Subjective Morality?

[Belacqua]

We're not far off from agreement, I think.  We'd both agree that red light is real, and say that this or that thing "is" red, though that's a bit of a simplification.

But in all cases, there are things and properties of them.  We can talk about red light, and consider its wavelength a property.  We can talk about an apple, and consider being red a property.

But for moral ideas, this seems much less clear to me: what's the object, and what's the property?  Is wrongness a property of rape?  Is wrongness itself an object, and our moral instincts a kind of sense of it, such that some of us sense it well, and others poorly?

I'd argue that I experience red.  That's an experience I can have which is not really subject (for the most part) to interpretation.  Most people will look at a stop sign and immediately see that redness is one of its properties.

But I'm convinced that many people actually do not believe, and cannot perceive, that rape for example is wrong.  Suppose you give up your ten best cows for a healthy young teenage girl, one who is known in your community as a bit of a troublemaker but whom you are willing to take under your wing, and she spurns you on your wedding night.  What an outrage!  How lacking in understanding she is!  How immoral she is!

So either wrongness is not a property of rape, or cultural bias prevents people from accessing their sense of wrongness.  I think the former is infinitely more likely-- that wrongness is neither a thing, nor a property of any thing.  Instead, it's one of the human emotions-- no less familiar and no better understood than love or a sense of beauty.

Yes, I think comparing morals to colors is an analogy, based on similarities but not the same thing. The differences you point out are important. 

In the case of the resistant bride you cite, that seems like a conflict of two moral convictions. The man in question might feel that obedience or child-bearing or other factors are more important morals that over-ride the rule against forced sex (just as governments can argue that capital punishment is a moral demand over-riding the rule against killing). I am absolutely not saying I agree with the violent husband, but I can see that different cultures might balance things differently. 

So whether or not morals are real, there will be real-world cases where total clarity is impossible. 

This reminds me a bit of aesthetic questions -- another similar but different field. I think we can make a good objective case that Beethoven's music is better than Justin Bieber's, but it's a lot harder to demonstrate that Beethoven's 5th is better than his 9th, or vice versa. Obvious cases are obvious. 

As I recall even Aristotle is careful to point out that we can't demand more clarity in a field than is possible. Measuring speed is just not the same as measuring goodness, even if we believe that the latter is real.