re after years can we say that christian morality is in article apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes reply to frank d s uucp frank o dwyer the problem for the objectivist is to determine the status of moral truths and the method by which they can be established if we accept that such judgements are not reports of what is but only relate to what ought to be see naturalistic fallacy then they cannot be proved by any facts about the nature of the world this can be avoided in at least two ways by leaving the good undefined since anyone who claims that they do not know what it is is either lying or so out of touch with humanity as to be undeserving of a reply if the good is undefined undefinable but you require of everyone that they know innately what is right you are back to subjectivism no and begging the question see below by defining the good solely in terms of evaluative terms ditto here an evaluative statement implies a value judgement on the part of the person making it again incorrect and question begging see below at this point the objectivist may talk of self evident truths pretty perceptive that prof flew but can he deny the subjectivist s claim that self evidence is in the mind of the beholder of course by denying that subject object is true dichotomy please explain how this helps i don t see your argument i don t see yours it seems to rest on the assertion that everything is either a subject or an object there s nothing compelling about that dichotomy i might just as well divide the world into subject object event it even seems more sensible causation for example is an event not a subject or an object furthermore if subject object were true dichotomy i e everything is either a subject or an object then is that statement a self evident truth or not if so then it s all in the mind of the beholder according to the relativist and hardly compelling add to that the fact that the world can quickly be shoved in its entirety into the subjective category by an idealist or solipsist argument and that we have this perfectly good alternate set of categories subject object event which can be reduced to subject object quality without any logical difficulty and why yes i guess i am denying that self evident truths are all in the mind of the beholder if not what is left of the claim that some moral judgements are true all of it if nothing then no moral judgements are true this is a thing that is commonly referred to as nihilism it entails that science is of no value irrepective of the fact that some people find it useful how anyone arrives at relativism subjectivism from this argument beats me this makes no sense either flew is arguing that this is where the objectivist winds up not the subjectivist furthermore the nihilists believed in nothing except science materialism revolution and the people i m referring to ethical nihilism the subjectivist may well feel that all that remains is that there are some moral judgements with which he would wish to associate himself to hold a moral opinion is he suggests not to know something to be true but to have preferences regarding human activity and if those preferences should include terrorism that moral opinion is not true likewise if the preferences should include noterrorism that moral opinion is not true why should one choose a set of preferences which include terrorisim over one which includes noterrorism oh no reason this is patently absurd and also not the position of the subjectivist as has been pointed out to you already by others ditch the strawman already and see my reply to mike cobb s root message in the thread societal basis for morality i ve responded over there btw i don t intend this as a strawman but as something logically entailed by relativism really any ethical system where values are assumed to be unreal it s different to say relativists say than relativism implies frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
