Can the Moral Law be figured out?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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I know this probably belongs in another forum…

But basically this is my question:

I’ve been trying to study the moral law and figure out if it’s objective, relative, both, or what?

It’s like if you say an objective moral law exist, then you have to prove why it exist, how you know that moral law existence is the correct one for all.

If you say the moral law doesn’t exist, than how can you say killing the innocent is wrong? Because then it’s all relative, it’s only your opinion, and isn’t wrong on a universal level so basically it means nothing.

Or can they both work together? How can something be objective and relative at the same time? Or can just ‘some’ parts be objective, and some be relative?

If anyone has a good logical answer I’d love to here it.

2

Etymologically…
m-w.com/dictionary/objective
m-w.com/dictionary/subjective

Correct one for your species, not for “all”. :wink:

The law does exist, but that law does not exist as an object independant of thought. Codes of actions – are not actions.

…?

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Hi club29,

Well, moral propositions take the form of declarative sentences. Murder IS immoral etc. If taken at face value, they seem to report facts. Facts are objective. So, if morality is not in some sense objective, you would have to give an argument as to why it is not. The few arguments I am aware of, I do not think work for various reasons.

But - whether or not there IS a moral law is a different question to how we KNOW the moral law. The 2nd question is a much more difficult one to answer. A good book on the subject would be William Talbott’s Which Rights Should Be Universal.

If morality is relative, then when we say “murder is wrong”, we don’t actually mean that the action murder has a property of ‘wrongness’. We might mean something like “I do not like murder” instead. So yes, we cannot say that it IS wrong if morality is relative.

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Hi Dan~,

I’m not sure about this. I’d say that most moral realists would say that the moral law applies to all moral agents - so theoretically it could apply to alien species.

What does this mean? It either exists or it does not. Morality is either cognitive or it is not.

5

==========
I would examine the MOTIVE of the act. Killing or murder for example, we kill enemies when we are at war, is that a sin? I know killing another human being is wrong but how about when we are at war? Stealing. A person in poverty stealing food for a hungry child, did that person commit a sin? If I were the soldier and that poor person, I think I will pray to God to “please forgive me as I am about to kill another human being or steal food for my hungry child, as I know no other way dear Lord, so forgive me and if I deserve a punishment dear God, give it to me now rather than suffer later. Thank you dear God for listening to me.”

6

I would think that the “Golden Rule” fits the bill for an objective moral law in that it came into such diverse consciousnesses as that of Plato, Buddha, Confucious and Jesus.

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Not necessarily… society has to agree to act in that way. And certainly christians do not treat homosexuals like they’d like to be treated.

(Jesus himself condemns millions to hell, is that how he’d like to be treated?)

Morals come from societal agreement, they are both subjective and objective at the same time. And yes, some “sort” of golden rule does play apart in that. Murder, theft and rape are obvious ones, as none of us want that to happen to us or others we deem them immoral. But not all societies agree… some, say “to the victor go the spoils”…

That’s their moral code. Certainly it’s not a golden rule, but it is a rule nonetheless.

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scythekain,
I thoroughly agree, but is the intent of the rule negated by those who cannot or will not follow it?

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No… if they are a minority they are subject to the majority. I don’t agree with the plight of homosexuality, (or other fetishes.)

The homosexuals want “equal rights”, and they are using their sexual deviance as the center of that “right”. That their “deviant”, “fetish” behavior is equal to the “accepted normal” sexual behavior. The problem is they don’t see the connection between their own abnormalcy (and they are by the very definition) and other fetish’ abnormalcy. If we grant sexual protection to homosexuals, why stop at that fetish? Already NAMBLA is chompin’ at the bit to see the results of the “homosexual rights” crusade, as are the polygamist, the zoophile, and the people who love making love to stuffed animals. (they were born that way!)

So what can the fetish’ do about not being normal? Attack what is… You can’t deny that they haven’t. Traditional relationships and traditional marriage have been under attack from the anti-moral (being what is accepted morality) crowd, than after spending the day attacking marriage, they complain that they don’t have equal access to it. Then they compare their plight, to the plight of the african americans who were trying to get equal access to buses, schools, and voting…

can it even be compared? The white majority in the south did disagree with it, sure… but the rest of the country recognized that access, shouldnt’ depend upon the color of your skin…

Should it depend on how you like to get busy? And if it should what does it mean for all the other fetishes?

What is the “moral” purpose of marriage? To have children. Now, their are other legal benefits as well, and certainly many of those don’t require you to be married. You can simply go to a lawyer and grant power of attorney to your “lover”. You can consign your will to whomever you want. As for healthcare, the current system is need of an overhaul anyways, it discriminates against the poor as well as the Fetish’.

