Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[vulcanlogician]

But the point is that IF morality is objective THEN we can make coherent statements about it using logic. We can have the debate about whether autonomy, wellbeing, desire satisfaction (etc.) is essential to morality using a logical framework. Otherwise, it would all boil down to subjectivity... one's personal tastes... one's cultural assumptions etc. Ethicists like to think that they are talking about something real when they do moral philosophy. Ask a utilitarian (like Peter Singer) if he thinks he is merely supplying opinions on morality.

One sort of "proof" that there are moral facts is that every branch of ethics suffers from problems. Philosophers all agree that there is no "one brand" of ethics that is not problematic, even proponents of specific ethical theories admit that their own theory has problems. If it was a matter of opinion, they could just be like "fuck off, this is the way I like my ethics." But that's not how it is. There are plenty of "tests" of moral facts in ethics. But nothing like science. They are more tests of logical coherence and/or departure from our intuitions.

Of course, philosophy is all about questioning things, and "are morals objectively real at all?" is a question that some have asked. Philosophy has room for moral realists and moral skeptics. I respect the moral skeptic's position, even though I'm a realist. There are good arguments on both sides.

There will be people who don’t agree, but calling them factually wrong is of no practical use whatsoever, as well as being inaccurate.

From where I'm coming from, I'm not trying to be of 'practical use' when I posit that morality is objective. I'm coming at the question like a philosopher, that is, somebody who is trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality. We can do "practical good" whether or not we agree on this one philosophical point. That's not the issue. The issue is: what is true?  Is morality objective or not?

[The Grand Nudger]

So we are discussing wellbeing then, and that’s a given? Like I said, this is a narrow subset of what I would more generally describe as morality. Of course we can make factual statements about how actions affect wellbeing, at least in a vague sense, since wellbeing is not easy to define.

So all we’ve done, just like I said, is to skip the initial value-setting step. We’ve been prescribed values.

Does moral realism only concern itself with this branch of morality then, or does it apply to any value set? If it applies to any values, then we're back to deciding which are the best values, which is entirely circular.

I'd say that it's a given of all moral systems, sure, but I only used it as an example, and I can, ofc, elaborate on why I consider it a given...but it doesn't have to be.  Moral realism isn't a branch of anything, as I mentioned before.  It's fundamental to what we're talking about.  Any and every moral system either makes objective moral statements, or it does not.  

I might have identified why moral realism sounds like presup apologetics. I think that's because it is.

If you consider "wrong" or "immoral", they are just words. They have no inherent specific meaning that correlates with reality. They are commonly used in highly subjective ways.

If we want to make scientific statements and determine facts, we need to define our terms very specifically. What does "wrong" mean? It means whatever we say it does, for the terms of the discussion. There’s no way I can demonstrate that some particular kind of outcome is wrong, without first defining "wrong" to include that kind of outcome. In this way, it’s entirely circular. Or we just make emotional appeals, which are of course invalid in scientific discussion.

If we say "wrong" has to be about wellbeing, for whatever reason, then fine. But it hasn’t been demonstrated that wellbeing is wrong in the general sense, just by defining it this way; that would entirely be an equivocation. "Doing bad things to wellbeing is factually wrong, because that’s how I’m defining wrong" is a tautology. It doesn’t tell me anything about reality. It just shows personal biases, although perfectly understandable ones.

So a statement can be true, given certain assumptions and definitions, but that doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily established any kind of fact about reality. There’s always this looming assumption that wrong means "wrong for human society", because that’s all that apparently matters. You either admit this assumption to be the case, and so you have done nothing but slip in your own values by definition; or else you have to start from scratch and define "wrong" in more general terms, and somehow equate that with human society. In the latter case, you’ve still only shown something is wrong within the restrictions of your definition.

Try these instead, virtue, deontology, and consequentialist;

Doing factual harmful things to a meaningfully objective wellbeing is morally wrong.  

Factually failing to satisfy a meaningfully objective duty is morally wrong.

Factually yielding an objectively negative consequence is morally wrong.

In any case, yes, a trivial statement can be made given certain assumptions and definitions but unless that statement accurately models reality this isn't the sort of statement that a moral realist is talking about - and in this way an objective moral statement is precisely the same as an objectively descriptive statement from mathematics.  Yes, there are certainly things true -of the system-, there are ways to play with theoretical units to yield a proof that has no bearing on reality.  If this erodes the credible of the notion of objective morality, it erodes the credibility of objectively true and descriptive statements derived through mathematics.  I'm not saying that it's not a problem..only noting that if it's a problem..it's a problem for alot more than moral statements.

"Wrong for human society" isn't a necessary assumption of every moral statement.  I can give you an example for each of the three above that has nothing whatsoever to do with a society.  However, if we're discussing community ethics, then "wrong for society" must be included, whatever that is, because it's -community- ethics.  In that case it's not an assumption, it's a necessary variable of the thing being considered.  In either case, the judgements can either be meaningfully objective, or not.  

Coming back to the length and ruler analogy:

We agree on just a few different types of rulers because it has practical value to do so. But even if we all used our own rulers, it would still work because we’d have conversion rates between all our rulers. We're determining how many of a unit of our choice go into an objective length.

