An ethics professor at Cambridge talks about teaching ethics in 2025

Witnessing people you believe to be moral now supporting genocide will create strange inconsistencies like that.
- It is not a genocide if god's chosen people do it!

Good! In a culture that worships cops and "thought leaders", this is two steps up from meekly accepting whatever powerful people say.
Now it's time for:
(3) Acting on your ethical convictions towards specific goals, and learning to work with people who share them, even when their motivations or values are different.
P.S. As others here have stated, (1) and (2) are not contradictory. If morality is constructed, then we all construct our own. Unless you actually WANT to be an amoral bastard.

Now that is funny. Its funny because its true.

For the people not getting it:
They treat morals as opinions.
They also treat their personal opinions like they're the absolute best opinion.
Another way:
They think everyone likes different ice cream flavors and that's fine. They like Rocky Road flavor. They also think anyone who doesn't is a monster.
Convictions are one thing. But they need to be logically consistent. Saying morality is subjective but you're evil if you don't subscribe to my personal version is illogical.
- Let's say we decide that ~~morals~~ what is right and wrong is decided entirely by ourselves. Then it makes perfect sense to defend your own opinions and to disagree with people who disagree with your stance on right and wrong. You chose those morals after all. It's kinda part of the deal that they can't apply to you alone (example: when is it just to kill?)
  So I don't see a contradiction.
  I guess this post is about Inability to engage with a different set of morals. But assuming that their is an absolute truth for right and wrong wouldn't solve that issue, so I'm not sure why they brought it up.
  
  The issue is believing that everyone has a right to their beliefs but then attacking them. It's like in cultural anthropology: you should only judge a culture by its own internal morals and standards and not impose your outside view when studying them. Kinda like Star Trek Prime Directive.
  If you TRULY believe everyone is entitled to their own morals, then you're breaking that when you criticize someone else's. After all, they have their own morals system and you're perfectly fine with that. Your morals can only include your actions. If you believe that your morals are objectively the best, you're no longer thinking the first thing anymore. It's subjectivism vs objectivism.

I believe the only objective morality is that you must act without intent to harm others unless it is in self-defense.
- How far in advance are you allowed to act in self defense? If you all but know they're leaving the room to go get a gun out of the next room can you strike while their back is turned as they leave? What if it's the neighbor who thinks you banged his wife and he's going next door to get the gun? For most people there's probably a distance at which the answer becomes "call the cops" but that distance probably gets a lot farther if the guy you think is about to shoot you is the sheriff's brother. And what if you're less sure? What if the person is clearly unhinged but it feels like a coinflip as to whether or not they're about to try to murder you?
  What about on a wider societal level? If you think a group of people is marshalling to attack you or the wider society can you attack first? Do you arrest them or even have the police violently disrupt their gatherings? Do you become a terrorist and commit an act of mass violence in the hopes that it will prevent them from attacking you or another group you consider vulnerable?
  That raises the other question of whether it's acceptable to defend others, but for the sake of simplicity it sounds like you're not in favor of getting in the middle of other people's fights which is fair, but do your kids fights count as your fights? Is there an age limit on that?
  None of those questions necessarily apply to any particular ideology but I can think of a few ways people might and often actually have used these concepts in ways both favoring and disfavoring my own personal convictions.
  
  And now you successfully turned a simple statement into one hell of a philophical exam.
  
  Oddly enough, just watched Hitman, and there was a line that fits here.
  Sorry, best quality I could find.

What’s even funnier- is the amount of people in the comments here that perfectly illustrate the humor in the post without even understanding why.
- Could somebody explain it to me, please?
  
