Objective morality as a proper basic belief

[Astonished]

So, this is just my pedantic brain working here, but it's about definitions.

No, again, it's about whether or not there are or can be any moral facts of a matter.  

You seriously can't even meet me halfway here? Jeebus H. Jones. That we arbitrarily choose to define things in the way we do is...da da da da...a subjective choice.

See, you don't look at the mechanism the way I do. I see a, for example, mathematical expression f(x) which I'm positive you must be familiar with. Now let's say that our machine for gauging morality is that function. You can plug whatever in the fuck you want as your x. Well-being, god-dick, WHATEVER. THE. FUCK. The choice of what to put in there is subjective. It is also subject to change. Someone with a fundamentalist morality can become an atheist and have to forcefully change that view and insert something else in place of whatever 'x' they had in there. But again, that is something that needs to be chosen, subjectively.

Yes, you -can- plug whatever you want into it, but that doesn't make whatever you plug in the actual matter of discussion.  Is there or can there be an objective fact of the matter, here?  As to what, for example...we're talking about when we talk about morality.  You feel that you have created a problem by insisting that there is some disparity between god dick pleasing and well-being.  You haven't.  Particularly if the god dick pleasings purpose is to avoid harm or to help.  They may be wrong about what causes harm, about what helps...but can't we objectively show that this is -why- they think that god dick pleasing is good?  That this is what we are both talking about, when we discuss morality?

Then what the fuck have we been talking about the last few pages?
When I hear someone say 'god matters, we don't', that has to fucking mean something is royally fucked there.

Once you settle on your particular x, then yes, I agree, there are certain concrete goals you can set as far as things to strive for and things to avoid. So in this one very, very limited aspect, there is some objectivity; we can determine what tends to contribute more to one side or another; however, there is no means by which to say one action will universally have the same effect or consequences so you can never say that objectively, throwing a turd at someone's head will be a wrong thing, or that one person firing a gun is good while another is bad (like a police officer compared to a former inmate out on parole who's not supposed to have possession of firearms anyway). That there are gradients in this and that arguments need to be made about what factor might outweigh what consequence is, surprise surprise, largely subjective even if they justify/rationalize it with empirical data. Also as we continue to grow and learn, both the goal posts we thought were set in concrete might shift, and the means by which to attain them correspondingly. And again, by how much? Who decides by how much if it's a subjective choice? Too much grey area here for objectivity to really play a factor except in the bare minimum capacity. Two people can use the exact same piece of objective data to support two different positions. Case in point...the wholly babble.

You keep referring to the agent.  "Who decides".   Astonished, we -are- subjective agents..but an objective morality is about the system, not the agent that employs it.  So, just assume for the sake of argument that an objective morality does exist.  That doesn't actually mean that any of us know what it is - that we have access to it.  Maybe we don;t have the relevant information.  Maybe our biasis in some instance or all instances are insurmountable, such that, even understanding those objective moral principles would not promise that we acted in accordance with them or even reliably grasped their accurate conclusions.

This seems, to me, to be exactly the state we're in..regardless of whether or not there is an objective morality.

Um...did you just make the 'just because you can't see god doesn't mean he isn't there' or 'is beyond our comprehension' argument? You're making it sound like this intrinsic thing which is frighteningly close to where our problematic folks are coming from. In any case it seems like if they're this woo-sounding thing you're going on about, it's about as pointless as contemplating the deist god to waste time on them.

But, going back to our foundations, because we chose subjectively to say that one thing is preferable to another, where we set the goal posts is also subjective; that we generally consider well-being to be the one to strive for and suffering to be the one to avoid does not mean this is always the case. I know how utterly insane this is but remember, people manage to make this happen whether we like it or not. Apparently god-dick tastes good or something, I wouldn't know. But they have the subjective freedom to insert any alternate 'x' compared to the secular humanist or general well-being model or whatever you want to call it. Whether it's all about god-dick or just a completely rampantly psychotic reversal of well-being and maximum suffering is preferred (I can't help but think of the Joker from The Dark Knight here) there are irrational models one can place into that function f(x) that shift emphasis away from well-being and into utter madness.

Again, still comments about the agent.  We can't just "choose" an objective moral foundation.  We have to be able to demonstrate that this -is- the foundation.  That this -is- what we are talking about.

So, we chose to define it as such. We can verify the its and whats about it but we chose to use it as our baseline in a way that pleases us. That the goal posts we rooted in opposing directions we specifically determined were the most personally preferable. You're making it sound like it's something the universe willed into existence here and we have no say in what it is or anything. This is why I'm unable to agree on this point.

Now, if I'm misinterpreting the definitions of anything else, I would appreciate that being pointed out with citations but it seems to me like if there is any objectivity to be had in morality, it's about 15% of the overall equation at most.

A sign in the distance objectively says a specific thing.  It 100% says it.  That doesn;t mean I can see it or read it, so...there may be zero objectivity here, at the point of use.  That's a hypothetical we could explore...but...it certainly seems like it;s possible to see more than zero or even 15% of a moral issue.  Are you 0-15% sure that rape is wrong?

Wow, a false equivalency of this magnitude is just...just staggering. I mean, shit, a chocolate bar with 15% nuts is far more apt because I'm talking about the FRAMEWORK of a moral system and not whatever the hell it is you seem to be rambling about here. You keep insisting there's this objectivity thing here which I continue to point out is not that, at least not the way you define it, and I personally can't define it because I'm convinced it doesn't exist. We can use all the objective data we want and still disagree about to which degree x and y are good or bad, hell, like I said, we can even use the same exact data point to do just that. So whatever little use objectivity has in the overall equation, it's vastly dominated by subjectivity. I don't know what was so hard to grasp about that. How much worse is it if someone commits murder vs. involuntary manslaughter if the circumstances that led to a person's death were identical? I mean, I honestly couldn't think of a way to quantify that or even find any empirical data about how to go about determining that. Yes, objectively a person is dead and a person is at fault, but beyond that...fucking minefield. At some point subjectivity isn't just the one driving, it's kicked objectivity out the passenger door.