You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 8th, 2008.
Right, enough of the fluffy personal posts. A dear friend and sister of mine and her inquisitive comment-ers have been raising an interesting debate about objective and subjective morality recently. We have an atheist or two, an undefined person or two, and a fairly devout Christian adding to the intellectual cake batter and the end result leaves an interesting taste.
As was noted, the distinction between objective and subjective morality is fairly clean-cut. The former assumes that there is a set moral or ethical truth in existence (which we may or may not be entirely conscious of; this raises one point of contention) completely transcendent of our own influence or personal experiences, and the latter assumes that morality is a product of what we ourselves think and believe. Or, as my friend puts it,
OBjective morality implies that ethical truths are independent of personal beliefs or situations, while SUBjective morality is dependent.
This is reasonable enough. It’s the support of one side or another that makes things messy. I am in no position to rehash what’s already been said and the many excellent arguments that have been made (I sincerely recommend reading the comments of the linked post) but I’ve found two cents of loose input change in the back of my mind. Pardon me while I take a deep breath to address my own position.