  The humor is based on a seeming contradiction this guy's students exhibit.
  They apparently simultaneously believe:
  in a relativistic moral framework - that morality is a social construct (that can mean other things, too, but morality as a social construct is a very common type of relativistic moral framework)
  that their morality is correct and get outraged at disagreements with their moral judgments.
  This isn't logically inconsistent, but it is kind of funny.
  It isn't logically inconsistent because, if you believe morality is relative and what is right/wrong for people in other societies is not necessarily right/wrong for people in your society, then assuming that the professor and his student are part of the same or similar societies, they should share the same or similar morality. People in the same society can disagree on who is a part of their society as well as what is moral. Ethics is messy. So, it is not necessarily logically inconsistent to try to hold others to your relativized moral framework - assuming you believe that it applies to them too since "relativized" doesn't mean "completely individualized". And, due to globalization, you might reasonably hold a pretty wide range of people to your moral views.
  It is kind of funny because there is a little bit of tension between the rigidity of the ethical beliefs held and the acceptance that ethics are not universal and others may have different moral beliefs that are correct in their cultural context. Basically, to act like your morals are universally correct while believing that your morals are correct for you, but not for everyone, represents a possible contradiction and could be a bit ironic.
  A good example of relativistic morality based on culture/society:
  On the Mongolian steppe, it has traditionally been seen by some nomadic groups as good and proper for the old, when they can no longer care for themselves, to walk out on the steppe to be killed by the elements and be scavenged - a "sky burial". Many in the West would find this unacceptable in their cultural context. In fact, they might say, it is wrong to expect or allow your mom to go sky bury herself in Ohio or say... Cambridge. Instead, they might think you should take her in or put her in a home.
  Now, if your professor said to you "So you don't think Mongolians expecting their mothers to die in sky burials is wrong, but you believe me expecting my mother to die in a sky burial is wrong in Cambridge? Curious. I am very intelligent." You could probably assume they are either a Mongolian nomad or don't understand relatvistic morality.
- Jokes on you, I don't believe in subjective morality.

Subjective morality is self evidently true, but that gives us no information about how to live our lives, so we must live as if absolute morality is true.
We only have our own perspective. Someone else's subjective morality is meaningless to us, we aren't them.

Everything in moderating or something. I'm not an ear doctor

I'm not quite following. From my recollection meta ethics deal with the origins of morality, with absolutism being that morality is as inherent to nature as, say, gravity is, and relativism that morality is a social construct we have made up.
Is it hypocrisy to acknowledge something is a social construct while also strongly believing in it?
If I grew up in the 1400s I'd probably hold beliefs more aligned with the values of the time. I prefer modern values because I grew up in modern society. I find these values superior but also acknowledge my reason for finding them superior ultimately boils down to the sheer random chance of when and where I was born.
- I don't believe he's commenting on whether morality is actually absolute or relative, but rather pointing out the irony that those who strongly believe it's subjective are appalled by the seemingly logical consequence that individuals reach different conclusions and disagree.

Even if all morality is subjective or inter-subjective I have some very strong opinions about tabs vs spaces
- Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life. If you're willing to condemn the world to your shitty code just because the tab key is quicker, you're a selfish monster who deserves hyponichial splinters. See also: double spaces after a period.
  
  Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life.
  Stoning people to death for mixing fabrics was based on morality too.
  
  My morality is built on furtherment of mankind technologically, with weights assigned to satisfaction and an aversion to harm. Here are some examples on how to apply this logically and without any emotion, empathy included:
  It's kind of like not really believing in human rights but supporting them anyways because the people who oppose human rights are destructive and inefficient.
  Humans are animals. We must act according to our basic wants and needs in a way that maximizes our satisfaction, or else we are acting against our own nature. However, we must do this in a way that causes no harm, or we have failed as a collective species.
  Diversity is a must because exclusivity is a system which consistently fails every time is has ever been tested.
  The death penalty is taboo not because life is sacred but because one person deciding the importance of another's life is intellectually bankrupt and only leads to a spiral of violence.
  All life is meaningless, full stop, which gives us the right to assign whatever meaning we like, and having more technology, with equal control over it by each individual person, gives us the collective power to make more choices.
  I will not be taking any questions, meatbags
  
  The correct answer is to map tab to spaces in your IDE.
  
  This is gonna get out of hand.
- People who use tabs are monsters
  
  Tabs are the one true way! All those who blaspheme against the might tab will be regex'd into compliance.
  
  <overly dramatic threat of violence here>
  
  Vertical or horizontal tabs? And I don't mean browser tabs.
- My heart goes out to those who suffer with poor editors where this is a problem. I do empathize with them. It’s important to love others and help. That’s the code for my life: love others. Except vim users. Straight to jail.
- Tabs. F alignment for aesthetic purposes
- As I have learned today: "tabstospaces": true

Yeah, that's because moral relativism is cool when you live in a free and decent society.
The irony is that you can afford to debate morality when society is moral and you're not facing an onslaught of inhumanity in the form of fascism and unchecked greed that's threatening any hope for a future.
But when shit hits the fan, morality becomes pretty fucking clear. And that's what's happening right now. Philosophical debates about morality are out the window when you're facing an existential threat.
- They used to be the case that just calling your political opponents evil was oversimplifying. But these days? They literally are just evil in the most cruel ways imaginable to the point where there's nothing to debate, and people who do so are doing so in bad faith most of the time. I think that's another dimension of the situation, a poorly moderate websites like Twitter make it so that people are constantly in a hostile environment where good faith cannot be assumed so you have to learn to operate in that kind of environment
  
