(March 10, 2016 at 4:52 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(March 10, 2016 at 3:48 pm)Kiekeben Wrote: I say morality is subjective because I think that claiming that something is morally good or bad, etc., depends on one's attitude towards that thing. It is not a claim about the properties of the thing itself, independent of what anyone feels about it. So, although I maintain that torturing someone for fun is always wrong, I do not mean by that that there is a fact about the action of torturing someone that makes it wrong - such that one could determine by examining the action itself that it really is wrong, and that anyone who disagrees is making a factual mistake. In saying it is always wrong, I am merely expressing my complete disapproval of it.
If I'm reading you correctly, what you're delineating is the difference between objective morality and absolute morality. You hold that torturing someone for fun is absolutely wrong, but that isn't a property that anyone can see in the action itself. Is that a fair restatement of your view?
Pretty much. Unfortunately "absolute" and "relative" are also used in more than one sense, but in general one should separate the objective/subjective distinction from the absolute/relative ones.
Incidentally, I'm an absolutist in the sense that I hold moral principles to apply equally to everyone (=universalist). That is what relativists usually deny - they say that moral principles are relative to culture, or even to the individual. But I'm not an absolutist about most moral principles a la Kant, that is in the sense that moral principles have no exceptions. Torturing someone for fun is absolutely wrong (in my opinion) in this sense (that's what the "for fun" is doing there); but not, say, the killing of an innocent person. It's almost always wrong, but one can easily think of exceptions. Nevertheless, where it is wrong, I regard it as wrong for anyone to do, even for someone in a society that regards it as okay.
As to being objective: it doesn't necessarily have to be a property one can see, but it does have to be a property of the thing that is supposedly good or bad, right or wrong. This is what I deny exists.