Absolute morals?

For example, if a stranger rapes or molests someone you love, is there any circumstance under which it would not be wrong?

Certainly!  Morals change over time, and that twinge of guilt and "wrongness" you have is a conditioned response.  Conditioned in the minds of human beings, not floating around in the heavens waiting for us to figure out what they are.

Consider ancient Rome?  The slave boy keeping the stables clean loves the slave girl that pours the drinks for the warrior nobles inside...  A visit centurion takes his fun with the slave girl, and plucks out the eye of the slave boy on his way out for giggles...  Is it wrong?  Not according to these Romans...  nor to the Samurai who chops your non-Samurai love in half to test his sword, nor to the CEO who steals your skies and poisons your seas.

Are these things wrong?  I think so, but that doesn't make them absolute... because they certainly don't appear to be to everyone, least of all to the people who partake in such acts.  If something is absolute, shouldn't it be unquestionable and unchallengable by everyone?

"If something is absolute, shouldn't it be unquestionable and unchallengable by everyone?"

If absolute morals exist, would we have the ability to question or challenge them?

I don't think we would be able to, no...  we can't question or challenge 1 + 1 = 2, not credibly at least (1 + 1 = XD!!  GTFO). So, since we can challenge any morality that pops up, I don't think there's absolute morality.

But when we're talking about morals, what defines "credibly?"

Nothing, I guess?  Hence, no absolutism?

Do the existence of absolutes depend on human beings?

Moral absolutes?  heh... absolutely...  unless you're a theist, in which cause this conversation becomes impossible.

and I would argue, that yes, absolutes depend on human beings.  Mathematics?  it's a system of interacting symbols.  And what is a symbol without a mind?  Nothing...  so, before humans started crawling upon this pale blue dot, there was no 1 + 1 and it did not equal 2.

Every other absolute?  What are they exactly?  Cases in which we categorize or place judgments and/or values upon, observations and extrapolations...  What matter such things to an uncaring universe?  We could say that absolutes exist in physics, if we don't wade into the murky waters of Quantum this and that, but anything we know about physics and the universe and everything is entirely tainted by the fact that it's humans observing and thinking about these things.  We look at existence in the tiny snapshot of it that's available to us, and all our perceptions are inherently bias towards the human perspective by things like time, distance, space...  Who knows what the universe is like once you take two steps out of the 3 inches of space in your skull that contains everything you are and everything you experience?  No one does...  and I doubt anyone ever will.

"In the end, we experience only ourselves."
-Nietzsche

*If* there is a God, do you think it would be possible for this God to define absolute morals and then let us choose whether we want to believe or act upon them?

>>10
"*If* there is a God"
-
"*If* there is a God..."

*If* there is a god, wouldn't anything he wants be inherently possible?  why, were the chaps sufficently sadistic and insane, even the world around us would be possible

>>1
This question was answerred 300 years ago and on forgotten occasions in ancient greece and ancient china.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/utilitarianism

The person you love is an evil dictator horrifically torturing millions of people to keep millions of others too fearful to resist their abject poverty and brutal oppression. Only by raping and molesting the person you love can the insidious evil end.

>>12
utilitarianism has problems too... if it's all for the good of the majority, then you can have a tyranny of the majority.  It might be great for the top 90% to enslave and eat the bottom 10, does that make it good?  From some vile calculus of the benefit of the greatest many?

>>13
yeah, that's right!!  that's why laws are decided on by the Supreme Court rather than by elected officials... to safeguard against the tyranny of the majority.

You're really smart and handsome, I hope we can, in time, make out.

-Someone else

>>13
Utilitarianism is the premise that the total happiness of all sapient beings is important which includes minorities.

Utilitarianists tend to value liberty because they know that there is no such thing as omnipotent rule and people cannot be trusted with too much power, they also recognise that happiness is difficult to define and that liberty and justice are the most reliable guides to keeping happiness high.

As a result a tyranny of the majority is considerred immoral on the basis that the minority is sufferring too much to justify the small increase in happiness amongst the majority and also because the breach of liberty will cause instability and further sufferring in the future.

>>15
Utilitarianism is actually: An ethical framework which posits that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest utility for the greatest number of people.

That's why it's utilitarian to, say, imprison rapists.

