Morality without god

Let's say that I smack my thumb with a hammer in front of a 100 witnesses and then leap about shaking my hand in such a way as one would if experiencing extreme thumb pain.A 100 witnesses will testify that this was a painful act.But unbeknown to them I have had a local anaesthetic, cannot feel any pain in my thumb at all, and the whole thing is an act on my part. The accumulation of subjective opinion on this matter is that I have experienced pain despite that fact that I haven't. Again - No. Now you are entering the realm of objective empirical evidence. But even if all the pain receptors in my brain are firing and I am sitting there with a smile on my face telling you that no pain is being experienced - Who is correct?Can you really tell me when I am experiencing pain and when I am not? No. They subjectively know it hurts and they can objectively conclude that others with the same physiological mechanism for experiencing pain will very likely do so under similar circumstances. What you are calling "dishonesty" is simply the fact of subjective experience. You cannot rely on everybody having the same reaction to the same situation and thus you cannot objectively define "harm".What you might consider to be personally harmful another might well consider to be personally gratifying. (being whipped for example) Given that "harm" lies at the heart of your equation you need a method of objectively determining harm.Do you have an equation with which we can objectively evaluate the "harm" in any given scenario or choice? Or is it just obvious to you as to what is more or less harmful in any given situation?

Eh ... no. It really did hurt in a most objective way. Oh, Dog, you really didn't say that. Objectivity and subjectivity are opposites. Yes it hurt (objective) but it was bearable (subjective).
One is fact the other opinion, and no the two do not play well together. "Subjective fact" and "objective opinion" are misnomers.No. Objective facts are NOT accumulations of subjective opinions. Uh, no. But I could give you an approximation that would be suitable for any purpose, just not exact. Well, general coastline is about 127 miles while the tidal shoreline is about 1850 miles.Did I just win something? I don't think they make tape measures that big, but I get your point.Actually, no I don't, especially if I'm not winning anything.OK, we can measure stuff. So, we can measure net harm in a situation to some more or less accurate degree.That is not in dispute. It is a fact. An objective observation. Whether we can measure it with "adequate" accuracy is a matter of opinion, i.e. subjective. And this presents a problem. You have already allowed for some of the various complex inputs which cannot be adequately measured with precision to be approximated subjectively.Any subjective inputs will make the result a subjective output. And, no, the plural of "subjective" is not "objective".In the cases where the inputs need be subjective because we have no measure or no accurate measure your results could still be a powerful data point, but it would be one input among others.Even in those cases where the data inputs are solid any thumbs-up/thumbs-down from your equation is not the end of the moral analysis. Powerful though it may be, and decisive in some cases, it is still just one data point among many. I think this is a bad example. Equations, especially the law-of-physics kind have no subjective components whatsoever. Two people arrive at the same answer despite any subjective differences in their beliefs. Hell, you and any intelligent space alien will arrive at the same result in the face of the most radical differences in beliefs, culture, antenna color or sexual orientation.And, the laws-of-physics questions to be answered are physical imperatives not human moral decisions.Regardless, my point is that some useful rules and measures to determine any net harm of a situation will produce a powerful input into a moral decision-making tree. But it is only one input. Other, maybe more subjective, emotional, empathetic inputs may also be required to make an adequate, justified and livable moral decision.I'll grant you that yours is a major input into the moral decision-making process but it may not be the only input in all decisions.

Morality is an assessment of where an action falls on a scale that ranges from absolutely bad to absolutely good. Having less of one will necessarily mean having more of the other.Everyone holds their own unique self referencing meter stick. Everyone's meter stick is an absolutely objective measure of the actual harm that they experience because of an action.If we take the objective measure from everyone's measuring stick we will have an objective measure of the net harm caused by an action.We can then locate that assessment on an objective scale that measures the net good/bad of an action.It does not matter that each individual's inputs are different. If they are aligned then the net value moves up or down the scale. If they are directly in opposition then the net value remains neutral.Our assessment of harm that we experience is objective. Our assessment of the harm that others experience is subjective. This does not change the fact that there is a net amount of harm caused by an action.

It's not going to be worth my while pointing out yet again, that there is now way to objectively measure this is there?(If there was, you would have been able to answer the question I set you earlier in a way that isn't subjective.)

The person who is experiencing the harm will be the only person with the possibility to make an absolutely objective assessment of how much harm they experience. My assessment of the harm that they experienced will be subjective. If we asked 100 people to assess the harm experienced then surely we are least closer to an objective assessment of the harm. What if we ask 100k people?In any case, this supports my position that there is a way to objectively know how much harm an action causes even if it is only when we ask the concerned parties.This also lends support to your position that we should treat others the way that they would be treated rather than the way that we would be treated. I still think that the original form is better because we are so intimate with our own assessment of harm and that in actual practice treating others as we would be treated brings us closer to moral behaviour more often. It is a yard stick that can be referenced at any time. Especially when the affected parties are not available for comment which is often. It seems to me that if there is such a thing as harm then we should be able to quantify it. How many other things are there that we know exist but we can't count? If there is such a thing as more or less harm is this determination not the rudimentary beginning of quantification? If we can quantify a thing then we can apply mathematical principals to it.

Is your objection strictly about quantifying harm and not about what to do with the quantity after we have determined it? Would it be fair to say that you agree that there might be a formula but we are unable to determine the correct values to plug in?Imagine some future world where we could perfectly monitor the firing of all pain receptors in the brain. Wouldn't this be an objective assessment of harm experienced?

