How can one state that something is moral?

Questions about Objectivism
41

425,

 

I still do not understand your answer or how it answers the question from the original post.

My answer to the original post is the same as that of the other posters. When making decisions about morality, one must gather all of the evidence available and ensure that his own logical methods are airtight. It is always going to be, as one of them put it, a “guess-and-check” method. I believe our current conversation is a result of diversions taken by both of us onto tangential but related topics.

 

To continue your example, Muslim terrorists are certain they are right. You state that they are not right and you seem very certain about your claim that they are not right. At this point, according to your post, both sides will have to either agree to disagree or make a moral judgment depending on the situation. I would assume in this situation the Muslim terrorists’ judgment would be that they are moral and you are immoral and your judgment would be that you are moral and that they are immoral.

I’m quite certain that Muslim terrorists are not right. When I talk about agreeing to disagree or prescribing moral judgements, I’m referring to my conduct according to the Objectivist morality, not their conduct according to Islamic morality. I imagine that their position in this situation would be that I am an infidel who has insulted Allah and the prophet Mohammad and therefore deserve death.

My position is that I should choose between a few actions: a) agree to disagree and choose another topic of conversation; b ) agree to disagree, but determine that my opponents are dishonest and therefore not worth any more of my time; or c) determine that my opponents intend to initiate the use of force and inform the proper authorities for my safety and that of other innocents. Each of these three scenarios requires first the conclusion of my moral judgement. In the first, I conclude that my opponent is mistaken but not dishonest, immoral or a force user. In the second, I conclude that my opponent is dishonest but not a force user, at least not in the immediate sense. In the third, I conclude that my opponent intends to initiate force. In the Muslim terrorist example, I’m probably choosing the third option. So I am passing moral judgement on them, saying that they are immoral, and I’m also calling the authorities because I believe it is likely that they will initiate force.

 

So we are right back where we started. Muslim terrorists say that they are right, you state that they are not right, so both sides make a moral judgment based on their beliefs (of which both sides are certain). How can we say that anything is moral or immoral?

This is correct. However, I must again reiterate that being certain and being correct are two very different things. To provide a stronger illustration: Imagine a schizophrenic person who believes that you have hidden cameras in his house. You know well that you have not done this. He’s absolutely certain that you have, because he’s, you know, neurotic. You’re absolutely certain that you haven’t. Even though both of you are certain, it is clear who is correct. His thought method is not a rational one. He’s listening to his paranoid neuroses and jumping to completely unreasonable conclusions. No matter how certain he is in his belief that you hid cameras in his house, he is still wrong, because you did not.

That was a dramatization, but it illustrates the difference between being certain and being right. In a slightly less crazy example, look at our Muslim terrorists. They’re certain they are right. But what is their thought process? They’re taking the word of clerics and an old book that there is a supreme being who wants them to follow a whole set of rules, including the murder of infidels. This is not at all a rational thought process, this is the use of blind faith to replace reason. Since reason is the only method by which man can learn about reality, this process for determining moral principles is flawed as well.

Then, as DonAthos so wisely pointed out, there’s the matter of Objectivists disagreeing because one made an honest mistake. In this case, the mode of thought for the party that is incorrect is still a good mode of thought, but with a slight error in the process or a gap in knowledge. But still, in this case, it is clear that it is possible to be certain but wrong, even if the way in which you are wrong is a minor logical error instead of a completely incorrect mode of thought.

Follow the pattern here. Of course the certain schizophrenic in my example is wrong, that’s as clear as day. So why can’t the certain Muslim terrorist also be wrong? Or the mistaken but certain Objectivist? Just because the way in which these people are wrong isn’t as obvious as it is for the schizophrenic, this does not mean that we can’t identify where they go wrong and thus label their ideas as wrong ones?

42

FredAnyman:

 

 

Aside from whether or not one could state with certainty “Statement 1”:

 

Statement 1:  “In particular context Z, given my particular identity K, my particular action A is moral.”

 

 

Do you agree (and you would if you understand Objectivism) that there exists Z, K, and A such that the following “Statement 2” is true regardless of the knowledge of the individual, anyone, and everyone:

 

 

Statement 2:  “In a particular context Z, given the individual’s particular identity K, the particular action A IS MORAL.”

