(April 9, 2019 at 1:43 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote:(April 9, 2019 at 9:42 am)Acrobat Wrote: 1) You mean relative to those who hold the goal/ought to do what's best for human thriving?
2) If I don't hold such a goal, then would you say I have no such moral oughts here? That the wrongness of torturing innocent babies just for fun might be true for you, but not for me.
3) Or in other words for your objective morality to work, it relies on people to subscribe to a subjective goal like doing what's best for human thriving?
Okay, then here are my answers to your questions:
I am defining morality as doing what is best for humans.
1) I meant something similar to your first question, but a bit more specific. Our built-in human nature is such that we pursue certain goals consistently, across human populations. Objective moral systems can be built on the facts about what is good for humanity, based on our common human nature. This is relative to humans compared with other species. We don't construct moral systems based on what is good for ants unless that's also good for humans.
2) You can't base moral systems on merely subjective preferences and irrational thinking. Moral considerations have to have some factual basis to be objective.
3) People can and do disagree about what the objective facts are surrounding the question of what is good for humans, but we are making solid progress on those questions over time. It takes time, thought, and efforts to overcome the human subjectivities which have distorted moral thinking historically. The more progress we make, the more our moral considerations are built into our laws and systems. It's an on-going challenge to improve our understanding. Any contentions are referred to our legal system for resolution.
So no, I am not relying "on people to subscribe to a subjective goal like doing what's best for human thriving," because the impulse comes from human nature, not from subscribing, and that goal is relative and not subjective. In other words, we are already doing it anyway, and have always done it.
This is secular rather than atheistic thinking about moral issues. Atheists don't have to invent something new.
I don't have any innate impulse to do what's best for human thriving. If we're strictly speaking about evolution, then the only goal evolution has in mind is for me to have sex successfully. Any selected for feature, is terribly short sighted, developed in consideration of immediate ecological pressures, with very little to any changes in our biology, as the product of natural selection, since the beginnings of our species, in our more tribal predicament.
So it shouldn't be surprising that the people I care about the most is my family, and my small community, and not so much humanity as a whole. Whether or not you get killed, robbed, etc... is of far less of a concern for most people than the glass in their cupboard, or their iPhones.
Not only do I not possess such a goal, I also reject the moral authority, of your supposed group that subscribes to such a goal, and wants to impose such an obligation on to me.
Based on this predicament, where does that leave your objective morality? It's true for you, but not for me?