Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

What about rape would make it wrong?  Wrongness implies some metric by which it might be contrasted with rightness.  But wrongness and rightness are ideas.  Other than in the minds of agents, where would such ideas exist, independent of the agent who considers them?

Doesn't matter.  Any proposition that says "this thing about rape x makes it wrong" is..at least..an attempt at an objective moral appraisal.  If they get it wrong, because thing x isn't true, or because thing x isn't cogent metric, then they're wrong (but still objectively wrong, lol).

Here I have to ask you the obvious question..though, can you actually not think of anything about rape that makes it wrong?  Yes, I have opinions, you have opinions, we all have opinions...and those opinions exist in our minds.....but you don't have any opinions about that....?

The existence of opinions and their place in the mind does not make any other thing necessarily subjective.  We contend that some opinions are fact based, and others are free floating opinions.  Since a moral realist sees a moral proposition as the equivalent of any other (purported) fact..this would also be true of moral statements.  The simple fact that you are expressing your opinion isn't enough to determine whether the moral statement is subjective or objective, and this is mostly due to the fact that both subjective and objective statements or positions are privately held in the mind (which is the sense of subjectivity to which possesion of the concept refers).  

I can only say this so many ways and so many times...but moral realism does not contend that we are not necessarily subjective agents who hold opinions.  That this is true is not a counterargument to the position.  The question being asked (by moral realism, in contrast to moral subjectivism, lol) is not whether you have an opinion...but whether some x causes that opinion, or whether the opinion causes some x.  That's the ground floor.  Does it purport to report facts.

When I say rape is wrong (and I do), I recognize it as a shorthand: I don't like rape due to my feelings, and I know that the majority of people in my social environment don't like rape due to their feelings, and so we say it's wrong.  We have a social contract to stand against it, and to punish those caught doing it.

But what's the difference between sex, which most people consider good, and rape, which most people do not?  It's a complex history of ideas about rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and so on.  Essentially, it's a narrative.  It's much more about the sense of identity, of personal power, and so on than about anything that I'd call objective.

What would happen if a man raped his dog? The dog would squirm around, might be kind of confused. He might be sore for a couple of days. But I doubt he'd live out a life of insecurity, PTSD, etc. That's because he's not capable of establishing a narrative in which sex is related to self esteem, and where the wrong kind of sex will disillusion him forever. In essence, you'd have to argue that one's entire world view is objective, which to me is a broken semantic.