Hi Peregrinus

Thanks mutually for vigorously debating various points. I doubt we can agree, as our conceptual schemes seem to give weight to significantly different sources. I’m reciprocally sceptical about arguments for moral realism. Where ‘moral facts’ may be taken to refer broadly to those data gathered through evolutionary, sociological, anthropological, psychological, neuroscientific and other studies with an empirical concern for behaviours and propositions about them which purport to be of a moral nature, and where these data can contribute prospectively to a constructivist ethics of harm minimisation, I think we have the desiderata for worthy projects. But I find myself in agreement with philosopher Joshua Greene and others that moral realism, with its traditional payload of a preoccupation with a theologico-philosophical ‘moral truth’, is an undesirable diversion which may actually harm such projects. I’m not naive enough to suppose that moral realism will go away, because it has strong intuitive appeal – not strong enough, though, to convince me.

Hi Davoz

Thank you for your reply.

Can I raise a different point, one going all the way back to your original post? You asked the question:

“In a world without God can ethical convictions be anything more than narratives?”

In discussing the question we veered into a discussion of moral realism – a discussion which has been illuminating, if not necessarily conclusive.

But we should note that

(a) It’s possible to propose the existence of God without also proposing that God is the source or foundation for moral absolutes (and examples of religious belief-systems of this type abound); and

(b) conversely, it’s possible to propose the existence of moral absolutes without seeking to ground them in an idea of God.

The way in which you pose the question raised in your original post suggests that you see an idea of God as the only way in which we can ground moral absolutes. But there is no obvious reason why this should be so, and – no offence - the assumption that it is may be a convenient way for the advocate of secular ethical system to deny to himself that he is, in fact, asserting moral absolutes.

When you talk about “data gathered through evolutionary, sociological, anthropological, psychological, neuroscientific and other studies” contributing to “a constructivist ethics of harm minimisation”, are you not, in effect, treating the goodness of “harm minimisation” as a moral absolute? It seems to me that you are treating harm minimisation as ethically good, while not critically examining the question of why it is ethically good. In this system the ethical goodness of harm minimisation seems to be axiomatic – accepted without proof as true.

Or, to put it another way, if we drill down deep enough don’t all ethical systems ultimately depend on one or more ethical axioms whose truth we accept but cannot demonstrate? These can only be held as a matter of faith. It doesn’t have to be religious faith, but I don’t see that a great deal turns on whether it is or not; it is still a fideist position.

iambiguous wrote:

But imagine confronting the words, "terminating the life of a perfectly healthy fetus" when broaching abortion as a moral or ethical issue. Here the reactions...philosophical, ethical, political...are all over the board. As are the so much more intense emotional and psychological reactions. How do we make them come into alignment when what is contrued to be rational or irrational comes from every imaginable direction?



But I contrasted the hopelessly conflicting and contradictory ethical narratives pertaining to abortion with the much more coherent and consistent facts that are shared by those performing abortions. There may well be a few competing arguments regarding the most rational manner in which to perform them but they are no where near the cacaphony we hear with respect to the morality of performing them.

Medical science prevails inside an abortion clinic. There is no such equivalent outside on the streets when the moral factions collide.



I agree. And if we had no free will Hitler is the equivalent of the greatest humanitarian. How can we detest the behaviors of those who had no choice but to act them out in a manner determined by whatever dictated the existence of existence itself.



Here I tend to embrace William Barrett's argument in Irrational Man:

For the choice in...human [ethical] situations is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the the ultimate outcome and even---or most of all---our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.

Which is why I tend toward moderation, negociation and compromise when moral narratives come together in the political [legal] sphere.



Science and math function flawlessly in a universe without God. Yet we have no way of knowing for certain if this is a Godless universe. Here, we all make our own leaps. My own is towards atheism.

But in a universe without God, I don't see how, "[a]n absolute system of ethics would be a logically consistent system" in it.

With ethics you are dealing with mindful matter. You are dealing with complex emotional and psychological reactions. You are dealing with people who see right and wrong from many conflicting and contradictory vantage points.

How can they be reconciled such that we derive sets of behaviors consistent with, say, Kant's cetegorical imperatives--- with a duty to behave in one manner rather than another.

Has this ever been accomplished in the history of philosophy. I don't think so. At least not pertaining to actual behaviors in conflict down on the ground.