It formed into a legitimate school of philosophy from the works of Jeremy Betham and John Stuart Mill in the 1800's, contrary to what you made up earlier.  Read a book or GTFO

>>16
Bentham, rather

>>16
>>16
Semantics. Utility, happiness, same thing.

An ethical framework which posits that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest utility for the greatest number of people. = Utilitarianism is the premise that the total happiness of all sapient beings is important

>>16
Less quibble bitches, more calculation.

absolute morality = fail

Absolute morals exsist, the examples above where a samuri or roman raped or killed where both examples where society accepted it. Because those romans grew up in a climate that said it was okay they're morality shifted. I'd say that when a human is born they have the same morals they stay that way until an event, person or ideal come along and write on what john lock would call the blank slate which is human exsistence.

Utilitarians are fags.  Absolute morals do not exist.  There is no absolute good and evil, just good and bad for you. 

You have your way, and I have mine.  As for the right way - it doesn't exist.

>>2
>Are these things wrong?  I think so, but that doesn't make them absolute... because they certainly don't appear to be to everyone, least of all to the people who partake in such acts.  If something is absolute, shouldn't it be unquestionable and unchallengable by everyone?

People do wrong for personal gain all the time.

>>22

Truth. Thread over.

If raping your baby brother means somehow curing cancer/feeding the poor/ world peace/all those other things miss world contestants wish for, isn't it our duty to rape said brother?

>>22
But without morals we'd still be living in a crazy tyranny.

I for one follow morals selflessly. I achieve happiness by knowing that I have helped others, I don't feel any emotional pleasure from it either.

>>27
what the fuck.

I achieve happiness by knowing that I have helped others
I don't feel any emotional pleasure from it either.

I achieve happiness
don't feel any emotional pleasure

happiness
emotional pleasure

>>28
Pleasure is not the only way to achieve happiness.

Morals are merely your sence of right and wrong, now if your some sick fuck and like raping people knowing of the pain it would cause their family then be my guest because whats ahead of you in prison will be a sufficiant punishment for you.  These Absolute are for people that are Strong Willed and very obiedient and understanding of all, most people are weak minded and are not strong enough to resist temptation therfor making them a looser pussy.

Lets say you took a girl away for the weekend. Between concert tickets food drinks and hotel costs you spent two grand on her. Is it wrong for you to lay awake during the night watching her sleep in the next bed over and imagine sexing her up? would it be wrong to give her a kiss while she is sleeping? would it be wrong to ask her for a blow job during the ride home?

>>31
Wait, why is she sleeping in the next bed over? Are we siblings or something? I think that might be important in answering the rest of the question.

Not siblings.  I am stuck in the friend zone.

>>33
If you're in the friend zone with a girl who's sleeping in the same room as you, there's great injustice in this world. Show her ya moves and get some of that before it gets stale.

Hint: she can't say no if she has a tongue down her throat.

This thread sucks, moral relativism does not imply tolerance

>>2
That "visiting Centurion," (centurionem visitat) committed one major wrong: injuring another man's slave. We can debate the validity or wrongness or slavery ad absurdum, but one concept or the other is nearly universally accepted: that you should not injure another's property; or that you should never injure an innocent person. Any person or people or law which advocates the injury of innocents is inherently inhuman.

I know it is an emotional argument, but who here would say that the wanton murder of an infant is somehow morally relative?

>>36
its all cool if its for some awesome religious sacrifice.

>>34
She was sleeping in the same room as me. No more, alas the weekend is over and we have returned to our lives but I will probably go bug her at her job a little later.

WTF! Since when did 4chan update/move their site?!

This one looks better anyway.

http://h1.ripway.com/4chanpost/4chan.html

Some morals are defined scientifically, in which case they are correct and people follow them because they understand them and/or because they have been drilled into them emotionally. The rest have no scientific basis in which case they are most likely incorrect and people only follow them when they have been drilled into them emotionally. Ever since nietzsche emofags have been claiming that morals based on sound metaphysical axioms are the same as morals with no scientific basis. When people try to explain to them that this is not the case they lack the intelligence to understand, dismiss the entire argument and start lashing out and calling everyone lemmings who have been tricked by boogeymen authority figures.

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>>22
emofags