The problem with moral relativism is that if it is true (at least on some construals), then people who believe that raping and murdering is moral are not wrong, and so there is no correct argument against them. The argument you present here is an argument that presupposes that morality has something to do with the good of society, which the relativist rejects.

Or perhaps it's a true statement.

The <blank> of the gaps argument is used to fill an inductive hole. For example,

* (God of the gaps) Science has not provided a sufficient explanation, it must be the work of God.
* (Science of the gaps) Science will eventually explain this.

My statement does not conform to this argument:

Edit: Your argument is simply saying "We can't know!" That's an acceptable position to take (moral skepticism, I think). But "God of the gaps" doesn't fit in anywhere.

The more I read from you guys, the more convinced I am that I'm not even close to understanding what morality means. I'm also starting to think it might be an utterly useless word.

So no more talk about morality from me. Except to say: Right/wrong, good/bad don't come from god, nor do we need a god to appreciate them, and that they are almost always subjective.

Well, I wasn't assuming that the view you were presenting was your own, so if that is your concern, then I plead innocence.

If you are saying that there is a reasonable view that if morality is based on human judgements (I would say desires), then objective morality is false, then I'll agree with you. I think it is likely incorrect, but it is reasonable. However, the claim I was expressing frustration with is the view that there "can be no [objective] right or wrong without god." I don't see any particular connection between these two views, while your statement that "there's a reasonable thought underneath that is simply not being expressed well" seemed to indicate that you did. But, if I misinterpreted you, then comity.

Thanks. I understand what you were saying now, and we're all good.

It is common for people who teach Ethics 101 to say that many of their students who claim to believe in moral relativism actually don't, or have other beliefs that are inconsistent with moral relativism. That is true in my experience as well.

I'm not sure what you mean in your last paragraph, since "right" and "wrong" are moral terms. Are you saying that you are becoming a moral skeptic, someone who doesn't believe that morality is real?

Well I note this quote from your link:

"Nietzsche calls attention not to “ordinary” or “folk” moral disagreement, but rather to what should be the single most important and embarrassing fact about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over the last two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality."

I'm a fideist not an evidentialist so most of my arguments are based on the subjective experience and I believe that is how God intends it. Paul writes in the scriptures that we don't learn of God through the scribes or philosophers. An intellectual exercise I think makes God keep his distance from us though I do know Geisler says Jesus provided the greatest apologetic himself so apparently God provides alternatives. I've always found it more useful to go to the scriptures and let God himself prove himself to me. Read the 23rd Psalm: He leads us in the path of righteousness. When you read the scriptures and try to compare all kinds of viewpoints you discover God working on multiple levels through the human intellect. There is bound to be some different exegesis because everyone is at different levels of sophistication and have different emphasis based on background, education and personality.

Every time I have a question I look up the bible topic and I always discover a lot more than I knew before and I refine what I know. God is never as black and white as most people interpret him. He's pervasive on many levels.

One of the most basic reasons for the stress on obedience in the bible I believe is because if you obey God from the start you never have to personally encounter the terribler problems that plague the human race. You will sidestep a lot of them. If you do encounter one then if you have faith you can claim your peace in Christ with a "Peace, Be Still".

The bible is a manual. It provides a working model not just a theoretical model. The philosophers provide theory only. Believers themselves experience pragmatic benefits from believing. The proof is in the pudding. Not by staring at it. By eating it. Understanding comes with practice. Karen Armstrong explains in The Case for God that faith in the ancient world was all about practice.

If you look at the beginning of my post. I started out a fideist and ended up an evidentialist. Seeing isn't believing. Believing is seeing.

If you have to have a philosopher though I believe I would scrutinize Kierkegaard. From the summaries I've read he had a conversionary experience and he tried to articulate it. I'm sure you have read him though. You seem to have read everybody.

Sorry if I sound less than humble. Its hard to break all this stuff down in a way you can mentally picture it.

I don't understand this.

First, rapists and murderers might be right in an objective sense if the goal of morality is for the good of the individual. It even works for the good of the society, if the society is partitioned enough. See war for an example of why murder is good for some societies.

