Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[Angrboda]

1) Decide what our values and goals are. If we refuse to think about this, we're essentially wasting our ability to think outside of our primitive tribalism. What is important to you, in general? Why is it important? How important are these things relative to each other? Do your values make sense, as a whole? Are you casting your net wide enough?

This section is what I would call subjective, and it’s the essence of morality. This is where the hard work is done, and everything stems from this. There are no right and wrong answers. It’s for each person to decide, and for societies to try and compromise on. Of course, being human, there will likely be some common themes between most people. We can investigate and finesse our values and goals, but we can’t arbitrarily alter them at will. They are going to be heavily influenced by our evolution as a cooperative species. But the more we think about all this, the more we may realise the importance of other things. Or not. As I said, this is an individual process. Discussion with others is how common ground can be reached, and minds can potentially be changed. The results are obviously going to vary between people according to how their values vary, and by how much.

I think the assumption that particular values must be in place, and that they implicitly govern any other values, is where a lot of misunderstandings occur; and where my disagreements with moral realism most likely crop up. The idea that there are correct values is entirely circular, in my opinion. This is why I reject the notion of "morality" as some absolute, because it’s essentially some arbitrary announcement or a popular best compromise. Goals must be agreed first, however that is achieved. Just because two people use the same word, it doesn’t mean they are talking about the same thing.

While people do appeal to particular values and goals to justify belief in particular morals, it isn't necessary for the moral realist to do so, as it isn't the satisfaction of those values or goals which makes a moral fact true or false, but solely the existence of a moral fact. We may use appeals to how a particular moral or framework satisfies certain values or goals as evidence that such a moral fact exists, but it isn't the satisfaction of those values or goals which necessarily makes a particular moral fact a moral fact. Take the objective nature of God as the highest good. He is not justified as being the highest good with an appeal to the utility of his values in achieving this or that desirable situation, his nature is good in and of itself, whether or not it satisfies any particularly worthwhile goal. So I think in one sense, you are misunderstanding moral realism. As a practical matter, it is moral subjectivists and relativists who need to appeal to values and goals to justify the adoption of their morals. So in a sense you've got it backwards. A moral realist may appeal to utility of specific goals and values as a polemical tool, but the existence of his or her moral facts does not depend upon that appeal unless they explicitly make that the case. If they do, then you can argue your belief that such views aren't objective at all and therefore moral realism isn't justifiable on those grounds, but you have to get to that point first. As demonstrated in the case of God, all that moral realism requires is that certain things either are or are not moral, not necessarily why they are moral. We have no explanation for God's nature, yet it is simply assumed to be perfectly good. That is the stopping point for the theist, not an appeal to the utility of God's values and goals.

Take as an analogous example that of the alleged reality of numbers. P.A.M. Dirac said the following:

It was not until some weeks later that I realized there is no need to restrict oneself to 2 by 2 matrices. One could go on to 4 by 4 matrices, and the problem is then easily soluable. In retrospect, it seems strange that one can be so much held up over such an elementary point. The resulting wave equation for the electron turned out to be very successful. It led to correct values for the spin and the magnetic moment. This was quite unexpected. The work all followed from a study of pretty mathematics, without any thought being given to these physical properties of the electron.

So, according to Dirac, they were able to predict certain things about electron spin and magnetic moment from following the mathematics alone. Note however, it wasn't or isn't Dirac's being able to predict such values from mathematics which makes mathematics in that case real, the fact of being able to predict those values from following the mathematics simply gives us confidence in our belief that mathematics itself is in some sense objective and real. As with morals, one can posit that this or that axiom is necessarily true, such as the axiom of choice, and that as a consequence of doing so, the mathematics corresponds to specific facts of reality. However, it is not our having chosen those specific axioms which makes the math reflected in them objective and real. The choice of axioms and our reasons for doing so reflect an attempt to provide a description of something real, not the underlying foundation as to why those things which correspond to our description are in fact real.

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ETA:

Another way to look at it would be to examine how moral realism intersects with moral paradox. Let's take Sam Harris' argument that well-being is the index of what is and isn't moral. According to this view, things which maximize well-being would be moral, regardless of whether our instincts agree with it or not. But this can become problematic when we consider moral dilemma's such as the trolley problem. In the first case, we save 5 people by throwing a switch that diverts the trolley onto a track that only has one person on it. Most people are perfectly comfortable with this solution. However, if the resolution involves pushing that one person off a bridge and onto the track to cause the trolley to derail, many people would be uncomfortable with this solution. Now it's not immediately obvious that there is any difference in terms of overall well-being, though there may be some which are simply not intuitively obvious. For example, it could be that setting the precedent of solving such moral dilemmas by initiating actions such as pushing the person off the bridge could result in more harm to overall well-being in the long term, it's not clear one way or the other. However, presuming that no such hidden effects exist, it would seem that we make a distinction between the morality of our action in the first case and that in the second case. So there appear to be two things at work here. First, it would appear on the surface of things that Harris is wrong in believing that maximization of well-being accurately describes morality. But secondly, we would have to conclude, presuming the integrity and the health of the test subjects, that the diffference between the two scenarios constitutes a moral fact, even though we can find no description of morals, no over-riding goal or value, which necessarily explains that moral fact.

A similar set of questions could be asked about the scenario in which five people in a hospital emergency room could be saved by sacrificing one person who is otherwise healthy, or, at least, not in danger of dying. This would plausibly result in an increase in overall well-being, even if we take into account the loss to the individual who is cut up for their organs, as the five other people would presumably gain an equal amount that they otherwise would lose without the healthy person's organs. Yet something about the scenario screams out at us that this would be wrong, and it would be wrong whether or not there are hidden factors such as in the trolley scenario which ultimately justify not sacrificing the healthy person due to long term or other incidental effects. Our intuition is that it is just wrong, regardless of any rational. We don't need to figure out the pluses and minuses to know that it is wrong and that this is an objective truth. We just 'know' it, independent of any framework explaining it. Thus the moral realist isn't required to appeal to justifications in terms of values and goals to justify their belief that actual moral facts exist. Our intuition seems to be telling us that this is the case. The challenge for the moral skeptic is to show that there is another explanation for our intuition in these mattters other than the objective existence of real, objective moral facts. It is the moral skeptic who needs an explanation in terms of goals or values, presumably hard-wired into us, to explain that intuition. And when the moral skeptic attempts to provide that explanation, at least according to the consensus of philosophers, he fails to provide a convincing counter-argument. YMMV.