It is useful for you to point this out, because I think the assumption you are making here--that if something is subjective it is relative--is the crucial one that leads so many people to think that atheism=nihilism. But I'll get to that in a second.

I take it that your objection is that the category of “epistemological objectivity” is useless because it can apply to both relative and absolutist moral theories. Now, I’ll grant you that it can apply to both these types of moral theories (I implied as much in my original post). But that doesn’t mean it is useless. Rather, it means that, in my view, it is useful for a different purpose than distinguishing between relativism and absolutism.

Essentially, the value of the category of epistemological objectivity is that it shows us how a statement can be true without be based either in a mind-independent reality (such as e.g. claims in astronomy) or based solely on your own personal experience of reality (e.g. ice cream tastes good). The reason this is important is because as a naturalist, I am going to be skeptical that the truth of moral claims is based in a mind-independent reality. The physical world seems to be empty of value unless we put it there.

The next step is where I think the nihilists and counterfactual nihilists (theists that claim to only be moral because of god) go wrong. They say, see, value is subjective, what we do only matters insofar as it matters to us. But here’s the problem. The fact that something is mind-dependent (subjective in the literal sense) does not mean that we can think about it however we want.
Naturalists believe that the square root of 49 is 7, regardless of how differently constructed we might be. Similarly, (some) naturalists that believe in an objective morality believe that there are principles of cooperation based on reason, in a similar way to how math is based on reason, that constrain what kinds of actions we can take to achieve our goals as humans (notice that this would apply to psychopaths as well as more ordinary humans).

Some naturalists believe that for almost all humans the range of things we value (our goals) is also constrained—that emotional responses of empathy, altruism, selfishness, maternalism and paternalism, etc. are to certain degree innate to human nature. This also constrains our goals in life. We cannot just wish away our feelings and emotions—they are there, they are a part of us.
Thus, we would say that, at least on these assumptions about human nature and reasons, there are absolutist rules of morality that constrain human actions. And going back to where I started, the reason this is the case is because the subjective is not necessarily relativistic.

Certain versions of non-cognitivism and egoism end up not being epistemoglogically objective. So, expressivists (a variety of non-cognitivism) claim that moral claims are neither true nor false, but rather are expressions of our emotional attitudes towards certain kinds of actions or objects. Thus, on this theory moral claims wouldn't be epistemologically objective because they aren't stating something that is true or false.

This, again, misses the point. I am not claiming that divine command theory is not objective or absolutist--I very much think it is. What I am trying to say is that it is subjective, that like the theory I am describing, according to divine command theory, the truth or falsity of a moral claim is not mind-independent, but rather is dependent on the mind of god.

Hopefully I have made clear why I think the category is both helpful and meaningful.

Two points. First, I am not really trying to say that god could be different than he is, and thus divine command morality is relative. Rather, I am trying to draw a parallel between god-based subjective morality and human-based subjective morality. So, if you want to say that god's nature is necessary and so it is necessary that god make the moral commands that he makes, fine. But notice that this is very much what Kant does in his subjective-based (i.e. reason-based) morality. He thought that our moral claims, if they were true, were necessarily true--that they followed as if by a kind of logic from the mere willing to do a particular kind of action that we have to will to do it according to the laws of morality.

Second, your example just doesn't work. If divine command is true, then it is impossible for god to will to do evil. "Evil" would be defined as that which goes against god's will. Thus, it would be literally meaningless to imagine a counterfactual in which god was evil. However, it is not meaningless to imagine a counterfactual in which god commands us to lie and steal. In that counterfactual, god is still not evil and his commands are still by definition moral, thus making it moral to lie and steal and immoral to do the opposite.

Right, and here I'll just reject cultural relativism. The fact that a different culture has different moral views than those commonly accepted in my own doesn't mean that their views (or ours) are not wrong, even on the subjective basis I've described. After all, they could have false views about reality (such as that the sun is a god and desires human sacrifices) that lead them to perform immoral acts. Or perhaps they (or we) have not yet developed social institutions that lead to better outcomes (here are some admittedly controversial examples: replacing slavery and serfdom with capitalism or patriarchal with egalitarian marriage). And obviously, this goes both ways as well--just because my own culture assumes that something is okay doesn't mean that it is either.

I'm sure that some theologians say what you say here, but I don't think there is a strong consensus about your claim. You are essentially describing a compatibilist version of freedom; God is free because God acts according to his nature.

However, some theologians understand God to have libertarian free will. Thus, although God is perfect and cannot sin, this doesn't mean that God is not able to sin (see for example Jesus's temptations in the wilderness).

This is to misunderstand the nature of necessity. We would say that if God is a necessary being (and don't forget that I think none of this actually makes sense), then if God exists, then God has all the Godly attributes. However, if God were a different kind of necessary being, say God*, then God* would have all the God*ly attributes. If God* is just like God, except with a different morality, then voila.

