Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

There's a pretty important difference.  A cat, presumably, is more than an idea.  Whether or not there's really (really really) a cat there, I can see something, and can call it cat.

The moral realist would say that morals are more than simply ideas as well, that it's true, our conception of morals is an idea, but that it is an idea that refers to something in the real world.  In the same way, physical realism consists of ideas, as that is the only access we have to reality and the world, but the ideas themselves are postulated to refer to something, a cat, which exists in a reality that is independent of the idea itself.  There really is no difference between cat realism and physical realism, both depend on ideas which are inferred to represent independently existing realities, but neither actually has access to that reality.  The only difference is you're willing to make that inference with regard to physical realism, but not with respect to moral realism.  But the fact of the matter is we have no different access to the existence of an independent physical reality than we have to an indepently existing realm of moral facts.  You simply have a double standard regarding the two, likely based upon some hypothetical difference between the phenomenology of morals relative to the phenomenology of the physical world within our thoughts (our perceptual experience).   There is definitely a difference in the phenomenology of the two, but that fact alone isn't decisive.  There is a difference between the phenomenology of numbers and that of physical reality, but we don't on that account conclude that numbers are necessarily subjective.

"It's wrong to kick cats."  This debatable moral assertion is dependent on the real existence of cats.  If cats are not real, then it's not wrong to kick them.  Very few people would get outraged on either side of the debate about whether it's wrong to kick unicorns, methinks.

Let's take an extreme world view, and assume that EVERYTHING is experiential, and NOTHING is real beyond that experience.  It will still be true that there are experiences we call things, experiences we call properties of things, and much more dependent feelings and ideas about the properties of things.

"All is mind so far as I can know" is a fine philosophical position.  But there's still a need to differentiate between ideas which are shaped like cats, meow like cats and rudely ignore you like cats, and ideas which are about feelings and beliefs about how people ought to treat cats.

In short, whatever world view you take, they cannot be on the same semantic level.  There's no reason to say, "The descriptions about our experience of shapes and colors which we call cats are not substantially different than descriptions of our feelings about those shapes and colors."  They ARE substantially different, because ideas and feelings which are intrinsically ABOUT things are not peers to words which are labels for things-- whatever thing-ness might be.

The only caveat would be the material monist view that we argued about once upon a time (with regard to free will, I believe)-- if you argue that feelings and ideas are really just physically deterministic mechanisms, and that the agency of thought is essentially an illusory byproduct, then okay. But at that point, morality ceases to mean much anyway.