Are the 12 opinions of a jury regarding a legal matter not a more objective assessment than the opinion of a single person? Just because it is an approximation does not mean that it is wrong. Even though we know that the answer is not exactly correct we can know that it is pretty close to correct. Assessments of a quantity of harm and the area of a circle or the length of a coast line are the same in this way. None of them are exactly correct. Harm is a physical thing.

You can be objectively observed to be experiencing pain when you are subjectively not experiencing pain.That's the trouble with worshiping Holy Objectivity: sometimes objective observations are wrong.

I know someone posted the answer to this, which means it can be objectively determined. However, so you know how it can be objectively determined, an individual could utilize fractal geometry to determine the actual length of the coastline. In fact, that is exactly what Mandelbrot first used his new, non-euclidean geometry to determine. How Long is the Coast of Britain?This question was what led him toward his future research in fractals and using mathematics to measure natural formations.As per your "did it hurt" question, there is absolutely nothing objective about it.If we imagine pain as being measured in a unit named "painons", then when I hit my thumb, I claim that I feel 5 "painons", while another individual feels 12 "painons". There is no reason to believe that the same action will hurt each of us equally, no matter what. Some women I have known did not experience a lot of pain in childbirth and it was a relatively easy process. Whereas, most of the other women I know have told me it was the worst pain ever and I would have passed out from it.Does this even begin to sound like we could garner an objective ideal about the amount of pain that childbirth will include?I will say that with the hammer example, we can objectively say there will be pain (even in Straggler's example of taking a painkiller, the pain is there objectively because the pain centers are firing, but the pain level is still subjective because he cannot feel it due to the painkillers)...however, we cannot set an objective level to the amount of pain that will be received. Likewise, with morality, we can set the basic ideals of a moral or immoral action, but there is nothing but subjectivity when it comes to determining the actual amount of "harm" that an action causes.I agree we should minimize "harm" whenever possible, such as the example from earlier in the thread of a fish lying on the beach. We can use this example to show two different ways, both moral, of minimizing harm.The first is to take the fish and place it back in the water. In this case, we have taken zero "harm" upon ourselves, and reduced the "harm" being caused to the fish.The other option is that we could take the fish to our house to eat. In this case, we have increased the "harm" caused to the fish, but decreased the "harm" of our family being hungry.Both of these actions would be moral, but actually rating the final level of "harm" can only be based on opinion and not objectivity. The only immoral action would be to walk past the fish and do nothing, because it increases "harm" without diminishing "harm" somewhere else."harm" is in quotations to show that it cannot be determined the exact level objectively, but that we can know objectively (similar to the thumb example) whether or not harm is being caused at all.

I definitely do not agree with this statement at all, even in context of the entire statement.Charles Manson enjoys carving Swastikas into his forehead, so the more moral action for him would be to do that to others? A person enjoys bondage and whipping, so it would be more moral for them to do those things to others no matter how the receving individual felt about those actions?It becomes a slippery slope when you force how you would feel about an action onto other individuals, instead of respecting that which they would want done to them. This is one of the big problems with the golden rule and why it really is inadequate for determining a moral action. Too many people enjoy things done to them that I would never want done to me and it would not be moral for them to force their subjective ideals upon me.

No. My objection is with the entire idea that morality can be objectively measured. It can't be. No. There is no formulae and no values that you can plug in. This is completely wrong headed. Morality is not a function of how much pain a human brain feels. If for no other reason that it completely omits the concept of doing the right things not simply avoiding doing the wrong things.

We are headed to one of those semantical quibbles that so obscures the major points and derails a topic.We will disagree in the quibbles, so be it.Subjective/Objective is not a sliding scale. There is no "more" objective or "less" subjective or versa vice the other way.Subjective is subjective no matter how close to accurate it may come. That does not make it objective, or (heaven forgive me the term) more objective.Now you are correct in that two heads are better than one and a thousand heads are better than two, but that is all they are: better, not absolute. Libel? Slander? Lying? Certainly these have moral judgements attached.The harm is not physical but emotional (though I suppose we could quibble this as well).

No. I can be objectively observed to act in a way that implies I am experiencing pain. Furthermore you could objectively observe the physical mechanism that leads to the sensation of pain.However whether or not I am actually experiencing the sensation of pain is purely subjective.How can you possibly tell me what I feel?

If those 12 people subjectively decide that slavery is perfectly morally acceptable does that make slavery objectively morally acceptable?If the majority of people in the world consider rape/slavery/whatever acceptable does that make the thing in question objectively moral?On one hand you insist that morality is absolute and objective. On the other hand you insist that objectivity is nothing more than an appeal to popularity.Can you not see that popular opinion is a cultural phenomenon and that your definition of objective morality as a function of accumulated subjective beliefs at any given time thus equates to morality being a function of culture rather than something which is absolute?

Two moral questions in the news just now.1. Should a fooballer be paid 100,000 per week?2.the American tennis player 'Georgeous Gussie' died yesterday.Her outfit drew considerable attention; reporters covering the event began calling her "Gorgeous Gussie",[5] and photographers fought for positions where they could get low shots of Moran,[5] with the hope of glimpsing the lace.[1] The event scandalized Wimbledon officials,[6] prompting a debate in Parliament.[1] Moran, who was accused of bringing 'vulgarity and sin into tennis' by the committee of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club,[1] later reverted to wearing shorts.[2] Tinling, who had acted as official Wimbledon host for 23 years, was shunned for the 33 years following the incident (he was invited back to Wimbledon in 1982).[7][8][9]Where was the harm in wearing a short skirt? And why don't we care now?