Objective morality: how would it affect your judgement/actions?

[Edwardo Piet]

This is mainly aimed at people who believe that "objective morality" is a coherent concept, and that there can be some sorts of statements about it which are independent of all opinion. I'll let each person approach it with whatever definition of morality they want.

Alright then.

Let's say you discovered that you are incorrect about some position you currently hold. You have concluded so far that, "A is a moral/immoral action, under circumstances C". Add whatever other caveats you like. Now imagine that you have access to "moral facts" somehow, and that it shows the opposite to be true.

Okay.

Which of your positions would you be willing to reverse? Would you now act differently, and judge others acting that way differently?

I'd hope that I'd put into practice the moral facts I had discovered.

Personally, I don't care about any such "facts", as I feel it would represent nothing more than some specific way of evaluating actions. Without a supporting argument as to why I should change my position by adopting this system, I won't be changing my actions or my judgements. I don't see it as a factual matter.

Well since I define objective morality as "At the very least not causing people to suffer needlessly" then when I change my position on a particular action it would merely mean that I had reason to believe that an action would cause more suffering than I had previously thought, when I had previously thought another action instead caused more suffering. I don't see any problem here. It's just facts about what causes the least suffering.

Objective morality matters because you can, for instance, say that the genital mutilation of females in another culture is wrong and immoral... period. And it's not just a matter of "I don't personally like it" or "in this culture it's immoral but in theirs it's fine". or "in my opinion it's horrible but there is no fact of the matter so my assertion that it is immoral is completely meaningless."

This is the problem with subjective morality. Why the hell should anyone listen to anyone who says such things are immoral if they're full on admitting that their opinion is the moral equivalent of them not liking the taste of Marmite?

I think the mere idea that female genital mutilation isn't objectively morally wrong is objectively morally wrong in itself. There's a big difference to saying there's a fact of the matter that such and such thing is immoral and saying that it's immoral "because God says so".