Two possible arguments against the existence of objective morality (and possible responses)

This video lecture builds off of a reading by MacKinnon & Fiala, wherein they canvas four arguments or reasons that moral skepticism or relativism are attractive. In the video I only discuss two of these reasons : (1) the existence pervasiveness, and persistence of moral disagreement and (2) the diversity of situations in which moral agents find themselves. This is part of an introductory level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics.

[daithi]

I've been spending hours watching your videos. I may already be familiar with a concept, but your explanations are just so damn good that it doesn't matter. I still tend to either learn something new, or see a different perspective, or I at least get some joy and benefit out of your explanation. So... Thank You.

[Kris.G]

I've always been put off by philosophy in general, but your videos are refreshingly easy to absorb.

[Tysto]

1:18 & 1:43 If nothing else, these lectures are a great argument for English spelling reform.

[bulhakov]

Taste is actually a perfect analogy, because it can be divided into the completely subjective aspect of tastiness and more or less "locally objective" aspects of healthiness (e.g. product X is generally not tasty, but healthy, or product Y is usually tasty but unhealthy, product Z tastes awful and is generally unhealthy but will make wonderful medicine in some specific cases and at the right dose). There never will be a single "objectively good diet", but overall some quite stable optimisations will emerge (with diets that are both healthy and tasty).

Add to that the fact that there are a ton of neurological studies that show how moral judgements are handled by processess very similar to physical disgust. Just like we evolved an ability to judge food as good/bad, so we evolved to judge behaviours.

For me the relativisim/objective morality is a closed subject, though we can still debate/optimize what should be part of a "healthy moral diet", e.g. should a belief in one "objectivelly good diet" be part of it?

[petardraganov]

I think the main reason why scientific disagreements are much easier to settle is that you actually have a relatively small number of people who are very invested in the truth of the matter looking at the same evidence as each other. Whereas moral disagreements aren't really a continuous conversation between the same group of people having the same experiences, aware of everything that has been said on the topic and not everyone is as dedicated to finding the answers.
Moral disagreement is more like different people having the same conversations rather than a single continuous conversation. Even if in a given time and place, the problem is as good as solved, the next generation is going to have a new evidence to deal with and limited awareness of the preceding evidence and arguments.

The (potentially) infinite adjustment of moral principles is a nice way to solve the issue of different circumstances, but my first thought was to just go the virtue ethics route.


Also, God is usually an uncreated creator and not a creature.

[flowmancerkasai]

Professor: "We say things like, pecan pie is tasty, but there's some disagreement"

Guy who is deathly allergic to tree nuts: "you're darn right there is!"

[andersedson]

Wish you were a grad student at Berkeley still, you seem like you would be a great GSI lol

[chrishirst]

The point that you didn't make is that there can be a million moral laws that are situational but that does refute the fact that you just need 1 to be universally true.

[PassGoGames]

The way I would boil this down is "we can say there are objective moral rules only if we phrase the rules to include moral relativism within them".

[davidthevegan]

I've become addicted to your content and I don't see myself stopping my consumption anytime soon.

[JadyGrudd]

I'm extremely impressed by his ability to write backwards

[mbg]

I think a problem with the last part is that moral objectivism is not that there are objective moral laws that can be written out, but that there are objective moral truths.
The stipulation that it has to be able to be written out as in a law book, is a stipulation that doesn't hold.

[tomschmidt]

I'm pretty late to the party. I like that you contrasted scientific disagreement with moral disagreement. It seems to me the difficulty with morality is it involves the interaction between two or more people. As such is is highly subjective. I think what one has to do is define a goal, in my case my the overriding moral principle is human wellbeing. Actions that increase it are moral ones that reduce it are immoral. The difficulty of course is not everyone has the same notion of what constitutes human well being.

[billbrock]

Our morality is predicated on sustaining the group, and not the well-being of the individual. All social animals exhibit some system of cooperation that makes group living possible. Our system is morality, which evolved along with our social nature. In a group the individual's survival, procreation opportunities, and quality of life are enhanced.

[jacktracy]

I have often used the existence of objective morality as an argument against the idea that people (read the antebellum southerners) cannot be judged because they were living in a different milieu.

But I simply cannot believe that situational ethics can justify the abject inhuman cruelty of slavery. Surely, this qualifies as an example of an objective morality.

And what bothers me the most, is that Southerners, who are the most likely persons to make this argument are, as denizens of the Bible Belt, also the most likely to argue that the 10 commandments are objective moral truths.

[Bronco]

This video is the answer to the question "why are legal agreement forms so long mind numbing" lol

[BasicBro]

It may be a bit of piling on… but science in general seems to be another example where there is persistent disagreement, but where there is objective facts. The scientific method by its nature is driven by perpetual disagreements but it arrives at agreed upon facts. The subjects and facts in focus just shift over time. The debate on the existence of tectonic plates ends and the disagreements what mechanisms drive plate movement begins.

In a similar way, morality has perpetual disagreements on the whole, but on specific subjects a moral consensus has emerged that didn’t exist previously. Slavery, genocide, monarchy etc. were once considered perfectly moral by most people, but are now recognized for the evils they are.

Perhaps a better comparison instead of tectonics vs. morality would be tectonics vs. moral question of slavery. Or Science as a whole vs morality as a whole.

At any rate, just a thought. Love your videos!

[johnlabarbera]

The fact there even is a moral dilemma to begin with, like the examples he stated in the video, is in itself evidence for moral objectivity.

If morals were subjective, there wouldn’t exist such a strong and consistent verdict to adhere to one over the other (e.g.: break your promise to save other’s lives).

[plasmaballin]

Another thing to note about the morality vs. taste comparison: If I disagree with you on morality, you can provide arguments that might change my conclusion, but if I disagree with you on taste, this is typically impossible. You can't argue me into thinking pickles taste good, but you could argue me into changing my mind about a moral issue like abortion. This seems to be a quite relevant difference between the persistent disagreements in morality and taste. Using arguments to change someone's mind doesn't make any sense if it's a subjective matter like taste, but we do it all the time for morality.

[nabilfares]

Again, great presentation with delightful clarity.

It might be that the question of god’s or gods’ existence is wrong like the question of set of sets that don’t contain themselves is wrong. The premise that all specifications of inclusion to a ‘set’ can define sets is wrong. Similarly, not all specifications of ‘entities‘ define entities of the kind whose existence can be queried.

Therefore, the example you gave of a persistent disagreement but that an objective answer exists may be invalid.