rusmeister wrote:True, but this misses my point, which is about where we DO use reason.
I'm still waiting for a demonstration of that (where you DO use reason). You claim to use reason to deduce your morality (or a least judge your absolute standards, which amounts to the same thing), but I don't believe you actually do this. Your hesitancy to provide an example makes me even more dubious.
. . . 'better' is the comparative degree of the adjective 'good', and 'worse' is the comparative of 'bad', just as "the best" and "the worst" are the superlative degree. This is embedded in the language itself (just like "a lie" - ie, one of many, but "the truth" - the one and only truth). You'd have to rip out all of your uses of those words if you deny 'good' and 'bad'. IOW, you can't even make comparisons without acknowledging a standard which you are progressing either to or away from. Put another way, on a ruler the ends would be the extremes, the superlatives, the middle is the dividing line between good and evil (the positive degree of the adjective) and any shift in one direction or the other or a comparison between two points is the comparative. If there is no positive degree there can be no comparative or superlative.
Ergo, there are absolute standards, however much we may not like the idea. Otherwise we'll have to deny the use of superlatives. Until further notice you are forbidden to use adjectives.
I'll be watching your grammar!

You've got a smiley at the end, so I'm not sure how serious you are about this argument. My gut reaction is to say that it's silly, but I don't want to offend you if you're actually serious.
So, let's treat it seriously. Grammar doesn't dictate reality. You can't derive any "truth" about the world--much less something as fundamental as Absolute Standards--simply by the syntax of these sounds we humans make with our lips and tongues. Relations between
ideas cannot yield conclusions about
facts.
If we really could derive Absolute Standards merely from the structure of our language, then this "universal" technique ought to work for anything we talk about, right? Like music. We talk about music. We judge music. We certainly say some composers and songs are "better" than others. We certainly prefer some more than others. So does this use of "better" and "worse" imply some universal standard? You say:
You'd have to rip out all of your uses of those words if you deny 'good' and 'bad'. IOW, you can't even make comparisons without acknowledging a standard which you are progressing either to or away from.
So according to this argument, we either have to admit that there's a universal standard which musical quality either progresses towards or recedes away from--or we must "rip out all uses of those words" to describe music. In other words, we couldn't judge some music as better or worse than other music. But this is clearly not the case. I know without a doubt that I like jazz fusion more than I like country music. In the scales of my preferences, there is no way they are equal. So how do you account for the fact that I can value one more than the other without a universal standard to judge them?
There is no musical standard. There is
no way to say that a piece of music is better than others
in an absolute sense. There are only personal preferences. And though I can explain my preferences with justifications such as: "I prefer the improvisational complexity of jazz over the simplistic, repetitive, jingoistic twang of country," there is nothing universally better about my criteria. Other people can like simplistic music, and there's nothing I could say to prove my opinion had more worth. Simplicity
can be beautiful.
But according to your linguistic argument, we can't talk about music with these comparatives, since there is no universal standard.
Which is why I say you can't possibly be serious about this argument. I don't expect you to suddenly give up your favorite music, or the way you talk about it.
Or, as Kant said:
logical necessity does not necessitate existence.
Or, as Hume said:
"All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic ... [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing."
Relations of ideas (e.g. logic and grammar) cannot be used to "derive" matters of fact. When you assert that there are absolute standards by which objects or actions in the world can be judged in virtue of their "participation in" or their "deviation from" these standards, you're asserting a matter of fact in the world.
And that's your fundamental problem. Moral judgments aren't
in the world. They are "
in our heads." Moral judgments aren't
facts. They are
opinions. They don't exist objectively in the world; they exist subjectively in our preferences. A man is
objectively 6'1", dark haired, 225 pounds. But he is only
subjectively good or bad. Moral worth doesn't exist like a physical characteristic. It ONLY "exists" in as much as a person judges him. And this judgment most certainly does NOT require some absolute standard, no more than judging music requires an absolute standard. This absolute standard doesn't exist as a fact. It exists as a confused grammatical understanding . . . in other words: an ambiguous, problematic
concept in your mind.
And
that is point on which our debate hinges. The reason why you think there are absolute standards is because you (incorrectly) think that morality is an
inherent quality of people (inherent in their souls, perhaps?), while I think that moral worth is only "in the eye of the beholder." I'm not merely saying that morality is subjective--i.e. judged individually--I'm also saying that it's an opinion
imposed upon a person, rather than an inherent quality we
discover in a person. You, on the other hand, think that moral worth is in the person, and travels with them wherever they go, regardless if there's anyone around to judge them. In fact, you think this inherent quality "sticks" with them, so much so that they can be judged in the Afterlife based on this quality.
However, your position relies upon imaginary, created fictions: a soul to "carry" the moral-worth-quality, and a God who constantly sees this quality even when no one else is around to judge it. Your position doesn't rely upon reason. It relies upon fictional concepts and mythology. There's nothing logical about it. I keep inviting you to prove this statement wrong, but you abstain. (You grammar argument doesn't count. Grammar is another human creation.)