RE: Subjective Morality?
November 7, 2018 at 10:22 am
(This post was last modified: November 7, 2018 at 10:39 am by The Grand Nudger.)
If morality were predicated on the -fact- of having those feelings- that would be subjectivism.
If morality is predicated on the -fact- of mind independent properties about which we have feelings.........this is moral realism
I'd echo Jor above. I can even agree that a great deal of our morality is predicated on meaningful subjectivity. We nevertheless insist that our experience and our observations provide us access to facts about the world we live in, about who we are..even (this, echoing jor again from far earlier in thread..it's unclear how or why moral realism is different from realism). So the simple fact that we have feelings and base a morality on feelings wouldn't actually rule moral realism out. Provided that those feelings are informed by some observation of our environment or the act - they can bee seen as a response to stimulus, sure - but a response with an meaningfully and objectively existent cause. We observe that x is wrong or bad....say, watching a bunch of adults kick an infant for five solid minutes. If bad means anything, we know that this is bad. It makes us feel shitty, because it's bad.
Our moral intuitions are clearly fallible...but we operated on them for quite some time before we even made the attempt to formalize a system or a description (and even when we have a system or a description..like the manual to your car..it largely stays in the glove box). I'm still looking for someone to bite on a question I asked earlier. How do we, as naturalists (as empiricists, even).....explain the success of moral intuitions if they do not refer to -any- natural fact (or objective fact)? If moral realism is categorically unacceptable, did we accidentally stumble upon this whole enterprise? It signifies nothing and refers to nothing..but...works? We'd have to appreciate this tremendous coincidence, lol.
If morality is predicated on the -fact- of mind independent properties about which we have feelings.........this is moral realism
I'd echo Jor above. I can even agree that a great deal of our morality is predicated on meaningful subjectivity. We nevertheless insist that our experience and our observations provide us access to facts about the world we live in, about who we are..even (this, echoing jor again from far earlier in thread..it's unclear how or why moral realism is different from realism). So the simple fact that we have feelings and base a morality on feelings wouldn't actually rule moral realism out. Provided that those feelings are informed by some observation of our environment or the act - they can bee seen as a response to stimulus, sure - but a response with an meaningfully and objectively existent cause. We observe that x is wrong or bad....say, watching a bunch of adults kick an infant for five solid minutes. If bad means anything, we know that this is bad. It makes us feel shitty, because it's bad.
Our moral intuitions are clearly fallible...but we operated on them for quite some time before we even made the attempt to formalize a system or a description (and even when we have a system or a description..like the manual to your car..it largely stays in the glove box). I'm still looking for someone to bite on a question I asked earlier. How do we, as naturalists (as empiricists, even).....explain the success of moral intuitions if they do not refer to -any- natural fact (or objective fact)? If moral realism is categorically unacceptable, did we accidentally stumble upon this whole enterprise? It signifies nothing and refers to nothing..but...works? We'd have to appreciate this tremendous coincidence, lol.
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