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.

I'm going to give this one last shot, as we are pretty much talking past each other as your second paragraph demonstrates.

Harris' book is not written for philosophers. It's a reflection of a society where we have two institutions that govern morality - the church and the state. Both of these institutions derive all their moral 'oughts' from an 'is'. In fact, the only way we get any sort of 'ought', moral or otherwise, is from an 'is'. While the philosophical objections to Harris make sense and are valid in the field of philosophy, the world marches on regardless. Harris' approach is to lay out vision of a scientific-grounded secular morality that can be easily understood by the layman.

From a philosophical perspective I think desire utilitarianism is much more satisfying than the 'well-being of conscious creatures' asserted by Harris, but "The Moral Landscape" is not appealing to my sense of philosophical elegance but to practical political/legal ethics.

Put another way, the philosophical criticisms of the book seem like attacking "The Magic of Reality" by Dawkins for lacking scientific depth.

I think it would be more like criticizing Dawkins for lacking scientific accuracy and intellectual nuance. Kind of like this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...n-2359196.html

I can't exactly respond to every random negative review of popular-science books any Tom, Dick or Abednego posts ITT. Feel free to start a Magic Of Reality thread, by all means.

If you think the point is the criticize the Magic of Reality, then you've missed the point.

Edit: By the way, the response you just gave when combined with your other defenses of Harris put you (in my mind) at fanboy status. You've so far been willing to rewrite "is-ought" by claiming that "ought comes from is" and you've brushed off "philosophical criticism" by basically saying that it's okay to be philosophically wrong if you're practical, and defended it by bringing forth a Dawkins book which struggles in manner very similar to how Harris' book struggles.

And while Colin Tudge isn't super-super famous, thinking of his commentary as being a random negative reviewer is a little bit off as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Tudge

Yeah, I mean, this is wildly inaccurate, so we can stop here.

So it's utilitarianism that seems to promise scientific answers about the nature of well-being and how to get it, but that doesn't address any of the basic philosophical objections raised against utilitarianism?

The tradition is that God is also the greatest possible being, not just a necessary being, so even if we could posit another necessary being with some of God's attributes, it would not be the greatest possible being; if it were the greatest possible being it would be God not God*. So the greatest possible being, God, cannot have a different morality than he has, even if God* can have a different morality.

If we define moral perfection as whatever God commands based on his nature, then if God had a different nature and thus had different commmands, then that other God would still be morally perfect.

It is only if we define God's moral nature by some external measure is it possible for it to make him not be morally perfect (and thus not the greatest possible being).

If we define moral perfection as whatever God commands based on his nature, then what the greatest possible being commands is morally perfect; any necessary being (that is not the greatest possible being) who commands what is morally perfect must have a moral nature that's identical to the moral nature of the greatest possible being (or it's morally perfect by accident, I suppose). Again, "if God had a different nature and thus had different commands" isn't possible if God is a necessary being, the greatest possible being. God has one nature like triangles have one nature - if you say that a shape is a triangle and then deny that it has one of the necessary properties of or entailed by being a triangle (say the property of having three angles or the property of triangle identities holding true) then you aren't talking about a triangle.

I'm not getting this either. Why exactly couldn't God be the greatest possible being with a different nature? The definition of 'morally perfect' and 'greatest possible being' would simply be different if his nature was different.

Here is SEP on how this might go.

Again, I'm not trying to argue that these claims are true, but rather that if they (or others like them) are true, then there are true absolute moral claims on purely naturalistic grounds. That would be enough to show that those who claim that there no grounds that can justify an absolutist morality if atheism is true.

How so? I've been very clear about what I mean by "objective" in this context. What is the different type of objectivity that you're applying?

Do you believe that morality is ontologically objective? Perhaps you are a Platonist about morality?

First, as I've said many times, whether or not some other group of people agree or not is not the issue. They might disagree and just be wrong because of false beliefs about the world, etc.

Second, your argument here doesn't really address my viewpoint. Yes, some conventional truths are relative. But some conventional truths are absolute. Thus, providing another example of a conventional truth that is relative shows nothing about whether conventional moral truths are relative.

What is the level of reality that you're positing?

Can a triangle have a different nature other than being triangle; a different nature than 'polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments'?

But this is my point. Triangles have a single nature because they have an external definition. On the other hand, the moral perfection of God's nature is not externally defined, but rather is just whatever God's moral nature is. For instance, if we defined "triangle" as a 2D representation of the shape of a planet, then a "triangle" would be a circle. But if planets were a different shape, a "triangle" would refer to a different shape as well.

It cannot have a different nature if it means changing its defining qualities. I'm asserting that God's moral outlook is not one of these qualities.

EDIT: OrP nailed it.

This seems odd, why would the singular nature of a thing depend on having an external definition? Certainly, before humans externally defined triangles, triangles had singular natures?

You can assert that if you like, I was asserting something else, that if one thinks that God's moral outlook follows necessarily from God's nature and that God's nature is necessary, then God's moral outlook is necessary; it couldn't have been any different. To say that God's moral outlook is not necessary is to say that God's moral outlook does not follow necessarily from God's nature or to say that God's nature is not necessary. It seemed to me that at least some theists would affirm that God's nature is necessary and that his moral outlook follows necessarily from his nature.

I don't necessarily agree, but for the discussion I'll grant that point. Still, I'm not seeing why God's nature has to be this and not that. Why did God have to be a triangle and not a square?

I think that's beyond what I've endeavored to argue so far, remember that I don't actually believe this, I'm playing Yahweh's advocate. I think some theists will argue from the idea that God is 'the greatest possible being' and that description denotes only one possible nature, whatever that nature is, that is such that it's the greatest possible and necessary.

I'll try to find time in the next week to read this.

I'm failing to connect the idea of "true" as being somehow inherent to the universe and "true" as being an agreement of human attitudes towards something as being the same thing.

If you take "ontologically objective" as being "human-mind independent" to avoid the "God's mind" issue, then yes. If not, then probably not.

I am unsure what it would mean to be a Platonist about morality.

Given that your viewpoint seems to be grounded in the ability to establish this dichotomy, how is it that you distinguish one from the other? At this point, I don't think it would be logically possible to show that any moral truth is either relative or absolute.

I view that things like "logic" are embedded into the universe in a way that is parallel to the idea of the physical laws being embedded in the universe, leading to true statements (observations) of the universe. I don't see how to connect this idea to thought that it's the same way with an agreement of human attitudes about something being true in the same way.

Maybe I'll say it this way as well:

It would be true that the sun is larger than the earth even if there were no humans. But if there were no humans, I don't think your position would allow a an absolute moral truth to remain true since the truth of the claim is grounded in some sort of collective human agreement.

So it really seems to me that you're talking about a different type of truth than I am.