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Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about a few topics and I just wanted to get the opinions of the community on some of the topics I've been dwelling on.
First:
Is subjective morality an oxymoron?
And second:
Is there truth in beauty?
What other kind of morality could there be? There's no way to measure morality, so how could it possibly be objective?
lol philosophy
Anyway philosophy professors at my school call the common belief that morality is "Subjective" (otherwise known as relativism) "Student Relativism" because only begining Intro to Philosophy students believe in that kind of relativism. 
Morality has to be objective for it to be meaningful at all. Just thinking about it I bet you don't even believe that morality is subjective (relativistic). For example: if morality was like that, then we would have no grounds to say that the Holocaust was morally wrong, because even though it might "not be right for me, or us, or our culture or whatever" then maybe using this definition it would have been morally right for Hitler, the Germans, the Nazis, or whatever kind of relativism you want to talk about.
I had a professor this summer joking about this, and he said on the first day of one of these Intro to Philosophy classes, he asked what the students thought about morality. They of course basically answered "student relativism", ala "what is right for you might not be right for me" or some such nonsense. He then played devil's advocate and was like "well thats great, so I have decided that I am just going to not assign any graded work and give every one of you a C+ (or whatever the average grade students in that class got in the past). Kids tried to argue against him (some even thought it was serious after a while) saying "You can't do that, thats wrong! What about those of us who work and get good grades???" And he would simply answer "I understand your moral objection, but I don't agree. My decision stands" or some shit. Basically he kept this up until some kids were so pissed they were about to walk out of the class when he revealed that he was just fucking with them, but making the point that if morality really was subjective like that then he would be 100% morally right to hand out that grade because no moral judgements are possible.
In short, morality basically has to be objective (assuming it exists, which is a whole other question!).
Beauty, however, I don't see how you could define as anything other than subjective unless I am just not understanding the question. I do know however that the truth is often harsh and discomforting.
Originally posted by: hubris
What other kind of morality could there be? There's no way to measure morality, so how could it possibly be objective?
What he said. For there to be an objective morality, you'd need a reliable, unfalsifiable universal constant to measure it by. Much as people have tried throughout the ages, I think it's safe to say that nobody has found one yet.
As to your second topic, both truth and beauty are subjective, so there's no absolute 'yes' or 'no' answer to that. Beauty is simply appealing, but that doesn't automatically imply that something beautiful is closer to the truth. I dare say it's often the opposite - colloquially speaking.
For morality to exist there doesnt necessarily have to be some sort of concrete, obvious way of "measuring" it that everybody has to agree on. Just because it isn't simple doesn't mean it is subjective, thats just silly.
He didn't say for morality to exist, he said for it to be objective.
Truth in beauty?
I think so
These are from my last owyhee hike about two weeks ago.
Nothing more honest than a rattlesnake.
Click for full size pics
Originally posted by: Legal_My_Deagle
For morality to exist there doesnt necessarily have to be some sort of concrete, obvious way of "measuring" it that everybody has to agree on. Just because it isn't simple doesn't mean it is subjective, thats just silly.
Could you elaborate on that? As to your previously mentioned student relativism, I'd say you gave some working examples of subjective morality right there. Hitler did believe he was right to exterminate the Jews, and if the teacher did have a perspective that students could, by definition, only be average, then the logical conclusion would be to grade them thusly.
The reason people object to those things is because they don't fit the *prevalent* morality. If Hitler had risen to world domination, I think the Holocaust would be viewed very differently.
First of all, just because Hitler believed it was right to exterminate the Jews does not make it so. My point was that if morality really was relative to individuals, then nobody could ever make any moral judgements of anybody else, anywhere, ever. Do you really want to say that no moral judgements are possible? Think about the implications of that if you take that seriously.
Secondly, doesn't it seem odd to say that Hitler could do something (like genocide) and the moral worth of that action would be, like, "pending" on whether or not he won the war? Sure winners live to write history, but how could later events retroactively make the moral worth of a past action? Thats just incoherent.
Anyway I apologize in advance if I come off as arrogant or something, just that I have seen this kind of discussion a lot before and usually people who believe in that kind of morality just don't realize what they are saying, so I am hoping you find out you don't actually believe it when you think about it.
Also what is this prevalent morality you are talking about, if you believe that morality is subjective?
Originally posted by: Krayzieilluzion
Is subjective morality an oxymoron?
If you can think of an example of a situation in which an act was moral, and another situation in which the same act wouldn't be moral, then you've just essentially defined two similar but different acts. The first act is moral and the second is immoral despite seemingly being the same. Each act is different, and one will be moral 100% of the time and the other will be immoral 100% of the time. Because of this, the inherent nature of many acts are morally neutral, depending instead on the context of the act, which therefore changes the definition of the act, to determine its morality. Only someone with perfect understanding of the context can accurately judge the nature of the act to determine if it was moral or not. So for example, the act of pushing someone who is standing in front of you is moral if it means that you save them from being hit by a train, but immoral if you push them into the path of a train. One might argue that this example is contrived since the acts can be described in a different way as "saving someone" versus "killing someone", but really any act can be broken down in this way. Pulling a trigger of a gun to kill someone in self defense can be morally right depending on the context, but that is an inherently different act than pulling a trigger to kill someone for personal gain.
So, yes it's an oxymoron, despite the fact that two similar acts can be oppositely moral due to the context. Subjective morality is a flawed concept.
Is there truth in beauty?
This is a loaded question, because beauty can be defined so many different ways (I've already seen it unconsciously defined many ways in this thread alone).
So, I'll address the question as if you were asking about absolute truth and absolute beauty. In that case, yes, there is absolute truth in absolute beauty, because if it wasn't true then it wouldn't be beautiful. I hope you're not planning to apply that rule to everyday situations though, because you'll be hard pressed to find something which is either absolutely true or absolutely beautiful.
