What is your general view on morality

Ovid said:

Denying moral objectivity is an exercise in futility. It's not really up for debate, just a logical fact.

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I don't see you actually supporting that there is objective morality. To do so, you have to show that morality exists no matter what people think about it. It seems that declaration is an axiom for you, and that you 'not really up for debate' shows you can not demonstrate that it is true.

Ovid said:

Incorrect.

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You better clarify that. Your reference to Einstein' relativity and the speed of a train is not clear. How are the measurements taken, and relative to what?

Ovid said:

Denying moral objectivity is an exercise in futility. It's not really up for debate, just a logical fact.

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The failure of every single person in history to prove that they are objective doesn't bode well for your statement

Morality to me is simply treating people how you want to be treated and not treating people how you know they would not want to be treated. That is very relative.

While there's a lot of fuzziness to morality, I think we can generally define it as empathy and those actions which extend from an attitude of empathy. Consider the agreeability of the Golden Rule, for example, or the fact that science has now revealed that even the youngest of children respond negatively to images of other children being harmed even when it benefits them.

Of course, it's hard to gauge empathy and those actions which correspond to it in a purely objective manner, which is why we all have different ideas about precisely what constitutes morality in the practical. But still, the general principle of empathy remains, so it's not totally subjective.

I believe that people should not lie, cheat, or steal. If you look at any sin, you can see that it will cause one or more of those three things to happen.

William Rea said:

I can believe that there is no objective morality while at the same time believing that there are situations where I can make an objectively moral decision based upon the data that I have. Morality is not about slavishly adhering to a code it is about making the best decision that you can based upon the best information you can obtain. This is why it is immoral to be ignorant of what is actually happening and falling back on simplistic models based upon what you think should happen.

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Pretty good answer. Example : It is immoral to kill another person, but not if that is the only way to stop that person from killing you.

What would you call that, situational morality?

Ovid said:

Morality is objective and universal like mathematics.

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The paradigm of mathematics as the ultimate guide to objectivity was established by the ancient Greeks, perhaps starting with the cult of Pythagoras, who thought the ultimate nature of the universe was mathematical, and continuing with Plato (who, on top of his Academy, had a big sign that said "let none ignorant of mathematics enter here" (Plato, in fact, may have been a member of Pythagoras' cult as a youth for a little time). It seems Plato thought that the answers to things like "What is justice?" or "what is good?" could ultimately be answered as objectively as 1+1=2.

That paradigm held pretty much until the late 19th/early 20th centuries. But with the development of things like non-Euclidean geometry and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, it has been shown that mathematics is just a useful tool we can apply to the situation at hand, not any kind of insight into ultimate reality.

Masterhawk said:

Choice B is not the same as choice C. B means that very few things can be defined as always right or wrong while C means that there is no right or wrong.

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Nature is amoral, and so are we. What we call morality are just social rules we imagined for ourselves to make a functional community.

victus qui se victus