  And the evil guys are yelling that the other side is evil, while the other side is too good to call anyone evil 😔
  
  I think the person replying to you actually just outlined the point the post made. You can frame all of these views for both sides, and could let two people on both side argue about who is actually trying to be cruel.
  As much as I'd agree so much evil shit is going in, it's a good point about how perceptions from others don't change our own views lately and we aren't even interested in discussing them. I also understand your point of there being no reason to try discussing them, but that's the view the people on the other side have had for the past 9 years now, and that's why we're where we are. I'm not American but I truly wonder if there's a way that people can capitulate to each other without having to start a civil war.
  
  I mean yeah, the democrats are violent, authoritarian, and and generally awful.

I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.
A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.
Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.
As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.
Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.
- To add to this, morality can be entirely subjective, but yeah, of course if I see someone kicking puppies in the street I'll think: "That's intrinsically morally wrong." Before I try to play in the space of "there's no true morality and their perspective is as valid as mine."
  If my subjective morality says that slavery is wrong, I don't care what yours says. If you try to keep slaves in the society I live in as well I want you kicked out and ostracized.
- In moral philosophy cultural relativism isn't merely an empirical observation about how morality develops, though. It's a value judgment about moral soundness that posits that all forms of morality are sound in context.
  (When he says "entirely relative" that signals cultural relativism).
  To use your chess example a cultural relativist would hold buckle and thong to the argument that if most people in your chess club habitually play scholars mate and bongcloud then those are the soundest openings, full stop, and that you are objectively right to think that.
  Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so tha analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.

I don't see the problem. One can have unshakeable moral values they believe everyone should have while acknowledging those values may be a product of their upbringing and others' lack of them the same.
- I think you're missing the significance of his phrase "entirely relative".
  In moral philosophy, cultural relativity holds that morals are not good or bad in themselves but only within their particular context. Strong moral relativists would hold the belief that it's fine to murder children if that is a normal part of your culture.
  
  I guess I'm parsing the statement as "understand it as a concept" when they mean "hold that position."
- What about the last part: "viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity?"
  
  I believe abortion is moral. I believe people who disagree are morally monstrous. I can also understand that their beliefs on whether abortion is moral or not can be a product of their culture and upbringing. What am I missing? Why is this odd?
  
  It's the kind of thing professors say when they want to go viral on some fascist platform.

Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it's not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.
Turns out, ordinary people's metaethics are highly irrational.
- Morality is subjective and many different systems exist.
  However, mine is the best one because it leads to optimal human welfare and happiness. If you can show your system is better, I'll happily change my mind, but until that time, if you follow a system that doesn't lead to optimal human welfare and happiness, you are, thus, intentionall working against it, and are a thus a monster.
- Sounds like "all moral philosophies are equal, but some are more equal than others"
  Love your username.
  
  Thanks bro, had read it in Plato but was on a real King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard kick when I signed up for Lemmy (still am).
- Not disagreeing that they're probably just inconsistent.
  Is it possible to be consistent about moral relativism & still make firm choices?
  What's it called when morality is construed as systems of arbitrarily chosen axioms & moral judgements amount to judges stating whether something agrees with a system they chose? Is it inconsistent to acknowledge that these axioms are ultimately choices, choose a system, and judge all actions eligible for moral consideration according to that chosen system?
- I just commented elsewhere in this thread, but isn't moral realism a thing for this exact situation? Is his post not a self report on his inability to identify a moral framework that fits his students worldview, or at least to explain the harm that arises if one has a self contradictory worldview and help them realize that and potentially arrive at a more consistent view? Seems like this comment section is filled with a lot of people that understand their moral framework more than this professor, but obviously are not in the field. Can you please elaborate on the issues here? Like I think abortions are fine, but I understand that others think it's murder. I don't think they're bad people for that, but I understand if they think I'm a bad person for my views. How we deal with it on a societal level is obviously even more complicated. I don't see how there's a problem there.
  It seems like ALL is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. Do they really believe ALL morality is relative and are also always insanely judgy if things contradict their beliefs?
  
  I think the issue is that students aren't consistent. They'll fall back on relativism or subjectivism when they don't really have a strong opinion, or perceive there to be a lot of controversy about the subject that they don't want to have to argue about. But fundamentally, whether there's an objective and universal answer to some moral question or not really doesn't depend on whether there's controversy about it, or whether it's convenient or cool to argue about.
  I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren't. Variation in cultural norms is totally okay, as long as we don't sacrifice the objective, universal stuff. (Like don't harm people unnecessarily, etc.). The contours of the former and the latter are up for debate, and we shouldn't presume that anybody knows the exact boundary.