Medical science does have facts at its disposal and it is possible to make rational, evidence-based arguments as to how best perform an abortion. But once upon a time, there were no medical facts and no consistently used scientific principles which people used to find them, which meant that deciding how to carry out a medical procedure was to decide between competing "narratives" - perhaps which called upon gods, spirits, demons, natural elements, and so on. This is the picture that you paint of ethics, and it is potentially correct, or potentially as correct as the picture of primitive, non-scientific medical knowledge described above. But I am glad that humanity did not write off scientific medical knowledge as an impossibility because they could not imagine it, could not imagine, for example, that virtually invisible bacteria played an enormous role.



Being unable to see how and defining something as logically impossible are not the same - the first might be a matter of experience and opinion, but the latter is scientific in its methodology, the same science we both agree is incredibly useful, powerful and wonderful in medical science. However, it might be logically impossible to have such a system, but what I think we should be discussing is the reasoning that forms your statement, "I don't see how".

I have mentioned that I do not think that ethics as a logically consistent system follows directly from the existence of a god. So I am curious to see how you think this chain of logic works. I would ask the question, Can there be a logically consistent form of ethics (with or without god)? If so, how? If not, how is this shown?



I think these are two separate questions. One is about an objective set of ethics. The second, which relates to the "complex emotional and psychological reactions" is, If there is an objective set of ethics, how can people be made to act ethically? For example, if we discovered that murder is objectively bad, that doesn't automatically mean that people are going to stop murdering each other, it just means that we objectively know it is wrong. To stop people from murdering each other we would have to assess the complex emotional and psychological reactions, and much more.

As far as your assumptions for your reasoning go, I am still in the dark.

But this just contrast all the more the distinction between abortion as a medical procedure and abortion as an ethical issue. Medical science has made simply astonding progress in performing abortions while ethicists are not an inch closer to describing rational behavior here.



How, for example, would one begin to determine the precise point when human life begins? Is it at conception? When the heart beats? When brain waves are detected? At the point "viability" outside the womb? At the point of birth itself?

When does a "clump of cells" become human? Or, as a clump of cells, are they already human?

Medical science can follow this sequence with extraordinary precision. But who is to say logically when a particular human life begins?

But I'm not arguing it's impossible to know this anymore than I would argue it is impossible to know logically whether abortion is ethical or unethical.

But what would such an argument sound like?



I think it does follow from God if this God is said to be omniscient and omnipotent.

Mere mortals are neither.

As I have argued before, if someone kills another [for whatever personal reason], chooses not to be bothered by it and never gets caught what does it mean [from his point of view] to speak of "ethical behavior"?

With God, there is no question of whether something is or is not a Sin. And there is no question of His not knowing if you commit a Sin. And there is no question of His not punishing you for it. This, in my view, is the import behind Doestoevsky's conjecture that, in the absense of God, all things are permitted. In other words, from conflicting and contradictory points of view, all things can be rationalized.

iambiguous wrote:

With ethics you are dealing with mindful matter. You are dealing with complex emotional and psychological reactions. You are dealing with people who see right and wrong from many conflicting and contradictory vantage points.

How can they be reconciled such that we derive sets of behaviors consistent with, say, Kant's cetegorical imperatives---with a duty to behave in one manner rather than another.



But, sans God, how can we argue beyond all doubt that killing another human being is always wrong? What of self-defense, capital punishment, abortion and stem cell research [which some call murder], the collateral killing that goes on in war?

Or hypotheticals like, "if you happened upon Adolph before he became Hitler would you be justified in killing him for "the greater good"?

There may one day be an "objective argument" to resolve all of the existential shades of grey but I don't see one now. I don't see how one can be made by mere mortals.

Well, this is pretty much the point. Until we can conclusively logically rule something out, it lives in the unimaginable area, but not the impossible area. Many things have lived there, and many more still do, and some of the things which have lived there have turned out to be possible and understandable, and some have turned out to be impossible. But just because we don't understand the "how" doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just that we cannot imagine how it would exist. Two separate things.

(By the way, I don't think we've done too badly as mere mortals.)



But just because it hasn't, doesn't mean it isn't possible. At some stage pretty much everything hadn't been discovered.



Well, the who is logic itself. And someone smart enough to eventually point it out, should it exist, or point out that it cannot exist.



I posted above that my argument starts out with an assertion about ethics being contingent on free will. Others, such as Aristotle etc., have different starting points. And there are probably many other types of arguments which we haven't heard yet. But just that we cannot imagine them now does not mean they are impossible arguments.



