My views on objective morality

[Kiekeben]

...Meaning there is no set right or wrong answer, correct?

No. A subject can have valid reasons for disagreeing with your moral sensibilities. Both sensibilities might each pertain in different situations or with different actors. If you're looking for pat answers in such a complex subject, I'm afraid I can't help you much.

You and I agree that generally, bashing someone in the face is not very moral. However, the immorality of an act can be mitigated or even negated by the circumstances around the event. Am I bashing in self-defense? To save another from greater harm? Does that make my bashing "good", or simply "necessary"?

That is the essence of the claim that morality is both subjective and relative. Neither adjective means morality doesn't exist at all, they only mean that each act must be judged on its own qualities. Note that that judgement inherently introduces subjectivity into the matter as well.

I have to come to CL's defense here. Terms like "objective" and "subjective" are used in more than one sense, as you know, but the way she is (roughly) using them seems to be just about the most common one in popular discussions on this. And even if it weren't, so what? She's making a specific claim - that morality is objective, where by "objective" she means that is is factual - rather than subjective, by which she means that it is just a matter of how someone feels about it. And that's a question that can be addressed independently of what the terms themselves "really" mean.

Assuming you're not ignoring my posts: have I understood you correctly, CL?

If so, then here is one problem I have with how you put things: you say that "subjective means there is no right or wrong answer." Now, I think I understand that what you mean by that is that it ultimately is a matter of how one feels about it (like with your pink color example), but by putting it this way, you might also be suggesting that a subjectivist cannot criticize someone he disagrees with. I say this because that's what a lot of critics of subjectivism say, and "there is no right or wrong answer" suggests that kind of thing.

I'm a subjectivist in this general sense that you have been talking about: I think that moral judgments are (in this respect) exactly like aesthetic judgments. But that doesn't mean I don't criticize or don't oppose those whose moral views are in conflict with my own. To put it another way, morality doesn't have to be fact-based in order for it to be something that is taken seriously. I think that's something you (following people like Peter Kreeft) assume must be the case, and that's just wrong.