So what’s the purpose of homosexual marriage? To pass on their perversion. Am I wrong? More importantly, what will that mean for the future moral majority? What will that cause for the other fetish’?

If you disagree with my stance above ask yourself these questions:

  1. Am I discriminating against gays, or merely stating the facts based upon reality and current morality?

  2. If we suddenly change our moral stance regarding this particular fetish, how long will it be before we allow other fetish behavior to marry? The guy next door wants to marry his hand puppet. He can only love hand puppets.

  3. Do we really believe that behavior is BORN into someone? If so how can we convict killers and rapists? After all aren’t they also “born” that way?

  4. Why would anyone in the moral minority choose to be in the moral minority? Wouldn’t the thief rather be in a majority where he wouldn’t be arrested for breaking into someone’s house?

  5. what is normal? It’s what society agrees to. What is moral? once again it’s what society agrees to. And currently the “fact” that homosexuality is not normal or moral is the majority position. Agree with it or not, that’s the fact of objective subjective morality.

It sucks being in the minority position, but I believe people choose their own fate. “you reap what you sow.”*

  • To a certain degree… The child born into the house a of a jihadi will likely grow up believing in the idealogy of jihadi. Like I’ve stated before I grew up in the idealogy of mormonism, and through another manner of luck and knowledge was I narrowly able to escape it.

But that’s environmental… and not genetic.

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scythekain,
While I appreciate your ideas and the fervor with which they are presented, I cannot agree with them, not for reasons you might think. I have no idea of what goes into the making of a homosexual and therefore believe I have no right to judge one from my state of ignorance. As for their alleged attack on family traditions, etc., this to me smacks of the old Nixon domino theory about communism. If the communists take over Viet Nam, they are well on their way to taking over the world. History proved him wrong. Communism fell under the weight of its own erronious assumptions. Homosexuality, and any of its defenders, cannot topple what is real or natural, assuming it is unnatural. History will sort this out. I can’t. I barely escaped christian fundamentalism with my life.

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Hi scythekain,

Love the sinner, hate the sin. IF homosexuality is a sin, it does not follow that the Christian should treat homosexuals badly. If they do do that, I’d probably say that they’re not very good Christians.

What is your argument for morals being non-cognitive? It seems to me that you’re begging the question.

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I’ve read all your post, and still none of you actually know.

If an ‘objective’ moral law was to exist, it’s only logical for it to exist “Universally” Now how we clarify what that is…just leads back to our own relative beliefs once again.

So then it still seems as if we’re left in confusion… They “Seem” to be relative…but then they also “seem” to be objective.

So basically if you believe morals are relative, when asked, “so you think killing the innocent is wrong” you must say in my ‘opinion’ it is, but my opinion doesn’t matter universally. So then this person cannot make judgements upon anyone other than it’s a belief system or standard in which he/she must follow(like the law).

So this is how I see it:

  1. Relative morals - this belief gives you no right to claim others beliefs as wrong, it’s just survival of the fittest, what happens happens.

  2. Objective morals - There is an objective moral law based on your belief system, such as God’s laws, that act universally to all ‘possibly’. Just as your religion you believe acts as the truth ‘possibly’.

So the facts are a universal objective law ‘could’ exist, but then it’s purely faith based as of now. The truth may be there, but we may never know.
Secondly, if they are relative then they don’t matter to anyone but your organization, which could possibly be the whole universe of creatures, but then again if these creatures are brainwashed the truth can still defy what seems to be the moral law to the creatures. It has to be some outside standard.

Does this make sense? Critique me where you like.

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Hi club29,

Well, suppose an example of a moral law and a moral judgement that proceeded from that law was “the Holocaust was morally wrong”. Suppose I could give good reasons for believing that the Holocaust to be morally wrong. Would that not allow us to ‘access’ a moral truth? Sure, we might be mistaken. But we might be mistaken about the Earth being round, yet we’ve still accessed the truth that the Earth, in fact, is round.

So, perhaps we can make reliable, but fallible, moral judgements.

More later - I’ve got to go to work. :slight_smile:

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I don’t see why relative morals don’t allow for situational morals. Given that, I fail to see how it creates a condition where it prevents anyone from passing judgement.

Just because I think there are situations where killing is justified, that doesn’t mean that I can’t say that a killing wasn’t justified.