This does not answer the question I posed (which was posed long before I was born). Even if a god is omniscient and omnipotent and tells mere mortals how to behave ethically, from where are the ethics derived? Did our god simply make them up from nothing, and make some arbitrary set of values concrete ethical values? This would imply they are god's subjective values. Or does our god base this system of ethics they have conveyed to us mere mortals upon some non-subjective ground? This would imply there is an independent logically consistent set of ethics. If god's ethics work without the need for punishment, if they work because the logic works, then they will work whether god exists or not. If they do not, then they rely on god's reward and retribution to work - just as the law requires police, prisons and judges to work. That does not describe a system of ethics, but a system of enforcement. I mean, do we just follow the law because it is the law, or do we also follow the law because we understand its meaning and intent?

Just saying that something is "omniscient and omnipotent" does not solve all dilemmas, instead it passes the buck to a mystical realm of paradox, where omnipotent gods can create rocks that they cannot pick up.

You have also not shown a distinct chain of reasoning as to the logical impossibility of a consistent set of ethics. You could do this by showing that a system of ethics would always contradict itself. But you cannot do this by saying "I cannot see how" or "It doesn't make sense to me."

Sorry, Peregrinus, mistaken identity! I take no credit for the OP, which was contributed by Iambiguous.

I’ll sketch out a possible answer, beginning with the notion of ‘absolute’. If we assume ‘absoluteness’ at the broadest possible level to be a nomological property of a physical universe which comes with a guarantee never to change, then as human beings we appear to have access to no such warrant, but only to probabilistic judgements. And if we have no warrant at this broadest level, then we have no warrant at subordinate levels. Without that warrant, when a scientist, philosopher or theologian says of some assertion or conclusion that it is ‘certain’, this can be true only of relationships among concepts in some delimited domain in which they have a systematic coherence. From a complementary source, experimental evidence from psychology and neuroscience tells us that while a ‘feeling of certainty’ is commonplace, whatever the relationship to the external world may be of the neural or psychological states that correlate with such feelings, any ‘certainty’ in this correlation is subject to the same underdetermination. So, if there is no certainty other than within limited domains, then there is a fortiori no absolute certainty, and I think this provides grounds for denying any ‘absolutes’ in the moral and ethical domain. Consequently, I would demur from claiming one under any description.

The shorthand of ‘harm minimisation’ betokens a field of concepts embracing heuristics like ‘Do no harm’, ‘Promote well-being’, ‘Do unto others ...’, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour’, and so forth. If the above argument about absolutes is valid, none of these can be simply posited as warrantable absolutes for a constructivist ethics. The preliminary conclusion is fairly obvious: if we cannot have absolutes because any that are claimed are falsely or wrongly claimed, then we must get by without them. There are many possible strategies for approaching this problem. I’ll briefly mention three.

[1] Adopt the theoretical stance John Rawls used in A Theory of Justice (OUP, 1973): assume an ‘initial position’ of ignorance, in which one elects values without any foreknowledge of who or what one will be in the society which espouses them. This focuses attention sharply on fairness and reciprocal rights and obligations.

[2] Defer to a somewhat similar move suggested by Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape (Free Press, 2010): imagine choosing the worst possible state of universal misery and suffering for humans; any shift away from that state is a shift towards some notion of ‘well-being’ or ‘harm minimisation’, however fuzzily underdetermined, and this simple observation helps to pull the plug on those who aver disingenuously that we can have no possible idea of what ‘well-being’ can mean for conscious creatures.

[3] Adopt the strategy described by philosopher Joshua Greene and others of eschewing the terminology of ‘moral truth’ (http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Dissertation.pdf). This is tactical: it does not deny that science may produce facts which will support the pragmatic adoption of heuristics for well-being such as those mentioned, nor that they may in the event be construed as the kind of approximative empirically-derived truths which science is eminently capable of discovering; what it does is to discard the divisive theologico-metaphysical baggage associated with the traditional discourse of ‘moral truth’ until it can be supplanted by the often counter-intuitive but evidence-based truths of scientific method.

I see your point about a logical axiology, but I’m not sure that it’s crucial. Would you say so? To demand one for a naturalised ethics implies that there has ever been a non-controversial and universal one for a supernaturally-grounded ethics. If someone can come up with one in grounding a naturalised ethics, then so much the better, but we are dealing here with centuries of possibly misguided intuitions.

