/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Moral nihilism is where it's and anyone who said otherwise dun goofed.

>>871
Basically. There is no way to arrive at universal moral rules without committing fallacies or outright lying to ourselves.

Nietzsche's idea that ethics was just a lie to avoid admitting that the state of the social world is centered on power and those who have it has some truth to it. You can turn power into an "ethical" value, however, like Marx did. For Marx the good of man was the actualization of his powers, i.e. maximizing the real possibility for all human capacities (something similar to Aristotle's human flourishing).

Out of classical philosophy, Aristotle did the best. Spinoza was the best of the intermediate modernists. Hegel, imo, was the best of the end modernists since he introduced historical society and contingency into ethics. After Hegel, to be an ethicist is to basically be ignorant of the history of ethics and its failure.

>>876
>to be an ethicist is to basically be ignorant of the history of ethics and its failure.
I don't think this is the case with fictionalists and those who think of ethics in terms of formalized compassion, social cohesion and game theory. For instance I don't have any trouble accepting Benatar's antinatalism through his asymmetry principle even though it's as "unfounded" as any other sort of factual or normative claim (Münchhausen trilemma). Lots of moral nihilists/anti-realists/non-cognitivists still write about practical ethics.

>>876

OP asked about moral objectivity, not whether moral rules are universal.

It seems trivial to me. If you can acknowledge that there is any moral rule, then the rule is objectively so, and if its objective then its objective everywhere all of the time (therefore universal).

This isnt even inconsistent with Nietzsche. 'Geneology of Morals' is an account of morality, not a denial of morality.

>>879
Objectivity as I understand it refers to the moral rule existing in itself. There are no moral rules that exist in themselves, all of them exist through humans and the contingent world. Social ethics are not objective, they merely are abstract rules of the general social will; the mass enforces itself on the individual.

>>882

I dont know what the means 'to exist in itself'. What does it mean for a rule 'to exist'?

I also dont get your point about humans. Whats it mean to exist 'through humans'? It makes it sound like, it cant be some anthropologic consequence, and nothing in philosophy should be contingent on such things. Our understanding of arithmetic today is certainly the consequence of human history. Our practice of counting and calculation no doubt is a human thing. And I could still consider mathematic propositions objective (or 'rule').

>>883
To exist in itself, to be objective, is to exist independent of us. Maybe you're postmodern, but this kind of language is usual in analytic and continental thought.

>>885

Im pretty well read in analytic philosophy, and I consider it weird and unusual.

It would be one thing to say that something like goodness exists, or that things that are good exist. Those are objects, and they exist because we can say true things about them, but a rule to exist? That just sounds weird. Its like saying the sentence 'Washington DC is the capital of the US' exists. Its true, and the objects in the sentence exist, but the sentence itself existing? I mean, the physical symbols forming the sentence exist, but that cant be what you consider important. (Analogously I would say the numbers 2 and 4 exist, but not '2 + 2 = 4')

I think rather than 'the rule exists in itself' we should say something like 'the moral proposition is true, and necessarily so'. In which case, I do think there are true moral propositions, that are necessarily so.