OBJECTIVE MORALITY
[Purpose of document] – In this article I am going to outline how I think morality can be objective. Terms will be defined as their simpliciter versions. The intention is to ground morality in reality.
NOTES: Introduce topic, say how this document is broken down, summarize conclusions, break down main terms in summary form, go into depth with the terms. Going from condensed form to expanded form. Then definitions and thought experiments and such in table of contents form at the end.
Maybe do summary of morality, expand on it to then break it down, then go from those broke down parts to summarize and put morality back together as a summary at the end.
[Simpliciter] – Simpliciter as in simple instead of complicated. Simpliciter terms are going to be used in order to avoid contaminating the simple and pure definitions with connotative or particular contextual baggage. That kind of contamination problem tends to happen with many terms people use in common language as well as in philosophical spaces. An example is that good and bad will not be define with moral baggage within this writing. Good and bad will be defined and talked about as the terms good and bad themselves without any context being added to them.
When it comes to the topic of objective morality, the terms need defined in order to come to a useful understanding. This includes defining the concept of morality itself and then terms within that definition.
Now to define what I mean by
[Objective] – The term objective is defined as “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”. To be objective in statements is to be corresponding to the object. An object is a composition of properties in an arrangement.
[Subjective] – Inversely, subjective is define as “influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. Dependent on the mind for existence; personal”. To be subjective in statements is to be corresponding to a subject and what they feel or think about an object non-objectively. This would be if there is not empirical foundations and or analytical logic deducing something.
[Morality Oxford definition] – Morality is defined by Oxford dictionary as being defined as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior”. To simplify this, we can equate right to good and wrong to bad. Morality then is defined as “an evaluation of good or bad behavior”.
[Code of Conduct vs Morality] – Is it good or bad behavior to score points in a game? Yes. Does that mean that scoring points in a game is moral? No. This points at a problem with the reduction of the definition of morality to “evaluation of good and bad behavior”. Without further criteria, “evaluation of good and bad behavior”, is just the concept of Code of Conduct.
[Virtues, Morality, and Ethics] – There are various types of behavior that can be classified as good, bad, or neutral. Those cases would be personal, interpersonal, and organizational.
[Virtues] – Virtues are about the behaviors an agent has. The behaviors will always effect the agent, and sometimes will effect other agents.
[Morality Criteria] – Morality is about about the behavior of an agent being imparted to other agents. The behaviors will always effect other agents, and sometimes will effect the acting agent.
MORALITY NOTES:
Objective Morality must deal with things that are objectively measurable things such as physical things. e.g. Physical damage vs emotional damage. Some emotional damage counts but it has to exist within an objective context.
VALUE NOTES:
Competing Values – Bad action vs Bad feelings. e.g. exercise is a good action but gives you bad feelings in terms of physical pain cost and time and effort and such.
Boxing is a competing values situation as well. Positive experience mentally (emotion) vs Negative experience physically (damage)
Footnotes:
Objective
Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.
The origins of objective being early 17th century: from medieval Latin objectivus, from objectum. Objectum being medieval Latin ‘thing presented to the mind’, neuter past participle (used as a noun) of Latin obicere, from ob- ‘in the way of’ + jacere ‘to throw’; the verb may also partly represent the Latin frequentative objectare .
ABOUT THE TERMS
Morality
The Oxford dictionary defines morality as:
1) [principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.]
“a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.”
- “the extent to which an action is right or wrong.””behind all the arguments lies the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons”
The origins are of late Middle English: from Old French moralite or late Latin moralitas, from Latin moralis, see moral. Moral is from late Middle English: from Latin moralis, from mos, mor- ‘custom’, (plural) mores ‘morals’. As a noun the word was first used to translate Latin Moralia, the title of St Gregory the Great’s moral exposition of the Book of Job, and was subsequently applied to the works of various classical writers.
The Oxford dictionary defines moral as:
concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.
1) [concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.]
“the moral dimensions of medical intervention”
- concerned with or derived from the code of interpersonal behavior that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society.”an individual’s ambitions may get out of step with the general moral code”
Good vs Bad
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Right vs Wrong
Related: Natural Rights vs Artificial Rights
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Definitions: Right
- Right – true or correct as a fact.
- Correct – in accordance with fact or truth.
- Truth – the quality or state of being true.
- True – in accordance with fact or reality.