Hi Davoz

You’re quite right; the OP wasn’t yours. I do apologise

As regards moral absolutes, what you say makes sense, and it persuades me that I didn’t actually mean “absolute”. The concept I should perhaps have employed was that of objectivity. Something may be objectively real or true, without being absolute or immutable.

And a second clarification: You talk about “nomological properties of the physical universe”. I think I have to quibble here. I had to look up “nomological”, but that’s not my quibble. Rather it is this; if there are objective moral norms they may be nomological, but they are not properties of the physical universe. They may be analogous to the properties of the physical universe, but that is not the same thing.

If we adopt a materialist position that only the physical universe has any objective reality then it will follow that objective moral norms cannot exist. I do not attribute this position to you but, if it is your position, or is an unstated premise in your arguments, then it would be as well to clarify this.

So, with these clarifications, and assuming for the moment that neither of us adopts a strict materialist position, are moral norms something objective, which we [attempt to] discern/discover, or something subjective, which we create/decree?

As already discussed, it may be difficult or impossible for us to discern them, or at any rate to discern them fully, but that is not an objection to their reality. After all, I take it for granted that there are truths about the physical universe that we can never discern.

By the same token, the fact that even that which we do discern we cannot know to be objectively true with absolute certainty is not an objection. After all, the scientific method proceeds on the basis that every perceived truth about the physical universe is provisional, always to be critically re-examined, and liable to be displaced. This does not cast any doubt on the objective reality of the physical universe.

Rawls’ approach seems to me to be a technique designed to enable us to approach objective moral truths without being clouded or swayed by our individual or specific circumstances and our own particular self interest. It does however encourage us to consider the self-interest of the hypothetical human being and, as such, treats the moral value of human well-being as axiomatic (which, I feel, is consistent with the notion that it is objectively true).

Harris, as you describe his approach, treats the moral evil of human suffering as axiomatic; is this simply the other side of Rawl’s coin?

I’m grateful for the link to Greene; so far I have only read the abstract. I note that his first section is devoted to arguing against moral realism; if we accept that conclusion then his ensuing thesis, that the language of moral realism is unhelpful to us, is at the very least extremely plausible. But I think I will be most interested in that first section (if I can wrap my head around it).

Peregrinus, you said:
"If we adopt a materialist position that only the physical universe has any objective reality then it will follow that objective moral norms cannot exist."

Why not? It seems that even even wolf packs and tribes of monkeys accept certain ethical norms such as not injuring defenseless youngsters. Are you saying that these inherent norms are subjective? I don't understand.

But until it can be shown how an ethics sans God can be more than merely shared [and conflicting] narratives, I'll continue to endorse situational ethics regarding most of the conflicts that rend us.

iambiguous wrote:

But this just contrast all the more the distinction between abortion as a medical procedure and abortion as an ethical issue. Medical science has made simply astonding progress in performing abortions while ethicists are not an inch closer to describing rational behavior here.



Anything is possible I suppose but when abortion as a medical procedure was in its infancy men and women were arguing about the morality of it pretty much as we still are today. That, to me, speaks volumes. Why no progress at all?



But "will" [like identity itself] is ever embedded in historical and cultural narratives that change over time. And, sans God, there is no moral font we can go to that transcends this. None of the arguments made by philosophers who try to root morality in, say, a priori deductions...in Reason...are ever sucessful "out in the world" in creating and then sustaining an argument that all embrace universally. Perhaps imagining that someone somewhere will think one up is enough to sustain your optimism. But I am far more pessimistic myself. I can read and understand the arguments from folks like Sam Harris and, up to a point, they make sense. But they hardly ever come down to earth. For example, in The Moral Landscape Harris makes reference to abortion three times! And even here it is mentioned by and large only in order to attack religion.



I don't really see how relevant this is. If God is omniscient...if He knows everything...doesn't it follow necessarily that his moral prescriptions are derived from the most rational manner in which to think about them? Mere mortals on the other hand come into a particular world where others brainwash them into believing all sorts of conflicting and contradictory things about right and wrong over space [culture] and time [history].

We can only view things like abortion from a point of view that is no where near approaching omniscience.



As I understand it...from the perspective of the God of Abraham...He granted Adam and Eve both a paradise on earth free of punishment and free will. They used their free will to disobey God, and brought punishment upon themselves and all the rest of us. Original Sin, in other words. This whole thing is preposterous to me but not to others. Yes, many do worship and adore God because they fear His retribution. But at least they have a Scripture that allows them to differentiate right from wrong objectively. Depending, of course, on how this is interpreted by the different denominations.

