Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

-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.

Sure. 

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.

Absolutely, we're a super feely bunch.  

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.

Agreed.

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?

You just quoted me answering your question.....?

A moral naturalist (for example) only requires the items in that first page..that we're both on, up above, to justify their system and conclusions.  The ability to perceive a material state and make factual propositions about that state is all that moral naturalism requires.  If you agree that this is possible then you have accepted the fundamental validity of moral naturalism as a factual and accurate position on how moral conclusions can be derived.   

Our ability in both of these regards, however... is not uniform among individuals..or even uniformly consistent within one individual.  We can fail to observe some relevant state, we can fail to account for some relevant factual statement.  We can make mistakes of inference (and mistaken observations).  We can even lose our shit and deny those states we do see and reject those factual statements we do understand.  We can adhere to a factual statement and an observation of a material state in one instance and differ from it the next. We can be completely unaware of some relevant fact or material state.

Two people can see a road sign, and think that it says different things.  Why would any morally relevant fact or observation be immune to those flaws common to us that apply to all statements of fact, to all observations? As Vulcan noted previously, realism isn't about a different kind of fact, it's about the -same- kinds of facts as any other fact. The things we are observing are -just as real- as your toe. The propositions we might make are just as objective as a statement about your toe. Not more real, not more objective. They are subject to our shortcomings just as much as any other....but these are comments on a moral agent, not the moral system. Our failure to see that the sign says "stop" does not mean that the sign says "go" or that there is no sensible way to arrive at a fact of what the sign says.

All of this...... just a long winded way of saying that people can be wrong. It's a thing that we do. That people can be wrong is all that's required to explain why two people might disagree. Hell..those two people might both be wrong -and- disagree with each other.