Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

What deserves mention..at this point, is that a moral subjectivist can't refer to any fact at all in justification of their moral statement and remain true to the contention of moral subjectivity.

Cannot use any fact at all?  That's a really limiting criterion, dude, and I don't accept it.

You may not, but moral subjectivism is defined by it.  I'm not saying that you can't use them as a statement of practicality or effect.  Clearly you can and do refer to facts (or at least what you take to be a fact).  I'm simply noting that by doing so you are acting contrary to the central contention of moral subjectivism.  That there are no mind independent anchors for moral propositions.  

If I feel that rape is bad, then the fact that I see a man on top of a woman, and she's screaming "Help help, get off me!" doesn't suddenly make my moral sense objective.  Nor does it make the rape objectively wrong.  What it does mean is that I'll get enraged, and possibly club the man into a quivering mess with whatever blunt object I find handy.

Correct, your feelings, as a floating justification, would not make something objectively wrong.  It is possible, however, for you to have feelings about something that is objectively wrong.  

Nor, even if I'm drawing on objective facts to establish a moral system, does it make that system objective.  For example, if I think causing suffering is immoral, and I look to brain scanning as a means of determining what causes suffering, this does not make my moral position objective.

Drawing on objective facts ( a bit redundant, but hey, lol) and leveraging a valid means of inference to arrive at a true conclusion is exactly what we take to be objective in any other sense.  Again, some explanation for inconsistent semantics is required.  Reasserting inconsistent semantics will not explain inconsistent semantics. The non-reductive approach is open to you..but if you fully stated it you would be agreeing with cornell realists, for example.

That's because no physical system or property can decide WHAT MATTERS. Does it matter if someone is raped?  If so, show me objective proof that this is true.  Can't be done, because there's no such thing.

Whether or not it "matters" is not the same question as whether or not it is subjectively or objectively immoral. The answer to that question can be subjective even if the moral proposition is (legitimately) objective.

(I want you to reconsider your earlier objection to my stating that no discovery of some fact x matters in a subjectivist framework...at this point, btw, lol)

It, whatever it may be in any given question..may not matter. This would make it an inconsequential truth, but it would still be true. So, for example, if rape were objectively wrong, the fact that this does not matter to the unapologetic rapist is moot. That is an example of selective and subjective compulsions and appraisals (and again a moral realist also notices this), but it's a statement regarding what some moral agent does or might do, not the underlying nature of the moral stricture against the act. Objective and subjective moral theory are about some (purportedly) moral act or system or proposition x - not binding comments on the moral agents who navigate them. If morality were objective, that doesn't mean that a moral agent wouldn't make meaningfully subjective decisions or that the moral agent would give a shit, or give a shit about the same things. Think about all the things you take to be wrong (subjectively or objectively)...that you do anyway.

On a more fundamental level, if by "deciding what matters" we are referring to moral criterion - then ofc we're the ones who decide that..we're just deciding what we're talking about when we use the word....and if we decide that what matters is our subjective appraisal we are endorsing moral subjectivity. If we decide that mind independent propositions...facts...matter..then we are endorsing moral realism. Obviously, it's not impossible for a person to make a claim to moral subjectivism while endorsing moral realism in their justification - here you are. I'm not telling you that your comments on what moral agents do, on their spotty agency, on moral systems as devised and practiced out in the world..are wrong. I'm noting that you are not disagreeing with moral realists on any of that, your ideas of objectivity and subjectivity and what those positions are....are not what they are talking about.

When a person can consistently and coherently agree with all of your objections to some position...then you aren't actually objecting to that position. Make sense?