15

‘Reliable’ yes, truth…we’re unsure, it’s purely faith based. I was asking a freind who knows nothing of the moral law, and hates philosophy(probably not a good subject) about if he believed the moral law existed or not. He said no, and I said so do you think torturing innocent children is ok? He said no… I said why? he said because it’s wrong, I said why? he said because it inflicts pain, I said why is inflicting pain wrong? he said…umm…and I said so it’s just your opinion then isn’t it? It doesn’t really mean anything if a universal law doesn’t exist.

No matter how you try and look at it, it all boils down to why? Why? WHY? until you’ve reached a point of relativism or faith based objectives(still relative as of now).

And I say universal because that’s the only way of looking at something objective, otherwise other galaxies, planets, etc. could have different morals and then we’re relative again.

So here’s my conclusion i’ve reached.

Relative morals do exist in some sort of way(someone give me a word that describes what I mean here). Where they do exist to us in an illusion? sort of way… only to be refuted by the unknown truth of an actual objective universal law… so before we ever conclude anything as wrong or not…we must know forsure that this type of law does exist.

So for now, as I see it, morals are faith based and relative, they’re only opinions as of now because we still do not know truth, and the only way to find the truth would be to unravel another coherrent truth to prove the universal law as truth, such as proving the existence of God and him having this law as a part of himself, him being universal as well.

Now…am I missing anything?

16

Okay, to address the original question:

Emotions and Reason: While emotions are important, I think we are supposed to determine the means to our ends according to reason. Once we have right reason, our emotion should be inlike with it if we are to be fully good people.

Objective and Relative: It’s my understanding that morals are based on human needs and respect. They are as objective as the subjects they deal with. Our laws based on objective morality, however, can differ.

For example, in our culture, we do not burp at a meal (I don’t know why) – it’s rude. In other cultures, you do burp at a meal (to show you enjoyed the food, I suppose) – it’s rude not to. The principal is not to be rude, the application differs with the culture, and emotionally, you should desire not to offend your host.

Sexuality also has the need component (desire to procreate) and the respect component (not using people for selfish personal desires). Marriage is a solution to both of these requirements.

I think this is a natural law position.

mrn

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Why is offending a host wrong? People offend their host everyday and don’t see a thing wrong with it because they have to pay. So then it’s just relative and how you look at the situation, nothing more than opinion, it’s not objective, it may be majority, but it’s not a standard set in stone. It comes from “faiths” “Beliefs” and these differ, they are relative. So this argument is in an unstable position as you now can see.

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Communism lives. The threat is greater than ever. But we also have to deal with the threat of fascism. As unrelated as that is to what I posted…

In the case of homosexuality, it’s completely possible that “natural” law (whatever that is) will take over if homosexuals are allowed to marriage. Since I don’t believe in natural law, I prefer to err on the side of common sense, and that fact that we know the early environment plays a huge role in the child’s development.

Heterosexuality is only as real or natural as we make it… and personally I choose to make that sort of relationship more important than a fetish relationship based purely on sex. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have male or female partnerships outside of marriage… It’s possible to love a male friend without it being sexual. They have the sort of fetish where they don’t know how to have a ‘normal’ relationship with a female. The movie brokeback mountain for all it’s intent and purposes to push the homosexual agenda, showed 2 men in horrible heterosexual marriage situations. 2 men that ordinarily would joke about their wife doing this or that… but in the homosexual world… they also have to have butt sex.

They’ve developed a fetish for butt sex and oral sex… and for males versus females, not because most of them were born that way… you ask most homosexuals and they’ll tell you, “it’s easier to get tail from a male.”

Club29,

Morals can be relative yet still objective. It’s about ethics. The two are inner connected. If you yourself join a tribe of cannibals and you all decide that eating human flesh is moral, than for you it is.

At the same time, I can decide from my moral standpoint (which I see as superior) that your morals are flawed.

Make sense?

19

Not universally stable Objective as of now. You can’t decide that on a universal basis that your morals are superior, it’s only relative. It’s what you hold as a higher standard.

So no, I really don’t understand. You don’t know what’s truth so you have no right to proclaim your morals as better and as truth, they are still just relative, you’re morals wouldnt’ be any better than hitlers, just opinionated.

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Offending a host is wrong because he is feeding and sustaining you – doing you good. At a restaurant you get to complain.

Above I posted something different from what you wrote here. (And I’m not sure I see the point you are trying to get across with those words.*) But faiths and beliefs differ, but have a core of similarity – the “natural law”. We look down on beliefs that don’t aid in advancing human dignity, and call them primitive or backward.

*And when you talk about something being “relative”, please say to what do you mean it is relative.