Morality is Objectively and Analytically the Same regardless of Culture and Era.

First I will state my argument, then I will respond to my opponent's arguments. Self-evident truths People make moral evaluations about phenomena all the time, usually based upon justification by appealing to a more basic moral evaluation. For example, one may say 'The death penalty is morally wrong' and they will justify it by appealing to the more basic moral evaluation of 'Killing is morally wrong'. If asked to justify that killing is morally wrong, they will have to appeal to a more basic moral evaluation and so on. However, this cannot go back to infinity; there must be a single moral evaluation that is intrinsic; it requires no justification. We may not know exactly what this is, but logic proves that there must be one. If this fundamental morality is intrinsic in its moral worth, it cannot be contingent on cultural or individual definitions. Thus morality is not subjective. Disproving Subjectivism My next argument takes the form: P1: Morality can either be subjective or objective P2: Morality cannot be subjective C: Morality is objective. Premise 1 is fairly axiomatic, if you do dispute it then I challenge you to find a concept that is neither objective or subjective. Premise 2 is the most notorious form of contention. I assert that morality cannot be subjective because all attempts to ascribe subjectivity to morality lead to absurdities, and thus morality cannot be subjective. Let me explain my reasoning: If morality is to be subjective, one of the two statements must be made: "X is good = I personally want X" (subjectivism) or "X is good = X is approved of by society" (relativism) The first statement (subjectivism) cannot be correct, because it would mean that the 'whatever I personally want is necessarily good'. This is false for two reasons. First, it means that one can never act immorally so long as they do what they want. Secondly, it leads to absurdities. For example, it would be a good act for me to torture and rape children if I so much as wanted to do so. The reason many people believe in subjectivism is that most people intuitively want to do good, but correlation does not imply causation. Note that I am not saying that what people want is not good, I am saying that what people want is not necessarily good. The second statement (relativism) also cannot be correct, because it would mean that 'whatever is socially approved is necessarily good'. Like subjectivism, this is false for two reasons. First, it means that it is impossible to disagree with your society. Advocates of intrinsic, objective goods such as Nelson Mandela would have been morally wrong to stand up against apartheid, because apartheid was socially approved. Secondly, it also leads to absurdities. As another example, violent anti-semitism in Nazi Germany would be a good thing because it was socially approved (1), if we accept relativism. It is an inadequate perception of morality that it could be determined by a group of like-minded individuals, no matter how evil, coming together to form a society. Therefore morality cannot be defined as what is socially approved, despite the fact that they generally happen to agree on most things. As both relativism and subjectivism; the two principle variants of the subjective morality world-view, have been shown to be inadequate in the above text, morality is not subjective. Thus my second premise is verified. With my two premises verified, the conclusion can be analytically reached that morality is objective. Responses to Con's arguments Con starts off by making the assumption that "If Morality were Objective, it would have to come from a source other then ourselves". This is not necessarily true. His premise is that objective concepts require a source of their objectivity, yet this is false. For example, science and logic are objective concepts, yet we do not see a need for a source for them. To summarise, objective concepts can exist without a source, so objective morality does not require a source and so can exist irrespective of a higher power. "Of equal issue with this is that we actually tend to change our own moral code over time." This is not to say that morality is subjective, on the contrary; when people change their moral codes they speak of their past beliefs as being 'incorrect' which implies an objective morality. If morality was subjective then people would refer to their previous moral attitudes as correct at the time. For example, reformed racists speak of their previous racist attitudes as incorrect, instead of accepting that their views were right at the time simply by virtue of personal belief. Furthermore, people change their scientific theories over time; yet it is absurd to conclude that science is subjective. In short, our attitudes towards changing morality heavily imply that morality is objective. My opponent's argument takes on the general form: P1: What was acceptable in the past is different to what is acceptable now P2: We would be unjustified to claim that our exact present view of what is acceptable is correct C: Morality is subjective However, this begs the question. The argument aims to prove that morality is subjective, but such a view entails that morality is defined as what is considered acceptable. However, this conclusion is assumed in premise 1 because this premise assumes that morality = what is considered acceptable. In other words, my opponent has used the assumption that morality is equivalent to what is acceptable to argue that morality is subjective; a conclusion that is used to prove the aforementioned assumption. It is a circular argument. As a side point, the second premise plays upon a misconception in my argument. When I argue that morality is objective I am not saying that our present view of morality is objectively correct. Objective morality does exist, but our current society has not discovered it in its entirety, and nor would I say that society ever will. However this does not change whether morality is objective or not. (1) http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...