Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

Any fact of the real world could be considered in a subjective moral system, or in the feelings that contribute to it.

We can consider something subjective all we like, but..if it's a fact of an object, it isn't.  We're just misusing a word.  That's a really good example of a subjectivist claim, actually.  Because we personally misuse a word, we are convinced of x.  

Maybe someone LOVES logs-- like, they will actually cry every time they see a log burning.  If you could get 2 of those nutjobs in a room together, a new moral code would be established pretty quickly.

The same goes for animals.  I know of many vegetarians who would literally cry at the idea of a cow being killed.  And there are plenty who would see them as no less silly than those who would weep over logs.

These are both emotivist, not subjectivist, at least as described.  

Trying to loop back to the OP, now-- do moral worlds even exist?  Can you "know" that X is right or wrong (call this category-A), or is that just short form for "I know that the people around me would approve or disapprove of X?" (category B)

I think it's a fairly serious problem in society that people confuse the latter with the former.  When challenged, they will spin some made-up rationale to show that a category-B belief is really category-A.

They don't "know that my family and friends disapprove of homosexuality."  They "know" that homosexuality is wrong, and that anyone who does wrong should be punished, perhaps by death.  But they don't know this due to any objective fact-- they "know" it through social osmosis.

I agree, confusing relativist morality (and the others) with objective morality is a mistake that leads to other mistakes.  In fact, I think it's the mistake that has lead to all of our mistakes of moral desert*.  When we consider women burnt as witches under a purportedly realist justification - we can see how those women died for reasons relating to the fact that some person believed they were a witch, or some authority declared they were a witch, or that some person was jealous, or angry, or upset at them.  They were not burnt for actually -being-witches.  For the purported fact.  We'll return to this again below.

This is why I challenge "scientific" positions-- it's important never to stop questioning them, such that "science," the best system of inquiry into reality, not be replaced with "Science" as a dogma, and that people "know" things that are in fact absorbed by social osmosis.  How many people say they "believe in" science who know absolutely nothing about it but do not KNOW that they are conflating category-B knowledge with category-A?  I'd venture-- almost all of them.

Continually questioning everything probably isn't the worst idea anyone has ever had - however....it doesn't make any sense to continually question relativist, subjectivist, or emotivist claims, genuinely expressed, in and of themselves.  

Only realist truth claims (again, genuinely expressed) have a variable relationship with truth or purport to report accurate things about objects (as opposed to subjects, societies, or the presence of emotions), such that a continual investigation might show the statement to be true or false with respect to the accuracy of the facts it purports to report.  As we've just agreed, it's a mistake to confuse relativism (or subjectivism, or emotivism) with realism, a mistake that leads to other mistakes.  That relationship flows both ways.  

So, lets say a person grabs a handheld radar and measures the speed of a baseball in flight.  Tell me, in what way do you think this purported fact is, in fact, not a fact of the baseball - but a fact of a subject's opinions about baseballs, a fact of a given society's proclamations about baseballs, or the presence of an emotion triggered by baseballs- as in the case for burning witches?

(* which is why i prefer a minimal moral reality, with an over-praising and under-punishing system of desert - explicitly crafted to evade objections to fact, objections to motivation, and objections to negative consequence. "But what if the purported fact is inaccurate?" - then the statement is discarded. "How can we compel people to do right if and when their interests are not aligned to it in and of themselves?" - by heavily incentivizing them. "But what if bad things would happen to people under a factual moral statement?" - we should take extreme care to see that they don't)