What makes a moral rule actually binding? - Discuss the ethics of ethics

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Why don't you tell the class about how the Soviets didnt kill civilians, and then continue your lecture on morality which you are foreign to, hypocrite?

Its in our past comments go dig it out, im not looking for fyi lazy bitch

You said it, you prove it.

Did you know the Roman punishment for bearing false witness was to be thrown off the Tarpeian Rock? So much for your romanitas.

 

[Chongqing]

Sounds like you concede the issue I raised
If moral rules are not actually binding, and what constrains behavior are either personal preferences or rules backed by consequences, then the grounding step I asked about simply does not exist under your view, it's essentially moral nihilism
In that case, what people call "moral rules" would just be personal beliefs about how people should behave, or social rules that carry a price if others decide to enforce them. Under that nihilist structure, violating a "moral rule" is not wrong in any categorical sense.

Right, unless you're religious there would be no basis for the person to view it as wrong.

One consequence of that view, however, is that any moral disagreement is structurally indistinguishable from a disagreement about taste. Like, "murder is wrong" is not categorically different from "I don't like pineapple on pizza". Neither of the two statements identifies something that a person must not do independently of preferences or enforcement.

Right. I don't know why this is so mindblowing.

He didn't answer my question and what you said doesn't answer it either.
It's very clear that many religions proclaim moral rules, nobody questioned that. The actual question I asked is what makes those rules binding in the first place.

I did answer your question and now I will try to do it again. It's belief. It's still belief. Belief in one's religion.

When a Christian says "obey God", then they don't usually mean "obey God if going to heaven happens to be one of your goals".

Yeah, that is what they mean. I don't understand how you think Christianity can be about anything other than that.

This shows the issue I pointed out in the second paragraph of the opening post
Under what you describe, morality is a goal-dependent strategy. If someone wants heaven, then following certain rules becomes a way to achieve that goal... which makes the rule conditional on the goal. Someone who doesn't care about heaven would have no reason to follow it under that structure.

Yeah, is it ok if I agree with you, Buddy? Jeez.

So the question remains the same: what actually makes the rule morally binding?

Nothing. Non-religious people are only bound by social and legal pressure.

For example, murder is morally wrong. It's also illegal. Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk, but he will never believe he did anything wrong. The only evidence that anyone disliked his decision, from his point of view, is legal and social backlash. That's all that keeps this man who believes he is a hero in jail.

I feel like you're arguing with me on the premise of, "But that would be really bad!"

Like, yeah, it's really bad.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

@Agamemnon Busmalis So you've answered the question not once, but three different ways that change the structure in incompatible ways.

Yes, because they can originate in multiple ways. You're attempting to apply a universal approach to concepts that can vary drastically by culture and circumstances.

Sometimes they are driven by theological or philosophical arguments, other times they are customary and developed naturally out of the pressures of community survival, and other times they have completely secular sources imposed by force of law.

None of these things, by themselves, explains what makes a moral rule binding in the first place. That is, you have explained enforcement, social utility, and obedience to authority, but you still have not explained normativity.

What I described is exactly what makes them normative. I don't even understand what you're looking for at this point.

 

[Unfathomed]

I will give an imaginary framework to show how moral law may be proved. Consider the action of a man who had the moral rule of doing exactly what he intended. Doing what he did not intend was a wrong action. When interrogated by a detective about assaulting someone, he said, "My intention was to hit someone, therefore I hit someone." Here, and unlike most moralities conceived of, the intention which was really a passion proceeded the action, and was not a goal. Instead, its existence proved that hitting someone would be 'right' given his framework. However, the state and the detective saw intention within the action itself and declared him guilty.
The man's action was affirmed by the prior intention. As consequence, he proved his moral rule. The rule was not less binding than the state's law. Take away the action, and there was nothing to judge. Proof of no intention, or proof of no agency, would have meant contradiction, both of the man and the state, and therefore the man would have faced no consequence.
This man approached a simple framework of natural morality. The action was affirmed by a prior inclination towards some passion. Was his moral law true? No, not necessarily. It simply affirmed life. Proving truth was not the question (if it were, my answer would be different). Was his proof binding to a community? No, and that was not possible from such a simple example.

Edit: To clarify, I would like to talk on the difference between intentions and goals. In my example, intention is observing a passion before and after you act. A goal would be your rationalization of some future action. A distinction of goals is that they have no passion.

 

[The Last Stand]

People can definitely disagree about the gravity of a given sin but there is always damage caused.

Sure, but you don't necessarily need theology to understand cause and effect.

Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk, but he will never believe he did anything wrong. The only evidence that anyone disliked his decision, from his point of view, is legal and social backlash. That's all that keeps this man who believes he is a hero in jail.

