If morality is subjective, then there is no such thing as an objectively good person. Whether a person is good or not in a moral sense is just a matter of opinion.
Same would go for a society--becoming a truly "more ethical" or "more just" society would be impossible because it would just be about opinions, not reality.
I've met a lot of moral relativists but they don't want to accept these corollaries.
>>29820783
Unless you define ethics in terms of practical reason in which case ethics becomes a process to achieve a particular end.
>>29820814
I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this. Please elaborate.
I agree with that position. By the same logic, a society can't progress to an absolute idea of perfection. It only progresses towards an objective perfection
Another way to understand this is that society progress left to right in a linear fashion (bad to good).
The way I see it, its more like a circle where a dot in the centre is being dragged to the edges, where each point on the edge is one of those objective perfections I mentioned.
What do you think OP?
>>29820965
>By the same logic, a society can't progress to an absolute idea of perfection. It only progresses towards an objective perfection
If morality is entirely subjective though, then society can only progress towards "subjective" pefection. But as "subjective perfection" is subjective, society can never REALLY improve. It can "improve" in the opinion of some people and all the while it would be worsening in the opinions (real or potential) of others. It's never actually going anywhere.
>What do you think OP?
I'm a negative utilitarian. I say the best definition of "evil" is the presence of suffering (or effectively, evil = suffering) and goodness is the alleviation or prevention of that suffering.
Ultimately my position rests on either the axiom that evil = suffering, or the circular argument that conceiving of evil as being equal to suffering is the conception that would do the most, were it widely adopted, to prevent the most suffering, therefore that is the best conception of evil.
For better or worse, everything ultimately reduces to axioms, circular arguments, or infinite regresses. It can get a little annoying.
But in short, I think good and evil are as sweetness or bitterness, or fear or anger. They are real properties of the universe that are part of the causal chain and laws of physics.
>>29820847
I'm abstracting from Kant a little bit who talks about imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is what you must do to achieve a particular end, for example if you want to be good at music you lust practice. He talks about morality in terms of it being a universal imperative, something you must as a result of your rationality. If you want to be rational you must be moral. Morality does not exist as an abstract, human independent, objective thing but it exists as a practical solution. A lazy summary but that's the idea I'm trying to get at.
>>29821164
Really interesting perspective.
I suppose I still think morality exists (or potentially exists) independent of humans though. All that is required for there to be evil is the potential of suffering of any kind (even animal suffering).
I fundamentally disagree with Kant on metaphysical libertarianism (I'm a hard incompatibilist), but I like his idea that others must be treated as ends in themselves, but my reasoning for why that's a good thing is different than his (I think following that principle would lead to a reduction in suffering, and THAT is the reason why it's good--not exactly because treating others as ends in themselves aligns with categorical imperative).
>>29820783
I consider myself a moral relativist, and yes this is exactly what that means. Might determines what's "right" - the mass opinion is a tyranny.
>>29820783
objectively good person could relate to an objectively good state or "just" state which would enable the people to be claimed as just and good. A subjectively good person would apply to a sociological viewpoint, for an example look at neo feminist culture, this wouldn't give the entitlement to a person to being good depending on what sense you are looking at. So yes morality can be a sense of opinion but it could also be conditioning to laws in a perfect state given enough time and resources to produce such, which would then become good and just. However this sort of crap will never happen because, well just look at the state of the god damn world.
>>29821478
pardon my god awful english
>>29821365
What do you mean by tyranny?
>>29821164
>If you want to be rational you must be moral
Surely this would only be considered as being rational from other people's perspective and this would imply that a few hundred years ago when we would chop off people's hands for thievery, which was rational for prevention of crime, this was also moral?
>>29821654
If you could actually prove that cutting off hands really is the best method of crime prevention there might be some case. However while such a method may be rational in the pursuit of crime prevention, it isn't isolated to that and the effects doing such a thing has on society at large and towards individuals may prove it irrational behaviour.