History of the Concept of the Word ‘Right’ Meaning ‘Correct’
In the long long ago, people aligned the idea of ‘right’ with ‘correct’ because a mass majority of humanity is right handed. People are said to have a right hand man for a reason. The reason being that people to the right of you are most accessible to your dominant hand.
For kings, this was of great symbolic importance. People to the right of them were seen as on their side. People on their left were seen to be inaccessible and not aligned with them. (That would rely on context because otherwise the king would always be to the left of any group of people they were with and that wouldn’t make much sense.)
‘Rights’ then would be things that are in accordance with fact or reality. When it comes to ‘human rights’ that would be things that are in accordance with fact or reality relating to humans.
When people talk about ‘rights’, they are most generally talking about agents of some sort. Most of the time talking about humans as those agents. People use the term ‘rights’ in two main different ways.
‘Natural Rights’ and ‘Legal Rights’. I’m going to refer to them more specifically to what they are, which would be ‘Natural Rights’ and ‘Artificial Rights’. ‘Natural Rights’ also are called ‘Negative Rights’. ‘Artificial Rights’ are also called ‘Positive Rights’.
Evaluating Wholes vs Parts
Bittersweet – Bitter sweet emotions are emotions that are both bitter and sweet. The emotions are reactions to different portions of a situation. This is how many things are. You can evaluate many parts of a situation.
Stealing Scenario – If Person A steals 5 dollars from Person B, we can evaluate from multiple different vantage points. Person A, Person B, and the behavior of stealing for starters.
Person A now has 5 more dollars. So it is good for Person A. Person B now has 5 less dollars. So it is bad for Person B.
The behavior itself we can evaluate as well. The behavior imparted from Person A to Person B has the impact or effect of a negative nature. We evaluate the behavior within the event that it exists within. The proximal effect. To judge the ultimate effects would be something a bit different. You could make such arguments, but for now, we are just focusing on the direct effect, the direct change of state produced from the behavior.
VALUE
Value – ability to impart effect
By impart effect, that does not mean ultimate effect, it means proximal effect.
Value transmitter – Value given imparted is from the point of view of the thing that produces the value. e.g. A chemical, a feature, a process. We would say that this thin can give value to something else or does. It is a value source.
Value receiver – Value gained is from the point of view of a thing that can have value imparted upon it. e.g. A piece of furniture, a plant, a person. We Would say that the thing has been been improved or given some kind of advantage. Though it had a source. That source is from the thing that the value is imparted from. The value source.
Positive –
The term positive comes from the idea of posit or placed. So you can have something that has been placed or you can do the action of placing. It is just a difference in temporal forms, or tense.
Positive Apples – Assume we have a table. A table with no things on it, nothing. Then we place an apple on that table. We have posited the apple. There is an apple placed on the table now. I’ve now used both forms of posit in relation to that table and the apple.
We now can say there is a positive amount of apples on the apple instead of zero apples.
You can go in a positive direction with some process such as physical movement, physical process, or conceptual process.
That is the idea of positive. You can have positive be in terms of a stable state such as quantity or in terms of a process such as with some process. States and processes.
Negative –
Negative is a bit of a more strange idea to think about than positive.
The term negative comes from late Latin negativus, from negare ‘deny’. The idea of deny can be applied to see that you are denying the existence of something when you are talking about the idea of negative. Negative has an English root you also may be familiar with; negate. Negate comes from Latin’s negate-‘denied’, from the verb negare I mentioned previously.
Negatives much like positives can be thought of as states of existence or processes. You can go in a negative direction when there is a positive location you are at. That would be the process kind.
Now must invoke the idea of zero. You may think of zero as a simple idea, but at one time in history, it was a brand new invention. A very useful idea. When it comes to negative there is an artificial kind and a natural kind. Artificial kinds are kinds that are imposed by things with minds. Generally people. I’m not sure birds have created an artificial zero yet.
Zero is a baseline, a floor, a place to start and end, a threshold. A negative state would be a location before, behind, below, or under a zero. Being at a negative location however in the physical world cannot truly be done, unless that positive location is purely an artificial construction.
Negative Apples – If we are talking about apples on a table, we cannot have a negative amount of apples on the table. Not in a physical sense at least. We can subtract apples that are on the table and that would mean that the quantity of apples on the table is going in the negative direction.