But if there is no God there is no moral logic. We're on our own. And the closest we can get perhaps to "objectivity" is to embrace the points folks like Harris propagate about Bad Lives and Good Lives, about "the well-being of conscious creatures."

In fact, Harris sounds remarkably like you:

...the fact that we may not be able to resolve specific moral dilemmas does not suggest that all competing responses to them are equally valid. In my experience, mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a great source of moral confusion.

emphasis the author



But my point is that regarding questions like this there is no "distinct chain of reasoning" one can use to answer them one way or another.

And, just as with the question of God's existence, it is, in my view, incumbent upon those who claim logic does exist to resolve moral disputes to provide us with an argument that does so.

And it's not that a system of logic contradicts itself so much as it relies on the internal logic of the meaning given to the words used in the argument itself.

Hi Tom


Moral norms are abstract concepts, not material objects. If only the physical universe has any objective reality, then abstract concepts have no objective reality; their existence must be entirely subjective.

I think the question you raise about the wolf packs has three possible answers:

1. Contrary to what we assume, wolves are capable of at least elementary ethical reasoning. Consequently they can give subjective existence to moral norms.

2. Despite appearances, the wolves are not "accepting ethical norms", but merely obeying an instinct which has been fostered by natural selection.

3. Moral norms have objective reality, and we must therefore reject materialism.

It seems to me, iambiguous, that your assumptions are:

(a) an omniscient entity can devise a non-independent but objective system of ethics,
(b) humans will never have the capacity to do this
(c) without an omniscient entity, there can be no objective system of ethics

As to (a), well, we've spoken about it a lot already. You say, for example:


Well, if god thinks about it in a rational manner, then there must be some logic which he or she follows. If the system is consistent, then there is some consistent logic that underlies the system of ethics. If god is totally rational and doesn't put any of his own subjective opinion in, then this is an objective system that does not require god in order to exist - it is logically consistent in its own right. If god does put his own opinion in, then the system is not objective, so it does not automatically follow that an omniscient god leads to an objective system of logic, unless there is a logic that god can follow and use.


Well, this just shows that you (i) don't believe there is evidence for an objective system of ethics invented by a god, (ii) that you agree it is based upon a system of punishment and reward, not necessarily related to a system of objective ethics, and (iii) that you recognise others only think it is objective from their perspective.

As to (b): if a logical system of ethics exists, can humans ever understand this?

Why no progress at all? Well, even on established fact (such as evolution or the theory of special relativity) people in the past and today disagree. So disagreement is not evidence of lack of progress. And, as I stated earlier, at some point in time every discovery is new and so takes up less than 1% of history. Should ethics follow the same time scale as medical history or the physical sciences? It was only last century that mathematicians really stopped taking maths for granted and delved into set theory and others. So you can judge the progress of this, but it is a subjective judgement (unless you come up with a full-blown "theory of discovery").

Are humans capable of understanding an objective system of ethics if it exists? Well, we don't know, so we'll have to stick to our subjective judgments about that as well. But what we can say is, If humans can never understand it, then we can simply put it into the category of "doesn't exist" because it is practically the same.

However, I think you give humanity a raw deal when you assume both (i) people can never transcend or understand themselves in relation to history (i.e. be totally defined by history) and (ii) that culture itself will never create a situation where people might discover objective ethics. They are pretty big assumptions.

What about (c)?


This quote is just subjective opinion. There needs to be some sort of chain of reasoning or evidence to show that "if there is no God there is no moral logic". As a claim on its own it means very little.


What this really means is, "I cannot think of a distinct chain of reasoning one way or the other." I have put forward the beginning of my chain of reasoning: in regards to free will, either we have some free will or we don't, and where free will is applicable, there ethics is applicable. Ethics is contingent on free will. I will actually have more to say about this in another post, but the point I want to make here is that being unable to think up a chain of reasoning does not prove that a chain of reasoning does or does not exist. If you are going to make the claim "There can be no objective ethics without god?" I feel it is fair to provide a chain of reasoning both that there is objective ethics with god and a chain of reasoning that shows how there is no objective ethics without god. I think "because it is complex and I cannot imagine it" is not enough evidence to back up a claim.


