Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

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.

Well, let me speculate even further. Perhaps there's something about our thinking regarding the "oughtness" of these moral acts that triggers us to feel strongly about these acts, as a way to reinforce that thinking.

No doubt.  The question is which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I'd argue that since "ought" implies a motivated behavior, and that motivated behaviors are mediated by hormones, feeling precedes cognition.

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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.

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, in general, morality more generally is a mediation among feelings, ideas, and environment?

No. Morality has nothing to do with feelings anymore than a theist's love of Jesus has anything to do with God's existence.

Look at it this way: if I say "rape is morally wrong." You could say one of three things:

1) That's just your opinion, Vulcan.

2) Your viewing rape as morally wrong isn't even an opinion. Rather, it is your emotional reaction to rape.

3) Rape is only wrong within the specific moral framework to which you subscribe.

I guess I should make room for:

4) Other (please explain thoroughly)

So when I say, "Rape is morally wrong"... what am I ACTUALLY saying, Bennyboy?

I'd say all of the above.  I've said morality is the mediation among feelings, ideas and environment.

Your opinion is a collection of ideas.  Your emotional reaction to rape is a feeling.  The social framework is your environment.

But in all cases, if nobody ever cared about rape, then there never would have been anything said about it.  Furthermore, since sexuality long predates humanity, then I'd definitely say that feelings about sexuality must predate our ability to verbalize or to hold rational views about it. In other words, I'm pretty sure whether the chicken came before the egg.