My views on objective morality

[Angrboda]

He fails in his analysis in that he assumes objective morality exists a priori, as this undergirds his criticism of various foundations of relative morality. In particular, his analysis of the possibility of morality coming from conscience is flawed. He neglects the possibility that morals are a group construct, formed by the individual consciences of members of the group. Thus the fact that individual consciences may differ in what they consider moral is not an issue as it is the whole of the group which participates according to unique individual consciences. So he fails in discounting atheist alternatives to objective morality because he never actually takes them seriously on their own terms.

Second, his claim that moral laws suggest a moral lawgiver is nothing but clever wordplay. It isn't a serious analysis of what it would mean for morals to be objective. All he does is assume they are beyond explanation via natural means, thus concluding they must be supernatural. Besides the fact that the supernatural is not 'above' the natural -- which is his only reference to the how of objective morality -- saying that objective morality comes from a lawgiver runs headlong into the Euthyphro dilemma and fails upon the horns of the dilemma. Either God constitutes an arbitrary standard for morals on this view, a divine "might makes right" answer to the problem, or it solves nothing and we're left still in search of the actual standards of morality, which even God must abide by. In short, he doesn't provide a rational justification for believing that we get our morals from God. Just some wordplay and a hand wave to dissmiss the problem.

He also fails to answer a fundamental question about objective morality. If we have an intuitive sense of the moral standard, and that standard never changes, then why do our morals change? The changeable nature of morals from time period to time period and from one society to the next is a massive puzzle for objective morality. The best that objective morality theorists come up with a response to the question amount to ad hoc excuses. Why do morals change? Under moral relativism, this is to be expected. Under objective morality, this is a mystery which even the ad hoc excuses are hard pressed to clearly demonstrate themselves. They are truly ad hoc in that they are designed to explain away the problem, and pay little heed to any demonstrable fact. They are indeed excuses in that all they do is excuse the difficulty, they don't actually show their claims to be grounded in fact.

So a) he gives moral relativity an inadequate defense, and b) his justification for God given morality is inadequate. A poor showing all around.