Originally Posted by
Chriscase
The central argument moral absolutists make is that:
1) Without the existence of an absolute, objective morality, we have no choice but to accept a completely individual, arbitrary, or idiosyncratic one. This is a false dichotomy, because there are other choices.
2) Because of (1), the consequences for society of not believing in an absolute, objective morality are deleterious, so we should believe in it. This is an argument from consequences. Objective things exist regardless of the consequences.
When you make argument (2), you betray your own knowledge that morality is inherently subjective. It may or may not benefit us to entertain absolute morality as an idea, but the argument from consequences does not apply to and cannot effect the existence of objective entities. On some level, you know that morality is subjective, which is why the argument from consequences seems persuasive to you.
As a standalone logical proposition, absolute morality is indefensible, for a number of reasons.
In the first place, a map of all possible human actions into a moral grid (good,evil, indifferent,..?) cannot exist unless we have a handle on the collection of all possible human actions. Given the nature of temporal reality, we cannot show the existence of such a collection at any point in time.
In the second place, even if such a map were to exist, proof that it is the correct map would necessitate a meta-map capable of the evaluation of a given absolute morality. This leads either to the unqualified acceptance of a given moral map, or infinite regress, as the meta-map itself must be evaluated.
So the short version is that, in purely logical terms, absolute morality is a non-starter. You have to prop it up with some sort of trump card that will make the logical difficulties go away (or at least one that is so much more riddled with logical problems that the problems associated with absolute morality become perceptively insignificant).
Let me give an analogy. Suppose my friends and I are hamburger fans. Every weekend we get together to create the absolutely perfect hamburger. Each of us is responsible for buying an ingredient - one of us gets the meat, another the buns, another chops onions, etc. We have protracted discussions regarding what makes the perfect hamburger, because we all have to agree about what to get. Now there are some material elements involved, for example, the quality of the meat. How much fat should it have? How fresh should it be? Grass-fed or corn-finished? Lots or material things influence the final product. It's even possible that someone, somewhere in the world prefers almost-rotten meat, but we'll consider ourselves lucky not to have someone like that in our group.
We have to wonder how each of us arrived at our individual vision of the Perfect Hamburger. Did the image of a Perfect Hamburger magically appear in our minds at infancy? OR before? No. We arrive at an abstraction like the Perfect Hamburger through repeated experience. We have known many hamburgers in our time, some were better than others, some even surprised us with innovations that may or may not have been adopted into our internal image of the Perfect Hamburger.
All of these elements are influenced by our physical circumstances - the ingredients that are available to us, our unique dietary needs, etc. It may seem as though there are deep commonalities among all the Perfect Hamburger images my friends and I maintain, and indeed there should be, because many of the physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors that have had a part in the creation of this image for each of us are common to our group. Yet there will still be variations, because each of us is also different.
Now someone comes along and maintains that there is one - and only one - Perfect Hamburger, everywhere and for all time. As proof he claims that, if this weren't the case, hamburgers would be absolutely arbitrary. We all might as well be eating turd sandwiches. This is obviously not a persuasive argument in this context. Nor is the same argument persuasive as applied to absolute morality.
We arrive at moral judgments in much the same way we arrive at other abstract generalizations. It's a complex interaction between individuals ultimately driving toward a common consensus. No God or other absolute idea is required.