William Lane Craig unmasked.

[Angrboda]

Moral ontology is regarding an absolute morality with the existence of absolute morals that require a foundaton. Craig kept asking for that but Shelly was arguing for an objective morality with an epistemic argument, not an absolutist one with an ontological argument.

This seems a somewhat artificial split. Objective morals may need a foundation, but I don't think there is anything that requires them to be absolute. You seem to be arguing for a version of morals in which we choose what things are moral (doing good) and immoral (doing harm), and the values flow from that choice. That is a moral foundation as much as Craig's positing God as the source of morals is a foundation. It is argued by Craig that this is an insufficient ground for morals because it is essentially arbitrary.

All the debate was about was if atheists can be moral too. Nowhere was moral ontology specified or required. So Shelly didn't have to argue for that. Craig was asking specifically for absolutist moral ontology which was a red herring to the debate in question.

I didn't see the whole debate, just that segment which you posted. In that segment, providing an adequate ontology of morals was the key question.

Absolute morality and the existence of absolute moral values and moral ontology is utter bullshit. Can there be objective answers to a version of morality in principle if not in practice once a definition has been specified (like harm=bad help=good?). Yes in an epistemic way. The same way that there can be objective answers in principle to what is healthy or unhealthy once we establish a definition of health. Doesn't mean there's ontological values existing absolutely in the universe that provide foundation for what's absolutely healthy or unhealthy. Yes we do need a definition first, and then objective answers in principle are given.

The reason we value health is because it has instrumental utility in delivering things that we desire (long life, freedom from pain and loss). But there does not appear to be a similar explanation for morals. Nor do definitions like causing harm seem to account for morals. If you have high cholesterol and I cook you a fatty dish, I may be doing harm to your health by serving it to you, but noone would say that I am being immoral. Regardless, we have intuitions about moral truths that feel differently from thing that are merely of instrumental value. It seems that when something is wrong, it is inherently wrong, and it invokes in us a feeling like no other. This does not seem to fit with arguing that morals are a result of choosing proscriptive definitions. Take the example by Haidt wherein a brother and sister decide to have sex together while they are on vacation. Nobody but them will ever know, they use two forms of birth control, and despite enjoying the experience decide never to do it again. Many people would consider what they did wrong, but more important than the question of whether they're right or not is the point that their feeling of "wrongness" is different from that which say might accompany doing something unhealthy.

Regardless, this doesn't seem to be a question of ontology versus epistemology. Shelly is arguing that we would be capable of recognizing moral truths because of our ability to reflect. That certainly doesn't answer the what question (ontology), but it really doesn't justify morality from an epistemic perspective. Yes, it has to do with epistemology, but it's effectively saying that we have morals because we reflect on our behavior, yet morals seem to come to us unbidden as intuitions. His epistemological argument seems simply wrong. Either way, you can't answer the what question with an epistemological how. It just doesn't address the question. The fact that we "just are" able to figure out morals from definitions is not much of an answer, epistemological or otherwise.

Morality is made up of should's and shouldn't's.  These do not appear to be natural categories as there are no such norms in nature. [...]

That's moral ontology again. No morals or values have to "exist" in nature or anywhere else. Moral epistemology isn't about existence. It's about knowing that there are objective answers in principle to morality once a definition is given. Objective =/= absolute. It's the same way that there are objective answers in principle to health once the definition is given. There aren't any values about what's healthy or healthy that "exist" in nature either. There's no foundation to look for. Health is arbitrary but science works by practice once a model is given. We can't draw the line between what is exactly healthy or unhealthy either but that doesn't mean there isn't answers in principle to what we mean by "healthy" or "unhealthy" and whether there are answers in practice is of course irrelevant. An objective morality doesn't have to be universal either. There just has to be objective right and wrong answers in principle to a definition of morality like there is with health. No ontology or values that "exist" required. No foundation required besides semantic one. It's like Shelly said... there are objective reasons that something is harmful or helpful to us.

