Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

The problem with these kinds of debates is that the correctness of an answer is more likely to depend on semantics than on any particular truth beyond the semantics.  Morality is subjective if you define subjectivity as I do, and morals as I do. 

Except that it's not, as I keep telling you.  Your definition of morality is a statement that moral realists can agree with, naturalists and non naturalists alike.  

It's objective if you define subjective or objective other than as I do, or define morality other than I do.

Definitions aren't the problem, lol.  

I'd say, though, that objective morals exist about as much as objective unicorns exist.  They might exist as brain patterns, or be encoded to some degree in DNA.

Then QED.  If objective morals exist as ideas then they exist exactly as a realist is telling you that they do.

If someone states that objective morals may exist, I will take it much the same way.  I'm agnostic about that, unless someone can define very specifically what they mean by objective morals, and give a concrete enough example for me to put my finger on it.  Without this, then by default I tend toward subjectivism, because I consider mores to be ideas, and ideas for the most part to be subjective mental experiences.

I keep telling you that realists aren't claiming otherwise, lol.  If your whole spiel about objective morality is based on the notion that they're ideas, so that's that.....then.....you......are.....confused.  It's not a definition problem, it's a you problem.

Every single position on the issue that answers that very first question with "yes, I think that our moral propositions express beliefs" thinks that moral propositions are ideas.  Every single cognitivist position on the issue.  Error theory, judgement dependency, moral naturalism, moral non naturalism, standard reduction, analytic reduction.  All are cognitivist positions, all agree that moral propositions are ideas that we have.

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I'll introduce you to to something you may appreciate.  An intuitionist description of objective morality from idealism.  

As per this position, we don't actually infer what is or isn't good.  We observe it.  This observation is fundamentally autonomous from scientific inquiry because no physical properties reduce to moral properties, nor can any normative proposition be reduced to non-normative semantics.  They are sui generis and non reducible.  Further, any natural explanation of morality will invariably fall at some point or another to the naturalistic fallacy.  

This position contends that if we are equipped with the functioning sensibilities, then by looking carefully enough at any given situation a person ought to be able to directly observe good or bad because these forms are accessible to us.  They are part of our sensible world.  Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.   Seeing that skullfucking your neighbor is bad is simple, understanding why lying to the would-be murderer of your child is wrong, is not.  These represent the limits and flaws of our sensible faculty, and all but ensure that people will come to vastly disparate moral conclusions.   Our emotional response to these moral observations are produced by their recognition..just as, if you were pointing at a duck sitting two feet between you... and a person was arguing that there was no duck...we would all quickly lose our shit.

They think that our moral propositions express beliefs.
They think that our beliefs are sometimes true.
They think that the fact of which are beliefs are constituted can be mind independent.
They think those facts are non natural.  

They are realists, just as I am.  They think that reality is different than I do, is all.  The intuitionist line, btw, equally open to us both.  It's the basis of empirical knowledge, after all.

Let me reboot with a simple idea.  We are talking about in WHAT WAY things are bad, morally speaking.

But how do you establish whether they are bad at all? Why is murder bad? Or rape? Or suffering in any form? How do you even arrive at the idea of badness, if everything is just the objective Universe grinding through its paces?