Why it's important to know there is an objective morality.

[Joods]

Alrighty, well. You say it's important to know this.

But I'd still like to know what practical difference it makes to anything. If you didn't know it, what difference would that make? Would your behaviour be worse, and if so in what way? I imagine you've pretty much always believed this, so would the perceived differences be realistic, or based on what seems like a jarring new world view?

I certainly don't know it or even believe it, and I'd be interested to know what I'd gain if I did.

Well, actually, there is a good example of it making a big practical difference. Objective vs Subjective make a huge difference when you are looking at a child's IEP. This is the best example I can come up with for the objective vs subjective debate. Remove the word "morality" from the scene and let's just focus on the words objective and subjective for a moment here. 

An IEP (Individualized Education Plan) is a plan written up for a child with developmental delays. It is carried out and implemented in school. There are various parts to it, but where the objective vs subjective parts come into play are with how the short term goals and the benchmarks that the child needs to reach during the school year are measured. 

If a child has a reading goal that looks like this: "Johnny will reach a second grade reading level by the end of the school year", and it is followed by a short term benchmark of this: "Johnny will learn 20 new vocabulary words every other week", then it is up to the IEP team, to determine HOW the benchmark and the goal will be measured. 

If the idea is presented that they will be measured by observation through the teacher (we'll call this Idea A), then it is subjective. 
If the idea is presented that they will be measured through tests and quizzes twice a month, showing a graph of progress (we'll call this Idea B), then it is objective. 

The difference here is huge because Idea A relies solely on teacher opinion, in other words, what the teacher thinks and what the teacher sees. It is subjective to her opinion. The child could be having a bad day, as some children with developmental disabilities often do. That bad day could happen during a time when the teacher is observing the child during a reading class and the child doesn't feel like participating. This is problematic because the child could very well know those vocabulary words, but because they are having a bad day, any real progress made is going to get an inacurate assessment from the teacher. 
Idea B comes from measurable testing of the child's knowledge of the words. Many IEP's are written so that the annual measurable goal, is measured objectively. This is mainly due in part because of changes to the law called IDEA.  (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Parents were concerned that their children were just being pushed through the system without actually making progress so the IEP's were changed to reflect the Annual Measurable Goals must be measured through objective means such as charting progress and continued testing. 

Most times, these children are working with teacher aids, other people in the classroom who are there to help the teacher out. My daughter has an aid who works with her throughout the entire day. Some days are better than others. Some days she is cooperative and stays on task. Other days, she's not as willing to do her work and is quiet. This is the main reason why subjective measuring doesn't work. It relies solely on what the teacher thinks and observes and is therefore, not accurate. 

I know, this has nothing to do with objective and subjective morality, but in a way it does. Because if the morality is subjective, the only way it can be measured for it's goodness or badness (is that a word?) is through the opinions and observations of others, largely, society. If morality is objective, then one can assume that there are laws built around that morality. If one breaks the law, it can be documented properly. 

I hope I worded that right.