With morality, we're all using our own "moral rulers" to assess a particular action. There is no conversion rate between them, and no utility in trying to pick just a few. This is because, as I see it, it's not a fact about reality that is being "measured" in the first place here. It’s a subjective assessment of an action. We come up with a kind of "society ruler" as a compromise; no such compromise is needed with length, because there is a fact at the heart of the matter. Neither does the length shift as society changes.

If there is a correct moral assessment, then I’m certainly not trying to achieve it, because I see that as utterly meaningless. On the other hand, once we’ve agreed a set of values, our rulers become much more closely aligned. Before that point, they needn’t have any relation to each other.

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PS: I don’t even use the same ruler all the time anyway. I use adjusted ones depending on who is doing the action, and what I could reasonably expect from them.

I'd suggest The Moral Calculus, or The Geometry of Desert.  You might be surprised how much conversion there is between us, even when we're all using our own rulers.  This is one of the things that moral realists point to when establishing the basics of "what we're talking about" when we discuss moral things.  Not all systems have identical content, not all systems have identical units of measure.  Not all systems have equivalent evaluative variables - but..it;s contended by moral realists, all moral systems have at least some common loci, areas of consideration or focus.  One of those rulers is wellbeing because we find wellbeing referred to in things as disparate as secular utiliatarian consequentialist ethics..and divine command theory.  A moral realist doesn't have to accept the specifics of any given system as being representative..but they would note that the people using those systems are -trying- to come up with a representative description of many of the same x's.  I'll note, here, that the applicability of objective systems is that they present the opportunity to give us a more accurate picture of the nature of those things x, and in so doing give us a means -other than our bare opinions- to compare any two moral x's in relation to each other or ourselves.  

Language is very tricky here. Maybe it would be easier to say that there are truths about reality. So then scientifically speaking, a fact is something that appears to represent a truth about reality, beyond reasonable doubt. Facts are determined by testing falsifiable hypotheses.

Our facts are necessarily going to be some sort of partial approximation of truths. The scientific goal is to approach the truth as closely as possible. Language is again tricky and very important. There will presumably be infinitely many truths out there. If we want to refer to any particular ones, we need to be highly specific. Words alone do not carry enough specificity to identify them. The words need to be part of some methodology.

This is all fairly straightforward and apparent in practice, with things like length.

You might be oversimplifying the interesting history and ticks of length, here.....

The failure of anyone to ever come up with a "moral fact" that gets accepted in the same way length does speaks volumes to me. It’s not a methodology. It’s a very vague notion, with loaded overtones. You can’t just say, "There might be moral facts" and expect that to actually highlight some truths in any kind of meaningful way. You might as well say, "There could be bibbly wibbly facts". If we don’t have a precise method and are just appealing to emotion, biases and general trends in our evolution, we may as well be talking bibblies.

The US still hasn't accepted metric, ergo metric is not a fact.  No one can come up with a single system of measurement that everyone agrees to, therefore measurement is subjective.  

Moral facts are not a vague notion, there are no loaded overtones.  You're investing the concept with those issues.  Whether moral statements describe some aspect of reality, rather than the aspects of our personalities and opinions..is, I think...highlighting some potentially true thing in a meaningful way.  

So that’s where I’m at, for the 1.5 people who made it this far (including me). Science is an attempt to remove biases and subjectivity as far as possible, and it works. We deduce facts which are actionable. If you try and remove the biases and subjectivity from morality, you’re either left with nothing, or vague statements about human behaviour. I might as well add that I find consequentialism hopelessly simplistic anyway, which moral realism seems to rely on, and I would expect a realist to abandon it pretty quickly outside of extremely simple scenarios. And simple is what they are. It’s still trying to establish that "rape rather than no rape is objectively wrong", and failing in my opinion, after all this time. While subjectivitsts (or whatever we call ourselves) simply agree that we value wellbeing, and that rape is bad for wellbeing, job done. There will be people who don’t agree, but calling them factually wrong is of no practical use whatsoever, as well as being inaccurate.

b-mine

Moral realism doesn't rely on consequentialism.  Consequentialist moral theories either are..or aren't..meaningfully objective.  All moral statements either are, or aren't, objective.  It's fundamental.  A moral realist, for their part, would at least consider those objective moral statements (wherever they found them) to have greater weight in moral calculus.  A moral realist might affirm the basic validity of a subjective moral statement as a part of a useful system - but insist on the primacy of objective moral statements when they come into conflict with subjective ones.

So, say, you believe in slicing off clits cuz god said so and that's right?  Those in command of facts counter that it is harmful, and non beneficial and that's wrong.  There is no reason other than your subjective beliefs to slice off clits.  There is every objective reason not to slice off clits.  To whom should our moral policies defer?  Really consider for a moment..when you're making this determination..that you are (both) implicitly endorsing what you take to be objective moral statements.  Our moral intuitions inform us of things being right or wrong not as matters of our own opinion, but as matters of some fact about x.  This example shows that our moral intuitions can be wrong (only one of the two statements above can be true, but both can be false).....and it also shows that we make pronouncements and live our lives as if things were "really right" or "really wrong".  

Say that you counter that if you don't slice clits, this will be harmful to you and god will punish you and/or the little girl (which is the underlying basis of these godasaidsos each and every time). You've just assumed the metrics of the opposing viewpoint..and a survey of what has happened to girls with their clits sliced and not sliced can be arranged to determine whether or not that statement is objectively true. If it isn't..and the opposing statement is, clit slicing is (rationally) DOA from a moral realists pov. The only way to begin to rescue clit slicing is to demonstrate that god exists and really will skullfuck somebody for failing to do so - that harm will follow failure...but this only kicks the can...because we can then ask ourselves whether or not the commandment is objectively good. It's not clear that following an evil commandment for practical gain is morally righteous. It's commonly contended otherwise.