43

Jaskn,

 

You wrote, “You may benefit very narrowly from the theft, but considering the circumstances you will have made for yourself – a life running from law enforcement – no rational person is going to agree that stealing is in your interest.”

 

This is very interesting and I will search for the threads you mentioned by I would appreciate your answer. It appears that you are, to continue an example, claiming that stealing is immoral because it is not in my interest. You claim that it is not in my interest because of the circumstances that I will have made for myself like running from law enforcement. But as I pointed out in a previous post, the act of stealing from you (or stealing in general) does not end my life nor does the act of stealing in and of itself have any negative impact of my life. You stated, “…the circumstances you will have made for yourself…” but this is not correct. I did not make any circumstances for myself. If I steal from you, nothing happens to me unless you decide to act in some fashion. If you do nothing, either because you cannot do anything or choose not to do anything, then nothing happens to me. If you choose to do something, call law enforcement for example, then something may or may not happen to me. So, it could be in my interest to steal from you or it could not be in my interest to steal from you depending on what you choose to do and are capable of doing. If I steal from you and you cannot do anything about it, then stealing from you is moral because it is in my interest. Of course, you will most likely think that it is immoral because it is not in your interest. So we are back to a situation where I think something is moral and you think something is immoral, and therefore we are back to the question in the original post of how can we say anything is moral or immoral?

 

Additionally, with your “all aspects considered” approach to figuring out morality, it appears we are back to the fact that humans cannot know everything so how exactly can one consider all aspects when it is not possible to know all of the aspects to consider?

44

DonAthos,

You state that we can say that something is moral or immoral by appealing to the evidence we have and logic and so forth.

Yes – those are the means we have to decide whether something is moral or immoral (just as we would assess any other claim to truth).

 

So if I state that X is moral by appealing to the evidence I have and logic and so forth, X is moral.

Insofar as you are correct in your use of evidence and logic, yes.

 

But if you state that X is immoral by appealing to the evidence you have and logic and so forth, then X is immoral.

Again, insofar as I am correct.

 

You claim we are not both correct and therefore we need to discover who is in error.

That’s right. Where one of us claims ‘A’ and the other claims ‘not-A’, I would hold one of us to be right and the other wrong.

 

However, you also claim that there is no authority who can rule on whether or not one or both of us has come to the correct conclusion and there is nothing we can do but to do the best we can do.

Right on both counts. This also speaks to other claims to truth. There’s no final authority in science, either, and there is nothing we can do but to do the best we can do.

 

So where are we? Do I just say that I am correct and act accordingly and you say that you are correct and act accordingly?

Ultimately, if you believe that you are correct on an issue, then yes – you act accordingly. (Regardless of whether or not I, or Objectivism, or Ayn Rand, or anyone else agrees.)

But I would argue to you that it is in your general interest to make an effort to determine whether or not you are correct (which is, presumably, the very motive which animates our present conversation, for instance). In the case where we recognize that we disagree on a specific point, it might justly provoke us both to reexamine the basis for our conclusions, consider the others’ rationale, and adjust our position if we deem it warranted.

 

How do this work when the differences moves beyond coffee table discussions and start to affect our lives?

None of this is a coffee table discussion; it is all about our lives and the effects that our ideas and actions have upon them.

Remember that morality, per Objectivism, is a guide to action for the purpose of living the best life we can live. We want such a “guide to action” because we must make choices, all the time. The choices we make matter to our lives, to their duration and their quality.

I’ve seen examples discussed in this thread regarding a thief or a terrorist, and this is not to weigh in on either of those specific topics, but just to say that a person has to decide things like, “Ought I steal that thing I desire?” or “Should I blow up that bus full of teenagers in Allah’s name?” Our choices are also routinely far more mundane, like whether or not we’ll hit the gym after work, but in every case the choices we make will have some impact on our lives.