I've had people, presumably young, argue with me on here about politics and morals. For example, I say the right to abortion is a political issue. Been screamed out that it's not a political issue because a woman's right to an abortion is a moral issue. Yeah, I agree, but the argument is still political. Some believe abortion is murder and that they're right. That's politics.
It's like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics. "I'm on the right side of this thing so it's not politics!" As if I'm somehow lowering the debate to mere... something?
That was one of the first things I got confused by on lemmy. Am I making sense? Just crawled in from work and I'm wasted tired.
- It's like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics.
  I think they point they are trying to make is that once you are very very wrong about something (in their mind), it's no longer a political position, it's just an immoral position. And if that's what they're saying, I disagree with it.
  I'm not saying that there are no immoral positions, I'm saying that a position can be completely immoral and still be political. I hate when people use the phrase "it's just politics" as a shield, as though everyone else has to be OK with some incredibly shitty attitude they have, just because they have managed to also make it a political attitude.
  And that's such a terrible superpower to give to politics, too: the ability to instantly legitimize a position simply because it falls under the domain of politics.
  Not to long ago, the question of "should white children and black children be allowed to go to school together" was a political issue in the U.S. And I'd say that's still a political issue. It didn't magically become some other type of issue just because a few decades passed and we now agree that one side was completely wrong. The fact that it isn't actively being discussed anymore doesn't change the fact that it falls under the umbrella of political issues. It means that someone can have a political opinion and they have to be a real piece of shit to hold that opinion.
- But they are moral arguments, unless politics is added into the discussion. Let me give you a different example. If I believe people are entitled to the fruits of their labor then that's a moral point. If I believe the government should enforce everyone getting their fruits, that's political.
  If I were to believe abortion is wrong then that can be a moral point. However if I think the government should take a stand on the matter, that's political.
- The owning class wants to be the only class doing politics. So they brainwash the proles into thinking politics is bad.
  
  And making people believe preserving the status quo is not political but changing it is
  
  not just bad, but extremely venal, petty, and a thing that happens in marble rooms you aren't allowed to go in.
- It's also a health issue. It involves choices about life, not unlike someone in a coma or another situation where they are unable to make a conscious choice about whether to continue or deny treatment.
  One argument in favor of abortion I recall reading was comparing it to donating an organ while you're still alive. You are under no obligation of donating anything, of risking your life to save another, even if you are literally the only person on Earth that can save the other. If medical professionals have to respect those choices, they should also respect the choice of mothers who decide to end an undesired pregnancy
  
  It's even worse than that. You can't even be forced to donate organs or blood after you're dead. Most places are opt-in for organ donation. A few jurisdiction are opt-out. Nowhere has mandatory posthumous organ donation. Some despotic countries have apparently used force organ harvesting on political dissidents, but no country has ever established some broad rule, based on patriotism or some such, that everyone has to donate organs after death.
  In red states, pregnant women literally have less bodily autonomy than corpses.
- The point they were trying to make (I believe, and this specific argument) is that the entire basis of the opposing argument is entirely based on religion and pretty much by definition specious. There is no sky daddy looking over your shoulder, and this any morality you base on its existence is inheritetly flawed at best.
  What there is are women who need timely access to medical care or their lives are at risk. This is a tangible and real threat.
  So treating the issue as "Politics" only serves to dignify the flawed morality of one side while letting women die.
  
  So treating the issue as "Politics" only serves to dignify the flawed morality of one side while letting women die.
  Your earlier paragraphs don't provide any evidence for this point.

I've been a College and University prof for the past 6 years. I'm in my young 40s, and I just don't understand most of the people in their 20s. I get that we grew up in really different times, but I wouldn't have thought there would be such a big clash between them and me. I teach about sound and music, and I simply cannot catch the interest of most of them, no matter what I try. To the point were I'm no sure I want to keep doing this. Maybe I'm already too old school for them but I wonder who will want to teach anymore....
- That is the same sentiment my music teacher had 15 years ago and the same sentiment his music teacher did before that. I don’t think it’s illustrating the times as much as just that teaching is a tough and thankless job and most people aren’t interested in learning
  
  I could get that at the grade school level, but at the university/college level those students are choosing the music classes. To be that disengaged for a course you picked is a bit different than a student who is forced to take a course.
  That being said, if the course is a requirement that does change things a bit.
  
  Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with this. I've always said to myself that I didn't want to fall into this old-versus-young rhetoric, but I think the situation is different. The world and technologies are changing faster than our ability to integrate them. The world in which my father lived wasn't that different from his father's, and neither was mine. But young people, born into the digital age, have been the guinea pigs of social media and the gafam ecosystem, which seems to have radically altered their ability to concentrate (even watching a short film is a challenge), as well as their interest in learning. They see school, even higher education, as a constraint rather than an opportunity. I have the impression that they don't see the point of learning when a Google search or ai answers everything, and that retaining things is useless. That's my 2 cents...
- Nah, I'm early 30s, but grew up around 20th century media, competitive parents when it came to game shows, and a weird expectation to just know pub trivia.
  Took me a while to realise I'm the outlier and still am. Just the other day I was talking to some old colleagues and had to spend energy convincing them that the things they were talking about in the Simpsons are mostly movie or TV references and even then mostly just Kubrick, Hitchcock and a considerable amount of Steven King. They just have no idea how unoriginal most modern/contemporary media is. Not even in a bad way, just in an homage/artist replicatong the old masters etc.
  But it's really strange for a generation with the biggest access and connection to human culture is somehow just as bubbles/silod as ever.
  
  Algorithms, mate. Algorithms...
- I think this is less time-specific, and more just people not being terribly interested in learning.
  For example, a professor who specialized in virology was explaining everything about how pathogens spillover between species, using a 2010s ebola outbreak as an example. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time because it was as fascinating as a true horror movie, and yet other students were totally zoned out on Facebook a few rows ahead of me. While the professor was talking about organs dissolving due to the disease and the fecal-oral (and other liquids) route of ebola, which wasn't exactly a dry subject, lol.
  Rinse and repeat for courses on macro/micro economics, mirror neurons, psychology classes on kink, even coding classes.
  Either I'm fascinated by stuff most people find boring, or a lot of people just hate learning. I'm thinking it's the latter, since this stuff encompassed a wide range of really interesting subjects from profs who were really excited about what they taught.
  I miss them a lot, I used to corner various profs and TAs and ask them questions about time fluctuations around black holes, rare succulent growing tips in the plant growth center, and biotechnology. It was fun having access to such vibrant people :)
- Do a class about sounds of tiktok reels that will be a hit.
  
  I actually do sometimes incorporates memes and stuff from tiktok and other social media in my classes.
- I wonder how much of that is a change in who is going to college and why, and what the requirements are. More people are being funneled into colleges that previously would have gone directly into the workforce or into an apprenticeship. Is your class a gen ed? Gen Ed's have really expanded and if you listen to bleeding hearts like me it's a good thing because it exposes people to new things, but I think it's actually so poorly managed that people end up taking the classes they think will be the least rigorous regardless of their actual interest just to get them over with.

Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.
- *humans
  
  There are no adults in the room.

Honestly, those two points don't seem incompatible to me. For example:
Teaching the history of fashion to undergrads in 1985 is bizarre because:
They insist that standards of dress are entirely relative. Being dressed decently is a cultural construct; some cultures wear hardly any clothing whatsoever and being nude is a completely normal, default way of presenting yourself.
And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
(And yes I changed the year because I'm sick of so many of these issues being brought up as though "the kids these days" are the problem, when so often these are issues that have been around LITERALLY FOREVER.)
I'm not trying to dunk on this Henry Shelvin guy -- I'm certain that he knows a lot more about philosophy than me, and has more interesting thoughts about morals than I do. And I'm also not going to judge someone based on a tweet...aside from the obvious judgement that they are using Twitter, lol. But as far as takes go, this one kinda sucks.
*edit: I'll add that I hope this professor is taking this opportunity to explain what the difference is between morals being relative vs being subjective, which is an issue that has come up in this very thread. Especially since I bet a lot of his students have only heard the term "moral relativism" being used by religious conservatives who accuse you of being a moral relativist because you don't live by the Bible. I know that was definitely the case for me.
- No, that is not the direct equivalence. The direct equivalence for 2. Would be something like
  "But then they insist that being naked is never acceptable and is grotesque, and anyone that disagrees is a gross pervert"
  That's where the inconsistency comes from
  
  Except that they probably don't think that.
  However, they might think that a professor exposing himself to his students is an abuse of power and sexual harassment, due to the local cultural consensus around what that specific action means, and the unequal relationship between teacher and student.
- And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
  Cancel culture today is out of control.
  
  We used to have academic freedom. Now we just have sensitivity trainings and PANTS. SHACKLES OF THE MIND, I TELL YOU!
  