So, in his moral alignment, he believes himself to be in the "right." That doesn't negate that what he did as objectively wrong or evil. Firstly, his actions expressed that "freedom of speech" means jack shit because Kirk said something he disagreed with, therefore violence was the ultimate consequence.

Again, morals are often associated with personal perceptions or beliefs.

Nothing. Non-religious people are only bound by social and legal pressure.

You say that as if it's a bad thing itself. I'm not religious, but I believe that I have morals that would influence my decisions or perspective on life. Said morals would be embedded onto ME.

 

[This User]

You said it, you prove it.

Did you know the Roman punishment for bearing false witness was to be thrown off the Tarpeian Rock? So much for your romanitas.

We've had two conversations, figure it out if you're so concerned.

I don't need to prove anything when you have a commie pfp and are a known admirer of communism. You've invalidated your credibly by your chosen associations and use of symbolism. If anything it's you who is in a debt of a sourcing, because you've actively taken on the mantle of lying apparatchiks of your own volition.

This is not academia or reddit, we're two real people in a conversation, and my friend, you have no credibility in that discourse. If you want to prove you aren't a bloodthirsty animal even though you told me Soviets didn't kill civilians, you have the means to do so. I don't really care about exonerating or condemning you. The slight against your gravitas is enough for me. It's up to you to prove or deny your poor character. Why should I care?

Catullus didn't need sources to discredit Aurelius and Furius on the floor of the Senate. He just called them faggots in a poem.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

"With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

 

[TyrasGuard]

The problem here is that, as soon as you remove that goal, or the goal was never there in the first place, the advice no longer has any force

Nothing is truly "morally binding".

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

We've had two conversations, figure it out if you're so concerned.

I don't need to prove anything when you have a commie pfp
You've invalidated your credibly by your chosen associations and use of symbolism
If anything it's you who is in a debt of a sourcing

This is not academia, we're two real people in a conversation, and my friend, you have no credibility
If you want to prove you aren't a bloodthirsty animal even though you told me Soviets didn't kill civilians, you have the means to do so.
I don't really care about exonerating or condemning you. The slight against your gravitas is enough.

So you have nothing.

My gravitas is intact. Your izzat, not so much.

 

[Chongqing]

So, in his moral alignment, he believes himself to be in the "right." That doesn't negate that what he did as objectively wrong or evil.

Nor would it negate that God can send him to hell.

I don't particularly believe in the Indian religious concept of karma. However, if it's real, I am still subjected to it.

Again, morals are often associated with personal perceptions or beliefs.

Yes, but the influence of religion on those beliefs cannot be understated even among atheists.

If human civilization was starting out right now from year zero, and no religions had ever existed, it would not be possible to create a law banning murder.

Imagine, your whole argument (to people who have benefitted from murder, mind you) would be, "Guys, come on! It's wrong! I mean that objectively! It's so obvious!"

All human concepts of right and wrong come originally from religion.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Apologies, @Nicholas Gur, didn't see you there
If I missed anyone else, please speak up
hate it when Deep Thoughts OPs just open a thread and don't engage with it

The closest rules come to being binding are those that fall under the golden rule. Do unto others is generally universal, because the vast majority share the same fears or annoyances. Empathy is a learned behavior however, so if you had really poor parenting you lack the ability to consider if your behavior would negatively impact you if another person inflicted it onto you.

The golden rule, interestingly, comes much closer to the structure I'm asking about than most of the answers in the thread so far.
However, the way you've described it still seems to rely on shared psychology rather than bindingness. If the rule works because most people share similar fears and annoyances, then that explains why reciprocity norms (like the golden rule) spread and stabilize in societies. It becomes a very practical guideline for social life.
The issue is that this still depends on said psychological similarity and empathy. That is, a person can understand perfectly well that others dislike being harmed... and still choose to harm them because it benefits him.
In that case, the golden rule functions more like a social strategy, it works well for people who want cooperative relationships with others. But the question I made this thread for is stronger than that: what makes the rule binding even for someone who doesn't already accept the reciprocal principle?

---

Morals are derived from metaphysical principles like “flourishing” or “telos.” To put it very simply, saying something like “the purpose of the heart is to pump blood” is derived from the fact that the heart exists only to pump blood. A faulty heart is “lesser” because it does not fulfill its telos as a pumper of blood as well as a “healthy” heart. “Healthy” here smuggles in the normative value that it is good to fulfill your telos, therefore a heart that pumps blood is preferable to a heart that fails to pump blood. Once you have a recognition of that primary value, that flourishing is of a higher aesthetic order than withering and faltering, other norms can follow. It is good to care for your heart. It is good to heal a heart that is sick. This is all agnostic of our individual notions, because the purpose of a heart would exist irrespective of our preferences. The metaphysical concept of “flourishing” is therefore an objective quality of reality.

