[Faith-talk] Moral Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist

[Brandon A. Olivares]

What do you see wrong with the definition? The definition you gave said codes of conduct. What are codes of conduct if not prescriptions of how one ought to act? It seems a pretty universal definition to me.

I agree however that kindness is not a fact, so I personally would go even further than he did. But if you get through the rest of the video, it is rather good.

---
Peace,
Brandon

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On Aug 4, 2014, at 2:09 PM, Poppa Bear <heavens4real at gmail.com> wrote:

> I tried to listen, but unfortunately when he laid out his definition of
> morality I became uncomfortable, When a definition is given to support a
> position and that definition differs even in the slightest from the typical
> definitions the proceeding talk can be shaped in any way the speaker deems
> fit. Even the examples of feeding the homeless being kind, that is not a
> fact, there are many presupposing/qualifying factors that would have to make
> that statement a fact. Below is a definition of morality from the Stanford
> Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 
> The Definition of Morality
> ; The term "morality" can be used either
> 1. descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society
> or,   
> 1. some other group, such as a religion, or
> 2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
> 2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified
> conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
> What "morality" is taken to refer to plays a crucial, although often
> unacknowledged, role in formulating ethical theories. To take "morality" to
> refer to an actually existing code of conduct put forward by a society
> results in a denial that there is a universal morality, one that applies to
> all human beings. This descriptive use of "morality "is the one used by
> anthropologists when they report on the morality of the societies that they
> study. Recently, some comparative and evolutionary psychologists (Haidt,
> Hauser, De Waal) have taken morality, or a close anticipation of it, to be
> present among groups of non-human animals, primarily other primates but not
> limited to them. "Morality" has also been taken to refer to any code of
> conduct that a person or group takes as most important.
> Among those who use "morality" normatively, all hold that "morality" refers
> to a code of conduct that applies to all who can understand it and can
> govern their behavior by it. In the normative sense, morality should never
> be overridden, that is, no one should ever violate a moral prohibition or
> requirement for non-moral considerations. All of those who use "morality"
> normatively also hold that, under plausible specified conditions, all
> rational persons would endorse that code. Moral theories differ in their
> accounts of the essential characteristics of rational persons and in their
> specifications of the conditions under which all rational persons would
> endorse a code of conduct as a moral code. These differences result in
> different kinds of moral theories. Related to these differences, moral
> theories differ with regard to those to whom morality applies, that is,
> those whose behavior is subject to moral judgment. Some hold that morality
> applies only to those rational beings that have those features of human
> beings that make it rational for all of them to endorse morality, viz.,
> fallibility and vulnerability. Other moral theories claim to put forward an
> account of morality that provides a guide to all rational beings, even if
> these beings do not have these human characteristics, e.g., God.
> Dictionary definitions of referring terms are usually just descriptions of
> the important features of the referents of those terms. Insofar as the
> referents of a term share the features that account for why that term refers
> to those referents, the term is not regarded as ambiguous. Referring terms
> are ambiguous when the referents of the term differ from each other in
> sufficiently important ways.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Faith-talk [mailto:faith-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon
> A. Olivares via Faith-talk
> Sent: Monday, August 04, 2014 9:38 AM
> To: Faith-talk, for the discussion of faith and religion
> Subject: [Faith-talk] Moral Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Found this video on Youtube today. It closely aligns with my own feelings on
> morality. So I wanted to put it out there to get a discussion going on this
> topic: is there such thing as objective morality?
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzfDIewPFb0 
> 
> Peace,
> Brandon
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