  Well because we have indecent exposure laws. Hanging your dick and balls out in public is not relevant to cancel culture or fashion.

Morality is subjective. Ethics are an attempt to quanitify/codify popular/common moral beliefs.
Even "murder is wrong" is not a moral absolute. I consider it highly immoral to deny murder to someone in pain begging for another person like a physician to murder them painlessly simply because of a dogmatic "murder is wrong" stance.
- i consider this specific example to also be an issue of language, which is in itself a construct.
  Murder as a word has meaning based in law, which is another construct.
  If you were to switch out "murder" for "killing" the outcome remains the same (cessation of life by another party) but the ethical and moral connotations are different.
  Some people use murder when they mean killing and vice versa which adds a layer of complexity and confusion.
  Though all of that could just be me venturing into pedant country.
  
  It's even worse than that. It floors me that it's widely accepted that soldiers murdering soldiers in war isn't murder. It's murder when a contract killer murders by order and gets paid, the fact that a government is paying the contract and giving you a spiffy Lil wardrobe to do it in is a really arbitrary line. They don't even have a proper word for it, they just say "it's not murder.... IT'S WAR!" What a lazy non-argument. It doesn't count because we're doing murder Costco style, in bulk?
  I mean yeah, it's people killing people that don't want to die on the behalf of people paying them to either gain something or secure what they have. It's more cut and dry than my first example, where you could argue that if the party to be murdered consents to be murdered, it no longer fits the definition.
  As George Carlin said, the word is avoided to soften what needs to be done, to defang language until it is robbed of the emotional weight of what is happening. Target neutralized doesn't have the baggage of human murdered. Don't want those soldiers in the field to internalize the weight of what they're doing, or they won't comply as reliably!
- in fact, that "murder is wrong" in in fact not a universally held belief. 20 billion animals wait solely sothat we can murder them eventually to consume their physical remains.
- People have been arguing about whether morality is subjective, and writing dissertations about that subject, for thousands of years. Is any of us really familiar enough with that very detailed debate to render a judgment like "morality is subjective" as though it's an obvious fact? Does anybody who just flatly says morality is subjective understand just how complex metaethics is?
  https://images.app.goo.gl/fBQbi2J5osxuFmvt7
  I think "morality is subjective" is just something we hear apparently worldly people say all the time, and nobody really has any idea.
  By the way, I have a PhD in ethics and wrote my dissertation on the objectivity/subjectivity of ethics. Long story short, we don't know shit!
  
  "Morality is subjective" is the inevitable conclusion of a secular, empiricalistic worldview.
  Essentially, now that we are in a scientific world disagreement is resolved through experiment.
  Disagreement not resolvable through experiment is removed from the realm of science, and is called falsifiable and is seen as subjective.
  If you and I disagree, there are no scientific tests we can run to resolve moral issues.
  And since we can't point to a God or objective moral laws, it doesn't even matter if one theoretically exists because it's inaccessible and infalsifiable. Effectively it doesn't exist for us.
  Both of us are following different moral standards, the "rules" in your head are not the same rules that I'm subjective to.
  You're morals are subjective to your experience, it simply is a fact.
- "murder is wrong" is a moral absolute if you adopt the deontological viewpoint. It's not if you adopt the teleological approach. Discussing these things is literally what I learnt in the very short Ethics course I had in third year uni (while in France that sort of stuff was much much earlier during Philosophy class...)
  Edit : and to be clear, I think absolute opinions are the province of the philosopher and the fanatic. Real life tends to be a bit more messy. But that's why it's important to sort of know what the options are and how difficult the choices can be (again, for real human beings who struggle with dilemmas ; fanatics tend to eachew all that and I'd say that's how you can spot them).

post-structuralism has done a lot to attack the basic idea that something like "right" and "wrong" even exist in the first place, outside of the mind of the observer.
I'm kinda pissed about that btw.

Parallel: Teaching contemporary American literature to undergrads in 2019 was utterly bizarre because they hadn’t lived through 9/11. So much stuff went over their heads. There’s just a disconnect you’re always going to have because of lived experience and cultural changes. It’s your job, especially in a philosophy course, to orient them to differing schools of thought and go “oh, I didn’t think about it that way.” And correct them on Nietzsche, because they’re always fucking wrong about Nietzsche.
- Gesundheit!

