Binding ideas of morality
Can the rabbi try to convince me that there are indeed binding ideas of morality? That there is, for example, a binding idea that says murder is bad? In my opinion, morality is subjective, and I don’t know of a convincing argument that morality is objective, so I would be happy if you could expose me to one if you have one.
Can you convince me that the color red is objective? Do you have any evidence that I, or the wall next to you, exist? Do you have evidence that objective evidence is indeed objective?
I hope Rabbi Michi will forgive me for being a layman jumping into my head, but I feel like answering:
P,
Try to think about the following case:
You are a married man, and you have pledged to remain faithful to your wife.
You have a desire to cheat on your wife, she will never know about it, you want to go to a brothel every evening to fulfill your sexual desires.
Do you feel ”I am doing a good deed”, ”I am doing a bad deed”, ”I am doing an unworthy deed”, or do these feelings have no meaning, because everything is subjective.
P wrote:
For some reason I can't respond there, so here.
Rabbi, I don't think the color red itself is objective, I think it exists only in my subjective sense. The objective thing in the story is the photons with the right wavelength to represent something red.
I have evidence that the wall you mentioned exists in the most direct sense, I see it. I see no reason to doubt my own evidence (or the intuition that tells me that my evidence can be trusted). The same goes for the intuition that tells me that the people I'm discussing with usually exist.
I'm not sure I understood what it means "is objective evidence objective?" It's not like asking "is a chick a chick?" It is a chick by definition.
Yeshi, who said subjective feelings have no meaning? In my opinion, all meaning in the world comes from subjective feelings (this is related to the problem of the present-desired). In my subjective opinion, it is bad to cheat on my wife, and therefore I will not cheat on her.
Sure, but what is the evidence that photons exist?
Why believe the intuition that your eyes show you the truth and not believe the intuition that your moral perception tells you the truth?
I meant to ask: When you think that some evidence is objective, who said you were right? Skepticism knows no bounds.
Because I don't believe there is a "truth" that moral intuition can "show" me. It only tells me how I feel about things, not what really exists. It's not like seeing. As for seeing, I can understand that there are objects external to me. That fits with my intuitions. As for morality, I can't imagine how an idea of value can exist. I can't understand how such a thing comes into being and in what sense it is binding. If my subjective moral perception doesn't fit with objective morality, am I still bound by it? It just seems impossible to me.
Scepticism has no limit unless we set it, and inspired by you, I set it in intuitions. As I said intuitively, I can't see how the existence of a value idea is possible.
I believe the first intuition and not the second because I have other, stronger intuitions about the second that contradict it. Intuitively, I can't imagine how an idea of objective value exists. I can't imagine how such a thing could come about. I can't imagine in what sense it is binding. If my subjective opinion about morality is different from objective morality, am I still bound by it? That seems simply impossible to me, something that can't be imagined. It's not like believing that the Wall of Lady exists.
It's an individual matter. If you don't believe then no. I didn't understand what the question was. It's intuitively clear to me that there are binding moral rules.
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