RE: Subjective Morality?
January 1, 2019 at 4:17 am
(This post was last modified: January 1, 2019 at 5:22 am by vulcanlogician.)
(December 31, 2018 at 11:52 pm)Dimmesdale Wrote: If there were no minds there would be no moral obligations or laws.
If there were no minds there wouldn't be any logic either. That doesn't make logic subjective, does it? Is an argument logically valid because you like the way it sounds? No! There are objective criteria with which we deem something logical or illogical.
If there were no minds there would be no mathematical proofs, nor any scientific laws (ie. principles that we use to understand the natural world). That doesn't make science or math subjective, does it? The existence of gravity can only be understood by a mind, but that doesn't make it a matter of opinion.
Of course, you could go the route of saying that logic and math are "useful fictions"... ie... "not real without minds that acknowledge them and make them real." But that doesn't mean that they are subjective, does it? 2+2=4 is NOT a matter of opinion, no matter how you slice it.
The argument that morality is subjective and the argument that morality is "something we just made up" are two different arguments. To me, the former (moral subjectivism) is absolutely untrue. The latter (moral nihilism) may be true, but I err on the side of moral realism.
