Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

I can objectively say that, "X holds the moral position Y, based on (insert way of knowing/inferring that)."  If you want to talk about the mechanics of mechanism, like brain function, then fine.  You could locate the "morality genes," perhaps, and those would be objective.

That would be moral subjectivism, not objectivism.  The subjectivists fact I supplied you with was an explicit invocation of the person or groups biology. If -that- is why they think something is wrong, then their moral assessment is subjective.

I'm fine with that, but I predicted that immediately upon entering this thread-- if you want to reduce reality to a physical monist world view, then discussion of morality means very little.  In my view of things, the things you quoted are essentially an example of objectivists wrongly conflating a material monist world view with a dualist or idealist concept.

If you have issues with the physical monist worldview, then you might find moral non naturalism appealing...but it's an objectivist position.  Moral non naturalism is moral realism for dualists/idealists.

But this goes back to our old discussions about mind, na?  In the essence, we're always going to be talking about the same issue: you will conflate the subjective and objective into physical mechanism, since the brain is presumably deterministic.  And I will conflate all into the subjective, perhaps with a pragmatic dualism-- there's a thinking/feeling subject, and the objects or ideas which the subject contemplates.

If a morality is based on external objects (in a physical world) or external ideas (in an idealists world) then they are equally expressions of objectivism or moral realism.  

Given this, our positions on morality are likely to be different, too, for the exact same reasons.  You will measure things AROUND what I call morality, and say it's a measure of morality.  X% of people believe Y, X brain region lights up when upsetting picture Y is shown to a test subject, and so on-- much like you insist that a particular frequency of light is "red," whereas I insist redness is purely experiential and has no meaningful objective existence.

I could list off all the problems with sampling from so many positions in just your idea of red, or your idea of morality, but seeing as how I've already done that and you saw no cause to refine your position - what would the point be?  Calling something "purely experiential" and saying that it has no meaningful existence is not moral subjectivism.  It is not moral non naturlaism.  It is not error theory, and it is not non-cognitivism.  Meanwhile, it does not argue against, make comment on, or refine the claims of moral realism. It's just a mishmash of things from each position which logically refute each othe, that may be useful for continuing to object when any objection that belongs to one of them is answer by any of the various brands of moral realism.

You are confused.  Every moral realist agrees that our moral agency...and in point of fact everything we know about the world..is "purely experiential". Either we make the assertion that our purely experiential whatsits refer to external x's (like non natural moral facts) or we don;t...but once we've made that assertion at all - that there is a world, regardless of what it's made of or how many different types of stuff the things in it are made of, or which of those types of stuff some specific thing is made of - then we've made a commitment that will apply to moral conjecture......and will require an explanation for abandoning that commitment in this purportedly special case. As Jorg already pointed out. There is no fundamental difference between realism in general, and moral realism.

For me, morality is predicated on subjective experience.  If google decided we should/shouldn't do something, I wouldn't consider it morality, because google presumably doesn't have any subjective experience of insult, or violation, or any real understanding of loss.

-and yet absent a subjects actual experience, we don't possess their experience, we feel confident in making moral judgements about them and what they do.  If our moral statements are cognitive propositions, and if any of those propositions were inference based truths, there's no clear reason why google couldn't be programmed to mimic our assessments.  

I don't know if that would make google a moral agent (since it would require no understanding or states of belief to do the moral calculus), but it would make google a competent assessor of moral propositions.  Many realists would, in point of fact, trust a computer to arrive at moral truth more readily than a human being.  We have known flaws in our judgement, they're compelling..and difficult to dispose of.  That's why concepts like super rationalism, full information, and logical self interest are leveraged.