What Human Rights?

[Mudhammam]

Nestor, I'm really liking what you're saying here, and agree 100%

I have a question for you. You don't seem to believe in moral relativism. So where do you think the objective truth that "kicking babies is immoral," came from?

(This is not a loaded question, btw. Genuinely curious.)

One on the hand, I don't see how morality can be objective, or at least justified as such, unless we concede that certain abstract objects (in this case, "the Good") exist independent of human consideration. Which is why I completely understand the view that without God, "everything is permissible," with the caveat that God be defined as The Good itself, which to my mind doesn't entail the characteristics of a theistic god at all. 

On the other hand, I don't see how moral relativism is saying much of anything that really pertains to morality, if we consider morality to be conduct that truly is right or wrong, independent of opinion. Otherwise, the relativist seems to be saying two things, both incompatible with the traditional meaning of morality and with one another: "I don't like that you do that. So, I'm going to call that immoral (because it gives more weight to my disfavor)," and "What I declare immoral is not really true beyond my defining it to be true, and my definition, by definition, does not extend to you." All of that is to say, what's the difference between saying that what's true for me is not necessarily true for you, and, that truth in this context is not meaningful, i.e. has no epistemic content?

So, with that being said, I kind of feel like the preponderance of evidence from history and sociology suggests that humans do have a conception of "the Good," a standard of measurement by which we really do feel that (and necessarily speak as though) morality is objective and independent of opinion (slavery was and is wrong and not just because certain individuals --- including myself --- feel that way), yet I don't feel like this can escape the inevitability of being a subjective judgment that lacks validation through any objective, i.e., exists external to me, means. The best hope for establishing objective morality is to show the contradictions that follow from moral subjectivism, or/otherwise we might just have to bite the bullet and say that morality doesn't really exist... which is not something I, or I imagine anyone else, would want to say... but then again, too bad?