There is a great concept to use about this time called N.O.I.R. Or without the periods, just NOIR, like the French films that are all in black and white quite often. Just the spelling and sound. Not the meaning though.
The NOIR we are talking about here is an acronym that stands for Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, Ratio. It is a data science kind of idea that talks about measurement types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement
Data Analysis 1: What is Data? – Computerphile
Nominal is the simplest of measurements. Just an identification of something by name. Such as a number on a footballers uniform.
Ordinal is about measuring things purely by order. So assume we can order something such as that one elephant is larger than another one next to it. Or you could put your favorite movies in some kind of order for someone. There is no unit of measure yet. We are getting there though.
Interval is about measuring things with set intervals. An example of this is a millimeter or inch for intervals of length. These are set intervals or spaces or amounts. This is used to measure all sorts of things; length, volume, time, weight, etc.
Ok, so why I’ve brought up NOIR is because zero has been used in a lot of places where the physical world is measured, temperature being the most relatable to most people. The idea of temperature at its core is about movement of particles. I will talk about Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin for this example.
With Fahrenheit and Celsius, the zero is artificial. It was decided by someone for some reason to be where it is at.
Fahrenheit set zero at the lowest temperature he could get a water and salt mixture to reach. He then used a (very slightly incorrect) measurement of the average human body temperature, 96 degrees, as the second fixed point in the system. The resulting schema set the boiling point of water at 212 degrees, and the freezing point at 32 degrees.
(In Fahrenheit, zero was defined as the temperature of an equal-part ice and salt solution of brine)
Celsius has zero at the point where freshwater will freeze and one hundred where water will boil.
The zero point and some other point are set by some kind of factor that could be witnessed in the natural world that people found useful to pin the temperatures to. These are artificial and not what the idea of temperature is at its core.
Absolute zero is a measurement in Kelvin that is based off the nature of temperature itself. Absolute zero is where particles have zero movement.
Negative Emotions – When a person speaks about negative emotions they are talking about from a baseline emotional state or emotions that have impacted a positive emotional state.
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Object X
A object-x is a simple/complex object. It does/does not have a mind. Object-x is / is not an alive thing.
Object-x is an arrangement of properties. The arrangement of properties has the ability to impart effects. The arrangement of properties has value.
Object-x uses and interaction with things. …
Gaining value content here.
Losing value content here.
It doesn’t require a mind to receive value from xyz.
— —
Cardboard Box
A cardboard box is a simple object. It does not have a mind. It also is not alive.
A cardboard box is an arrangement of properties. The arrangement of properties has the ability to impart effects.
A cardboard box typically is known to store things. However, it can do many other things. It could block an air vent. It could be a place for a small child or pet to play in. You could put things on it.
If we light this box on fire, it will lose parts of itself. It will lose some of its boxness. The arrangement of properties will be modified and reduced in amount of itself. This means that is will lose some of its ability to impart or produce effects when it interacts with things. The parts that are on fire will change their arrangement of properties and become something else. The ashes are not the box itself. They are ashes of the material the box is made of. The ashes can produce effects, but they are not the box. So it would not be the box imparting or producing effects.
The degradation of the box means it has lost value. It doesn’t matter if that value is to a person or not.
Car vs Lake
Is it good for a car to be submerged into a lake? Not for a person that may drive it, but for the car itself.
Blackhole and Star
A blackhole does not have a mind. A blackhole is not alive. A star does not have a mind. A star is not alive.
A blackhole gains more value (ability to impart effect) as a blackhole the more it is able to consume matter. A star being sucked into a blackhole would cease being a star. It therefore would lose its value as a star.
Bacteria vs Anti-bacterial Cleaning Agents
A bacteria is a simple object. It does not have a mind. It is alive.
Plant and Sunlight
A plant is a simple object. It does not have a mind. It is alive.
A plant gains value (ability to impart effect) from sunlight. The sunlight is a transmitter of value (ability to impart effect) and the plant is a receiver of that value (ability to impart effect).
It doesn’t require a mind to receive value from sunlight.
A Person and their Arm
A person’s arm provides the person value. It enables them to do things. If we see a person cutting them arm off in the store, we would try to stop them. We don’t really care about how they feel about removing their arm. They have consented to their own actions, yet we ignore that consent. We automatically treat the person as if they are doing a bad thing to themselves in a very obvious way and so there must be something wrong with their mind and how they are processing reality.
