Arguments against objective morality
In a place such as SteemIt, where many libertarians freely exchange ideas, objective morality seems to be a given, while relativistic morality is considered a mental flaw. But rallying cries do very little for the discussion. Maybe moral objectivists will win the argument some day, but for this to happen, they should stop and listen to their opponents.
First of all, what does objective morality mean? What most people understand by it, is the position that morality is anchored on a set of universal principles and that we can use reason to derive from those principles how we should behave. (This is a common position among religious people, who think morality ultimately rests on divine revelation. For this article, I'll just ignore the religious side of the argument and deal only with the secular sort of objectivists.)
The problem with the objectivist approach is that, while you can use reason to derive ethics from principles, you cannot use it to get those principles in the first place. For example, you may say that “theft is wrong” and “taxation is theft”, then conclude that “taxation is wrong”. But why was theft wrong to begin with? Maybe because “injustice is wrong”, “theft is unjust”, then “theft is wrong”. This sort of regression is supposedly stopped by some universal principle but, whatever it is, it doesn't come from reason alone.
On a Ted Talk defending something akin to objective morality, Sam Harris argues that humans have a hardwired sense of morality that can effectively be used as principles for a rational morality. He's quite right about that – most humans (the exception being psycopaths) will naturally find that “reducing suffering” for example, is a firm basis for morality. But this doesn't correspond to what objectivists aspire. There's to reasons why: first because this hardwired principle is consequential in nature; and second because multiple principles can conflict with one another.
That leads us to a very important point that objectivists don't seem to address. Our morality is based both on principles, which is called deontological ethics, and on consequences, which is called consequentialism. Authors usually use deontological ethics to prescribe behaviors, but to understand how humans actually process morality, we must take consequentialism into account.
And what of consequentialism, then? The reason objectivists seem to avoid consequentialism is that it levels the playing field. Relativists, statists and many others make moral claims based on consequences while objectivist libertarians claim to use logic exclusively. But if you take consequentialism into account, than the objective claim “you can't tax in order to pay for the police, because taxing is itself an aggression” can then (in principle) be answered with “but if we don't tax, the absence of the police will lead to an increased overall rate of suffering”.
Consequentialism also allows us to deal with ethical conflicts. Imagine you are faced with a decision between two courses of actions, both which contradicts moral principles. Deontological ethics can tell you both are wrong. Consequentilism can tell you which is less wrong, allowing a practical decision to be made.
For a libertarian to say their view is the moral one, and be taken seriously, it is not enough to say their morality is internally consistent. Its consistency is not in question. He must instead convince the statist that the libertarian will provide the best consequences, which is much harder to do and much more relevant once it's done. Consequences are important. If you claim to be a libertarian and don't think the consequence of libertarianism is a reduction in suffering, I'd argue you may be rational, but is definitely immoral.
Leibniz once said that someday people would resolve moral conflicts by sitting down, taking an abacus and calculating the best course of action. Today, Sam Harris expressly says he doesn't think a computer will ever be able to tell right from wrong. The difference between these two is not that one uses reason and the other doesn't. It is because Leibniz reduced humans into little machines of logic operating under arbitrary premises. Sam Harris, on the other hand, recognizes a deeper dimension of humanity, and accepts the premises are contingent to the physical reality.
You read so far, you might find it interesting to read this article about religious morality, this article about deontologial and consequentialist morality and this article about objective morality.
Morality is a word symbol to describe as aspect of reality. What is being described, is objective, they are actions. The only subjective aspect is that it is consciousness that discerns. Much like truth is a word symbol to represent reality and existence. Truth doesn't exist in itself, nor does morality. "The truth" is a universal concept, it emcompasses everything that is, much as reality and existence does. They are grouping-concepts, universals, to group everything together and represent it as a word symbol. The word universal is a grouping concept, uni-verse, turned into one. The universal concepts of truth, existence and reality are representative of the objective universe. They are not things unto themselves as particular primary substances (Aristotle's metaphysics). To claim that truth is subjective would be making the same mistake as claiming morality is subjective. Just because they don't exist int themselves does not mean they are not valid referential concepts about an understanding in objective reality.
