General question about the possibility of objective moral truth

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I'm not so sure if we can say that people who don't value positive social structures don't survive. Actually my impression is that we have plenty of people of this kind in this world.
At the end my whole question comes up to find an argumentation not for those who keep social rules, but for those who don't. It's very frustrating if you have a real criminal in front of you and you try to explain him that (and why) his behavior is really wrong, while he just denies that there is an objective way to proof that. Of course we can still punish him. But I also want to show him that he himself knows that his behavior is wrong.

As a portion of the population the number is fairly small. Just as the number of people with genetic diseases is small. It is not advantageous, but it does happen.

At the very end you probably CAN'T provide an objective reason to the person who does not value life or positive social consequences.

Then gets to the rather nasty bit, we as a society IMPOSE some of our moral judgements. It is very hard to justify this objectively. Why does the majority get to impose their moral judgements on the minority? This is something I'm still working out on my own. There is some evidence to indicate that these people are sick, and as such it would indicate that their judgements and values might not be completely sound. But again, what is the objective justification? I don't think there is one. I'm not comfortable with that, but that might just be the way it is.

This argument also presumes that all lawbreakers are such because they are immoral, rather than desperate or socialized in a way that is different from the majority (taught to favor a different moral code than the majority's). Actual psychopaths, those who gain pleasure from harming others, are extremely rare, even in prison... and, even in prison, there are mechanisms in place by both the guards and inmates to restrain such individuals from freely practicing their whims.

Nature of the social animal. We make societies, and societies make cooperative rules for everyone to live by.

But I think the language you selected, Mr. Wald, is informative of one of the big problems with the American justice system; it's based in Puritanical-Christian moral philosophy (quite literally, the term "penitentiary" comes from the term penitence, or "go pray and think about what you did until you know why you are sorry"), and still underlies a lot of how we think of crime, punishment, and rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, it's mostly bunkum. Most inmates know what they did, they feel bad that they got into that situation (either because they were addicted, or stupid, or desperate), and most feel terrible about what they did-- furthermore, they have the attitude of "I did it, I got caught, and I am going to pay my time".

The movie "Hollywood fantasy" version, in which the convicts sit around and joke about how they're all innocent, just doesn't happen. It makes most people feel good, I guess, but it's just not reality. So if we're going to discuss moral philosophy, let's make sure we understand just how rare the actual sociopath/psychopath is... it's less than 1% of the world population, and most of them stay "in line" as a result of learning to conform to the rules the 99% of the rest of us set, so they do not suffer the penalties for stepping outside of what is considered acceptable to normal, feeling people.