Hi DT,
The argument for OM doesn't just say it exists because people think it, it says the assumption of objectivity is implicit in our moral discourse and without it we can't maintain a sense of morality that is anything like morality as it is practiced.
I accept that this is a reasonable argument for those who have a fundamental belief in OM. However, I would counter that by saying that the fact that I have an instinctive and emotional sense of morality says nothing about it having an objective existence. I suggest that it is just as reasonable to suggest that natural selection has built us this way in order to develop strategies that are tailored to the social world we live in.
Talking about an 'intuitive approach' makes it sound like there is an alternative to trusting our intuitions as the basis of our metaphysical beliefs, but of course there isn't. Empiricism for example has its own assumptions at its base so to pose it as an alternative is to having to trust some basic intuitions is to miss the intuitions we all stand upon, whatever our beliefs. I have no problem with the fact that some people disagree with me though, I only have a problem with the type of atheists who think that anyone who doesn't share their point of view is irrational.
The fact we are inclined to trust our intuitions as the basis of our metaphysical beliefs is coloured by the fact that those same intuitions can vary widely. Therefore I don't feel that this is a justification that those basic intuitions(including my own) are necessarily correct. Thus, for myself, I can happily assume that the world around me is absolutely real for all practical purposes, but it does not mean that it might not be some form of highly complex illusion. Science, as you intimate, is clearly founded on the belief that the natural world exists and can be understood and manipulated. For my own part, it seems to be a basic part of my nature that I am sceptical about all manner of things, and will only be convinced when I am faced with clear evidence. Incidentally, as an atheist, I have never been of the opinion that those who do not share my point of view are therefore irrational. That sounds like quite an 'irrational' approach.
I don't share Alan's trust in moral principles and if another species had different capacities to us, it may be that ideas like pain are meaningless so how we might apply objective moral truths like justice or compassion might be diffenrence,..but then the term torture wouldn't really apply either. Torture means consciously and deliberately inflicting suffering, and in this case it’s for someone else’s enjoyment…..so for this description to apply we are necessarily assuming that these other beings are at the very least centres of consciousness with a capacity to suffer and enjoy, who can act in a self-directed intentional manner. If this description does apply then I can’t see any reason why moral judgements wouldn’t apply because the situation is bursting with morally relevant features. If you do then I’d like to hear why.
My position would be as follows:
If other entities were involved in Alan's scenario, and asuming no humans existed, then I would consider my own present views, which are entirely from a human perspective, to be superfluous. There is no way that I could feel I should or could impose my own views on such an hypothetical situation.
If, on the other hand, we take Alan's scenario as is, then, of course I would feel TACTTDJFF to be wrong, as I have already said. However, I suggest that humans do often react in this way to the immediacy of such a situation. If one changes the parameters only slightly, then it is not so clear cut at all. For instance, if one changes it a little to 'someone else torturing a child to death in order to give us pleasure' then it does not seem so clear cut. Examples of this approach might be the prevailing atitudes to child labour in the brickyards, the coal mines etc. during the 19th Century when large swathes of the population did not feel so incensed about the immorality of such a situation, or even today, when child labour has been used in different parts of the world to satisfy our enjoyment of fashionable clothing.
I am of the opinion that a scenario is, of itself, neither moral nor immoral. It seems to depend on how we, as human beings, view it. For instance, on a personal level, someone who has recently been bereaved, might react with strong emotions to some particular action or object which reminds them of their loved one. This does not mean that the action or object has some intrinsic quality associated with this emotion, it simply means for that person it becomes a trigger to set off the emotion. For another person it may have no such meaning. Morality, it seems to me, is something like this writ large. By that, I mean that the vast majority of human beings react in roughly similar ways to particular acts, either with abhorrence or commendation, and we give these feelings the names morality/immorality because we think that others should also react as we do.
I’d 'demonstrate' it (or at least make a justified argument for it) by pointing out that our moral practice has a range of features that we can only adequate make sense of if it is objective – our morality assumes truth even at the deepest levels; we justify our moral judgements in the same manner as we do for other factual claims - on features of the situation we are judging as opposed to our personal preferences that we might appeal to in liking tea; on the phenomenology of our moral experience, which is such that we perceive morally relevant features as implicit in situations rather than merely a deriving from our own non-cognitive reactions, and morality imposes constraints and demands on us despite and sometimes quite opposed to what we may desire to do. On the previous thread I delved into the example of when we change our moral opinions – including at times our most basic moral principles – this can be a major and traumatic event in people’s lives which we agonise over and are quite fundamental to our self-identity. When we make such changes in basic views the crucial feature is that we do so because we recognise our old views were wrong. If morality was invention we can’t adequately make sense of these most basic features of the role of ethics in our life….yet these aren’t just peripheral aspects of our lives we can just discard, they are among the most profound and defining aspects of the human condition.
The trouble I find with this approach is that, apart from our general moral feelings, our moral practices can deviate quite strongly according to how we rationalise them in any given situation. Apart from the most generalised moral attitudes(which I would explain through feelings such as empathy, sympathy, social cohesion etc) we can make contrary 'moral' decisions according to how we analyse a situation(E.G. assisted suicide, abortion).
As far as your idea of the trauma of changing our moral opinions goes, I quite agree with you when you say that it can be intensely traumatic. However, changing all sorts of things in our lives, when we change our deep seated outlooks, can be traumatic too. We may be in the process of changing our views of another person, which may release similar agonised feelings. We may realise(through illness, for instance) that what we thought was an entirely adequate lifestyle has to change dramatically for us to remain healthy. This may induce its own major mental problems as we go through a period when we lose our self confidence. What I am saying is that changes in our moral attitudes, as with other things which are deeply ingrained in our lives and in our thinking, can have an understandable traumatic effect on us. If a person, after an intense period of soul searching , changes from being a theist to an atheist, I would not suggest that this demonstrates the truth or otherwise of atheism, so I'm not sure why a person changing their fundamental moral attitudes demonstrates the actual existence of OM.
As for evolution, neither a realist nor an anti-realist about morality need disagree that it is through our evolution that morality develops, but they would both have a different interpretation of how it develops in that context. While you assume that it means it’s something invented for survival the realist would simply say that it is via our evolution that we develop the capacities to discover moral truth. In other words the evolutionary and social context of morality is no challenge to realism in the slightest and only seems like one if you smuggle in a whole bag of additional anti-realist assumptions in your argument to start with.
I'm hoping that we may have some measure of agreement here. I would happily accept that one can positively engage with the idea of evolution playing its part in developing moral attitudes while suggesting that there is an objective morality which underlies it, just as it is quite possible for a person who takes on board evolution to also believe in the existence of a god. No problem at all. For me, however, I see no evidence of such(either God or OM), so I see no reason to change my opinions on either count. This is very different to trying to prove OM is wrong. I just take a different view.