I heartily agree. We should do the best we can until we know better.

I hope this clears up some of my thinking, and where I disagree that some things you find obvious and intuitive are actually fact.

Peregrinus,
It seems that you are defining ethics sans God out of the realm of the possible by saying:

1. If one isn't convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being then one is a materialist.

2. Materialists only accept the existence of the material universe.

3. Moral norms (ethics) are abstract concepts, not material objects.

4. Because ethics are not material objects they can have no objective reality to one who isn't convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being.

5. Therefore there can be no ethical system sans God.

I would argue that there are people who are not convinced of the existnece of a Supreme Being who do accept abstract concepts such as 1+1=2, or after hearing a big bang and seeing a huge muchroom cloud, even accept such questionable abstract concepts as E=mc2.

And I would further argue that if we reject the concept of "royal blood" and accept the proposition that no person is born with more inherent rights than any other person, then it can be shown in logical steps that a legitimate rational ethics based on the Golden Rule of reciprocity will follow sans God.

Yes, you have put this argument forward previously, but there are still questions pertaining to this that you have not answered. (In the other, but similar thread, I think.) In fact, I think what you said was, "Thanks."



Of course, part of the materialist argument is that mathematical concepts are descriptions of physical reality, formulated in some computational system (such as the human brain), and therefore do not need to be described as abstract. So in a materialist concept of the world, there is no need to deny maths or formulae such as e=mc2.

To imabiguous:


This is an example of the chain of reasoning I have been talking about.

McFate,
1. Either the fact that I question the existence of a Supreme Being is not proof that I am a "materialist", or

2. It is posssible for a materialist to believe in a rational ethics sans God, because I know at least one person, myself, who questions the existence of a Supreme Being, but believes that a logical, just, ethical system can exist and is there for the taking, sans God. This much is fact, not conjecture.

Jesuits may try to wrap heretics in chains of rules that they devise, but I don't accept any of their BS, beginning with , I guess, that Jesus was the Son of a Supreme Being born to a virgin muggle.

The immediate difficulty we have here is trying to imagine what it means to be logical as an omnicient being. How does the Creator of all existence put His or Her own subjective spin on things?

I would imagine that if God knows everything it is possible to know then any ethical system He or She devises would reflect that.

But we don't have to speculate hypothetically on the knowledge mere mortals bring to ethical conflicts. We can be reasonably sure it is no where near to being omnisient. And if, for example, you don't know everything it is possible to know about abortion how can your own ethical agenda not just be a particular narrative based on the knowledge you have picked up in the course of living your life? How can this be other than a prejudice?

iambiguous wrote:

As I understand it...from the perspective of the God of Abraham...He granted Adam and Eve both a paradise on earth free of punishment and free will. They used their free will to disobey God, and brought punishment upon themselves and all the rest of us. Original Sin, in other words. This whole thing is preposterous to me but not to others. Yes, many do worship and adore God because they fear His retribution. But at least they have a Scripture that allows them to differentiate right from wrong objectively. Depending, of course, on how this is interpreted by the different denominations.



I don't believe in God so these theological quandaries are largely moot to me. But it does seem [to me] God could have constructed an objective ethics based on knowing all that can be known about everything. Then H/She creates man and woman and gives them the freedom to live in accordance with his moral truths. If they choose vice they get punished.

God does not have an existential perspective.

My problem here though is that I don't see how an omniscient God can be reconciled with free will. If God knows everything then H/She must know everything we will ever do. And if H/She knows that how can we freely choose to do it?



Yes, but when you compare the extraordinary conflation that exists between doctors performing abortions and the utter lack of conflation regarding the ethical conflict, the distinction is dramatic. Science [medical or otherwise] is able to narrow the disagreements down considerably over time because they have the tools to do so. Not so ethicists. All they still have today are the assumptions they make about the meaning of the words they use in their arguments. They can't go out and perform experiments in order to measure precisely the truthfulness of all the conflicting points of view.

Instead, as with Sam Harris---I'm reading The Moral Landscape now---they can only speculate that one day this might be possible.



I don't see how anyone can untangle all of the thousands of existential variables that go into any one particular individual's belief about the morality of any one particular abortion such that it can then be extrapolated into an objective moral truth such that any abortion performed in any situation and for for all time to come must be viewed, evaluated and judged in precisely the same way if one wants to be thought of as a rational and ethical human being.

Where to even begin in coming up with that argument?!!!



