Thoughts on Relative Truth and Subjetive Morality (morals, tradition, evolution)

[Jeremiah61]

One cause of misery and vice is always present with us in the greed and pride of men, but at certain periods in history this is greatly increased by the temporary prevalence of some false philosophy. Correct thinking will not make good men bad ones; but a purely theoretical error may remove ordinary checks to evil and deprive good intentions of their natural support. An error of this sort is abroad at present. I am referring to relativism, sometimes called subjectivism or pluralism.
After studying his enviroment man has begun to study himself. Up to that point, he had assumed his own reason and through it seen all other things. Now, his own reason has become the object of his reason: it is as if we took out our own eyes to look at them. Thus studied, his own reason appears to him as the epiphenomenon which accompanies chemical or electrical events in the cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process. His own logic, hitherto the king whom events in all possible worlds must obey, becomes merely subjective. There is no reason for supposing that it yields truth.
As long as this dethronement refers only to the theoretical reason, it cannot be wholehearted. The scientist has to assume the validity of his own logic even in order to prove that it is merely subjective, and therefore he can only flirt with subjectivism. It is true that this flirtation sometimes goes pretty far. There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results. This is, no doubth, a bad symptom. But, in the main, subjectivism is such an uncomfortable yokefellow for research that the danger, in this quarter, is continually counteracted.
But when we turn to practical reason the ruinous effects are found operating in full force. By practical reason I mean our judgement of good and evil. If you are surprised that I inculde this under the heading reason at all, let me remind you that your surprise is itself one result of the subjectivism/relativism which I am discussing. Until modern times no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgements of value were rational judgements or that what they discovered was objective. It was taken for granted that in temptation passion was opposed, not to some sentiment, but to reason. Thus Plato thought, thus Aristotle, thus Hooker, Bulter and Doctor Johnson. The modern view is different. It does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another. To say that a thing is good is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have.
But if this is so, then we might have been conditioned to feel otherwise. 'Perhaps,' thinks the reformer or the educational expert,' it would be better if we were. Let us improve our morality.' Out of this apparently innocent idea comes the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its 'ideology' as men choose clothes. Everyone is indignant when he hears of Hitler defining justice as that which is to the interset of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will to whatever is "true for _____." Unless there is someobjective standard of good, over-arching Nazis, Fundamentalists, Anti-Semitists, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Nazis, even the people who spread homophobia, are as competent to create their ideology as we create ours. If 'good' and 'better' are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each person, the of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, as a ruler is independent from a plank. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age to those of another; progress and decadence would alike be meaningless words.

Source

[angellous_evangellous]

This is "Poison of Subjectivism - from Christian Reflections by C.S. Lewis"

[doppelgänger]

Ironically, this notion that one possesses knowledge of the non-subjective truth is exactly what makes "Nazis, Fundamentalists, and Anti-Semites" possible.

Moral relativism is not a recognition that the objective truth is malleable. It is the recognition that the perception of the objective truth is endlessly malleable. The leadership that drives Nazis, Fundamentalists and other such groups that bother Lewis depend on people not understanding that their perception of objective truth and actual, objective truth are not the same thing, so that they are less aware that their objective reality is being manipulated by symbols and language.

[PureX]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Ironically, this notion that one possesses knowledge of the non-subjective truth is exactly what makes "Nazis, Fundamentalists, and Anti-Semites" possible.

Moral relativism is not a recognition that the objective truth is malleable. It is the recognition that the perception of the objective truth is endlessly malleable. The leadership that drives Nazis, Fundamentalists and other such groups that bother Lewis depend on people not understanding that their perception of objective truth and actual, objective truth are not the same thing, so that they are less aware that their objective reality is being manipulated by symbols and language.

doppelganger,

This is an excellent observation.

[Anti-World]

Amusing. Well. We know from psychology that the mind is manipulated by those around us and events in our lives. Therefore, all morality and theories are "subjective" not necessarily to an individual but certainly to a society. I have a faint grasp of subjective and objective so forgive me if I use the terms incorrectly. What I mean to say is all of our morals and ideas are shaped by our culture without culture we see that people get depressed, emotionless, ignorant, or a variety of other mental and or personality disorders. (This is argued by Schizoids but I'm pretty confident Schizoids don't complete lack the human necessities for learning about who they are by those around them.)

So, all morals are tools by those who know how to use them and willing to accept that there is no one that will stop them from changing them except society. Break away from society and one can break away from morality but we tend to lose much more. Morality is a lie. It always has been. It's been put in place to ensure that those with power are protected. We live in a world where the vaste majority of poor suffer to keep the wealthy happy. (Even, or perhaps especially, in capitalism where we say that no one should have equal income because some people are better than others due to education, ambition, etc.) So we can see that even in polotics and government we are shaped by culture.

How can the world not be subjective? All we have is our minds. In the end we are only a series of thought processes. I like to beleive that we're more than that but...

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by Anti-World

How can the world not be subjective? All we have is our minds. In the end we are only a series of thought processes. I like to beleive that we're more than that but...

Simply put, it's all we have; but if we accept that there is more than us in the world --that there are things to have --then we accept that there is objective reality.

[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Ironically, this notion that one possesses knowledge of the non-subjective truth is exactly what makes "Nazis, Fundamentalists, and Anti-Semites" possible.

Moral relativism is not a recognition that the objective truth is malleable. It is the recognition that the perception of the objective truth is endlessly malleable. The leadership that drives Nazis, Fundamentalists and other such groups that bother Lewis depend on people not understanding that their perception of objective truth and actual, objective truth are not the same thing, so that they are less aware that their objective reality is being manipulated by symbols and language.

Good point and I agree to a large extent. I would go one step further to claim that an "objective truth" that the human mind can comprehend is all there is to objective truth that the human mind can comprehend. This is a circular statement but so is any notion of objective truth held subjectively.

Objective truth must be shared truth in order to have any coherence. Privately held notions of objective truth are incoherent without expression. Unless an expression of objective truth is understood (thereby accepted) by another it remains incoherent and without grounding in language.

Objective truth grounded in whiring atoms is another matter. Without it being grounded in language we cannot know it directly either (at least in normal consciousness).

Oz
Oz

[Ozzie]

IMO objective truth is "endlessly malleable" in terms of which individuals may inhabit a region of objective truth defined by a linguistic space, at a given time. There is no room for the subjective because truth is shared.

Oz

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Ozzie

IMO objective truth is "endlessly malleable" in terms of which individuals may inhabit a region of objective truth defined by a linguistic space, at a given time. There is no room for the subjective because truth is shared.

Oz

Well put.