The skeptics task is to give us reason to assume that things aren't as they seem. Not to tell us that some specific moral statement, axiom, or system is false - that would not only be objectivism...moral realists explicitly contend that this is so.  Not to question the applicability, usefulness, or agreement of people.  I have a yellow broom.  How is this fact applicable to you?  Of what use is this fact?  Will everyone agree that I have a yellow broom?  The yellow broom skeptic wastes their time asking these questions. If the yellow broom skeptic tells me I don't have a yellow broom..they have denied the accuracy of my broom based statement but assumed the validity of the underlying objective schema. A pyrrhic victory.

The only way for the skeptic to make cogent case is to establish to some standard that the moral statement, system, or axiom is meaningfully subjective. Neither right nor wrong...-incapable- of being right or wrong, in it's purport to external content....but here's the real kicker on that one. If you competently made that case with some specific moral x, a moral realist would say "hey, nice job, thanks for spotting that for me, I'm going to scrub it out of my moral system and/or massively devalue it". Human beings aren't entirely rational actors, and we make mistakes.

Meanwhile, if a moral realist can bring the clit slicer above around to the fact that his beliefs about what god said are meaningfully subjective and the nature of the act of clit slicing is meaningfully objectively - that is the point from which you can begin to suggest that they stop slicing clits. Hey, they might still do it..sure. You can drop facts on people all day...we're highly resistant....but think of any other area where you would find yourself saying "I think that facts are meaningless and have no utility".

Now, to end with the bolded bit. You're only a subjectivist if you think that rape being bad for wellbeing is a matter of personal opinion. That, if your opinion were different, rape would or could be good for wellbeing.

Do you think that's the case? Do you think that something about the act of rape changes based upon our varying opinions, and that none of these competing hypothetical opinions could lay claim to being true or false, or more or less accurate, than the others?

[vulcanlogician]

Rob, I'd like you to watch the following video when you get a minute. It's an interesting video on its own merits, but I'd like you to keep in mind our debate about "Is morality real and objective?" in mind while you listen to the debate concerning "Is math real and objective?" There are parallels between the fictionalist view and moral skepticism. 

Fictionalism postulates that math is practically useful, yet says that math does not make factual statements. Sound familiar? You postulate something very similar with your notion that the idea of wellbeing is something that is useful for you and I to achieve our subjective goals, but that morality itself is not an objective endeavor.

The point is, most people reject mathematical fictionalism. They think that mathematical statements do have truth value. But they can't fully make the case that numbers exist. I think the same phenomenon transpires when people say that moral statements can have no truth value.

[Belacqua]

A lengthy and detailed critique of Sam Harris's work here:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/b...reasonable

[robvalue]

Rob, I'd like you to watch the following video when you get a minute. It's an interesting video on its own merits, but I'd like you to keep in mind our debate about "Is morality real and objective?" in mind while you listen to the debate concerning "Is math real and objective?" There are parallels between the fictionalist view and moral skepticism. 

Fictionalism postulates that math is practically useful, yet says that math does not make factual statements. Sound familiar? You postulate something very similar with your notion that the idea of wellbeing is something that is useful for you and I to achieve our subjective goals, but that morality itself is not an objective endeavor.

The point is, most people reject mathematical fictionalism. They think that mathematical statements do have truth value. But they can't fully make the case that numbers exist. I think the same phenomenon transpires when people say that moral statements can have no truth value.

Sure, I get what you’re saying, but there’s an awful lot of problems comparing maths to morality. There isn’t just one mathematical system, for a start. There are infinitely many. Which one is "correct"? They can all be correct within themselves, but that's all you can say. Which ones have the most practical applications, is a more apt question. This depends on what you’re trying to achieve. We're back to the same circular problem as with morality. If you’re trying to achieve one thing with maths and I’m trying to achieve another, then asking which is the correct system to use is meaningless.

I answered the rest of the questions in the numbers thread, especially concerning the video

(You also seem to have admitted that an agreement upon wellbeing as being a desired outcome is necessary before you can even begin to talk about comparing moral systems. You need to agree some sort of outcome or you’re talking about different things.)

[vulcanlogician]

(You also seem to have admitted that an agreement upon wellbeing as being a desired outcome is necessary before you can even begin to talk about comparing moral systems. You need to agree some sort of outcome or you’re talking about different things.)

I say we talk about math in the other thread. In regards to wellbeing, to me wellbeing is but one component of morality. I am an ethical pluralist. But that has no bearing whatsoever on the debate about moral objectivity. I could be wrong. That's what I was trying to tell you before. A lot of people get their facts wrong. That doesn't change the reality that there are still facts in the first place.

Because it is such a good example let's look at a basic scientific fact: the earth revolves around the sun. Some flat earther dude might say, "No, man. The sun revolves around the earth." So here we have a disagreement about facts. This is fine. These sorts of things happen all the time. But you would agree, wouldn't you, that one of us is right and the other wrong?

Now what if somebody said, "There are no scientific facts. Whether the earth revolves around the sun or the other way around depends on your subjective vantage point. If someone is on the earth, it would be true for them to say that the sun revolves around the earth. But for someone in outer space it would be true to say the earth revolves around the sun because that's how it would look from their perspective. You see... it's all subjective."

