Subjective Morality?

[bennyboy]

But let me ask you this-- if nobody has feelings about something, then from whence WOULD "ought" come from?  Why are there differences?  Are there different moral fact for individuals, or are there the same physical facts, which they are feeding through different instances of subjective agency, thereby producing varying results?

-all moral positions can agree on the fact that human beings are necessarily subjective agents.  This practically ensures that even if morality were a sign on the side of the road, somebody..somewhere, would disagree with somebody else about what it says.

Nevertheless, we insist that it is at least possible for a person, who is a necessarily subjective agent, to be in possession of a fact, and to be able to use systems like reason or the scientific process to further reduce the likelihood of error and make true and accurate statements.  Obviously, even that won't be compelling to everyone, see our many creationist threads.

When I entered the thread, it was on this caveat: that we must consider, at least pragmatically, the matter to be dualistic: that there are subjects and objects, mind and material states to think about.  I do not deny that there are objective facts which a subject might observe, have feelings about, and form ideas about.  You do not deny that any system of thought, including a moral system, involves subjective agency.  I haven't really tried to say that since all our observations are done through mental agency, we should not consider the possibility of objective facts; you haven't tried to argue that the Universe is deterministic, including our brains, and so we don't really need to consider the subjective experience of moral ideas at all.  So we're on the same page up to that point, at least.

Now, I'm willing to assert (I have, actually), that ALL morality, at its root, has feelings upon which it is predicated.  I can refine that-- I'd say they are feelings about social order specifically, rather than about beauty, about mathematics, or about cats.  This, as I see it, is not a point I'm trying to make-- it is a category description.  I would like to believe that we all agree still, up to this point, if not about the need for feeling, but about the category of the content which morality considers.

For most objective truths, I expect there to be a fair chance at directly observing the truth (or following the same path of inference which arrives necessarily at it).  For example in discussing gravity, science teachers are perfectly happy to describe all the relationships, experiments and so on by which one might arrive at an understanding comparable to their own.

I'd very much like, and it's now been asked a few times, for any EXAMPLE of a moral fact, and a description of the process of (purely rational) inference by which it is arrived at, or if it is an observation rather than a conclusion, how that observation leads to a correct moral view.  I believe I can describe how feelings lead to moral views, and to make at least a reasonable speculation about how and why people or groups of people arrive at different views.  Can you do so for moral realism?