Truth and morality are not determined based on subjective whim, wants of wishes. They are objectively determined.
These words describe aspects of reality. Reality is objective. These terms can be objectively understood in reference to reality.
“but if we don't tax, the absence of the police will lead to an increased overall rate of suffering”
This is irrelevant to the actions created into reality, that of taxation, and that it is a wrong. Just because another seeming problem arises from the removal of a wrong, does not invalidate the objection to the wrong and "magically" make the wrong a right. Even if something is less wrong, its still wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, describe the diversity, variability and multiplicity of actions in reality, along a spectrum, a scale, in degree of application, which I called dualistic conceptual framework. The polar ends are not realities, but ideals to use to value and discern the relative variability within the spectrum. In terms of this example, the solution is not to allow taxes, or a centralized authoritarian police force, but for people to develop personal responsiblity and evolve consciousness to understnad hwo to control themselves, to self-govern themselves, and respect the conceptual ideal of what is right and wrong through an understanding of the reciprocal cooperative optimization of survival together, which means not harming others. Nonaggression, nonviolence.
Our objective actions and their affects on others, the consequences, can be understood. They are objective. This is morality.
Philosophical divisions miss the point and construct frameworks/models in a rigid manner so as to deny the other models. Then they try to argue which one is "best" in their stubborn attachment to a definition of their particular model, rather than try to incorporate what is valid from each to form a holistic accurate understanding of reality.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
They can't see the reality or morality clearly because they are blinded by limiting definitions of morality as defines by specific models, rather than seeing things more clearly by evaluating the merits in all of them through an objective understand of reality. The definitions are attached to, and they seem to be trapped by them. They need to take what is valid in all of the models, and drop stubborn attachment to one or the other as the "only" valid model to use. You seem to be doing similarly, by trying to merge what is valid in either. But, morality is not subjective, it is objectively defined by our actions, not constricted models that lack inclusion of other valid understanding. The models need to be expanded upon, and not attached to.
As I said, the subjective aspect, is the consciousness that is able to discern what action are doing to others. The subjective consciousness wants to be subjectively attached to themselves often, and deny "rights" to others groups that they deem can be excluded from moral violations. Like taxation for the group of citizens. Like slavery for another race. And other justifications for the exclusion of others from the concern of our actions towards them. Our actions are at the root of morality, not who the "other" is and how we view them as different from us. Most moral/ethical philosophers don't get this yet, and are still denying who qualifies as another, not evaluating them as a consciousness being on their own level, both cognitive (thinking) and effective (emotion) differences in degree.
Take care. Peace.
I thank you for the well articulated response, even if I disagree. Your argument for truth and morality being objective, as best as I could tell, rests on them being words to describe the objective reality. They're not. We live in an objective reality, yes, but humans share a different reality as well, one composed of symbols, history, taboos, social restraints, art. We are an autistic species, so to speak, all sharing a make belief world that, although real enough to us, is not the same as the physical reality.
The laws of physics are objective, as they describe an objective reality. The "laws" of morality are subjective, as they describe a humanity's shared delusion.
The philosopher Fichte once said something akin to “men cannot be free in a society that isn't, and a society can't be free if its men aren't”. Just stating that two courses of action are morally wrong, as deontological ethics does, isn't helpful in determining what is the right course of action. And it doesn't help us to beat Fichte's paradox and attain freedom. This doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't help to postulate everyone should just be better.
I'll illustrate what I mean. Imagine a Catholic family under Nazi regime, harboring a Jew family to keep them safe. Is it moral to do so? Objectively speaking, no. They are pretending to uphold the system and paying taxes to the opressor. Objectively, they should oppose the system outright. Of course, this would mean the Catholic family would die and the Jew family would die. A subjective analysis, taking consequences as parameter, would lead to a lesser evil.