If we wish to live, and to live well, then we want to try to understand the relationship our choices have with potential outcomes. For instance, if I become a terrorist, how will that impact my life (again: to the best of my knowledge)? Will it help me achieve a long life of happiness? Or is it likely to work otherwise? By which mechanisms? (And again I can ask the same thing about whether or not I should skip out on my gym session.) These kinds of questions form the basis for moral reasoning. We ask them because they are important to ask, and we answer them as well as we can, because whether we are right or wrong, we will enjoy/suffer the consequences. This isn’t about establishing one’s self at the coffee table as a “deep thinker,” or “winning points” in the current discussion, or anything; it’s about the very real question of, “If I want to be happy, what do I do?” It’s about trying to answer that question, and get it right, with the one life we have.

45

CriticalThinker2000,

 

I do not understand how your last post gets us any closer to answering the question in the original post. If I make a statement that X is moral and I determine that it is logical and integrates with the totality of my knowledge and therefore it is true and you make a statement that X is immoral and you determine that it is logical and integrates with the totality of your knowledge and therefore it is true, we have not made any progress. At best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that your knowledge or your logic or your integration is somehow in error and you try to convince me that my knowledge or my logic or my integration is somehow in error.

46

It is true that humans can’t know *everything,* but that’s not actually necessary. All we need to know is “enough.” I don’t know much of anything about physics. Yet, I have no problem putting my foot on the floor every morning when I get out of bed. I know that the floor will be there, even if I don’t know why.

You have acknowledged that some morality is obvious. But, you have a problem figuring out the less-obvious. It’s not just you, it’s everyone, and it’s not just morality, it’s all knowledge. That’s the entire human deal – using a mixture of our senses and our reasoning ability to find out more and more about existence, and how we should live in it.

But, as I mentioned before, just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean we know nothing – just as with putting my foot on the floor every morning. If we knew nothing, we could never move from one spot. Similarly, although not everything is known about human motives or whether they’re telling the truth in any given moment or who deserves what, or how justice would be served, we do know a lot about the morality of human interaction. Since we can’t just go around acting like we don’t know that, and since we must find some way to interact, we make the best judgement call we can, and call it “moral” within our context. Some interactions will be as certain as riding the cement block to the bottom of the river. Other interactions, we may have to say, “I’m torn and don’t know everything I’d like, but I have to make a decision. Based on what I know, I’ll decide what I think is the moral thing to do.”

You seem to be uncomfortable with competing moralities between individuals. But, that’s just the nature of many individual minds figuring reality out independently. In the abstract, I can say, “The person closest to the truth is right, and will likely come out on top in the long run.” In practice, you can see how it’s played out in history through human conflict after conflict. Or a best case scenario, it’s as you wrote, “…we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that your knowledge or your logic or your integration is somehow in error and you try to convince me that my knowledge or my logic or my integration is somehow in error.” Looking “beyond the coffee table,” it’s messier than just debating. But the final decider is the same: reality. For example, it’s a pretty solid guess at this point that the communists were doing it “wronger,” and that Western cultures do it “righter.” As you said, “what is, is,” with everything including morality, even when we are still ignorant and in the dark. In that case, we use our best judgement and move forward. “Guess and check,” as usual, forever.

47

425,

 

Since your answer to the question asked in the original post is that one must gather all of the evidence available and ensure that his own logical methods are airtight, then if I gather all of the evidence available and ensure that my own logical methods are airtight and say X is moral, then X is moral. And if you gather all of the evidence available and ensure that your own logical methods are airtight and say X is immoral, then X is immoral. And since we disagree, like my response to CriticalThinker2000, at best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that your evidence or your logic methods are somehow in error and you try to convince me that my evidence or my logic methods are somehow in error. And if we can’t convince each other, then I will claim that I am correct, claim that you are incorrect, and act accordingly and you will claim that you are correct, claim that I am incorrect, and act accordingly. Do you agree with my summary?

48

StrictlyLogical,

 

I cannot agree with what you have written in your post. By stating that action A is moral you are presupposing an answer to the question asked in the original post of, “How can we say that anything is moral or immoral?” Since I do not know the answer to that question, hence the asking, I cannot say that action A is moral (or immoral) under any circumstances.

