Moral rules aren't binding. A purely moral choice is a choice. Living in a society or being a part of some thing brings rules that you observe or pay some kind of price (whether materially or reputationally) (fluctuating depending on enforcement and/ or choice ); personal beliefs, ethics, and aims shape an individual's personal rules.
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.
That's sufficient to explain how norms arise and persist, but it would also mean that the term "moral" is not doing anything beyond describing preferences and enforcement.
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.
Second point, he is answering your question. The basis of all of this is religion.
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.
And like I said earlier, there are really only two possibilities
Either the rule is binding because capital-G God commands it, or the rule is binding because the command reflects something that is already binding independently of that command
And if it's the first, then morality depends entirely on the command. If capital-G God comes tomorrow and declares that wearing hats is forbidden, then wearing hats would become morally forbidden simply because of that decree. And if it's the second, then the command itself is not actually the thing that's grounding the rule, for the grounding would lie instead in whatever independent structure that makes the rule binding in the first place.
then acting morally facilitates the goal of going to heaven.
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.
So the question remains the same: what actually makes the rule morally binding?
I would think "binding" would be too strong a term to describe how personal goals or moral rules are enforced.
Yeah, that's a pitfall when using words that have different meanings dependent on context.
See, when I used examples like eating healthy or playing basketball, the point I was making is that they are goal-dependent. Like, if someone wants to become or remain healthy, then "eat healthy" is good advice. But if someone doesn't care about those goals, the advice no longer applies to them in any meaningful sense. The consequences you mention
If you do not eat healthy, goal notwithstanding, you run the risk of obesity and other negative side effects. If you don't practice good basketball techniques, your skills will regress for negligence.
are simply the natural outcomes of the choice, and not something that makes the choice morally wrong. As in, that's closer to prudence than it is to morality.
If you're talking about personal goals for yourself, the answer would be holding yourself accountable under your own free will and choices. You know the sayings "a man is as good as his word," or more aptly, "word is bound." If you cannot oblige to YOURSELF, how could you expect to be true to others?
That here is closer to a self-adopted code, rather than to a categorical moral rule. That is, if a rule is binding because a person chooses to adopt it, then the rule depends on that prior commitment. Someone who doesn't adopt that code would not be bound by it under that structure.
To clarify, the bindingness the central question of the thread is about is the stronger claim that's made by most moral philosophies.
For example, when a Kantian says "lying is wrong", they don't usually mean "don't lie if you personally chose honesty as your code". When a utilitarian says "reduce suffering", they don't usually mean "reduce suffering if you happen to care about reducing suffering". 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".
That is, these moral views are normally presented as binding in a sense that is stronger than prudence, preference, or a self-imposed commitment. And it's that stronger sense that I'm asking about. What makes a moral rule binding even for someone who doesn't already share the goal or commitment?
@Agamemnon Busmalis So you've answered the question not once, but three different ways that change the structure in incompatible ways.
At one moment, moral rules come from faith in God's decree. At another, they come from benefit to the community. At another, they come from the state force or successful enforcement. Not three versions of the same answer.
State force can explain how obedience is extracted, but it doesn't explain moral bindingness. A regime like the UK can enforce degrading or monstrous rules just fine.
Community benefit can explain why certain arrangements may be useful for flourishing or survival. But it doesn't explain why a person is categorically bound to serve that benefit in the first place. That is still prudence or teleology relative to an end.
Faith in divine command doesn't solve the problem either.
"God said it, I believe it, end of story"
is not something that grounds normativity, rather it's somebody declaring that they're stopping the inquiry at authority. Which immediately raises the question of what makes that authority binding rather than merely asserted.
What you described is three different
substitutes for grounding, namely force, usefulness, and authority. Force explains enforcement, usefulness explains advantage, and authority explains who issued the command.
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.
