Objective Morality?

[theVOID]

My interpretation, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that things which are objective can be studied and measured in a science experiment whereas subjective matters are weighed out in philosophy discussions. Science is the study of the objective universe where philosophy is the debate of subjective matters.

Not really... Philosophy when dealing with opinions or attitudes is 'subjective' such as 'eastern philosophy', when dealing with logic or reason however in the style of analytic philosophy or Quinean naturalism it's objective, take for instance the old "Socrates is mortal" syllogism, it's perfectly objective in that it is independent of any persons opinions.

Science as far as measuring phenomenon is objective, the interpretations can fall prey to subjectivity though, for instance many scientists will and have interpreted data in terms of their own opinions or attitudes knowingly or not, just look at the climate change debate, while the objective measurements show a trend in increasing temperatures there is still a lot of subjective interpretation of the data, namely in terms of it's significance.

If I have this right, then objective morals should be something we can scientifically study and measure. Just like we have units of measure for temperature, velocity and mass, we should be able to come up with units of measure for moral goodness. We could plug numbers into a spreadsheet and determine the best moral course of action in each case.

You could only ever measure the various value producing sections of the brain to see the subjective values of that individual, the best you could do is talk about the distribution of values amongst a population, while it might be 'obectively true' that most people value x over y it's not the same as determining that x is morally good and y is morally bad... It's all basically cultural relativism... Studying people from 500 years ago would show things to be 'morally good' that we now find repulsive.

Also, the various value producing centres of the brain often conflict with each other, contrasts between the deontological and utilitarian type judgements our brain produces are commonplace, what often makes us favour one or the other comes down to whether the pleasure (reward) can be outweighed by a long term plan for increasing value.

If this sounds silly, you understand why I'm skeptical of claims that "objective morals exist". Perhaps someone could explain it to me a little better?

I'm skeptical of the approach you talked about, frankly the idea of measuring moral good and moral bad in a brain is nonsense, measuring distributed values is argument from authority and/or cultural relativism depending on how you approach it... The only sensible way to do it is to understand how values arise through studying neuroscience and then determining philosophically how these values interact/conflict.

At this point, I'd also like to mention that I believe that "subjective morality" =/= amorality, as often asserted by theists.

If you agree that morality is a subset of value theory dealing with shared/conflicting values then "subjective morality" is utter nonsense, it's naught but an individual's subjective consideration of a situation where values do conflict, judged entirely in terms of their own values.

Just because we acknowledge that moral questions are complex issues that involve empathy, judgment and conscience doesn't mean "anything goes". We can and do judge "honor killings" and other abuses by religion and still debate right and wrong. Just because we can't plug it into a spreadsheet doesn't mean it can't be rationally discussed.

It can be rationally discussed in terms of goals such as "will this make a healthier/happier society?" or "will this increase freedom?" but those goals themselves are still entirely the product of subjective values, there are no objectively right or wrong goals to have, so even in that sense you've just kicked the can down the road.

Just to be clear, I welcome discussions of non-theistic objective morality as well.

That is what I was talking about, I'll explain in more detail later.

Also, seeing as god is a "person" there isn't possibly "objective" theistic morality, if it reduces to god's opinions/values/attitudes it's still subjective.

These are separate issues that can be arranged in a quadrant:

1. God exists, objective morality exists.
2. God exists, morality is subjective.
3. God does not exist, objective morality exists.
4. God does not exist, morality is subjective.

Or;

5. God does not exist, morality does not exist.

This is known as Error Theory, the idea that moral statements ("x is morally wrong") attempt to make factual claims but since morality does not exist all claims are necessarily false.

It all has to start with a definition of morality basically.

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I highly recommend you take a look at this; http://lesswrong.com/lw/5u2/pluralistic_...ductionism

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I'm not sure that when we apply objective as an adjective to morality that, this necessarily means it is open to science. However I would argue that this isn't because it is of supernatural origin nor that it transcends time/space etc. For objective morality to exist, morality in the first place must exist, and there is nowhere in reality can where we find it. It appears to be a totally abstract concept existing only in ethics, much as numbers only exist in their own framework, ie maths.

That's contingent upon what a person means when they say "morality" and there is no rigid definition, just a collection of terms trying to get at roughly the same thing.

For me the term refers to the conflict/interaction between subjective values and since subjective value does exist and interact then morality necessarily exists.