What would be the harm?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll make a quick response because I don't feel like reading all this crap at the moment.  I may not get to it for some time.  I am interested in doing as you suggest and reading about intuitivism if you would be gracious enough to provide some links.  In the meantime I'll simply point out that you are wrong, and the reason you are wrong was included in my last post, so your making this argument is just an example of you not engaging my objections and simply blathering on repeating things and making arguments without actually engaging the counter-arguments.  When you don't engage my objections, and simply repeat your arguments on the pretext that I haven't shown sufficient understanding of how you are right, you are explicitly acknowledging that you aren't engaging.  For you to accuse me of not engaging, despite having done so, when you, in this very post, show that you are not engaging my objections, is laughably hypocritical.

I'm not sure what you mean here, do you mean, in sum, that intuitivists are wrong?  Well..okay, I think that they're wrong about alot of things too.  I'm not trying to browbeat you into accepting their arguments, only informing you of the existence and sensibility of the arguments, and this, vis a vis why the objections that they levy, which you have also levied..may be good arguments against some thing x, but are not arguments against -realism-.  They are, themselves, realist arguments.  

Now, onto why taking the top off a mountain doesn't qualify.  In some loose sense it might qualify as 'damage' but qualifying as damage alone doesn't make it harm.  That's the missing or implied part of the definition.  By your own definition, harm is bad.  Thus if it isn't bad, it cannot be harm.  How is taking the top off a mountain objectively bad?  Feel free to fill in the details because you haven't yet.

All that is required for objectivity in the sense that moral theorists are talking about is that the damage be mind independent..which it is.  If this is their standard, then it is an objective standard, at least.  This, alone, is enough to defang your assertion of a meaningful subjectivity.  

Harm as conceived of by moral realists isn;t subjective.  End of.  That harm can be conceived of subjectively or that some harm is..properly, subjective rather than objective is not a damning indictment of the realists position...but exactly the sorts of harm they would exclude from their criteria.  

Anyway, I'll likely not get to the rest of your reply until Tuesday.  In the meantime, if you have some links, that would be appreciated.  If you can say how taking the top off a mountain is bad without either referring to subjective goals and wants, or recursively circling back to your assertion that harm is bad, it would be appreciated.

You seem to have found one, you could follow that rabbit hole down.   

(One last comment.  A brief glance suggests that the epistemology of intuitionism has much in common with Reformed Epistemology.  If you're going to go that route, providing it pans out as I suspect, you'll need to show how reformed epistemology fails with respect to things like sensus divinitatas, while intuitionism succeeds, if in fact they are both making essentially the same epistemological assumptions.)

Again, forgive me, but the article immediately suggests a line of attack.

-and there are surely other lines of attack.  There is no moral theory which is free from lines of attack - but it;s important when offering them to understand both what it is that you're attacking and that your line actually applies to what you're attacking.  Your remarks regarding the subjectivity of harm have not been either of those things, had you engaged with the propositions to which you applied them.   Realists of -every- stripe accept that there are subjective conceptualizations of harm.  They simpkly contend that these are not the proper field of the objectivists moral landscape and are..instead, predictable failures of a subjective agent.  

If this seeming with even and odd numbers can be wrong, why should we trust such seemings on propositions such as yours that "harm is bad?"  This may seem to you to be self-evident, but seemings can be wrong, so your having such a seeming does not put your belief that harm is bad on a sound footing.  How do you get it onto a sound footing?

Why, indeed.  Harm is bad is self evident to a person who launches an intuitivist argument.  That doesn't make this so -to me-...I was simply capable of relating their argument to you, and expressing why your objections might fail in response to that argument.  I think they also fail in response to my moral naturalism, for reasons also laid out at length in multiple posts..post wherein I also took the time to note the pitfalls of naturalism as a sound footing for moral realism. Harm is a natural property, and in the sense meaningful to moral theory, it is mind independant...regardless of whether or not there are a whole host of mind dependant things in it;s periphery and about it. There are opinions and there are facts. We commonly have opinions about and around facts. Pointing out these opinions existence..something that neither of us (and no moral realist) denies, does not..in and of itself, make any of those facts necessarrily subjective.