To this person I would say, "No, it isn't subjective. Regardless of your perspective or subjective vantagepoint, the earth revolves around the sun. If you say that the sun revolves around the earth, you are incorrect."

Now, what if this person said, "No, no. You are assuming the 'outer space' perspective from the outset. That's why you think it's objective." He would more-or-less be accusing me of trying to say my subjective view is "objective" when it is not. He might say that the only reason I think that it is objectively true that the earth revolves around the sun is that I am using the "framework" of the outer space perspective under which it becomes true (within that framework) that the earth revolves around the sun. It is only true under these conditions which I have established with my own prejudices.

How should I answer this person?

[robvalue]

A statement like, "the earth revolves around the sun" is too vague in itself to constitute a scientific fact. "The earth follows the pattern of a system of other planets all making their own roughly equidistant orbits around the sun" would be more scientific. The thing is, most people know this is what you mean by the first statement, but you haven’t actually said it. The same is kind of true with morality. People assume others "basically know what it’s about" without actually staying what it’s about.

I see this a lot, an implied parallel with scientific facts. What I don’t get is examples of how this applies to morality. It is just assumed that there are facts, without any demonstration of how this can be so, or what these facts would even represent. Are they approximations of truths about reality (scientific facts)? Or are they merely axiomatic internal truths such as with mathematics?

If I don’t value wellbeing at all, for example, am I excluded from the conversation? If not, how can any fact apply to me and you at the same time?

---

PS: there must be a meta-system which values whether valuing wellbeing is a good thing.

[vulcanlogician]

If I don’t value wellbeing at all, for example, am I excluded from the conversation? If not, how can any fact apply to me and you at the same time?

---

PS: there must be a meta-system which values whether valuing wellbeing is a good thing.

No. You are not excluded from the conversation. Immanuel Kant did not value wellbeing and he was a moral objectivist. Sam Harris does. If the two were to debate, the debate would be over who has their moral facts correct. Kant would say Harris is wrong. He would say Harris doesn't have his facts right. No contradictory facts can apply at the same time. That's what all debates in ethics are about.

[robvalue]

So you’re saying it’s either factually correct or incorrect to value wellbeing? If so, is this axiomatically true, or a scientific fact?

[vulcanlogician]

Most systems of morality are based on axiomatic truths. For instance the hedonist says pleasure and happiness are moral goods. If pressed to explain why pleasure and happiness are good, a hedonist will say that it is self-evident that they are. Ethical disputes, however, use logical discourse. One may object to the hedonists claim that happiness is self-evidently good by providing a counter example--- Would you want to abandon the life you have now and hook yourself up to a machine that supplied you with endless amounts of pleasure and happiness? No? Then, the opponent of hedonism would conclude, you either don't want the most good for yourself, or goodness cannot be boiled down to pleasure and happiness. This sort of thing is the bread and butter of ethics (once you accept the premise that there are moral facts).

I found this for you. Please read it when you have time/motivation. It makes the case for moral facts better than I can. It's quite a light and pleasant read, as far as philosophy goes.