This seems more a question of figuring out instrumental utilities, pragmatics, than it does epistemology. I think that's a fancy term for what is essentially determining the a priori meaning of your definitions. If you include that in epistemology, so be it.

He doesn't have to prove why "harm" = immoral or why "help"= moral..... that would be arguing for moral ontology which is what Craig is obsessed with but which isn't actually necessary for the subject of the debate. It's a red herring. There seems to be this whole thing that morality is only TRULY objective if it's an absolute morality grounded in moral ontology. Something which isn't possible and is a huge misnomer and rather an example of the NTS fallacy even perhaps.

The subject of the debate is, "Is God Necessary For Morality?" While that can be answered epistemologically, it invites the ontological question, especially if there is no answer given to the ontological question. Your objection appears to be that you don't believe there is an objective foundation for morality beyond the one you have given. That's a matter of opinion which in itself doesn't determine whether the ontological question itself is relevant or not. According to Wikipedia, the majority of philosophers are moral realists and thus would likely differ on that subject; that makes the question relevant.

There's no reason whatsoever that morality is only objective if we're talking moral ontology. Science isn't even objective that way.

Ontology deals with the question of whether something is objective. You've given an answer for morals that offers a purely chosen foundation for morals. That by definition is a subjective morality; that is its ontology. You don't get around the ontological question just by postulating a subjective morality. You seem to want to skip that step as if the ontology of your ethics had no effect on its practical identity with human morals. Human morals appear objective in a way that is more substantial than that they are just an instrumental utility.

So what is morality.

Shelly offers the commonsensical idea that what's moral is what helps and what's immoral is what harms. Does he have to absolutetly prove why that specific definition is the right one? No because he doesn't have to argue for absolutist moral ontology or the "existence" of moral values (whatever that would even mean) to address the question of the debate. That's a red herring. Objective answers in principle to a definition of morality is still objective answers in principle to that definition.[1] There are clear answers in principle to what is harmful and what is helpful regardless of if there are in practice. Again, even science doesn't have an absolutist ontological foundation. Can we prove that health should mean being well as opposed to sick and shouldn't instead mean something completely different? No we can't... people pick a definition of what something means and then there can be objective answers in principle to that. Ontology and absolutist foundations are just silly (unless it's something like the logical absolutes because of course it's absolutely true that a thing is whatever that thing is whether we're there to conceptualize that or not).[2] There is no reason to expect special pleading for morality. There is nothing magical about the word "should" the so-called is-ought gap is bullshit.[3] Once a definition of what morality means or what "should" and "shouldn't" are about then that can go from prescriptive to descriptive (and why that definition should be selected isn't required because I'm talking moral epistemology here, not moral ontology). To ask "why should we be moral?" makes no sense at all. It's like asking "Why should we do what we should do?" errrrmmmm because we should. Ya know... tautology? [4]

1. That doesn't change the fact that, ontologically speaking, you have erected a subjective morality and that difference matters. For one, for the obvious fact that we don't "feel" that morals are a matter of subjective whim. Subjective morality guts the sense of morals that we have. Moreover, there appears to be largescale agreement on basic moral values (e.g. Haidt); this seems nonsensical if "do no harm" is just an arbitrary choice.

2. Not everybody agrees with you on this point for reasons already in evidence. Subjective morals don't appear to fit our intuitions about morals.

3. I don't think that's special pleading. Regardless, I don't think you've established that the is-ought gap is bullshit. We can commit to certain values such as do no harm if we choose, but that doesn't explain why we would choose those specific values as a moral foundation. You don't get around the fact that a choice is made by simply saying you're talking about something else now. Perhaps you could say more about why you think the is-ought gap is bullshit.

4. Your answer here appears to suggest that you have no answer to the question. Typically, we 'should' do things if there is instrumental utility in doing them toward things we value. But moral values appear to be a special case in which instrumental utility does not apply. For example, cheaters in a game appear to be "overpunished" for the wrongs they do. There's such a thing as moral outrage. This doesn't fit with a definition of morals that hinges on instrumental utility. Instrumental utility doesn't go near far enough in answering why we have moral should's.