I base them only on the manner in which for thousands and thousands of years now the human race has come no closer to resolving the moral and political conflicts that ever tear us apart.

For example, I can ask, "Is the release of the wikileak documents moral?" Or, "Does the conflict in Afghanistan constitute a 'just war'?" Or, "Is it ethical for the government to forbid its citizens to be armed?" Or, "Is hunting for sport unethical?" Or, "Is it wrong to be nude in public?"

And on and on and on and on.

How would we go about determining these things objectively?

Muggle?, please explain. Your post may be very clever but it's quite nasty. Out of nastiness how can any good come? I'll stick with Jesus.

Without being willingly circumlocutory , Peregrinus, my response would go something like this. In posing his OP question, Iambiguous had recourse to a counterfactual (‘In a world without God can ethical convictions be anything more than narratives?). Even so, I can’t read it other than being concerned exclusively with propositions in the public domain, which is all that narratives or stated convictions can be. It does not distinguish norms of behaviour from norms discussable in discourse. Anything written or spoken under the latter description is ontologically real (unless we are solipsists), and this allows us to say (at least) that the language of moral norms exists with ontological objectivity (is that an agreement?). While this may seem both deflationary and platitudinous, it is consistent, as far as I can see, with materialist or immaterialist philosophical (or religious in the latter case) positions.

A strategic question is then whether any such propositions can be recast in terms which are not those of traditional moral realism but have the same import for possible human behaviour and futures; that is, whether they are correlatable with a (lower) level of description which bypasses traditional moral realist or commonsense moral talk but can nevertheless say something vital and important about how humans can agree and cooperate for survival. Someone can reject the latter desiderata, of course, and might wish to envisage a future catastrophic scenario in which ethics has no conceivable meaning, but one must wonder why he or she would want to be part of this debate. I’m partial to Hilary Putnam’s emphasis on the idea of considering ‘ethical’ problems as another variety of practical problem (Ethics without Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2004: 28-30), which directs attention to the many kinds of parity between (still using conventional terms) ‘ethical’ and non-ethical’ problems and potential solutions to them.

Not at all. For what it’s worth, I believe that ethics without God are very possible. If I question nontheistic bases for ethics, it’s because I am interested in exploring them, not because I am denying them.


You fall at the first hurdle, Tom. I never said that anyone not convinced of a Supreme Being is a materialist; nor do I believe it.

I observe that some atheists – definitely not all – describe themselves as materialists, by which I understand them to mean that they believe that only the material has objective existence. And it seems to me that it would be difficult for those people to assert the objective reality of moral norms. (It would also be difficult for those people to mount a convincing argument against the objective reality of moral norms, since they would start from a faith-position which precluded the objective reality of moral norms and, to their antagonists, this would look exactly like assuming the conclusion.)


1 + 1 = 2 and E = mc2 are descriptions of how the material universe operates. If I have one apple and I acquire another then I have two apples. And I observe that this is true also of oranges, dollar bills, copies of Price and Prejudice, etc. I infer that it is generally true for all material things. 1 + 1 = 2 is therefore an accurate description of an observable property of the material universe. It’s a generalisation. That’s quite different from a moral norm, a statement about good and evil.


Well, a materialist would deny the objective reality of “rights”, and so would agree that no person is born with more inherent objective rights than any other, since everyone is born with none at all. But I doubt that they could proceed from that by any number of logical steps to asserting the objective reality of the Golden Rule, since their philosophy seems to me to preclude that possibility.

I think most materialists understand rights as something subjective; something created/conferred by society. You have a right to the ownership and control of (say) your land only because I (and lots of other people) regard it as your land, and agree that we have to seek your permission to enter the land, sow crops on it, or whatever. If we were not of that view then the land wouldn’t in any real, objective sense be “yours”, and you would have no property rights in it.

On this view of rights, it is quite clear that society can confer different rights on different people, and in fact it commonly does. Take voting rights, for example; in the past they have been conferred on men but not on women, on whites but not on blacks, on people of property but not people of no property. Those particular forms of discrimination have all been eliminated, but most countries still deny the vote to one or more of children, non-citizens, non-residents, the mentally incapacitated, the imprisoned, the formerly imprisoned. If we understand rights as something created and conferred by human beings on one another, therefore, then different people not only can but normally do have different rights.

Hand up anyone if you can understand what Davoz, mcfate Tom Palven iambiguous and Peregrinus
are talking about!