---

Why I am an Objectivist about Ethics (And Why You Are, Too)
by David Enoch


You may think that you're a moral relativist or subjectivist - many people today seem to. But I don't think you are. In fact, when we start doing metaethics - when we start, that is, thinking philosophically about our moral discourse and practice - thoughts about morality's objectivity become almost irresistible. Now, as is always the case in philosophy, that some thoughts seem irresistible is only the starting point for the discussion, and under argumentative pressure we may need to revise our relevant beliefs. Still, it's important to get the starting points right. So it's important to understand the deep ways in which rejecting morality's objectivity are unappealing. What I want to do, then, is to highlight the ways in which accepting morality's objectivity is appealing, and to briefly address some common worries about it, worries that may lead some to reject - or to think they reject - such objectivity. In the final section, I comment on the (not obvious) relation between the underlying concerns about morality's objectivity and the directions in which current discussion in metaethics are developing. As it will emerge, things are not (even) as simple as the discussion below seems to suggest. This is just one reason why metaethics is so worth doing.
Why Objectivity? Three (Related) Reasons
In the next section we're going to have to say a little more about what objectivity is. But sometimes it's helpful to start by engaging the underlying concerns, and return to more abstract, perhaps conceptual, issues later on.
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1.1 The Spinach Test
Consider the following joke (which I borrow from Christine Korsgaard): A child hates spinach. He then reports that he's glad he hates spinach. To the question "Why?" he responds: "Because if I liked it, I would have eaten it; and it's yucky!".
In a minute we're going to have to annoyingly ask why the joke is funny. For now, though, I want to highlight the fact that similar jokes are not always similarly funny. Consider, for instance, someone who grew up in the twentieth-century West, and who believes that the earth revolves around the sun. Also, she reports to be happy she wasn't born in the Middle Ages, "because had I grown up in the Middle Ages, I would have believed that the earth is in the center of the universe, and that belief is false!".
To my ears, the joke doesn't work in this latter version (try it on your friends!). The response in the earth-revolves-around-the-sun case sounds perfectly sensible, precisely in a way in which the analogous response does not sound sensible in the spinach case.
We need one last case. Suppose someone grew up in the US in the late twentieth century, and rejects any manifestation of racism as morally wrong. He then reports that he's happy that that's when and where he grew up, "because had I grown up in the 18th century, I would have accepted slavery and racism. And these things are wrong!" How funny is this third, last version of the joke? To my ears, it's about as (un)funny as the second one, and nowhere nearly as amusing as the first. The response to the question in this last case (why he is happy that he grew up in the 20th century)
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seems to me to make perfect sense, and I suspect it makes sense to you too. And this is why there's nothing funny about it.
OK, then, why is the spinach version funny and the others are not? Usually, our attitude towards our own likings and dislikings (when it comes to food, for instance) is that it's all about us. If you don't like spinach, the reason you shouldn't have it is precisely that you don't like it. So if we're imagining a hypothetical scenario in which you do like it, then you no longer have any reason not to eat it. This is what the child in the first example gets wrong: He's holding fixed his dislike for spinach, even in thinking about the hypothetical case in which he likes spinach. But because these issues are all about him and what he likes and dislikes, this makes no sense.
But physics is different: What we want, believe or do – none of this affects the earth’s orbit. The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is just not about us at all. So it makes sense to hold this truth fixed even when thinking about hypothetical cases in which you don't believe it. And so it makes sense to be happy that you aren’t in the Middle Ages, since you’d then be in a situation in which your beliefs abut the earth’s orbit would be false (even if you couldn’t know that it is). And because this makes sense, the joke isn't funny.
And so we have the spinach test: About any relevant subject matter, formulate an analogue of the spinach joke. If the joke works, this seems to indicate that the subject matter is all about us and our responses, our likings and dislikings, our preferences, and so on. If the joke doesn't work, the subject matter is much more objective than that, as in the astronomy case. And when we apply the spinach test to a
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moral issue (like the moral status of racism), it seems to fall squarely on the objective side.
(Exercise: Think about your taste in music, and formulate the spinach test for it. Is the joke funny?)
1.2 Disagreement and Deliberation
We sometimes engage in all sorts of disagreements. Sometimes, for instance, we may engage in a disagreement about even such silly things as whether bitter chocolate is better than milk chocolate. Sometimes we disagree about such things as whether human actions influence global warming. But these two kinds of disagreement are very different. One way of seeing this is thinking about what it feels like from the inside to engage in such disagreements. In the chocolate case, it feels like stating one's own preference, and perhaps trying to influence the listener into getting his own preferences in line. In the global warming case, though, it feels like trying to get at an objective truth, one that is there anyway, independently of our beliefs and preferences. (Either human actions contribute to global warming, or they don't, right?)
And so another test suggests itself, a test having to do with what it feels like to engage in disagreement (or, as we sometimes say, with the phenomenology of disagreement).
But now think of some serious moral disagreement - about the moral status of abortion, say. Suppose, then, that you are engaged in such disagreement. (It's important to imagine this from the inside, as it were - don't imagine looking from the outside at
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two people arguing over abortion; think what it's like to be engaged in such argument yourself, if not about abortion, then about some other issue you care deeply about). Perhaps you think that there is nothing wrong with abortion, and you're arguing with someone who thinks that abortion is morally wrong. What does such disagreement feel like? In particular, does it feel more like disagreeing over which chocolate is better, or like disagreeing over factual matters, like whether human actions contribute to global warming?
Because this question is a phenomenological one (that is, it's about what something feels like from the inside), I can't answer this question for you. You have to think about what it feels like for you when you are engaged in moral disagreement. But I can say that in my case such moral disagreement feels exactly like the one about global warming - it's about an objective matter of fact, that exists independently of us and our disagreement. It is in no way like disagreeing over the merits of different kinds of chocolate. And I think I can rather safely predict that this is how it feels for you too.
So on the phenomenology-of-disagreement test as well, morality seems to fall on the objective side.
