to the concretes that are claimed by anybody, religious (or aggressively non-religious), philosophical, or otherwise. I think there's a difference between merely observing and making claims about what should be true, and this op-ed strikes me more as an observation. So I guess I'm responding more to your comment than the article.

> If everything that one person chooses to believe is true for them, and that person chooses to believe that there is an objective truth that precludes this statement, then you have a problem.

I can't parse this sentence at all -- mostly, I think, because "true for them" doesn't seem to mean anything. Can you clarify? Also, what's the problem you're talking about?

Simplified postmodernism says that something can be "true for you" but also "not true for me"; it's the subjectivity of truth. "Abortion is an absolute human right" can be "true for you" but not "true for me".

This is the contradiction I refer to. You can't have truth-entirely-relative-to-a-person and even one person claiming that he believes his truth applies to all. There are options, but they all involve some other sort of absolute axiom that force you to judge some people's beliefs as false as a consequence. Postmodernists try to have it both ways, deflecting all moral criticism with "it's all relative" while still fairly freely wielding absolutes with abandon.

(Incidentally, even if you can't find an academic who actually wrote this down somewhere in some pithy form that could be cited, I have dealt with plenty of people in person at university who did this repeatedly and, to my mind, blatantly. I know I'm glossing over the belief system a bit since this is a comment on the web and not a dissertation, but I know people with this belief system exist. I've personally encountered them.)

You reference a "problem"; were you actually referring to astine's "This is a problem to say the least."? I can't answer to that, those aren't my words.

Effectively this means that there is no such thing as right and wrong and what we are left with is shallow consensus (as opposed to a reasoned consensus) at best, and application of force at worst.

I think that society defines morality - society defines what is wrong and what is right, and its criteria is fuzzy and shallow and unreasoned, and fluctuates over time. Since society is an aggregation of individuals, a society's definition of right and wrong is an aggregation of it's members definition of right and wrong (sometimes enforced by law.)

Slavery becomes right, because I'm a sociopath with a gun.

That's effectively what happened in the 18th century in Europe - it wasn't considered a problem then, but it is now because people's (and therefore society's) outlook on slavery has changed.

I don't think that the fact that society decides what is right and wrong is right (as in, it doesn't square with my own personal definition of what is morally right), but I can't think of more accurate definition that is also practical (and practicable.)

"This is a problem to say the least."

Can you state more clearly where you think the problem is? Or is it simply that you don't find this arrangement preferable?

The problem, is that my preference is now morality.