You could contend that if everybody opposed the regime, then an even greater good would arise, which of course is true. But it is not your prerogative to control everyone else's behavior. If freedom is foundational in morality, then it follows that we must make moral choices as individuals, not as societies. If those choices bear good results, they might be repeated elsewhere, and become an accepted tradition. That is how we escape from Fichte's paradox: with individual moral actions over time, each responding to their own circumstances the best they can.
Let us consider a simple mind experiment. Lets imagine Earth was completely destroyed by an asteroid and that mankind have never come into existence. Hence there have never been taxes, rapes, murderers, neither donations, love or adoptions. None of these things ever existed. Would in a scenario like this, tax be immoral? If morality was an objective reality, it would be independent of our existence.
Please, consider that a subjective morality does not imply that each person will have his own and that there is no such a thing as right or wrong. To claim that morality is subjective implies simply that morality is a part of our 'autistic' world, as isacvale said, of the human world, not of the rock and space world of the physics.
I enjoyed this post - and I am an anarchist/voluntaryist. I'm almost ready to go to bed, but I'll comment something to comment more tomorrow.
I'd like to think that my personal morals equal those of the morals of voluntaryism, but I don't think I can make a claim that my morals are an objective fact.
There is no ought from is - at least no one has been succesful at convincing me otherwise.
One of the best arguments, however, I think, for the voluntaryist morality is the fact that if we only concentrate on consequences, we may justify some terrible means that lead to the desired ends. History has examples of this.
Absolutely, consequentialism alone can't explain our morality. I don't believe objective morality is a requisite for being a voluntaryist, and I'm glad you're empirical proof of it.
To be honest, I'm puzzled why people seem more interested in prescriptive ethical systems, instead of understanding why we think particular things are moral and others are not.
I fail to see in history examples of terrible means achieving good ends. I know people (usually bad people) claim that the solution for a real problem is taxation, war or genocide, but when they implement their atrocities the result is just as bad as the means.
I can understand that it is possible that undesired means can lead to desired results, as when cutting someone's throat is the way to save his life making him breath again. I'm just saying that history (specially political history) is not full of examples like this.
I'd like to remember that the Non Aggression Principle (NAP) does not need to be the bedrock over which the whole morality rests in other to be useful. I see the NAP as a way of concentrating a huge philosophy of liberty and peace in a simple and easy sentence. Sure, it is not the ultimate perfect solution, but it is a very strong tool for us to use to understand the world. For instance, strikes can be classified as peaceful when the strikers do not attack those who show up to work, and not peaceful when they do. Nowadays people are used to think about strikes as a workers right, including aggression, but NAP helps us see that the violence used may render the whole movement immoral.
It's hard to come up with historical examples of something very bad that resulted in something very good. It might even be an impossibility, but let me propose a different look. Instead of expecting something good to be a consequence of something bad, let's look for something bad that could have gone much worse. That is easier find.
Some people genuinely argue that the Hiroshima bomb, while a tragedy, prevented the loss of innumerable more lives (something I don't quite believe myself). The killing of Bin Laden is another bad event (pre-emptive killing of people) considered a good act, because he was a dangerous man who could cause the death of tens of thousands of people. The extermination of animals carrying disease, the use of force to prevent crime, the destruction of private property (in sabotage operations) to disrupt oppressive regimes, the payment of taxes or the act of voting in order to ensure one's own safety or his family's. Don't you think this qualify as "good" coming from evil?
But I think this is a serious question: is it moral to do something immoral in principle, but that's believed to bring a better outcome? If you say no, then you're guilty of acting according to what feels good instead of what does good (you gutless phony). If you say yes, then your position is terribly close to a suicide bomber's who thinks the terrible loss of lives is a small price for obeying the will of his god. Imho, simply prioritizing principles or consequences over the other will lead to failed morality.