In fact, we may be able to take disagreement out of the picture entirely. Suppose there is no disagreement - perhaps because you're all by yourself trying to make your mind about what to do next. In one case, you're thinking about what kind of chocolate to get. In another, you're choosing between buying a standard car and a somewhat more expensive hybrid car (whose effect on global warming, if human actions contribute to global warming, is less destructive). Here too there's a difference: In the
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first case, you seem to be asking questions about yourself and what you like more (in general, or right now). In the second case, you need to make up your mind about your own action, of course, but you're asking yourself questions about objective matters of fact that do not depend on you at all - in particular, about whether human actions affect global warming.
Now consider a third case, in which you're tying to make up your mind about having an abortion, or advising a friend who is considering an abortion. So you're wondering whether abortion is wrong. Does it feel like asking about your own preferences, or like an objective matter of fact? Is it more like the chocolate case or like the hybrid car case? If, like me, you answer that it's much more like the hybrid car case, then you think, like me, that the phenomenology of deliberation too indicates that morality is objective.
(Exercise: think about your taste in music again. In terms of the phenomenology of disagreement and deliberation, is it on the objective side?)
1.3 Would It Still Have Been Wrong If...?
Top hats are out of fashion. This may be an interesting, perhaps even practically relevant, fact - it may, for instance, give you reason to wear a top hat (if you want to be special) or not to (if not). But think about the following question: Had our fashion practices been very different - had we all worn top hats, thought they were cool, and so on - would it still have been true that top hats are out of fashion? The answer, it seems safe to assume, is "no".
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Smoking causes cancer. This is an interesting, practically relevant, fact - it most certainly gives you a reason not to smoke, or perhaps to stop smoking. Now, had our relevant practices and beliefs regarding smoking been different - had we been ok with it, had we not banned it, had we thought smoking was actually quite harmless - would it still have been true that smoking causes cancer? I take it to be uncontroversial that the answer is "yes". The effects of smoking on our health do not depend on our beliefs and practices in anything like the way in which the fashionability of top hats does. Rather, it is an objective matter of fact.
And so we have a third objectivity test: One in terms of the relevant “what if” sentences (or counterfactuals, as they are often called), such as "Had our beliefs and practices been very different, would it still have been true that so-and-so?". Let's apply this test to morality, then.
Gender-based discrimination is wrong. I hope you agree with me on this (if you don't, replace this with a moral judgment you're rather confident in). Would it still have been wrong had our relevant practices and beliefs been different? Had we been all for gender-based discrimination, would that have made gender-based discrimination morally acceptable? Of course, in such a case we would have believed that there's nothing wrong with gender-based discrimination. But would it be wrong? To me it seems very clear that the answer is "Yes!" Gender-based discrimination is just as wrong in a society where everyone believes it's morally permissible. (This, after all, is why we would want such a society to change, and why, if we are members, we would fight for reform.) The problem in such a society is precisely that its members miss something so
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important - namely, the wrongness of gender-based discrimination. Had we thought gender-based discrimination was okay, we would have been mistaken. The morality of such discrimination does not depend on our opinion of it. The people in that hypothetical society may accept gender-based discrimination, but that doesn’t make such discrimination acceptable.
In this respect too, then, morality falls on the objective side. When it comes to the counterfactual test, moral truths behave more like objective, factual truths (as whether smoking causes cancer) than like purely subjective, perhaps conventional claims (say, that top hats are unfashionable).
(Exercises: Can you see how the counterfactual test relates to the spinach test? And think about your favorite music, the kind of music that you don't just like, but that you think is good. Had you not liked it, would it still have been good?)
What's At Issue?
We have, then, three tests for objectivity - the spinach test, the phenomenology-of-disagreement-and-deliberation test, and the counterfactual test. And though we haven't yet said much about what objectivity comes to, these tests test for something that is recognizably in the vicinity of what we're after with our term "objectivity".
Objectivity, like many interesting philosophical terms, can be understood in more than one way. As a result, when philosophers affirm or deny the objectivity of some subject matter, it's not to be taken for granted that they're asserting or denying the same thing. But we don't have to go through a long list of what may be meant by
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morality's objectivity. It will be more productive, I think, to go about things in a different way. We can start by asking - why does it matter whether morality is objective? If we have a good enough feel for the answer to this question, we can then use it to find the sense of objectivity that we care about.
I suggest that we care about the objectivity of morality for roughly the reasons specified in the previous section: We want morality's objectivity to support our responses in those cases. We want morality's objectivity to vindicate the phenomenology of deliberation and disagreement, and our relevant counterfactual judgments. We want morality’s objectivity to explain why the moral analogue of the spinach test isn’t funny.
Very well, then, in what sense must morality be objective, for the phenomenology of disagreement and deliberation and our counterfactual judgments to be justified? The answer, it seems to me, is that a subject matter is objective, if the truths or facts in it exist independently of what we think or feel about them.
This notion of objectivity nicely supports the counterfactual test. If a certain truth (say, that smoking causes cancer) doesn't depend on our views about it, then it would have been true even had we not believed it. Not so for truths that do depend on our beliefs, practices, emotions (such as the truth that top hats are unfashionable). And if moral truths are similarly independent of our beliefs, desires, preferences, emotions, points of view, and so on - if, as is sometimes said, moral truths are response-independent – then it's clear why gender-based discrimination would have been wrong even had we approved of it.
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Similarly, if it's our responses that make moral claims true, then in a case of disagreement, it seems natural to suppose that both sides may be right. Perhaps, in other words, your responses make it the case that abortion is morally permissible ("for you", in some sense of this very weird phrase?), and your friend's responses make it the case that abortion is morally wrong ("for her"?). But if the moral status of abortion is response-independent, we understand why moral disagreement feels like factual disagreement - one is right, one is wrong, and it's important to find out who. And of course, the whole point of the spinach test was to distinguish between caring about things just because we care about them (such as not eating spinach, if you find it yucky), and caring about things that seem to us important independently of us caring about them (such as the wrongness of racism).