Thank you. Glad to see that my post may not be a misrepresentation after all.

+1

-2

You can't say something like "philosophical criticisms of the book miss the point" and then concede you aren't a philosopher, and further claim that the ability to attack 'the philosophical underpinnings of anything' is somehow a reason to accept your view. So suppose I can attack the philosophical underpinnings of anything; does it follow then that morality is what I affirm on odd-numbered Tuesdays?

Philosophy is actually quite good for tasks like these; not to say what objective morality is (philosophy almost always sucks for making substantive claims like this), but to point out the myriad flaws in philosophically underdeveloped thinking.

I should have quoted better.

I didn't +1 for the - philosophy can attack anything, therefore its pointless - argument. I gave the +1 for his aligning view on the utility of epistemological objectivity - as I have been arguing for in this thread.

There's hardly a situation where I don't claim the possibility of being wrong.

But since it appears that you're quoting Einstein out context to try to make a point completely different from the one that one can reasonably conclude he's making based on the available evidence, it does not come as any sort of surprise that you would take a single sentence of mine completely out of context to try to make a point that bears little resemblance to the point I was actually making.

But as I said earlier... whatever.

We clearly disagree on the rest, so I thought I'd leave it alone for now.

All I wanted was an admittance by you, that my post was not a misrepresentation, but I'll settle for a compromise, with your acknowledgment of the possibility of you being wrong - this is about as much as I'm going to get out of you.

Original Position can accomplish more I think - on the epistemological objectivity front - which I hope doesn't appear to be so "objectively wrong" to you anymore: whatever that even means.

At a certain level, this seems to be a different concept of "true" than what I normally associate with that term. (This is not to say that I think you're wrong in your usage of the word.) This is similar to the error that VeeDDzz is making with his statements about what social scientists say. When they make observations, they are doing so in a descriptive sense. Their observations are true insofar as they accurately reflect the attitudes of the specific range of persons in question (where the range can be both time and culturally constrained). An observation that a social scientist makes is NOT true in some sort of global sense.

Going back to my example of inches, it would still be true that there are 12 inches in a foot even if the entire world went to metric. The only thing that would cause a "violation" of this fact is if people redefined the terms "inch" and "foot" to have a different relationship (in which case, we would really only have a violation in the sense of a conflation of terms, and this would easily be resolved by referring to the relationship of foot_1 and inch_1 as being different from the relationship of foot_2 and inch_2).

I appreciate that you spent the time to expand on this point. I can understand a bit better what point you're trying to make here. From my point of view, you're basically just saying that you want all the things that God provides, but you want to have humans take responsibility for it.

I had to look these up.

This makes sense now. Obviously, I don't agree with it, but coming to a point of agreement on this wasn't ever the point. I think that you're creating a sliding scale of truth, which to me feels very odd. I have a difficult time conceptualizing the word "true" as applied to math in a way that is meaningfully applied to human constructions in the absence of a larger construction which defines the parameters. (I view logic and mathematical truths as being somehow embedded into the universe, and it seems to me that you're trying to define truth as being somehow embedded into some sort of collective human perspective/experience.)

You've also said more, but I don't have anything in particular to say in response at the moment, so I'll simply leave it as it is and thank you for the time you took to expand on your thoughts.

He assume everyone wants to be healthy, and thats easy once you define what it means to be healthy (eat good, exercise, take medicine when needed etc)...Most people dont want to vomit.

But what about people who smoke, take drugs, who are obese, if these things were moral questions we would ban all cigarettes/tobacco, ban all fast food joints are at least put a restriction on the amount of times you can go to a fast food place, same for alcohol, force people to exercise, maybe even control their diet, maybe punish people for being obese etc..so where and how do you draw the line on freedom to act compared to what is moral and the right thing to do?

Most people want to be healthy, sure I can buy that, but most people dont act on it because they desire other things. How can the will to desire to do things outside of the social norm be wrong? Doing what is best is a fine idea but only if you value what is best. (best for who?)

I don't think I'm using a different concept of "true"--I'm still more or less talking about correspondence truth. The difference is that I am talking about conventional truths--things that we make to be true by certain kinds of actions, agreements, goals, etc. It seems to me obvious that we talk about these kinds of things being true (e.g. it really is true that I own the computer on which I am currently typing, that I am a citizen of the U.S., etc.). My goal here is to make sense of how these kinds of claims could be true.

As for social scientists, while it is true that they often only attempt to describe society (though not always--see economists for counterexamples), my point is that under some descriptions of society the rules of morality follow.

I think the basic problem is this. You recognize that some things can be true by convention (you give an example above). However, on the basis of these examples, you also think that if something is true by convention it is arbitrary. It is an accident of history that there are twelve inches rather than ten inches in a foot. Thus, it is non-absolutist. Applied to morality, if morality is true by convention, then it appears that morality is also arbitrary--we could have decided that lying was not immoral just as we could have decided that there were ten inches in a foot.

