(August 22, 2023 at 10:20 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sure, subjects can apprehend things. That in and of itself doesn't make that thing subjective. Is the sun subjective because I apprehend it? OFC not. The sun is there whether I apprehend or consider it. So too is a box and the utility of a box.
I like harm based examples. If harm is one of the things we're talking about when we discuss good and bad then punching bob is immoral regardless of what I, an agent, might decide. I could conceivably decide that punching bob is not bad (lets say I really want to punch bob!) - but I would be plain and simply wrong.
Calling anything that people do or see or conclude subjective just isn't workable. It's not what moral theorists mean when they use the term at all.
It's not the apprehension that makes something subjective. It's the fact that something can only be decided by an agent and has no mapping onto external reality. I apprehend the sun via the senses, and since the sun lies outside my brain it is objective. But I cannot apprehend moral truth via the senses, and there's no evidence of it existing in shared external reality. Comparing the sun to an ethical evaluation seems wildly disanalgous.
Harm is a poor word because of its ambiguity (much language smuggle in moral assessment), but in the sense of causes physical property X (see post above) it is not a moral statement. The morality has to be added onto it by an agent. Thus it is subjective.