Another way of making the same point is as follows: Objective facts are those we seek to discover, not those we make true. And in this respect too, when it comes to moral truths, we are in a position more like that of the scientist who tries to discover the laws of nature (which exist independently of her investigations), than that of the legislator (who creates laws).
Now, in insisting that morality is objective in this sense - for instance, by relying on the reasons given in the previous section - it's important to see what has and what has not been established. In order to see this, it may help to draw an analogy with religious discourse. So think of your deeply held religious beliefs, if you have any. (If, like me, you do not, try to think what it's like to be deeply committed to a religious belief, or perhaps think of your commitment to atheism). And try to run our tests - does it make
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sense to be happy that you were brought up under the religion in which you deeply believe, even assuming that with a different education you would have believed another religion, or no religion at all? What do you think of the phenomenology of religious deliberation and disagreement? And had you stopped believing, would the doctrines of your faith still have been true?
Now, perhaps things are not obvious here, but it seems to me that for many religious people, religious discourse passes all these objectivity tests. But from this it does not follow that atheism is false, much less that a specific religion is true. When they are applied to some specific religious discourse, the objectivity tests show that such discourse aspires to objectivity. In other words, the tests show what the world must be like for the commitments of the discourse to be vindicated: If (say) a Catholic's religious beliefs are to be true, what must be the case is that the doctrines of the Catholic Church hold objectively, that is, response-independently. This leaves entirely open the question whether these doctrines do in fact hold.
Back to morality, then. Here too, what the discussion of objectivity (tentatively) establishes is just something about the aspirations of moral discourse – namely, that it aspires to objectivity. If our moral judgments are to be true, it must be the case that things have value, that people have rights and duties, that there are better and worse ways to live our lives - and all of this must hold objectively, that is, response-independently. But establishing that moral discourse aspires to objectivity is one thing. Whether there actually are objective moral truths is quite another.
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And now you may be worried: Why does it matter, you may wonder, what morality's aspirations are, if (for all I’ve said so far) they may not be met? I want to offer two replies here. First, precisely in order to check whether morality’s aspirations are in fact fulfilled, we should understand them better. If you are trying to decide, for instance, whether the commitments of Catholicism are true, you had better understand them first. Second, and more importantly, one of the things we are trying to do here is to gain a better understanding of what we are already committed to. You may recall that I started with the hypothesis that you may think you're a relativist or a subjectivist. But if the discussion so far gets things right (if, that is, morality aspires to this kind of objectivity), and if you have any moral beliefs at all (don't you think that some things are wrong? Do we really need to give gruesome examples?), then it follows that you yourself are already committed to morality's objectivity. And this is already an interesting result, at least for you.
That morality aspires in this way to objectivity also has the implication that any full metaethical theory - any theory, that is, that offers a full description and explanation of moral discourse and practice - has to take this aspiration into account. Most likely, it has to accommodate it. Less likely, but still possibly, such a theory may tell us that this aspiration is futile, explaining why even though morality is not objective, we tend to think that it is, why it manifests the marks of objectivity that the tests above catch on, and so on. What no metaethical theory can do, however, is ignore the very strong appearance that morality is objective. I get back to this in the final section, below.
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Why Not?
As I already mentioned, we cannot rule out the possibility that under argumentative pressure we're going to have to revise even some of our most deeply held beliefs. Philosophy, in other words, is hard. And as you can imagine, claims about morality's objectivity have not escaped criticism. Indeed, perhaps some such objections have already occurred to you. In this section, I quickly mention some of them, and hint at the ways in which I think they can be coped with. But let me note how incomplete the discussion here is: There are, of course, other objections, objections that I don't discuss here. More importantly, there are many more things to say - on both sides - regarding the objections that I do discuss. The discussion here is meant as an introduction to these further discussions, no more than that. (Have I mentioned that philosophy is hard?)
3.1 Disagreement I have been emphasizing ways in which moral disagreement may motivate the thought that morality is objective. But it's very common to think that something about moral disagreement actually goes the other way. For if there are perfectly objective moral truths, why is there so much disagreement about them? Wouldn't we expect, if there are such objective truths, to see everyone converging on them? Perhaps such convergence cannot be expected to be perfect and quick, but still - why is there so much persistent, apparently irreconcilable disagreement in morality, but not in subject matters whose objectivity is less controversial? If there is no answer to this question, doesn't this count heavily against morality's objectivity?
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It is not easy to see exactly what this objection comes to. (Exercise: Can you try and formulate a precise argument here?) It may be necessary to distinguish between several possible arguments. Naturally, different ways of understanding the objection will call for different responses. But there are some things that can be said in general here. First, the objection seems to underrate the extent of disagreement in subject matters whose objectivity is pretty much uncontroversial (think of the causes and effects of global warming again). It may also overrate the extent of disagreement in morality. Still, the requirement to explain the scope and nature of moral disagreements seems legitimate. But objectivity-friendly explanations seem possible.
Perhaps, for instance, moral disagreement is sometimes best explained by noting that people tend to accept the moral judgments that it's in their interest to accept, or that tend to show their lives and practices in good light. Perhaps this is why the poor tend to believe in the welfare state, and the rich tend to believe in property rights.
Perhaps the most important general lesson here is that not all disagreements count against the objectivity of the relevant discourse. So what we need is a criterion to distinguish between objectivity-undermining and non-objectivity-undermining disagreements. And then we need an argument showing that moral disagreement is of the former kind. I don't know of a fully successful way of filling in these details here.
Notice, by the way, that such attempts are going to have to overcome a natural worry about self-defeat. Some theories defeat themselves, that is, roughly, fail even by their own lights. Consider, for instance, the theory “All theories are false”, or the belief “No belief is justified”. (Exercise: Can you think of other self-defeating theories?). Now,
