Objective Moral Judgements can be made in Moral Nihilism

Anyway, let’s continue with the debate. Rejection of Objective Moral Truths By the rejection of objective moral truths, the independency of truth statements to whether or not certain actions are moral or immoral are rejected. For example the Holocaust could not be said to be objectively immoral, and very conceivably there could be a case where the holocaust would actually be a true statement. This is a form of relativism but what I will be forwarding in this debate is actually a form of egoism, which is compatible with moral nihilism as defined. Contrary to popular opinion, the rejection of objective/inherent moral truths in no way entails that statements about morality cannot themselves be objective. Depending on how ‘morality’ is defined then the problems of actions not having any intrinsic value are no more significant than fiat money not having any intrinsic value, or a certain medicine being intrinsically good for health. To expand on the first analogy, a wad of 1,000 dollars intrinsically is worthless, it is literally a wad of paper whether you like it or not. [1] Absent humans and society attached to it, there is virtually nothing that fiat money actually does, or in fact ‘is’. However it is an objective fact that today, under the circumstances of people, society, and social constructs that 1,000 dollars is equal in value to say a high-end laptop purchase. It is also an objective fact that a house is generally worth more money than a laptop, despite the fact that the money itself is intrinsically worthless. It is entirely subjective depending on the circumstances. When applied to morality, certain actions, such as rape, murder, saving someone’s life etc indeed are not inherently moral or immoral, and it is only in light of the circumstances surrounding the murder, and the full context that a moral value can be ‘computed’ for the situation. For example, murdering someone who you know is suffering from a painful, terminal disease is generally going to be better, or even a positive act when compared to murdering somebody spontaneously, for no reason. The context of the circumstances give the truth value to the moral judgement. [2] Moral “Egoism” With morality ungrounded, it follows that humans generally act in a way which advances their own self-interest, i. e. according to egoism. First though I must establish the ‘ought’, which I deem as axiomatic. A. People ought to do what is in their self-interest This is rather easily defended, since if left to their own devices people will always do what they want to do, they will always do what is in their self-interest. Therefore if someone wants to accomplish something within their self-interest, then they ought to act within their self-interest. [3] This is impossible to challenge too, because the negation is self-refuting: A*: People ought not to do what is in their self-interest Here we have a case of people wanting to act how they don’t want to act, it’s a self-contradiction. To contend that “Why would anybody want to adopt this philosophy” the answer is “It is by definition, the philosophy that they want”, since it is directly tied with self-interest. So here we have a system which is decoupled from any intrinsic values, and entirely based on the self-interest of the sentient beings involved. “Myoptic” Egoism vs Alltruism This philosophy does not rule out ‘altruistic behavior’, such as charitable behaviour etc, as these are easily arguable at actions that the individual wants to do, even though perhaps long-term it is not in their own self-interest. A more major consideration is society as a whole. Generally, in order to satisfy self-interest, one generally must also consider the other sentient being’s self-interests too. Adopting a desire that advances one’s own self-interest (myoptic egoism/self-interest) at the heavy expense of another (such as burglary) would result in society accepting this as moral behaviour, and hence that individual would also be subject to being burgled. It would not be a society that individual would want to life in, hence while the instinct to burgle, or kill, or rape someone was myoptically within their self-interests, on a larger scope of interest, it is actually within their self-interest to adhere to generally altruistic behaviour that we are familiar with in today’s society (“englightened” self-interest/egoism). [4] Indeed this is supported by the fact that most/all large societies employ forms of law enforcement/authority which maintains the self-interests of the sentient beings involved. “Application to moral judgements” From what I have provided so far, we now have a device by which objective moral answers can be yielded which is divorced from objective and inherent moral values and standards. What is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are answers yielded from a subjective assessment of the sentient beings involved and beings that perceive said actions. It may be some discomfort that multiple objective judgements arise from different considerations. Two I will consider below: 1. Self-Centred Self-Interest 2. “Communal” Self-Interest I have talked much about #1 so far, where actions that are self-serving, or societal serving but with one’s self in mind is exclusively considered for moral judgements. This yields objective answers, similarly to how there is an objective answer to ‘what is my healthy weight’ or ‘what is my favourite cereal’. The answer is objectively true or false, but it is entirely subjective of who I am, and what my interests are. #2 Is exactly the same as #1, except it considers all members of a society, or of a ‘closed system’. All member’s self-interests are taken into account. Moral judgements made with this consideration would maximize the average overall self-interest each member of the community. This of course means that each member would trade-off their immediate self-interest in order to maximize the fulfilments of self-interest of all members of society, which may or may not lead to greater heights that would otherwise be accomplishable with only #1 considered for each person. Such a system would be suitable for social norms, and especially ‘moral’ actions for society would be those which significantly go against Self-Centred self-interest in favour of “Communal” self-interest (such as jumping on a grenade, for example). [5] Both of these considerations fall back to the axiomatic statements made earlier, and very conceivably yield objectively true/false answers to actions of moral questions, which is what this debate sets out to demonstrate. References 1. . http://www.investopedia.com... 2. . https://philosophy.tamucc.edu... 3. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. . http://jeevands.ipower.com...