Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_10df9ua in philosophy
SvetlanaButosky t1_j4mf30d wrote
If morality is subjective, that means world ending philosophy like Antinatalism, Pro mortalism and Benevolent world exploder argument are all valid and it wouldnt be "wrong" for people to pursue the end of all life on earth or beyond.
The only difference between them and other people is the amount of subscribers? lol
So if one day in the future, a small group of them are determined enough to fund and develop a technological doomsday device to sterilize or blow up earth into pieces, they would not be morally "wrong", right?
DragonflyUno t1_j4rizld wrote
If morality is subjective then any example you give would not be morally wrong, so correct?
Symsav t1_j4rynh7 wrote
This is not how subjectivity works. You’re equating subjectivity to non-existence. Right and wrong can and in almost all cases do still exist to the moral subjectivist, they just don’t refer to an objective principle of reality. Subjective morals are derived from the subject’s interpretation of morality, any of these world ending philosophies would be considered wrong by the vast majority of people and so would be intersubjectively wrong.
SvetlanaButosky t1_j4s5f7w wrote
Its not objectively wrong, its only subjectively wrong due to moral consensus of the day.
Just like when people used to own slaves, have human ritual sacrifice, burn witches, not letting women vote, etc.
Just like when atheism is considered wrong by the majority a few hundred years ago.
Just like when Galileo were imprisoned for his teaching about the solar system.
A lot of terrible things used to be subjectively right due to consensus, a lot of good things used to be subjectively wrong due to consensus as well, they gradually change over time.
Thus blowing up earth as a philosophy is only wrong due to subjective consensus, it could become right one day to many people, depends on the amount of suffering that will either increase or decrease in the future.
Symsav t1_j4sdqwv wrote
Yes. In the same way that the eradication of poverty and inequity could be considered right. These issues are not a result of subjectivism but the social and political environment in which these situations arose. Similar to the problems with the value judgements you mentioned is the way in which these views at the time were seen to be grounded in objectivity - the belief in the existence of objective morality can be just as, if not more, destructive when compared with subjective morality.
Whence are the objective standards of morality you are referring to? There is no objective principle of morality, to improvise one for the sake of objective morality would create many more problems than any subjective valuation.
Perrr333 t1_j4s7l2e wrote
All non-objective ethics positions have these sorts of problems. Typically relativism (theories where ethics is in some sense relative to a "group" of people) is favoured over outright individual subjectivism, but it's still fundamentally flawed. With all of these sorts of views it's hard to eliminate a "Hitler was right" type of statement. Jumps and backflips are performed, but I have never found any convincing. I will never be willing to concede any "Hitler was right" type of statement, so for me an acceptable ethical theory must satisfy some form of objectivity.
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