(October 7, 2015 at 2:15 pm)robvalue Wrote: It's how exactly you settle disputes between direct conflicts of interest that I think science cannot adequately answer. To do this, it must at some point assign relative value to different aspects of wellbeing. And bluntly, I don't much care about how anyone else values my physical pain compared to my lifespan, as a rough example.
But isn't this just you objecting on the basis of subjective viewpoints on an objective fact, rather than showing that the view is exclusively subjective? Once we accept the idea that objective facts can be known about moral value judgments, then by definition there must be an optimum action or set of actions one can take in any given scenario within the context of the objective facts, and whether we- or anyone- can properly apprehend or predict is irrelevant to whether or not that pinnacle actually exists. That's the whole point of objective things, that they continue to exist regardless of whether subjective beings can adequately account for them.
Take the trolley problem, for example: there is potentially some combination of objective facts that would make one or the other solution morally preferable (perhaps the one person has a nuclear bomb with him that will detonate if he's hit and kill far more than just one person, or perhaps he's a doctor with knowledge of how to cure cancer on his way to tell other people. Maybe the five people in the other tunnel are convicted murderers, or all hosts to a new, particularly virulent strain of Ebola). The fact that the person attempting to solve the problem may or may not know these facts, or may subjectively have values that would lead him to take the morally sub-optimal choice, does not alter the fact that one choice is objectively better than the other, given what we know about human beings. Our choices are influenced by the facts at our disposal, but that doesn't mean that all other facts cease to exist.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!