49

DonAthos,

 

Similar to my response to 425, since your answer to the question asked in the original post is that we can say that something is moral or immoral by appealing to the evidence we have and logic and so forth, if I state that X is moral by appealing to the evidence I have and logic and so forth, then X is moral. And if you state that X is immoral by appealing to the evidence you have and logic and so forth, then X is immoral. And since we disagree, at best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that you are somehow in error and you try to convince me that I am somehow in error. And if we can’t convince each other, then I will claim that I am correct, claim that you are incorrect, and act accordingly and you will claim that you are correct, claim that I am incorrect, and act accordingly. Do you agree with my summary?

50

Jaskn,

 

It is disappointing that you have not answered, nor even addressed, the questions that I asked in post #33 and #43 as I am curious about your answers, but it does not seem necessary in order to answer the question asked in the original post. Your answer to the question of how can we say that anything is moral or immoral is simply, as you stated, “‘Guess-and-check,’ as usual, forever.” Is this correct?

51

DonAthos,

 

Similar to my response to 425, since your answer to the question asked in the original post is that we can say that something is moral or immoral by appealing to the evidence we have and logic and so forth, if I state that X is moral by appealing to the evidence I have and logic and so forth, then X is moral. And if you state that X is immoral by appealing to the evidence you have and logic and so forth, then X is immoral. And since we disagree, at best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that you are somehow in error and you try to convince me that I am somehow in error. And if we can’t convince each other, then I will claim that I am correct, claim that you are incorrect, and act accordingly and you will claim that you are correct, claim that I am incorrect, and act accordingly. Do you agree with my summary?

Per an application of Kahneman and Tversky, morality seems to have a reasoned dimension which might be argued out between consenting adults of good will , but also a heuristic one, as well.

 

This means that much of what we call ‘moral’ is how we instantly react to unforseen events (See 'trolly-ology for more!). This is also where Aristotle comes back in and says, 'Ethos pathein; moral transgressions give an emotive reaction.

 

So i suppose that part of the issue, in aristotelian terms, is that we expect a ‘nomos oud-pathein’ investigation–or that morality should stand up to the logical, dispassionate scrutiny of law!

 

We generally, then,  react to transgressions with emotion. All we can therfore say is that both first-principle reasoing and reflecttion upon past reactions can  offer us some hope of future adjustments…

52

StrictlyLogical,

 

I cannot agree with what you have written in your post. By stating that action A is moral you are presupposing an answer to the question asked in the original post of, “How can we say that anything is moral or immoral?” Since I do not know the answer to that question, hence the asking, I cannot say that action A is moral (or immoral) under any circumstances.

 

My post does not require agreement or disagreement.

 

It is a question.

 

Which you have avoided/evaded.

53

DonAthos,

 

Similar to my response to 425, since your answer to the question asked in the original post is that we can say that something is moral or immoral by appealing to the evidence we have and logic and so forth, if I state that X is moral by appealing to the evidence I have and logic and so forth, then X is moral.

I’d ask that you consider the context I gave you in my preceding post, when you’d made the same statement:

 

Insofar as you are correct in your use of evidence and logic, yes.

X is moral (or immoral) regardless of what you state, or come to realize. You may appeal to evidence and logic but still be wrong. You may claim that X is moral, and you may claim to have good reason for your belief, and yet you might be mistaken.

We do not make X moral by thinking it so, or claiming it to be so, or constructing a good argument for it. X is either moral or not (meaning: good for our lives or not), and we do our best (via evidence, logic, argument, etc.) to recognize the truth of the situation.

It might help you to understand my position to continue to extend the analogy of various theories about evolution. If we make an argument that “punctuated equilibrium is correct,” and if we appeal to evidence and logic, does that make the theory of punctuated equilibrium correct? Not exactly. It is proper to base our theories on the evidence we have, according to our best use of logic, but we do not thereby make them correct. Rather, the theory is either right or wrong, and we strive to discover which through our investigation and our best use of reason.

 

And if you state that X is immoral by appealing to the evidence you have and logic and so forth, then X is immoral.

 

Again, insofar as I am correct.