Materialism has wrought this modern dilemma because you cannot have any ethical standards without metaphysics, something materialism explicitly denies. It’s even worse than that though, because you can’t even have boundaries between true and false without making metaphysical claims about epistemology.

The first reply I've read in this thread that actually makes an attempt to ground normativity rather than explaining enforcement or psychology.
I know this line of reasoning well because it's neo-Aristotelian. Unfortunately, even neo-Aristotelianism or teleological natural law fails to solve the problem that I've raised in the opening post.
Consider the heart example you gave. Organs can perform their biological function well, or they can do it poorly. A heart that fails to pump blood is defective relative to that function. That descriptive fact, however, does not yet yield moral normativity. All it does is tell us how the organ functions, and it doesn't tell why fulfilling a function is categorically binding.
Now when you say that fulfilling one's telos is good, and that flourishing is preferable to withering, that is where the normative step appears. And the issue is that this premise is not derived from the heart example itself, rather it is introduced.
So even if flourishing is objective in some metaphysical sense, the question remains the same: what makes flourishing normatively authoritative in the first place? Put differently, why does the fact that something has a telos make fulfillment of that telos binding, rather than merely describable as proper functioning?

---

Nothing. Non-religious people are only bound by social and legal pressure.

For example, murder is morally wrong. It's also illegal. Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk, but he will never believe he did anything wrong. The only evidence that anyone disliked his decision, from his point of view, is legal and social backlash. That's all that keeps this man who believes he is a hero in jail.

I feel like you're arguing with me on the premise of, "But that would be really bad!"

Like, yeah, it's really bad.

See, what you're describing is that moral rules are binding for someone because they believe in a religious authority that issues said rules. Which explains why a believer accepts the rule, but it leaves the grounding step unchanged. Belief explains acceptance of the authority, it does not explain what makes the authority binding in the first place.
If someone doesn't share that belief, then under your structure, the rule has no binding force for them.

---

The example, or rather the evidence of its effectiveness is what conjures that rule into existence.

You do things in a specific way because you have been told and shown that they work.

Which explains why certain techniques or habits emerge. Like, once people see that a method reliably produces a desired outcome, they'll copy it. Medical practices, engineering techniques, athletic training, there's tons of examples for that.
However, that structure is still goal-dependent. Someone follows the rule because they want the outcome that the rule helps produce. If the goal goes away, the rule loses its force. A person who doesn't care about winning basketball games has no reason to practice good basketball technique.
The question in the thread is about a stronger claim. Most, if not all, moral philosophies present their rules as binding even for people who do not already share that goal. So I'm asking what makes (or can make) a rule binding in that stronger sense, rather than merely being a technique that works for achieving some goal.

---

What I described is exactly what makes them normative throughout human history. I don't even understand what you're looking for at this point.

Where do rules come from?
Why do people follow rules?
What makes rules normatively binding?
These are three different questions.
The first is the question of origin, which you answer with things like theology, customs, and legal impositions. The second is the question of enforcement or compliance. The third is the question of normativity, and that is the relevant question in this thread.
To list different ways that moral rules originate does not explain what makes them morally binding. That is, I'm looking for an answer that explains why violating a moral rule would actually be morally wrong, rather than merely punished, disliked, or prohibited.
If a rule is "binding" simply because it's enforced by a state, then any regime can make anything morally binding by decree. If a rule is "binding" because a community of people believes it, then morality reduces to cultural consensus and the question becomes anthropological rather than normative. If a rule is "binding" because a religion proclaims it, then the grounding lies in whatever makes that authority binding rather than merely asserted.
The question remains the same: what actually makes a moral rule binding in the first place?

---

I will give an imaginary framework to show how moral law may be proved. Consider the action of a man who had the moral rule of doing exactly what he intended. Doing what he did not intend was a wrong action. When interrogated by a detective about assaulting someone, he said, "My intention was to hit someone, therefore I hit someone." Here, and unlike most moralities conceived of, the intention which was really a passion proceeded the action, and was not a goal. Instead, its existence proved that hitting someone would be 'right' given his framework. However, the state and the detective saw intention within the action itself and declared him guilty.
The man's action was affirmed by the prior intention. As consequence, he proved his moral rule. The rule was not less binding than the state's law. Take away the action, and there was nothing to judge. Proof of no intention, or proof of no agency, would have meant contradiction, both of the man and the state, and therefore the man would have faced no consequence.
This man approached a simple framework of natural morality. The action was affirmed by a prior inclination towards some passion. Was his moral law true? No, not necessarily. It simply affirmed life. Proving truth was not the question (if it were, my answer would be different). Was his proof binding to a community? No, and that was not possible from such a simple example.

