Morality and Subjectivity

There you use "perceive logically." In Message 1, you wrote, of moral rules, that "they have no logical grounds." In Message 16, you wrote "but I see no logical justification for this belief, if one is an atheist."I'm not sure what you mean by "logical" in any of those statements. It "logical" merely some adornment you are adding to your sentences, with no apparent reason for adding it?Logic is the application of rules of inference to assumed premises. The grounding is provided by the premises, not by the logic. To say something is grounded in logic, would seem to say that it has no grounding whatsoever.Mathematics is grounded in the assumed axioms, not in logic. We use logic as a tool for doing mathematics, but we don't expect it to provide grounding. Morality is grounded in the shared assumptions of a society. We may use logic, applied to moral rules, to deduce implications. But the moral rules are not grounded in anything other than the shared assumptions of the society.

I am questioning your use of "logical".From the point of view of logic, both can be equated. In either case there are some rules that originate outside of logic, and to which logic is applied.I suppose that they could be equated in other ways. Mathematical axioms are somewhat arbitrary. In practice, mathematicians only study axiom systems that are "interesting". The choice of axioms is pragmatic. For moral rules, I would say that those too, are somewhat arbitrary (why is the speed limit 55, instead of 54 or 56?). The choice of moral rules is also pragmatic - they are determined so that we can have a smoothly running society.

Good question. Perhaps robinrohan should comment. I was using the term "moral rules" that he introduced to the discussion. If you are going to distinguish between morality and laws, then I would say that it is the laws that are rules, while morality is not rules-based. A connection - sure. But the connection is not one of identity.

This is getting way off-topic. But I'll comment anyway. As a mathematician, why am I unaware of this "fundemental result?"I'll suggest that what is involved is more a matter of the practice of mathematicians. If one axiom can be proved from others, then that axiom is removed. It's a choice to have minimalistic axiom sets. Sure. In fact, any false statement is unprovable. I think you meant to say that there are undecidable statements (Goedel's incompleteness theorem).

Become a mathematician. In mathematics you can have certainty. In real life, you cannot.