Qualia Soup – Of Objectivity and Oughtness

This video does not seem to argue against an objective morality to me. It seems to be arguing against an objective morality based upon a god, and more specifically WLC’s moral command objective morality. I’m also not certain if they were arguing for subjective morality or not.

I believe in an objective morality, but just not one derived form a god. I remember in my philosophy course in university having the prof describe it as starting with the assertion “pain bad” and working outwards from there. Sam Harris in his book “The Moral Landscape” did a better job of it in my opinion. He describe a place where suffering is universal and absolute as being the worst possible place. Therefore any more away from that and towards a place of well-being as being morally superior to anything behind it.

This isn’t to say that a place where children and tortured three days a week is a morally good place. It just means that place is morally superior to a place where children are tortured six days a week. Of course a place where there is no torture, all children are safe and secure and on the road to self actualization would be both morally good and superior to the two prior examples.

There is a certain amount of subjectivity to Harris’ view on morality, but to me it is based on the objective standards of well-being. You can listen to Harris describe his answer to that problem in the video I’ll post below. I’m actually fine with it being somewhat subjective because, to me, that means it’s not bogged down in the rigid constructs of philosophy and more accurately describes reality.

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Sure it is. But, as like in the QS video illustrates, murder is just an action. The morality of it is in the intent. Therefore murder isn’t really all that straightforward.

Murdering infants for no reason whatsoever would be a morally bad action. It decreases the well-being of that infant, of those than know that infant, and probably of the murderer. If in defending yourself from an intruder, there is a struggle and the intruder dies in an act of self defence, it would probably be a morally neutral action. It does nothing to increase your or your families well being, but it prevents harm from it as well.

Just curious if you’ve watched the video Arb. Harris does an excellent job in making his care for an objective morality. You do have to sit through some mind numbing stupid from WLC, but it’s worth it.

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Lol, fair enough Arb. I thought of a better answer to your previous question before, something that I was trying to articulate but did so poorly. It was that you seemed to be asking me a question on morality based on a black and white checklist. Murder – check in the immoral box. Empathy – check in the moral box. The way Harris is describing is less of an action checklist and more of an evaluation of actions and whether they are improving the welfare of conscious creatures from the state you are currently in.

This to me is more akin to what reality is rather than the moral checklist that theists seem to offer. It takes an evaluation of the actions and a decision of if that action is currently moral or not. The goal of course is to be in a perfect state of wellness, which is of course hard to define. Wellness is much the same as health to define. After all, what is the optimal running speed of a healthy human male? There is no clear cut answer, but it’s clear that having a running speed of 30 km/h indicates a healthier person than someone who cannot run.

Just some thoughts to mull over.

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