This is not about a person who is removing their arm because there is some kind of medical reason or otherwise reason that is important to their overall survival or well being. This is just some person in the store hacking their arm off with a pocket knife or piece of broken glass or something like that.
In this situation we can see that the person is doing damage to themselves. The removal of the arm would be removing value from themselves. That arm has the ability to impart effect and if it is removed, it will not have the ability to impart effect. At least not as a person’s connected arm does.
Car vs Lake
Is it good for a car to be submerged into a lake? Not for a person that may drive it, but for the car itself.
COMMON CONTENTIONS
- Error Theory
- “Moore’s open question argument”
- Is – Ought Gap
Error Theory
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Moore’s Open Question
“That is, Moore’s argument attempts to show that no moral property is identical to a natural property.[2] The argument takes the form of a syllogism modus tollens:
Premise 1: If X is (analytically equivalent to) good, then the question “Is it true that X is good?” is meaningless.
Premise 2: The question “Is it true that X is good?” is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question).
Conclusion: X is not (analytically equivalent to) good.
The type of question Moore refers to in this argument is an identity question, “Is it true that X is Y?” Such a question is an open question if a conceptually competent speaker can question this; otherwise it is closed. For example, “I know he is a vegan, but does he eat meat?” would be a closed question. However, “I know that it is pleasurable, but is it good?” is an open question; the answer cannot be derived from the meaning of the terms alone.”
So, as I understand it, Moore is claiming any candidate definition of “good” has to occupy the space between an uninformative tautology, i.e., good is good, and the victims of the open question, i.e., pleasure is good. These would be definitions that would lead to closed questions if genuine candidates, i.e., is Hesperus Phosphorus? With the answer being yes if the definition is the true account of “good”
https://youtu.be/8_IIREfc214
Is-Ought Gap
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THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
- Trolley Problem
Trolley Problem
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General Links
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NOTES
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
- Simpliciter
- Thing
- Objective
- Subjective
- Morality
- Code of Conduct
- Ethical
- Virtue
- Good
- Bad
- Positive
- Negative
- Value
- Cause
- Affect
- Effect
- Impart
- Ought
- Responsibility
- Should
- Need
- Want
Simpliciter – a version of a term free from any shades of meaning given to it by surrounding words or phrases
adj. Indicating that a word or phrase in a document is used absolutely, unconditionally, and free from any shades of meaning given to it by surrounding words or phrases. For example, if the word “yard” is found in a document, it means that the word is used in its most natural sense. Thus it is not a “stockyard”, which is a particular type of yard.
Definition: clarified dictionary definition
Thing – an arrangement of properties
A thing is an arrangement of properties. That goes for objects or processes.
Definition: custom
Objective – (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
- not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.
Definition: from dictionary
Subjective – based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Definition: from dictionary
Morality – the evaluation of good or bad behavior imparted from one party to another party
Definition: custom
Good – positive value
Definition: custom
Bad – negative value
Definition: custom
Positive –
Definition: ???
Negative –
Definition:
Value – ability to impart effect
Definition: custom
Cause –
Summary Explanation
Definition: ???
Affect –
Definition: ???
Effect –
Definition: ???
Action – production or restriction of specific pattern of change in a sequence
Definition: custom
Ability – A power that is possessed by something to produce a specific effect.
Definition: custom
Ethical –
Definition: custom
Standford Encyclopedia Definition
Virtue –
Definition: custom
Standford Encyclopedia Definition
Code of Conduct –
Definition: ???
MISCELLANEOUS
- Value vs Valued
- Cardboard box
- Star and black hole
- Plant and sunlight
- Cutting off arm
- Instrumental vs Terminal value
- Inherent value
- Everything has value of some sort
- Numerical Values
- NOIR
- Subjective VS Objective morality, good/bad, value
- Billiard balls
- Table with items vs table without
- Temperature
- Sound
- Emotional states – positive and negative
- Types of value
- Paintings
- Pizza
- Car with gas doesnt need more gas
- Why is it good to be alive?
- Ought people do what is good?
- Rights – natural and artificial
- Justice
- Responsibilities
- Why ought we do what is good instead of ought do what is bad?
- Why emotivism and intuitionism is not good ways to go at morality. – Emotions and intuitions are reacting to factors. They are not magic. Emotivism and Intuitionism for morality are gapism theories.