Is he saying the first point is wrong or just that it conflicts with the second?
- They conflict. The first one is a form of moral relativism (that how you should act morally depends on your culture/upbringing).
  The second one is a form of moral absolutism (that there is a specific morality you should live by)
  Basically someone saying there's no right answer while also saying they have the only right answer and everyone who disagrees with it is bad.
- That it conflicts. He's saying that if you believe that morality is relative and every person/culture has the difficult task of defining their own, it's ironic to be so aghast when people have reached different conclusions than you.
  
  This, we sadly have people who believe that open-mindness is a virtue, as long as you're open-minded in the exact same way as everypony else.
  
  There are two opinions: mine and wrong.
  
  It seems like that tension between those things (which I'd expect are natural intuitions that many people experience) would be a foundational principle in ethics. Is it? Is that the joke?
  
  Setting aside the unshakeable part, morality should be somewhat rigid. While relative, that doesn't mean morality can or should change on a whim.
- That it conflicts with the second viewpoint.

Can both points not be true? There will be local morals and social morals that differ from place to place with overarching morals that tend to be everywhere.
Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
Unless they mean all their ethics are held that way in which case that's just the whole asshole in a different deck chair joke.
- I'm sure both are true for some people, but I think the irony he's pointing out is that this belief system recognizes that every individual/culture has different morals, while simultaneously treating individual/cultural differences as reprehensible.
  
  Sounds like someone who was raised in an echo chamber. They recognize other chambers exist, but hate that they do. We're back to tribalism.
- If you agree that morals are relative and culturally constructed, then you shouldn't reject differences in morals of others as immoral.
  That's basically just taking a position where you want to be able to change your mind on what's "moral", and expect everyone else to follow your opinion on it.
  
  I don't think acknowledging morals as relative to the culture they exist within exempts decrees of immorality. Relative to their culture, it is. Should they speak from the point of view of a culture that they don't understand? I personally think it's a sliding scale where, to the extent it harms other people, it needs to be viewed more objectively just, and where it doesn't harm, it's fine being a difference in opinion. The only downside to this is that sometimes you don't know enough about a topic to know there are victims, and so your prescriptive thoughts can change very quickly about the morality of it. Perspective is important and should always be maximized to avoid this problem.
  
  I said that some are but it seems cultures share a couple of them in common like not killing without cause. So in that system there are local morals and global/regional morals.
- Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
  The tweet suggests the sample group disagrees with this statement.
  I think you're expressing the general consensus: people get a lot of their morals from their environment, but there's some stuff that's universal/non-negotiable; and we should be able to find common ground with that.
  At least, I think that's the general consensus. I've gotten into trouble with that assumption though.

This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.

The misunderstanding I see here is in the definition of “subjective”.
Subjective is often used interchangeably with opinion. And people can certainly have different opinions.
But the subjective that is meant is that morals don’t exist without a subject, aka a mind to comprehend them.
A rock exists whether or not a mind perceives the rock. The rock is objective. It is a physical object.
The idea that it is wrong to harm someone for being different is subjective. It is an idea. A thought. The thought does not exist without a mind.
So yes. Morals are all subjective. Morals do not exist in the physical world. Morals are not objects, they do not objectively exist. They exist within a subject. Morals subjectively exist.
That does not mean that any set of morals is okay because it’s just an opinion, bro. Because it’s not just an opinion. Those subjective values effect objective reality.
- But suffering objectively exists. I know this. I experience this. It is an objectively immoral experience that exists in this reality that I am calling 'suffering'.
  That pretty much enough for moral objectivism for me on some level.
  Do no harm, do only good. In that order.
  
  The keyword there is experience.
  You are a subject. Suffering isn’t an object, it’s a feeling. A concept.
  Subjective doesn’t mean “not real”. It’s something that needs a subject to exist. The suffering, just like morals, do exist. They are real, they can be measured, they can be discussed, they have real effects.
  What makes them subjective isn’t “well that’s like, just your opinion, man”, it’s the fact that without a subject to experience them, they would cease to exist.
- I think this is a bit too simple. Suppose I say that moral badness, the property, is any action that causes people pain, in the same way the property of redness is the quality of surfaces that makes people experience the sensation of redness. If this were the case, morality (or at least moral badness) would absolutely not be a subjective property.
  Whether morality is objective or subjective depends on what you think morality is about. If it's about things that would exist even if we didn't judge them to be the way they are, it's objective. If it's about things that wouldn't exist unless we judge them to be the way they are, it's subjective.
- Nobody used the word subjective. What are you on about?
  