What I am arguing here is that you are making a mistake by generalizing from examples like the foot as a unit of measurement to the claim that all conventional truths are arbitrary (and thus could be otherwise). Now, it is of course true that some social conventions are arbitrary in this sense--what side of the road to drive on, what to wear, etc. However, I don't think that all social conventions are of this sort. For instance, some of the moral rules about property or truth-telling seem to be requirements for developing almost any kind of society at all. These conventions are not arbitrary, nor are they necessarily based on any kind of explicit agreement. If people didn't abide by them, then the alternative is to not form society at all.

Sure. Remember, the basic point for which I am arguing is that nihilism doesn't follow from atheism. Even stronger, I am arguing that an absolutist morality of the sort desired by theists is compatible with naturalistic atheism. So, for a theist who believes that god provides them with this absolutist morality, then of course it will seem like I am just substituting humans into the place of god. I am.

Actually, on this point, I am trying to persuade you. That is, I am trying to convince you that naturalistic atheism doesn't imply that morality isn't objective. After all, the claim that it does is not part of Christian doctrine, but rather just a claim about a different worldview. You should be open to the idea that your understanding of that worldview is limited or incorrect. Changing your mind about the implications of naturalistic atheism would have no impact on your views as a Christian.

Also, I want to be clear that I am not here trying to convince you that this account of morality is the best account (you might still prefer the god-based account) or even that it would be true if god doesn't exist. You might think as an atheist that the empirical claims about social conventions or human nature that this view of morality requires are false and so reject this absolutist morality (though oddly enough, I think that most of the theists who think that atheism implies nihilism actually do accept them). But, if atheism doesn't imply nihilism, then all these arguments from theists claiming that atheists should be nihilists are just wrong.

Edit: You might find the SEP article on "Convention" useful here as it gives some of the background for what I'm claiming.

Criticisms of Harris that focus on his failure to address the is-ought problem miss the point because Harris shows analogies to other fields where the same problem applies, philosophically, but is ignored because otherwise no progress would be made. Put simply, Harris doesn't claim to solve the is-ought problem, he just posits that we don't need to solve it to proceed if we can find moral bedrock from which we can go forward.

Well, I don't want to denigrate philosophy here but your statement reads as "Philosophy is quite good as pointing out the myriad flaws in philosophically underdeveloped thinking". This sort of statement isn't exactly going to change the man-on-the-street's view that philosophy is insular and esoteric. We have real-world morality, in the form of laws and politic, going on right now and we need real-world solutions to moral problems. In a world where most people derive (or BELIEVE they derive) their morality from ancient fairy tales, secularism only needs to demonstrate moral thinking as philosophically robust as theism, not as philosophically robust as algebra.

You lose me right around here. I understand the claim, but I don't understand how you connect the claim about "form society" to "morality."

I'm also doubtful that your claim is true, in the sense that we see in the animal kingdom many instances of "societies" that do not have anything resembling "property rights" and any sense that we can understand "truth-telling" in a way that meaningfully reflects "truth-telling" as humans. So it seems to me that while it might be possible that the only way society as we experience it may require these conventions, I'm not sure that it makes sense to think of those conventions as being necessary to form any type of society at all.

I agree that morality isn't objective, but the type of objectivity that you're applying is distinct from the type of objectivity that I'm applying. Again, it feels like a sliding scale. It seems there are two ways to see it:

You can have a statement that 100% of humans agree is true, and this will be objectively true. If one or two people think differently, it's still objectively true in this sense. If ten or twenty people think differently, it's still objectively true in this sense. Even if several thousand people -- or even hundreds of thousands (say, the set of mentally unstable people in the world) think differently, it's still objectively true in this sense. This sense of truth appears to be fundamentally different than something like saying that the sun is larger than the earth.

A second way to see it is that the objectivity is dependent upon the population under consideration. We can consider any truth that we feel is a conventional truth, and take that to some small community on an island in the middle of the ocean and not be surprised if they do not agree that the statement is true. Within that population, it is possible for the statement to be false. How do we reconcile the "objectivity" in this case?

Sure. You have convinced me that your worldview makes sense insofar as "objectivity" is taken to mean something different. A worldview constructed on objectivity at the level of human belief correspondence is internally consistent*, but lacks the objectivity on the level of reality that I'm positing.

* That is, if you understand what you're talking about, you can talk about it in a consistent manner.

The is-ought problem is just one relatively specific thing that Harris seems to screw up. To say that solving the is-ought problem is not necessary for 'finding moral bedrock from which we can go forward' requires a non-trivial philosophical argument in and of itself, which you can't do if you renounce the more rigorous or esoteric parts of philosophy.

When did we take up the challenge of changing the man-on-the-street's view of philosophy?

I don't understand what you're claiming here, if theism is not sufficiently robust, why would we want a philosophical alternative that is equally not robust?

I said
You said
I guess we just disagree.