Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

One of the many...many reasons neither I nor objectivism consider a thing moral or immoral based on it's utility to me or whether I feel a certain way as a product of my biological origin.  

"I don't just hunt animals for food, I hunt them for fun."

I suspect you may, in fact, have as feelings-based a moral system as the "squee" that makes people fall in love with baby animals. 

You must mean to say that you suspect I have feelings - but ofc - that's not in dispute by me or any of these different propositions about moral statements.  I could do, and enjoy, all sorts of bad shit, and do.  I could do, and hate, all sorts of good shit - and do.  I can be made to feel shame for doing something that I know is not wrong, and I can be made to feel shame for -failing- to do a thing I know is wrong.

But your instincts don't say "squee" they say "rawr" in that context.  I'm trying to give you a moral escape, in that your "rawr" instinct is external to your conscious awareness-- it is part of your mental environment, let's say, and those feelings are a product of billions of years of animal interactions that you have nothign to do with.  But if you don't think its emotions that serve as the differential basis for your moral calculation, then what, objectively, IS?

You're looking for moral escape.  I'm focused on factual accuracy.  That's a running issue.  That a person has some instinct to do x will not answer the question of whether or not that thing x is good or bad.  

But maybe, as you say, I don't understand anything about anything.  Tell me, then, on what objecitve basis is your willingness to harm some organisms but not others not considered "moral or immoral based on it's [sic] utility to me or whether I feel a certain way as a product of my biological origin."

You should ask if, before you ask how.  I've yet to find an organism that I'm not willing to harm..and I don't need to consult any moral system for that.  The things I'm willing to do, as a set, overlaps with good and bad, as sets, just as it overlaps with what I like and what I don't.  

And before you start mocking me for being a bleeding-heart, I'm not particularly emotional about animals.  But I was quite young when I realized that I could not find any rational basis for preferring humans to animals in my moral calculus-- what objective difference exists between humans and other mammals that would make the suffering of one sacrosanct, and the other unworthy of regard?

Why would I mock you for being a bleeding heart?  I like bleeding hearts.  Yet another example of a thing I like..that I still wouldn't say is explicitly moral or good for a fact because I like it, and yet another place where you might have wanted to try if, before how.  I don't think that there's anything about human beings that makes us sacrosanct, or uniquely deserving of consideration.  

If the sorts of things you're objecting to are the reason you think something is askew with moral realism..then there's no maybe.  You misunderstand..completely.