So - you make a very good point. If we don't have an objective standard then it's just your word against mine. Fortunately it's not as simple as that. Let me explain.
You know how frustrating it is when you make a point and some smart ass comes back with "yeah well that's just your opinion."? It's annoying and insulting - and we know intuitively that it's a bullshit response. But why?
Because the strength of an argument does not depend on who is making it, but on its own merit, and the logic and reason and evidence that backs it up. Whether the world is flat isn't a matter of your opinion against mine. Whether cancer is bad isn't a matter of your word against mine.
People are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts.
If one person says slavery is fine and another says it's wrong, you aren't just lost at sea. One person can be objectively right and another can be objectively wrong.
As I said, morality concerns the wellbeing of conscious creatures. It's like health - it's hard to define health as one thing, but it's easy to say what health isn't, e.g. Throwing up, getting cancer etc.
In the same way, wellbeing includes health but in this sense I would include things like Freedom. If I own you and can beat you and you are my property, you do not have freedom. You are a prisoner. You are controlled under threat of violence. Therefore it can be argued that my owning you is immoral, because it takes away your freedom and infringes on your wellbeing.
I would contrast this with many so-called moral systems that are systems of controlling human behaviour within society which do not hold human wellbeing as the highest value, such as in India where widows throw themselves on their dead husband's funeral pyres.
If you think of morality in terms of wellbeing vs suffering you have an objective standard for morality. What's that you say? I said morality isn't objective? That's not actually what I said. What I said was, there isn't some standard abstract from conscious creatures. Morality isn't like a cosmological constant. But that doesn't mean it's just whatever we feel like at the time. It's about all of us as a species realising that we all experience life in first person, we can all suffer, and we can all flourish, and that it is in everyone's best interests if we work together and agree to respect each other, that we agree that my freedom to swing my fist ends at your face. It's about valuing each other's wellbeing enough not to infringe upon it for individual gain.
You know how frustrating it is when you make a point and some smart ass comes back with "yeah well that's just your opinion."? It's annoying and insulting - and we know intuitively that it's a bullshit response. But why?
Because the strength of an argument does not depend on who is making it, but on its own merit, and the logic and reason and evidence that backs it up. Whether the world is flat isn't a matter of your opinion against mine. Whether cancer is bad isn't a matter of your word against mine.
People are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts.
If one person says slavery is fine and another says it's wrong, you aren't just lost at sea. One person can be objectively right and another can be objectively wrong.
As I said, morality concerns the wellbeing of conscious creatures. It's like health - it's hard to define health as one thing, but it's easy to say what health isn't, e.g. Throwing up, getting cancer etc.
In the same way, wellbeing includes health but in this sense I would include things like Freedom. If I own you and can beat you and you are my property, you do not have freedom. You are a prisoner. You are controlled under threat of violence. Therefore it can be argued that my owning you is immoral, because it takes away your freedom and infringes on your wellbeing.
I would contrast this with many so-called moral systems that are systems of controlling human behaviour within society which do not hold human wellbeing as the highest value, such as in India where widows throw themselves on their dead husband's funeral pyres.
If you think of morality in terms of wellbeing vs suffering you have an objective standard for morality. What's that you say? I said morality isn't objective? That's not actually what I said. What I said was, there isn't some standard abstract from conscious creatures. Morality isn't like a cosmological constant. But that doesn't mean it's just whatever we feel like at the time. It's about all of us as a species realising that we all experience life in first person, we can all suffer, and we can all flourish, and that it is in everyone's best interests if we work together and agree to respect each other, that we agree that my freedom to swing my fist ends at your face. It's about valuing each other's wellbeing enough not to infringe upon it for individual gain.