I hope you understand why I insist on what might seem to you to be a subtle (or even unimportant) point. But if we were evolutionary biologists who disagreed on punctuated equilibrium – one arguing that it explains the data and the other arguing that it does not – we might both point to evidence and use logic in making our case. However, that would not mean that punctuated equilibrium was somehow “both true and not true,” or “true for you but not for me” or anything like that. It remains either true or false, and it is our endeavor to decide which, to the best of our ability.

If we wished to resolve the disagreement between us, we would have to discuss the theory in terms of the arguments we make, the evidence upon which we rely and our particular rationales, to suss out where one (or both) of us has gone wrong.

 

And since we disagree, at best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that you are somehow in error and you try to convince me that I am somehow in error.

Yes, this is what reasonable people (ethicists and scientists and all other manners) do when they disagree on an issue. We attempt to convince one another of why one position is right or another is wrong, through logical argument, reference to examples, etc.

 

And if we can’t convince each other, then I will claim that I am correct, claim that you are incorrect, and act accordingly and you will claim that you are correct, claim that I am incorrect, and act accordingly.

Yes, that’s right.

Given the context of the conversation, I’ll add that beyond our claims, one of us may actually be correct, while one of us (at least) is certainly not.

 

Do you agree with my summary?

Taken together with my own amendments, yes.

54

CriticalThinker2000,

 

I do not understand how your last post gets us any closer to answering the question in the original post. If I make a statement that X is moral and I determine that it is logical and integrates with the totality of my knowledge and therefore it is true and you make a statement that X is immoral and you determine that it is logical and integrates with the totality of your knowledge and therefore it is true, we have not made any progress. At best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that your knowledge or your logic or your integration is somehow in error and you try to convince me that my knowledge or my logic or my integration is somehow in error.

 

I’m just having a terribly hard time getting to the essence of your problem which I thought I’d already answered. Let’s take a real world example: You think theft is moral and I think theft is immoral. We can try to convince each other of our respective positions but suppose we don’t come to an agreement. Who is right? The determinant of who is right is reality- the facts- the way things are. Just like Newton believed in his laws of physics and his detractors did not. We look to the facts of reality to decide the winner of that argument as well. Just because Newton disagreed with others didn’t mean that gravity both existed and didn’t exist. Just because we disagree about the morality of theft doesn’t mean it’s immoral and moral. That would be a contradiction.

55

Jaskn,

It is disappointing that you have not answered, nor even addressed, the questions that I asked in post #33 and #43 as I am curious about your answers, but it does not seem necessary in order to answer the question asked in the original post. Your answer to the question of how can we say that anything is moral or immoral is simply, as you stated, “‘Guess-and-check,’ as usual, forever.” Is this correct?

Neither of those posts were written by you, so I don’t know which questions you think I missed.

Also, I explained a good deal more than simply “guess and check,” and other posters explained more still. You are responding to every single post, so I can’t even guess which parts you’re missing and which you’re acknowledging and understanding, since your questions have been very similar, repeatedly.

56

StrictlyLogical,

 

In post #42, you asked (and it was the only question that you asked): “ Do you agree (and you would if you understand Objectivism) that there exists Z, K, and A such that the following “Statement 2” is true regardless of the knowledge of the individual, anyone, and everyone:” (emphasis added)

 

I answered, “I cannot agree…” How have I avoided/evaded anything? Would you have rather I just wrote: “No”? Would you like me to provide a more detailed answer? If so, I will do so now:

 

StrictlyLogical,

 

I do not agree that there exists Z, K, and A such that the following “Statement 2” is true regardless of the knowledge of the individual, anyone, and everyone.

 

I do not agree because by stating that action A is moral, as you do in Statement 2 (and in Statement 1), you are presupposing an answer to the question asked in the original post of, “How can we say that anything is moral or immoral?” Since I do not know the answer to that question, hence the asking, I cannot say that action A is moral therefore I cannot agree that there exists Z, K, and A such that the following “Statement 2” is true regardless of the knowledge of the individual, anyone, and everyone.

