RE: Subjective Morality?
November 1, 2018 at 6:31 pm
(This post was last modified: November 1, 2018 at 6:52 pm by bennyboy.)
(November 1, 2018 at 6:23 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Maybe the feelings we have about certain acts are a result of our cognitions regarding these acts, not the cause.
I think about a lot of things. I don't have feelings about math problems, for the most part. However, I can say that there's no case in which I form an idea about "should" which does not involve feelings, either current, or past, or as inferred from others.
Thinking isn't feeling. That they are connected is apparent enough, but thinking alone isn't the basis of moral positions, so far as I can tell. I'd argue that all motivated behavior, which is automatically implied by "ought," requires some kind of emotion to serve as the motivator.
(November 1, 2018 at 6:25 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Concerning my Michael Jordan metaphor, you need to make a decision. Is Jordan being good at basketball at basketball a matter of opinion? If so, you are a subjectivist concerning basketball skill. But what if you recognize that Jordan is objectively good at basketball, but your point is that basketball is something we made up? Well, then... you are a nihilist and NOT a subjectivist.
That's a strange conflation of skill and moral correctness. I'm fine saying Jordan is objectively good at basketball, because the rules define a context, and are not really debatable. If there was only one set of moral ideas, we could say the same about rape, or about any other moral issue.
However, morality does not provide a single set context by which things can be judged right or wrong. People, in thinking morally, establish many different contexts, many at odds with each other. If there were a thousand different versions of basketball, it might be difficult indeed for me to demonstrate that Jordan was an excellent basketball player outside the context in which we have already judged him.
Why don't we all agree on the following: given a particular social context, it may be able to establish that some act or belief is objectively wrong by the rules of that social context? But that morality more generally is a mediation among feelings, ideas, and environment?