Write4U:
Since your replies don't really do anything to advance the debate about whether morality is subjective or objective, this reply of mine will be somewhat off-topic. However, I would like to correct a few errors.
I believe that I made a reasonable argument for morality being subjective, but I welcome any and all valid corrections to my fundamental argument.
It seems that certain elements of human morality are similarly hardwired, in that they are consistently seen in human societies. Does hardwiring imply objective, or not?
That is not a correction, that's a question I have already addressed.
I would ask the question: is the actor (animal or human) capable of understanding the moral implications of his/her/its actions, and does he/she/it act out of free choice? If the answer to both of these questions is "yes", then we can have a meaningful discussion about whether the chosen course of action is moral. If, on the other hand, the answer to either of these questions is "no", then it seems to me that it would be difficult to impose a moral judgment on the situation.
Yet another question, no correction. And again, I already addressed this in previous posts that certain behaviors are hardwired based on the survival fight or flight instinct, which already starts in single-celled organisms as a reaction to kinetic external pressures.
Where do you draw the line?
I draw the line where an animal is aware of community rules and knows that disobedience brings reprisal.
But these rules are subject to the environmental conditions the animals live in. Whereas a cow is an innocent herbivore who fertilizes the soil as it grazes (which humans kill for food), a predator must kill to survive but usually kills the weak and plays a part in the process of objective natural selection (and we kill for sport)
Written sources indicate that there is a very long history of associating moral prescriptions with religious ideas. All religions have ideas and prescriptions for what adherents must and must not do.
The same ideas exist in secular societies such as in insect hives, where each individual fills a specific duty for the hive.
Sophistry came along with the shaman who either pretended or honestly but falsely believed that he/she was in communication with spirits (deities)
Last time I checked, human beings were part of the universe. Therefore, it follows that if human beings practise morals then so does (a part of) the universe.
I thought that in scripture God banished humans from paradise for the sin of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and acquiring the ability for choice and disobedience.
Observations are meaningless without interpretation. All the important things in science are interpretations.
Yes, from observation and verification of regular patterns in form and function.
Without controlled observation we merely have philosophy, which can be wrongly held for 2000 years, like Aristotle's belief that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Galileo proved him wrong with a simple demonstration of similarly shaped objects of different weights dropped from a tower.
Can people agree about what "behaviours" have been observed? If they can, then it seems that those behaviours - relational or otherwise - cannot be purely subjective. They must have an objective component.
I agree, objective reality is established by agreement among observers, who each have a slightly different subjective observational experience of the same natural phenomenon. I already addressed that earlier.
Remember, behaviours are actions that are done in a physical universe, and you've already agreed that the physical universe has objective characteristics. Therefore, behaviours of every type have objective characteristics. Moral behaviours, and immoral behaviours, therefore have objective characteristics.
No that doesn't follow at all.
There are distinct differences between behavior patterns in animate and inanimate objects.
Inanimate objects are subject to mathematically deterministic "physical laws" (Law of falling bodies)
Animate organisms are subject to physically individual "response behaviours" (Bombardier beetle)
Human beings are part of the universe, so at least part of the universe things in human terms!
I agree.
Do you imagine that human beings are somehow separate from nature? How could we divorce ourselves from nature? What are you talking about? There's nowhere we can be other than in nature.
I don't, Scripture does, remember God kicked us out of Paradise (the true nature of Nature), because we could act by Choice, if not Free Will.
You're thinking of one particular religion. The idea of sin isn't found in all religions; it tends to be a focus in Christianity - and more in some denominations than others.
So, you consider some religions as objective and others as subjective?
No, they are all subjective and that proves my point doesn't it?
Not necessarily. Evolution favours organisms that are better adapted to their environment, and that environment necessarily includes other organisms, ones of the same species and ones of other species. It is often the case that a survival strategy rooted purely in self-interest turns out to be inferior to one in which cooperation and altruism occur. This is an objective fact, by the way.
I agree and have made that argument many times, particularly in support of the symbiosis between the honeybee (pollinators) and flowering plants that feed about 75% of all living organisms on earth.
Three-fourths of the world's flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce. More than 3,500 species of native bees help increase crop yields.
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plantsanimals/pollinate/#
Now that is a noble effort. Honey and Royal jelly are two of the true sterile foods in existence.
Please note that human wanton use of fertilizers and insecticides are destroying bees' own immune systems.
For shame! It proves how far humans have drifted from the natural world.
Are any of those rules grounded in facts about the universe, or are we free to just make up anything? Is any (moral) rule just as good as any other?
I just gave you an example. You be the judge.
You didn't address my point, which was that the existence of immoral people or immoral behaviours does not imply that morality itself does not exist. Do you agree?
No, mathematical determinism exists.
You live in "harmony with Nature" or you "disturb the natural balance and symmetry of Nature and you die, along with a lot of other living organisms, except the insect. It has learned to become part of Nature's balance and symmetry.
You still haven't explained to me why this would make morality purely subjective.
Humans are one of the few species that are capable of abstract thought and we KNOW that our lifestyle is contrary to Natural Law.
Yet we persist in our immoral behavior because we can and we may just end up leaving the ruins of our existence to the insect who have now evolved to adapt to all the changes and disorder humans are inflicting on this secular Paradise! (Hellstrom Chronicle)
There are only two species on the increase, man and the insect. Man because he can alter his environment, the insect which can adapt to every alteration man makes to the environment.
I don't think you know what a category error is, either.
In context of behavior, Function and Behavior are different categories.
Distinguishing behaviour from function
It can be very tricky to distinguish between behaviour and function. They are really descriptions of the same phenomena, but from different perspectives.
Behaviour describes the response of an object to stimulus. As such, it depends on the stimuli and on the structure of the object. Behaviour doesn't refer to any entities; it describes phenomena an object can exhibit in isolation of context.
Function, on the other hand, is a description of a state change in the context of the object resulting from changes in the context of the “consumption” of inputs, and the “production” of outputs, by the object. In functional descriptions, neither the structure nor the behaviour of the object is referenced. The functional perspective focuses only on the interaction of an object (system) with its co-systems, all within a given supersystem.
https://deseng.ryerson.ca/dokuwiki/design:pfbs#
Clearly it does not, because here we are, human beings in the universe with ideas about morality. The universe hasn't excluded our morality yet.
And is that why we are now in the midst of the Man-made Holocene extinction event?
Behold the Inquisition.