What you're showing is slightly different from what I'm asking about in the thread.
In your imaginary framework, the rule is essentially "do what I intend". If the man intends to hit someone, then hitting someone becomes right within that framework.
But that does not yield a moral rule. All it does is make the agent's intentions self-justifying. That is, under that structure, intending to help someone would be right, and intending to harm someone would be right as well. The rule therefore collapses into a description of behavior. "The man did what he intended to do."
And as you note at the end, the rule is not binding beyond the person who adopts it. It does not explain why anyone else would be bound by it, or why violating it would be morally wrong.
Which is why we return to the question I raised in the opening post. What actually makes a moral rule binding in the first place, rather than merely a personal rule that someone chooses to follow?

---

"With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

That's a scripture quote, isn't it? Regardless, what the quote states is a rule of reciprocity.
The question in this thread is what makes such a rule binding in the first place, rather than merely stated or enforced.

---

This is the part where I get lost.

Moral rules are usually presented differently than advice like "eat healthy" or "use proper basketball technique". That is, when someone says "do not murder", then what they typically mean isn't "um, excuse me, if you personally want a peaceful society, then do not murder, okay?" or "hey, if you happen to value human life, my man, then do not murder". Like, they present the rule as if it were binding regardless of what goals or preferences people have.
It is precisely this stronger claim that the thread is about. The question is what makes a rule binding even for someone who doesn't already share a goal.

 

[TyrasGuard]

It is precisely this stronger claim that the thread is about. The question is what makes a rule binding even for someone who doesn't already share a goal.

Nothing from a moral standpoint will ever make a rule "binding".

You don't really have a rule if you are only basing it on morals.

Morals are pretty much the explanation as to why we may or may not do something, the truly "binding" part are the consequences.

 

[Chongqing]

See, what you're describing is that moral rules are binding for someone because they believe in a religious authority that issues said rules. Which explains why a believer accepts the rule, but it leaves the grounding step unchanged. Belief explains acceptance of the authority, it does not explain what makes the authority binding in the first place.

It does! You just don't want to accept my answer.

Belief in religion, belief in the getting to heaven is a worthwhile goal and belief that following these rules will get them to heaven is what makes these rules binding. It has absolutely nothing to do with authority, which you are annoyingly fixated on.

If you're going to say that doesn't make it binding then you have to admit that you're being pedantic by giving a new definition to the word binding.

It feels like you're trying to stay one step ahead of everyone you're discussing this with by continuing to reframe what we're actually talking about.

I have edited this post to make it less rude.

 

[Nicholas Gur]

the question I made this thread for is stronger than that: what makes the rule binding even for someone who doesn't already accept the reciprocal principle

Honestly nothing. Unless you have an example of a universal rule that has never been broken? There are of course rules born out of self preservation, but occasionally someone will just decide they want to die and grab a live wire anyway. Its basically just rules of survival, rules of empathy, and rules of punishment avoidance.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Where do rules come from?
Why do people follow rules?
What makes rules normatively binding?
These are three different questions.
The first is the question of origin, which you answer with things like theology, customs, and legal impositions. The second is the question of enforcement or compliance. The third is the question of normativity, and that is the relevant question in this thread.
To list different ways that moral rules originate does not explain what makes them morally binding. That is, I'm looking for an answer that explains why violating a moral rule would actually be morally wrong, rather than merely punished, disliked, or prohibited.
If a rule is "binding" simply because it's enforced by a state, then any regime can make anything morally binding by decree. If a rule is "binding" because a community of people believes it, then morality reduces to cultural consensus and the question becomes anthropological rather than normative. If a rule is "binding" because a religion proclaims it, then the grounding lies in whatever makes that authority binding rather than merely asserted.
The question remains the same: what actually makes a moral rule binding in the first place?

I appreciate your questions and love intellectual discussion, but this is becoming way beyond the scope of a forum thread and my ability to respond timely, as well as review and cite relevant works. I only had a couple hours to kill waiting for some client work to come in but now I'm swamped.

Send me a DM and we can discuss this at a slower pace. I won't address your comments immediately but will acknowledge receipt.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

what makes such a rule binding in the first place

Self interest

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

 

[This User]

So you have nothing.

My gravitas is intact. Your izzat, not so much.

That's a cope commie. Pathici Agamemnon can't defend himself. How sad!

You have the reasoning and the language skills of a 2011 YouTube atheist. I think my job here is done.

 

[monk]

OP discovers moral relativism.

 

[This User]

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

A caution about how the word neighbor is used: neighbor in Hebrew translates to "rhea" and it's a very... nuanced concept, to put it nicely.

It's not about nearness or sharing a physical community. It's an in-group word that denotes peoples who are not Zara, meaning strange.