Second, moral relativism is only a problem if you assume there must be an argument against murderers and rapists. Why must there be? Why can't right and wrong also be relative?

And what is universal/absolute/objective morality supposed to be for the good of? The individual? The small group? Your neighborhood? Your country? The world? The solar system? The galaxy? The universe? It doesn't seem that relative morality's standpoint is much different in that aspect.

It's very common for people (especially college students) to think that philosophy is just a matter of stating opinions about things. If you've ever in those late night, slightly buzzed conversations about life, then you've been exposed to that type of philosophy. It's not that it isn't philosophical, but it's just extremely sloppy work, but since nobody is paying attention, the many, many errors and inconsistencies go by unnoticed.

Philosophy (like theology) is something that everybody does (all theists do), but not many of them do it particularly well. You don't get good at it or even begin to understand it until you spend some time really thinking carefully about it. And it's usually not easy thinking.

Edit: I might even argue that atheists still do theology. But that's a tangential comment.

I think this is right.

I'm very sloppy at philosophy and I overstate things a lot.

But you don't really need philosophy if you spend a lot of times in the scriptures they seem to reveal an analytical mind that already anticipated every question. It's just you have to determine yourself what the key question is then go dig it up.

Sure. It is possible that objective morality is true, but we are supposed to always act in ways that according to current moral theories are immoral. That is just a way of saying that there are many objective moral theories, so even if we have decided that morality is objective, we still need to figure out which theory we think is correct.

I'm not arguing that moral relativism is a social problem. I'm saying that if moral relativism (on common construals) is true, then there are no correct normative claims about human behavior. After all, what would it mean for a normative claim to be correct? This would mean that we would have to radically rethink our understanding of ourselves and society.
Objective morality is not a moral theory and so doesn't have a single answer to any of these questions. Instead, it is a group of moral theories, all of which suppose that there are answers to these and related questions.

I know what you mean and I've actually done some studying of philosophy since I began participating back when we only had the SMP forum. While I do not in any way consider myself an expert in philosophy, I think I am much better than I was (back when I used to engage in those buzzed late night discussions with friends) and can *usually* hold my own in philosophical discussions nowadays without being too sloppy. Of course, there are exceptions. DS has more than once pointed out my sloppy philosophy and I immediately saw my error and either recanted or changed my own views. But this is entirely different.

Nothing you have said has caused me to see any errors in my philosophy here. If this were the case, I would admit it and move on. The fact is, I simply don't understand what the hell you're talking about. It's as though we're discussing something and you're talking about it in Greek and I simply can't translate it to where it makes any sense to what I've just said.

This discussion has also caused me to question whether morality has any meaning at all. Clearly, when two people are trying to discuss a subject, yet are so far apart that they are passing each other by miles, something is wrong. So I am now of the opinion that morality is meaningless. I'm not sure if there is a name for this view, but it's one that I now hold. I will never discuss any subject in terms of morality. I will state what I think is right or wrong and give my reasons for doing so, but I will never again make a moral claim.

Three points. First, your conclusion that "morality" is meaningless doesn't follow from the fact that we have different understandings of the term.

Second, saying something is "right" or "wrong" is a moral claim.

Third, you can define "morality" and "right" and "wrong" however you like, but if they are still normative terms then I can still make my point using any definition you choose.

This should be the case, but I still don't see why it is a problem for the existence of morality (if that's what you are implying). Morality could very well be like science in that it provides utility for, and models of, our behavior without being anything other than a methodology. I don't understand why having 100% correct normative claims is necessary for anything unless those claims are knowable.

Objective/absolute morality behaves similarly to relative morality. You can say that it has correct normative claims in theory, but in practice it is functionally equivalent to moral relativism.

If God has the moral authority to do and ask what he wishes and it will always be moral. Doesn't this mean as humans we can't have personal objective moral truths on actions like killing, stealing and raping? The only objective moral truth would be to do what God says or asks. If God wants me to take someones land kill them and take their females it will be moral.

The way i see it people who base their objective morality on God cant have objective moral views on human actions.

It's meaningless to me.

Not to me, because I have eliminated the word moral from my vocabulary. I don't need it. The words "right" and "wrong", "good" and "bad" will suffice.