Originally posted by: hubris
What other kind of morality could there be? There's no way to measure morality, so how could it possibly be objective?
There's no way to measure morality, so how could it possibly be subjective? You can't decide if what you just did was moral or not, since you can't measure it, so the only way it could ever be determined was if someone somehow found the universal standard of morality and used it to judge your situation. There are many layers of subjectivity - one's personal opinion would probably be one of the least significant. The opinion of the entire human race might be better, but again, since there's still no way of measuring, you can say with certainty that the subjective judgment is not necessarily accurate. The only way to be accurate is if there was a way to measure, in other words, if it was objective.
Originally posted by: Frost
What he said. For there to be an objective morality, you'd need a reliable, unfalsifiable universal constant to measure it by. Much as people have tried throughout the ages, I think it's safe to say that nobody has found one yet.
That doesn't mean that a universal constant doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't mean that we can't speculate about what it would be if it did exist. What that means is that while we can have personal opinions, we must always be humble enough to realize that they frankly don't mean jack squat beyond the scope of what our own feeble brains can comprehend.
So that puts me with LMD on this one.
I think in the grand, grand, grand scheme of things, there is no morality at all. But on the level of humanity that we live, it would be wrong for me to go kill somebody just because I felt like it.
Originally posted by: Killgore9998
That doesn't mean that a universal constant doesn't exist, and it certainly doesn't mean that we can't speculate about what it would be if it did exist. What that means is that while we can have personal opinions, we must always be humble enough to realize that they frankly don't mean jack squat beyond the scope of what our own feeble brains can comprehend.So that puts me with LMD on this one.
I'm a bit confused by this thread now, because it seems like we're describing the same thing, yet applying opposite labels to it. The lack of an identifiable universal constant means, to me, that any judgment made in that regard must be subjective - each subject has its own basis for determining whether an act is moral or not. This is how it necessarily works in practice, since, as you say, if there *is* a universal constant to measure by, we don't yet comprehend it.
Originally posted by: Frost
I'm a bit confused by this thread now, because it seems like we're describing the same thing, yet applying opposite labels to it. The lack of an identifiable universal constant means, to me, that any judgment made in that regard must be subjective - each subject has its own basis for determining whether an act is moral or not. This is how it necessarily works in practice, since, as you say, if there *is* a universal constant to measure by, we don't yet comprehend it.
Not being able to identify it or describe it is indicative of our limitations as stupid monkeys, not indicative of it not existing. It MUST exist, because all of sane humanity has a general notion of what morality is, each individual's notion of which points in a similar direction, though they differ on the details. You're right that in practice we rely on our own imperfect judgments of morality, but in those cases we struggle to apply what we believe to be an absolutely true concept of whether the given action was right or wrong, even if the result of my analysis might be the opposite of my neighbor's.
This is why we can have a justice system, to have a singular authority which does a better job than any of us to analyze and determine if what was done was right and wrong (filtered through our set of laws of course, which are supposed to approximate morality themselves). If morality was subjective, then each individual's assessment of the situation would be just as valid as the next. But it's not.
Originally posted by: Killgore9998
Originally posted by: Frost
I'm a bit confused by this thread now, because it seems like we're describing the same thing, yet applying opposite labels to it. The lack of an identifiable universal constant means, to me, that any judgment made in that regard must be subjective - each subject has its own basis for determining whether an act is moral or not. This is how it necessarily works in practice, since, as you say, if there *is* a universal constant to measure by, we don't yet comprehend it.
Not being able to identify it or describe it is indicative of our limitations as stupid monkeys, not indicative of it not existing. It MUST exist, because all of sane humanity has a general notion of what morality is, each individual's notion of which points in a similar direction, though they differ on the details. You're right that in practice we rely on our own imperfect judgments of morality, but in those cases we struggle to apply what we believe to be an absolutely true concept of whether the given action was right or wrong, even if the result of my analysis might be the opposite of my neighbor's.
This is why we can have a justice system, to have a singular authority which does a better job than any of us to analyze and determine if what was done was right and wrong (filtered through our set of laws of course, which are supposed to approximate morality themselves). If morality was subjective, then each individual's assessment of the situation would be just as valid as the next. But it's not.
I really don't know what to say here. You're employing a different sort of logic, apparently, because I'd draw the opposite conclusions from the very examples you listed. An absolute morality doesn't have to exist - humanity, in general, has simply set up a moral codex that works in the world we live in. It's more beneficial in the long run not to kill people - generally. It's more beneficial in the long run to have a notion of property, hence theft is viewed as immoral. Morality is in itself quite utilitarian, as generally decisions that are deemed moral are constructive to society at large. Determining what is moral is hence largely decided by a local environment, which is why we have differences in moral judgment, even if the over-arching principles as they apply to a human community remain similar.
The justice system is meant to standardise moral judgment to a degree, as working with the same framework benefits the society when it comes to its behaviour. But even the components within this system more often than not have their own ideas about morality, even going so far as different interpretation of common law. This may be an attempt to steer towards an objective morality, but like the utopian ideal, is unattainable.
In conclusion, the reason why the moral judgments of some people (such as criminals) are considered flawed is because they go against this moral framework that the majority has put in place (and yes, it is the local majority - hence the differences in law internationally). That framework was made by people for people, though, so I don't know where you're getting the notion that there has to be an absolute moral standard - especially considering that we don't know of it, so we can't even use it.
As an off-tangent, I don't believe there are any universal absolutes. The closest thing would be 'happiness is good', but I haven't laid down any potential contradictions to that yet. Just thought I'd mention that perspective for the consideration of whoever wants to reply.
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