57

425,

 

Since your answer to the question asked in the original post is that one must gather all of the evidence available and ensure that his own logical methods are airtight, then if I gather all of the evidence available and ensure that my own logical methods are airtight and say X is moral, then X is moral.

So long as your logical methods actually are airtight. As DonAthos has pointed out, it is possible for someone to start from good premises, perhaps be an Objectivist, and still make an error in logic without knowing it. Odds are if you are a good philosopher and have good premises, you’ll discover that error upon “checking your work,” so to speak, but it is still possible for you to miss it. But you are correct in that if you gather all the evidence available and use airtight logic, then you can conclude that a certain action is moral.

 

 

And if you gather all of the evidence available and ensure that your own logical methods are airtight and say X is immoral, then X is immoral.

I would reiterate the same basic thing that I said above, but if my evidence is complete and my logic is airtight, then I could draw the conclusion that a certain action is immoral.

 

And since we disagree, like my response to CriticalThinker2000, at best, we end up in a situation where I try to convince you that your evidence or your logic methods are somehow in error and you try to convince me that my evidence or my logic methods are somehow in error.

Right. Since contradictions do not exist in reality, this means basically one of two things:

  1. One of us is missing pertinent information (or, I suppose, has inaccurate information) regarding the particular action X or the context of that action.

  2. One of us has made an error in our logic.

So yes, if the two of us were discussing this issue and came to opposite conclusions, ideally we would each evaluate our own and each other’s arguments in search of either 1) incompleteness or inaccuracy of information or 2) logical errors.

 

And if we can’t convince each other, then I will claim that I am correct, claim that you are incorrect, and act accordingly and you will claim that you are correct, claim that I am incorrect, and act accordingly. Do you agree with my summary?

I agree with this part, and I agree with most aspects of your entire summary. I have noted my quibbles above, but yes, I think you’ve done well at outlining the process. I would just briefly add that realistically, if we were debating a relatively minor issue (like the morality of eating food from McDonald’s or something, as opposed to the morality of breaking and entering), this would be type of scenario where we would probably agree to disagree.

Edit: I want to add that my quibbles with regard to the difference between the action of “ensuring that your logic is airtight” versus your logic actually being airtight is essentially the same as what DonAthos said in response to the very similar question you asked him. I also think he did better than I in accounting for the possibility of outside information unavailable to us. I agree entirely with his post #53.

58

DonAthos,

 

Your statements, “X is moral (or immoral) regardless of what you state, or come to realize” and “We do not make X moral by thinking it so, or claiming it to be so, or constructing a good argument for it. X is either moral or not (meaning: good for our lives or not), and we do our best (via evidence, logic, argument, etc.) to recognize the truth of the situation” are very interesting as they appear to differ from other posts on this tread.

 

It seems, and please correct me if I am wrong, that you are saying that there exists, completely independent of any human thought or idea, “Morality” and this morality applies to things and the morality of something is what it is regardless of what I think or you think, or anyone thinks it is or should be much like laws of nature. And while you or I may not know exactly what the morality of a specific something is, we can form an opinion about it, learn about it, discuss/debate it and hopefully come to discover it. Is this what you are saying?

59

CriticalThinker2000,

 

Let’s continue the real world example of theft. The determinant, as you claim, of whether theft is moral or immoral is reality, the facts, the way things are. So, as I mentioned in another post, if I steal from you, nothing happens to me. My life does not end. My heart doesn’t stop beating nor am I stricken with disease. The laws of physics do not have any effect on me as a result of the theft.  These are some of the facts concerning theft. So can we determine if theft is moral or immoral at this point?

 

If you proceed to state, as other have done, that I will suffer some consequences as a result of the theft, such as being pursued by law enforcement officials or punished in some way by other humans, then I will state (again as I did in an earlier post) that if I steal from you, nothing happens to me unless you decide to act in some fashion. If you do nothing, either because you cannot do anything or choose not to do anything, then nothing happens to me. If you choose to do something, call law enforcement for example, then something may or may not happen to me. These are some more facts concerning theft. So can we determine if theft is moral or immoral at this point?

60

Jaskn,

 

I write and post as FredAnyman. Both post #33 and post #43 were written and posted by FredAnyman.