this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (7 children)

The misunderstanding I see here is in the definition of “subjective”.

Subjective is often used interchangeably with opinion. And people can certainly have different opinions.

But the subjective that is meant is that morals don’t exist without a subject, aka a mind to comprehend them.

A rock exists whether or not a mind perceives the rock. The rock is objective. It is a physical object.

The idea that it is wrong to harm someone for being different is subjective. It is an idea. A thought. The thought does not exist without a mind.

So yes. Morals are all subjective. Morals do not exist in the physical world. Morals are not objects, they do not objectively exist. They exist within a subject. Morals subjectively exist.

That does not mean that any set of morals is okay because it’s just an opinion, bro. Because it’s not just an opinion. Those subjective values effect objective reality.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think this is a bit too simple. Suppose I say that moral badness, the property, is any action that causes people pain, in the same way the property of redness is the quality of surfaces that makes people experience the sensation of redness. If this were the case, morality (or at least moral badness) would absolutely not be a subjective property.

Whether morality is objective or subjective depends on what you think morality is about. If it's about things that would exist even if we didn't judge them to be the way they are, it's objective. If it's about things that wouldn't exist unless we judge them to be the way they are, it's subjective.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is basically how teaching secular ethics always is, though. Doesn't seem special about 2025. People will always be overconfident in their beliefs, but it's not necessarily a coincidence or even hypocrisy that they can hold both views at the same time.

You can believe that morality is a social construct while simultaneously advocating for society to construct better morals. Morality can be relative and opposing views on morality can still be perceived as monstrous relative to the audience's morality.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I don't know, I might intellectually understand that morals are relative to a culture and that even our concept of universal human rights is an heritage of our colonial past and, on some level, trying to push our own values as the only morality that can exist. On a gut level though, I am entirely unable to consider that LGBT rights, gender equality or non-discrimination aren't inherently moral.

I don't think holding these two beliefs is weird, it's a natural contradiction worth debating and that's what I would expect from an ethics teacher

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's because there are 2 general schools of thought in ethics - relativism and absolutism. Relativism (the idea that morality is intrinsic to the person's experience and understanding) is the one that seems to be the most talked about in general society. I believe in absolutism, the idea that there is a set of guidelines for moral behavior regardless of your experiences or past.

Your example (more formally known as the paradox of tolerance) is what convinces me that absolutism is the better school of thought

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