The short of the long is that you are simply not using the term subjectivity in the way that moral theorists use it. Bcause of this, you can validly claim that any given x is subjective..but it won't matter if this is true..because they are not talking about the same thing that you are. Yes, we have desires. So what. Yes, our desires can align with our moral propositions. So what? Yes, we can and often do conflate our subjectivity with a meaningful objectivity, so what? Yes, we can and often do conflate objectivity with the subjectivity of survival. So what? Yes, we can and commonly do conflate the instrumental goods of x for an intrinsic good. So what? Yes, we can be in moral disagreement (and you don;t need to refer to lions or bacteria to establish that, lol). So what?

No realist need disagree with any of this. In point of fact, none do. Each example is pointed to as an artifact of a subjective agent, circumscribing -why- we have things like moral disagreement or moral indeterminacncy or moral failure.

Moral naturalists, for their part (and correct me if I'm wrong but you are trying to address moral naturalism, specifically, yes?) need to ground their moral schema in natural properties..but they can't ground every part of their schema in those brute facts of nature..as what is natural is not necessarrily right....and as they do so and avoid that...they have to ground them in such a way as to avoid the open question, and arching around all of that they have to ground them in such a way as to overcome some error theory. These are the main problems for moral naturalism, and the toughest one is the last one. Not subjectivity. Moral subjectivity is not an error theory. Error theories accept as a point of definition that moral propositions purport to report objectivity, they reject subjectivism fundamentally, they assert, instead..that we get the answer to some question wrong..but this is only a sensible notion within the implicit claim that there is a right answer - the realists contention.

Your answer to my so whats..and again correct me If Im wrong...is that.."so what if that's what we're doing!". It's a good question. I'm only suggesting that no invocation of subjectivity is a valid way to launch -those- attacks. You're shooting at the wrong thing. You're an error theorist, not a subjectivist. We both eschew subjectivity..again, as it;s used by moral theorists, in order to launch much more damning (or illuminating) arguments than..."but that;s like..just your opinion, man". All that pointing out some opinion as opposed to some fact might do, in the case of me being a realist, is to cause me to discard that opinion as a basis of moral justification..because it's not what I'm talking about. I'll just say.."thx, shitcanned, next?".

Yes, it's my/our opinion, but is it -wrong-. It sure as shit may be! Is harm wrong (as in, wrong as a moral basis) -because- it's subjective? No, a thousand times no. If it is wrong, it's wrong for some other reason. Is it wrong because there is disagreement? Because lions and bacteria (and other people) would not agree? No, there is disagreement over every true thing.

Is it wrong (still as a moral basis) because I desire to avoid or entertain it it? No, I desire to avoid many true things, that doesn't make them less true. I do a hell of a lot of harm, and have done a hell of alot of harm, and in point of fact -enjoy- doing at least some harm........everyone knows this about me, lol. Thankfully, that harm I've done and what harm I enjoy falls within the remit of social acceptability....but according to my moral schema, it's still wrong, still bad.

(I do understand, agree, and concede...btw, that intuitionism isn't dominant in the field..but that's not because intuitionism isn't ever-present in the field..lying under -every- justification, it is..it's just profoundly unsatisfying - my reference to it shouldn't be taken as an indication that I feel otherwise. I do think that it's a profoundly unsatisfying conjecture..it doesn't answer the questions I want to ask....but fuck me if I can make reference to any fact of any thing without some unspoken affirmation -of- it. Ultimately, that's a problem of all propositions, moral or otherwise. The thing that's dominant in the field is natural realism. Moral subjectivity long since acknowledged and dealt with and discarded in the sense that moral theorists are referring to it. Subjectivity made incredible contributions to how realists conceptualize and argue for their objectivity, and non natural realism made contributions to natural realism.....but, at present, it's error theory that's most concerning, error theory that gives us pause to wonder whether our foundations are built on sand - and error theory to which contemporary natural realism builds itself as scientific realism or analytical realism or standard reductionism in a bid to overcome.)