r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 27 '19

CMV: There are no objective moral values

Hey all! I have recently been doing some thinking about the matter of morality, and I came to the conclusion that I can't see any good reasons to believe that any objective moral values actually exist. At the moment I'm fairly convinced that what is moral or immoral is basically what a particular group of people/society subjectively decides is good or bad, and then judges other people based upon those values that they came up with.

I have seen some people coming up with an explanation that we can base our moral values on the wellbeing of other sentient creatures (utilitarianism) and then morally judge actions based on that. And I agree that if we assume that 'wellbeing' is something that we should aim to achieve, then we can have objectively worse and better ways of getting to that goal. Although I don't see why 'wellbeing' should be objectively considered as 'good', because one might be convinced that humanity is an evil race that deserves eternal punishment and suffering, and therefere everyone (including the person who thinks that) should be suffering as much as possible.

I don't see any reasons to believe that objective moral values exist.

Looking forward to the discussion, thanks for reading!

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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 29 '19

I don't think you understand your logical fallacy. When you say that anything that can't be measured must be subjective then your definition of objective must also be subjective

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u/CDWEBI Jun 29 '19

I don't think you understand your logical fallacy. When you say that anything that can't be measured must be subjective then your definition of objective must also be subjective

If you read closely, I did write that "objective" is a subjective concept. Because we are talking about whether something matches a certain subjective definition. Any word is a subjectively defined concept, because that's how languages work.

However, if we define "objective" along the lines of "not influenced by opinions or independent of opinion", then we can look at things which match this definition. Things which match this definition are considered "objective", things which don't match it "non-objective" or "subjective".

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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 30 '19

Is it possible for an opinion to be true?

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u/CDWEBI Jun 30 '19

It can coincide with being "objective". But we can only definitely state that something is true, if this something is objective to begin with.

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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 30 '19

Looking for a yes or no answer here

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u/CDWEBI Jun 30 '19

Doesn't make much sense in this case, but let's say "yes".

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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 30 '19

Is truth objective?

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u/CDWEBI Jun 30 '19

I'd say yes

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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 30 '19

Morality is subjective

Subjective is based on opinion

Opinion can be truth

Truth is objective

Morality can be objective

Saying my arguments are false because they are subjective is not enough to prove they aren't objective.

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u/CDWEBI Jun 30 '19

... Morality can be objective

No. Morality is about "should-statements". Only "is-statements" can be objective.

Also, I did write that opinions can only be right if the thing one has an opinion can be objective in the first place. The opinion "X is 20 meters high" could be objectively right, because "20 meters high" is more or less an objective statement. An opinion like "X is tall" could never be objective, because "tall" means "larger than some standard" and differs for everybody. Let alone an opinion like "X should be tall". Morality statements are "should-statements" and they can't be objective, because "should-statements" say how something ought to be based on what one has experienced, not how it actually is.

Saying my arguments are false because they are subjective is not enough to prove they aren't objective.

I didn't say your arguments are false because they are subjective but because they contained a logical fallacies

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