  Seems my brain autofilled the concept in, with the post image being confused why someone would consider opposing morals to their own as terrible.
  “Moralality is subjective” is a common way to say “Well my morals are different than yours and that’s okay” to justify immoral behavior. With the image being confused about students acknowledging morals being culturally formed, while not entertaining debate on their own morals.
  Yes, morals are a subjective thing that only exist with a mind to perceive them.
  That doesn’t mean there aren’t right or wrong morals. That doesn’t mean anyone should entertain debate over the morality of whether, say for example, white supremacy is “just an opinion, bro”. There’s nothing confusing about acknowledging that it’s a mindset caused by culture, and also viewing it as a “moral monstrosity”.
  … I’m also posting these ramblings half asleep.
  
  So you legitimately don't recognize the screenshot as being fundamentally based around the issues of subjectivity and objectivity?
  I mean.. what are you on about?
  
  Probably in relation to the use of 'relative', I guess a synonym for subjective?
  (Edit) I thought is was an interesting comment btw

viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity
This should be the slogan of public social media.

I don't know, I might intellectually understand that morals are relative to a culture and that even our concept of universal human rights is an heritage of our colonial past and, on some level, trying to push our own values as the only morality that can exist. On a gut level though, I am entirely unable to consider that LGBT rights, gender equality or non-discrimination aren't inherently moral.
I don't think holding these two beliefs is weird, it's a natural contradiction worth debating and that's what I would expect from an ethics teacher
- That's because there are 2 general schools of thought in ethics - relativism and absolutism. Relativism (the idea that morality is intrinsic to the person's experience and understanding) is the one that seems to be the most talked about in general society. I believe in absolutism, the idea that there is a set of guidelines for moral behavior regardless of your experiences or past.
  Your example (more formally known as the paradox of tolerance) is what convinces me that absolutism is the better school of thought
  
  I can't help but be struck at how cowardly 'moral relativism' seems. Yes, you could potentially offend or step on someone's toes if you express moral outrage at the practice of childhood genital mutiliation, for example, but are you truly opposed if you are willing to contextualise said opposition? If you have a strong moral objection to something, then have a strong moral objection.
  There are 8 billion people, and not all of them are going to or have to agree with you. There's absolutely no need to play the chameleon to keep everyone happy.
  If your moral objection to something isn't universal, then it isn't an objection.
- an heritage
  Who pronounces it as 'eritage
  
  I'm gonna guess French people

This is basically how teaching secular ethics always is, though. Doesn't seem special about 2025. People will always be overconfident in their beliefs, but it's not necessarily a coincidence or even hypocrisy that they can hold both views at the same time.
You can believe that morality is a social construct while simultaneously advocating for society to construct better morals. Morality can be relative and opposing views on morality can still be perceived as monstrous relative to the audience's morality.
- But "constructing better morals" is by itself a non-relativist statement. How can you say there are "better morals" when you follow moral relativism, which states that there is no universal set of moral principles? In other words, that morals are not comparable with each-other?
  It's not the same thing as accepting that different cultures have different set of morals, but whether some things are simply more moral than others, or not. For example, saying that slavery is always bad, and should never be allowed, is an absolutist moral statement.
  
  I think they worded this poorly. I believe their argument was more that someone can believe that morals are constructs, and relative, but you can also believe that you should try and move people to construct morals based on your own.

Absolute truth must exist, because if it doesn't, "there is no absolute truth" is absolutely true, which is a contradiction.
- Kind of, right? You're making strong assumptions about the meanings of words. A lot of continental philosophy has been written about this subject.
- You should look into Godel's incompleteness theorem.
  
  I first encountered it in Hofstadter's incredible book.
- Obviously truth is absolute. The question is whether morality is absolute or relative.
- You arent the decider of what truth is though, especially for others.
  
  You don't agree that there are universal truths? Like the earth is spherical, the sun provides us light, and lemmy.ml is full of tankies?
- I mean, in the same vein, I can completely break reality if it can't stand a contradiction, watch:
  This sentence is false.

Excuse me I was told that anyone who says "people view disagreement as moral monstrosity" is actually a nazi.

Noam Chomsky would like a word.
- He’s a linguist who has his own issues with moral duality

Maybe the kids are right, and it's just that the prof is too oldheaded to understand.
- If all your morals are relative you can sign on to do some reprehensible shit when misinformed about a situation because relative to what you know killing another person might be righteous. That is generally not the best way to handle anything. If your baseline isn’t an unshakable one based in human empathy idk what you really ever stand for
  
  do you not think that people can't come to conclusions you would feel are terrible and still hold them as unshakable morals they derived from empathy? Do you think empathy is not subjective?
- Don't trust anyone over 30, man.