Then you can make your points (with me anyway) using the words "right" and "wrong", "good" and "bad". I will no longer respond a moral claim. I hereby reject the very concept of morality.

[Edit:] Of course, I suspect you're going to say that right, wrong, good, and bad are moral claims. Fine. But I'll defend or attack a position using only these words. I do not need the term morality to do so.

I don't speak your made-up language, but I'll do so if you say what you mean by "right" and "wrong."

Also, what does it mean to reject a concept?

Lol...tricky.

What do you mean what does it mean? It means I don't accept it. If you tell me something is morally right or morally reprehensible, you can leave out the work morally. Just tell me why you think it's right or reprehensible and we'll go from there.

What (I think) I've learned here, is that morally is a frivolous word. Morality is a frivolous concept. A sort of blanket thrown over other words like right, wrong, good and bad. At the very least, it's a catch-all with which these words are thrown into a kind of cauldron to be sorted out and pieced together however one so chooses. You can always take this word or that word and say, "Looky here. This doesn't jive under my definition, the accepted definition, or even your own definition of morality!".

Screw all that. I don't need it. If anything, I now think the use of morality is a cop out. A way to justify (rationalize, whatever) just about anything, any way you want it. No. If you think an action is right or justified, tell me why. If I disagree, I'll tell you why. We don't need some overriding morality hanging over us to have an intelligent discussion about it.

Btw- All I said above might just speak to the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to morality. That's kinda my point anyway.

I think it speaks to more than not knowing. It looks like you don't know what you're saying and are completely unwilling to try to learn. (Hint: Dropping the word "moral" from your vocabulary does not change that "right" and "wrong" behaviors are moral concepts.)

Did you take the time to at least try to read the links about morality that I gave earlier?

Well, I don't think your distinction between a "working" model and a "theoretical" model is accurate. Philosophers come up with theories (or "models") about morality, but these theories are based on claims about or from our practical lives. In fact, I would say it is more the other way around. In philosophy we study moral theories from which we can derive principles which we can use to make or evaluate moral decisions. In the Bible, we have these evaluations of moral decisions (e.g. "Don't fornicate"), but without a theory from which they are derived.

Another way of putting this, is that the Bible is not like a manual, but more like a list of directions for how to fix things. Perhaps those directions work, perhaps they don't. Since they are not justified by a moral theory, we cannot say. Furthermore, since the list is not complete (there are moral questions the Bible doesn't address), we have to go outside the Bible to philosophy or theology to answer many contemporary moral problems.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the Bible. I don't think all books should be philosophy books. But it does show that the Bible alone is not sufficient for morality.

I have read Kierkegaard, and highly recommend his writings. Since you like to recommend books, I'll recommend that you read Fear and Trembling and A Sickness Unto Death. I think his understanding of Christianity and its relation to the modern world is quite profound.

To you and anyone else who I might leave hanging:

I don't want to be rude, so I should explain that I'm self banning myself from 2p2 for one year. I have bookmarked those links you provided and will read them thoroughly. I greatly appreciate your efforts and everyone else who has had patience and taken the time to try and educate me about such topics on these forums. Thanks!

Good luck and God Bless Lestat!

Good luck. I hope the year-long self ban does whatever it is you hope it will accomplish.

Let's take a standard moral claim: "It's wrong to torture small children for pleasure." Now, can the moral relativist say this claim is true? Not really. According to the relativist, the rightness or wrongness of torturing small children for pleasure depends on what perspective we take towards this action. If we please, we can take one where it is not wrong. Or, we can take one where it is wrong. Furthermore, there is ultimately no reason to prefer one of these perspectives to another--it is arbitrary which of them we take (or have).

In other words, there is no reason to claim that it is wrong to torture small children for pleasure if you are a relativist. But if there is no reason to make this claim, then believing that it is wrong is not a justified belief. Since the exact same story could be told about all moral claims, it seems like moral relativism implies moral skepticism.

This is unclear to me. Are you saying that regardless of your views about the universality of morality, you will accept the same normative beliefs? Because that seems extremely unlikely.