(March 11, 2014 at 2:19 am)Jovanian Teapot Wrote: OK. let me lay it out.
Objective morality is real? I'd say not. It seems to me that all of our moral judgments are based chiefly on how the event in question makes us feel. I can see no reason to assume there is some set value system with which to judge an action morally better or worse that exists independent of the human mind. It is interesting for me to think that so many people Hold onto their idea of objective morality. At any rate, i just want to see if anyone has a quick argument that could show me what all the fuss is about.
I broadly agree, but I also think that a coherentist approach is also quite useful in evaluating the truth value of competing ethical systems. In whatever way a set of ethics is said to exist, it must have logical consistency to be true, even if that truth is only defined in terms of a set of self evident values.
Now, say we look at racism, in some societies racism might be thought of as a good thing as those people of other races are deemed inferior and it would only seem right that those who are intrinsically superior should make decisions and have privilege over those that are inferior. When one looks at the coherence of this belief with other facts about what potentially makes another race inferior however, one finds that the racist always resorts to special pleading. They therefore believe in an ethical system that has a low degree of coherence. An ethical system that does not regard race as a morally relevant characteristic is therefore more logically consistent and so has a higher objective truth value.