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disagreement in philosophy has many of the features that moral disagreement seems to have. In particular, so does metaethical disagreement. Even more in particular, so does disagreement about whether disagreement undermines objectivity. If moral disagreement undermines the objectivity of moral conclusions, metaethical disagreement seems to undermine the objectivity of metaethical conclusions, including the conclusion that disagreement of this kind undermines objectivity. And this starts to look like self-defeat. So if some disagreement-objection to the objectivity of morality is going to succeed, it must show how moral disagreement undermines the objectivity of morality, but metaethical disagreement does not undermine the objectivity of metaethical claims. Perhaps it's possible to do so. But it's not going to be easy.
3.2 But How Do We Know?
Even if there are these objective moral truths - for instance, the kind of objective moral truth that both sides to a moral disagreement typically lay a claim to - how can we ever come to know them? In the astronomical case of disagreement about the relative position and motion of the earth and the sun, there are things we can say in response to a similar question - we can talk about perception, and scientific methodology, and progress. Similarly in other subject matters where we are very confident that objective truths await our discovery. Can anything at all be said in the moral case? We do not, after all, seem to possess something worth calling moral perception, a direct perception of the moral status of things. And in the moral case it's hard to argue that we have an
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established, much less uncontroversial, methodology either. (Whether there is moral progress is, I'm sure you've already realized, highly controversial.)
In other words, what we need is a moral epistemology, an account of how moral knowledge is possible, of how moral beliefs can be more or less justified, and the like. And I do not want to belittle the need for a moral epistemology, in particular, an epistemology that fits well with an objectivist understanding of moral judgments. But the objectivist is not without resources here. After all, morality is not the only subject matter where perception and empirical methodology do not seem to be relevant. Think, for instance, of mathematics, and indeed of philosophy. But we do not often doubt the reality of mathematical knowledge (philosophical knowledge is a harder case, perhaps; but, Exercise: can you see how claiming that we do not have philosophical knowledge may again give rise to a worry about self-defeat?).
Perhaps, then, what is really needed is a general epistemology of the a priori - of those areas, roughly, where the empirical method seems out of place. And perhaps it's not overly optimistic to think that any plausible epistemology of the a priori will vindicate moral knowledge as well.
Also, to say that there is no methodology of doing ethics is at the very least an exaggeration. Typically, when facing a moral question, we do not just stare at it helplessly. Perhaps we're not always very good at morality. But this doesn't mean that we never are. And perhaps at our best, when we employ our best ways of moral reasoning, we manage to attain moral knowledge.
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(Exercise: There is no uncontroversial method of doing ethics. What, if anything, follows from this?)
3.3 Who Decides?
Still, even if moral knowledge is not especially problematic, even if moral disagreement can be explained in objectivity-friendly ways, and even if there are perfectly objective moral truths, what should we do in cases of disagreement and conflict? Who gets to decide what the right way of proceeding is? Especially in the case of inter-cultural disagreement and conflict, isn't saying something like "We're right and you're wrong about what is objectively morally required" objectionably dogmatic, intolerant, perhaps an invitation to fanaticism?
Well, in a sense, no one decides. In another sense, everyone does. The situation here is precisely as it is everywhere else: No one gets to decide whether smoking causes cancer, whether human actions contribute to global warming, whether the earth revolves around the sun. Our decisions do not make these claims true or false. But everyone gets (roughly speaking) to decide what they are going to believe about these matters. And this is so for moral claims as well.
How about intolerance and fanaticism? If the worry is that people are likely to become dangerously intolerant if they believe in objective morality, then first, such a predictions would have to be established. After all, many social reformers (think, for instance, of Martin Luther King, Jr.) who fought against intolerance and bigotry seem to have been inspired by the thought that their vision of equality and justice was
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objectively correct. Further, even if it's very dangerous for people to believe in the objectivity of their moral convictions, this doesn't mean that morality isn’t objective. Such danger would give us reasons not to let people know about morality's objectivity. It would not give us a reason to believe that morality is not objective. (Compare: even if it were the case that things would go rapidly downhill if atheism were widely believed, this wouldn’t prove that atheism is false.)
More importantly, though, it's one thing to believe in the objectivity of morality, it's quite another to decide what to do about it. And it's quite possible that the right thing to do, given morality's objectivity, is hardly ever to respond with "I am simply right and you are simply wrong!", or to be intolerant. In fact, if you think that it's wrong to be intolerant, aren't you committed to the objectivity of this very claim? (Want to run the three tests again?) So it seems as if the only way of accommodating the importance of toleration is actually to accept morality's objectivity, not to reject it.
Conclusion
As already noted, much more can be said - about what objectivity is, about the reasons to think that morality is objective, and about these (and many other) objections to morality's objectivity. Much more work remains to be done.
And one of the ways in which current literature addresses some of these issues may sound surprising, for a major part of the debate assumes something like morality's aspiration to objectivity in the sense above, but refuses to infer from such observations quick conclusions about the nature of moral truths and facts. In other words, many
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metaethicists today deny the most straightforward objectivist view of morality - according to which moral facts are a part of response-independent reality, much like mathematical and physical facts. But they do not deny morality's objectivity - they care, for instance, about passing the three tests above. And so they attempt to show how even on other metaethical views, morality's objectivity can be accommodated. As you can imagine, philosophers disagree about the success (actual and potential) of such accommodation projects.
Naturally, such controversies also lead to attempts to better understand what the objectivity at stake exactly is, and why it matters (if it matters) whether morality is objective. As is often the case, attempts to evaluate answers to a question make us better understand - or wonder about - the question itself.
Nothing here, then, is simple. But I hope that you now see how you are probably a moral objectivist, at least in your intuitive starting point. Perhaps further philosophical reflection will require that you abandon this starting point. But this will be an abandoning, and a very strong reason is needed to justify it. Until we get such a conclusive argument against moral objectivity, then, objectivism should be the view to beat.

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