this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Is it actually? As far as I'm aware, it doesn't really make any statements that anything is moral or immoral, nor is it a framework that could be used to determine such things by itself, more so a statement on the validity of such things. Or in other word, is it really a moral thesis, or is it a thesis about moral thesis?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Yeah I don't understand the point the meme is trying to make

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

You're on the right track here. It's a metaethical claim, not a moral one.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

You could argue that moral relativism is a metaethical thesis and so is not straight away self-defeating. Even so, moral relativists often go on to claim that we shouldn't judge the moral acts of other cultures based on what we take to be universal moral standards. Because, get this, it would be wrong to do so.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not smart enough to understand anything in this conversation, but "Metaethical" seems like it would be a good metal band name

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Followed by Postmetaethical when they lose a member

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This sounds like Goedels theorem. How could a philosophy be consistent and have an opinion about every moral topic?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure morality would have the same problems with recursion that math has.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure it's the SAME but if there were a system of created ethics that were able to speak to everything and do so consistently.... Wouldn't we know?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Why would we? Ethics can be just as opaque as any other subject. It took us thousands of years to get economics, psychology, etc. to where they are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yooo. You are onto something here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Is it that it's wrong or simply that it lacks proper context? Like if you're going to judge a culture you should learn the culture that seems obvious even without the arguments about morality

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (3 children)

This just in: Literally everything in life is made up as we go along.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Except table manners. Those are dictated by the Universe itself!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)
  1. All tables must be proper and well-behaved.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What do you do with rude tables?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Use them as firewood

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Read somewhere that the elbows thing comes from the days where tables were just planks of wood sitting on something. Your elbows would tip the board over so it was a dick move to knock everyone's food over. Anyway idk if it's true but it's a neat idea

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die.

Come watch TV?

[–] CookieJarObserver 1 points 11 months ago

Wrong, Cookies in Jars are real. They are the only real thing in this universe.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

ITT: bad philosophical arguments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Welcome to every discussion on every digital medium that's ever existed?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Think you mean Welcome to Earth

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

What's important is you all remember I Am Right And You Are Wrong

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I'm pretty sure "moral relativism" is in the realm of metaethics and not ethics. There's a distinction between making a claim about morality and making a claim about how moral claims are made.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well, this one seems to be going over better than your last philosophy meme.

I appreciated both of them, by the way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment. I'm still going to take a pause on the philosophy memes as I literally can't stop myself from arguing in the comments and I should be working lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That same One Weird Trick has been used to academically shoot down logical positivism as well.

The idea that only matter exists and that only things that can be measured in a laboratory environment exist in a meaningful way (concepts don't real) is itself an idea that can not be measured in a laboratory environment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

At least the logical positivists where philosophically rigorous enough to drop the view when they realized it's untenable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Academically, yes. Logical positivism persisted and had an unofficial resurgence among the "academia is bunk" junk/pop science crowd. I saw it pop up, by name, more than a few times on reddit-logo in years past.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

My main takeaway from philosophy is that I hate philosophy and mostly just want to wing it. So much hair splitting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

According to Morality and Ethics 101, a universal moral truth is an ethic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (7 children)

I've never heard a rational defense of moral relativism that made any sense. If there are no moral truths, then serial killers have done nothing wrong for example. If a moral relativist admits that there are some moral truths, then moral relativism is completely indefensible. At that point, you're just arguing over what is and what is not a moral truth.

[–] Tb0n3 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

How about the fact that all morals are made up and therefore obviously relative to those who made them up? There may be instinctual preference on many, but that doesn't make it a universal rule.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The fact the morality was invented makes it synthetic but not necessarily relative. Numbers are also "made up".

Its possible that moral truths are objective but our interpretation of these objective truths is imperfect and therefore seems relative.

To use another commenters example, the fact that killing is not morally blameworthy in some cases doesn't mean that an absolute moral truth doesn't exist but just that our concept of killing is just too broad to express it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

the fact that all morals are made up

You’re starting from the basic axiom of moral relativism. A moral absolutist would disagree with this axiom.

[–] Tb0n3 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And all I would have to do would be reference the multitudes of cultures across the earth and through time that have vastly differing morals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A moral absolutist would argue that most, or even all, are wrong in one way or another. One can be a moral absolutist without claiming to be able to evaluate the morality of any particular scenario.

To provide an analogous example, there is a two-player game called Hex for which it has been proven that there exists a dominant strategy for the first player, but a generalized winning strategy is unsolved. One can soundly assert that such a strategy exists without knowing what it is. Likewise, its not fundamentally invalid to assert that there exist absolute moral truths without knowing what they are.

[–] Tb0n3 0 points 11 months ago

Most people would go with murder but then again there's honor killings.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Universal moral truths. Like absolutes. We can say killing is bad, but many would say killing a mass murderer currently on a murder spree would be more moral than letting them kill a bunch of people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding here that seems suspiciously like a bad faith argument.

[–] ryathal 5 points 11 months ago

Just because there aren't moral truths doesn't mean a serial killer did nothing wrong. You seem to be stuck on finding a single contradiction and using that to dismiss everything else related as irrelevant. That's not actually how the world works.

Similarly in physics, the existence of non-newtonian fluids, doesn't invalidate Newton's work in fluid dynamics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Sure, and how does your understanding contend with the concept of a serial killer of Nazis? Or a capitalist?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If there are no moral truths, then serial killers have done nothing wrong for example

This does not follow from moral relativism. Moral relativism simply states the morality of serial killers is determined by people rather than an absolute truth.

For example, if you add the detail of “serial killer of humans”, most societies would deem that morally wrong. In contrast, “serial killer of wasps” would be considered perfectly fine by many. A moral relativist would say the difference between these two is determined by society.

You can, of course, claim that murdering humans is not morally wrong. A moral absolutist might say “you’re wrong because X”, while a moral relativist might say “I don’t agree because X”.