Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

A scientific fact must be something that can be objectively determined by any observer, following a particular method. Therefor any moral judgement contained within that fact/method must be objectively defined also. This is the problem. I can’t just insert the word "wrong" into a scientific claim, without being explicit about what that means. It can therefor only be one definition among many possible ones. It can’t retain its element of moral evaluation outside of the scientific statement.

That’s the problem, I think. I see it as the smuggling of moral language into scientific statements, to make them appear to be some sort of fact about morality. But it’s only a fact about whatever morality is being assumed in the first place.

You can have facts about various different moralities that individuals may hold, or about various ethical systems. But again, you can’t deduce whether the whole systems are wrong or right scientifically, for the same reasons. You also can’t scientifically say which is correct or incorrect, without defining what those criteria mean. So we're back to the circular problem: correct in what way? To determine that criteria is just to define a particular moral/ethical system indirectly.

I’ll say this though. There’s one standard that can be applied to any moral system. Well, any system, really. Internal consistency. I can’t tell you that what you think is wrong is wrong, but I can point out ways in which your moral statements might appear to contradict each other. By doing so, I may change your actions, if you agree that I have indeed found a contradiction. Either that, or you accept that your system isn’t logically coherent, and that you’re okay with that. I can maybe also point out ways in which you are failing to achieve your own moral goals, through incorrect/inefficient practices.

I'm not looking to establish that such concerns are..well..unconcerning, only pointing out that those concerns are equally concerning to anyone who has made a commitment to scientific realism, or scientific naturalism.

I've bolded the relevant bit, I think?

The great asset of Cornell realism is that it directly adopts widely accepted views about the nature of natural properties and scientific knowledge in order to answer the foundational questions of moral metaphysics and moral epistemology. What are moral properties? Highly complex natural properties, individuated by their causal profiles—Boyd calls these homeostatic cluster properties. Are there, generally, properties like this? Yes; healthiness is one; moral properties are properties like that. How do we know about moral properties? By looking for directly observable properties that are characteristically functionally upstream or downstream from the moral property that we are interested in (provided that we have justified background beliefs about the functional roles of moral properties). Do we, generally, have knowledge like this? Yes; this is how we have scientific knowledge; moral knowledge is knowledge like that. In this way, the theoretical resources of scientific realism also turn out to support moral realism (Boyd 1988).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/