Comment on Philosophy meme

• balderdash9@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You can objectively say that humans think certain things are morally bankrupt but you cannot say that certain things are objectively morally bankrupt without specifying according to whom.

  This is begging the question in favor of moral relativism. If there are objective facts “floating out there” about math, biology, etcetera, why can’t there be objective facts about morality?

  If the answer is that it is difficult to know what the moral facts are: some facts are more difficult to find out than others. Physics didn’t know about the Higgs Boson for centuries and yet here we are. Perhaps philosophy could do the same thing with moral truths in time.

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  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If there are objective facts “floating out there” about math, biology, etcetera, why can’t there be objective facts about morality?

    Because the objectivity of statements about math, biology, etc. can be verified by posing a scientific question. In other words, something like 1+1=2 is a testable claim. We have seen no occurrence of 1+1=2. Hence, we can say that “1+1=2” is a law of nature. “Moral truths” are simply not testable.

    If the answer is that it is difficult to know what the moral facts are: some facts are more difficult to find out than others. Physics didn’t know about the Higgs Boson for centuries and yet here we are. Perhaps philosophy could do the same thing with moral truths in time

    And the Higgs Boson became an “objective statement” only after it was verified. Prior to that, it was just a hypothesis. Do you have any scientific evidence to suggest that there are certain universal moral truths that apply to all humans?

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    • balderdash9@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And the Higgs Boson became an “objective statement” only after it was verified. Prior to that, it was just a hypothesis.

      We might have two different understanding of what it means for something to be an objective fact. Objective truth/facts/reality exist independently of human understanding. If all the humans got together and decided that the Earth is flat, that wouldn’t make the Earth flat. If scientists had never discovered the Higgs Boson, the particle would still exist.

      Alternatively, perhaps you already agree with that and your point is more about the objectivity of statements (i.e., our linguistic acts). And while I disagree with your overall stance on morality, I can see the logic in insisting that our statements about the world be verifiable/falsifiable. Historically, some philosophers held that words that cannot be verified are literally meaningless.

      So just to be clear, we can make a distinction between the objectivity of facts (e.g., physical facts, moral facts) and the objectivity (here, justifiability) of our statements about the facts. My stance is that there are objective moral facts. I concede the point that the justifiability of our statements about the moral facts is a difficult problem to solve. But finding the Higgs Boson was also difficult and we humans did it!

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• cricket97@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  so do you disagree with the original post?

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  • PixxlMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, I don’t think there could exist such a thing as an objective moral truth - per definition.

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