Can we trust our Moral Intuitions?

[The Grand Nudger]

The issue I raise isn't that morality requires sentient observers. It's that morality requires actions by sentient agents in a universe in which their actions can affect other sentient agents. It is not surprising that the example you give on which you can expect moral agreement, the curbstomping of babies, involves a sentient agent and sentient target. Your example of rock defacement requires at least a sentient agent, as you acknowledge we don't attach moral import where this occurs through natural processes. Give me an example of something you find intuitively "bad" from a lifeless universe. If you can't, you should agree that morality requires subjects.

I do agree, but that's exactly the problem.  The apprehension of moral value requires subjects (of some kind, at least - living or non living, we might add that they need to be sentient creatures..even), but requiring sentient subjects to apprehend something isn't subjectivism.  You may have to be a sentient creature to notice that you got slapped in the face - but you don't have to be a sentient creature to get slapped in the face. So long as the bad-making property is a property of slapping, it's an objective proposition.

My view is that morality only makes sense in reference to certain goals that must be agreed upon. Humanity has a common interest in human flourishing and the avoidance of pain. If we can agree on those as goals, then we can discuss actions that objectively lead to those goals. Our moral intuitions generally align with those goals, which I attribute to millions of years of evolution in which those without such intuitions would have been at a survival disadvantage. If I am arguing for the morality of an action, I would either seek to obtain agreement to these goals or assume such agreement and argue how the act furthers them. Curb stomping babies furthers neither goal but in fact is contrary to both.

The above is a form of natural objectivism - not subjectivism.  Here, though, we could stop to consider whether this is a full description of our moral intuitions.  We may all agree on some goal, and curbstomping a kid may even further that goal - but many of us would not...then, say that it is morally correct, or even morally acceptable.  The child of my enemy may grow to become my enemy and I may have every reason to kill that child and my entire society may give me assent to kill that child...and yet...

Math and science would still exist in a lifeless universe because these are words we use to describe how matter and energy work, and wherever there is matter or energy, we can describe them with math and science. We may not be there to do so, but that in no way means they wouldn't apply. Morality is different because, as you acknowledge, sentient agents and subjects are required for morality. It makes no sense to speak of morality in their absence. The equivalent for gravity would be removing all spacetime, in which case I say that yes, there is no gravity since gravity is a function of spacetime. What are the cracks you see in a subjective view of morality as I describe it?

It makes sense to speak of morality in the absence of subjects just as it makes sense to talk about sound when a tree in the forest falls with no one there to here it - or, at least, that's what objectivism implies. In fact, we do discuss and research morality in exactly these circumstances with presentation tests. Seeing how people moralize when supplied with partial details, and what might change when counterfactual information is presented. A series of claims that seem justifiable on their face but with every added detail become less and less so. Were these things moral before the subjects knew how shitty they were, or did they only become bad when the subjects were supplied with sufficient information?

Some of the cracks might be that you don't have, or at least haven't expressed, a subjective moral view. With respect to how our moral intuitions are formed, you may be right - but..if it were a product of a natural fact and reducible to natural facts - then, ofc, non natural realism would be incorrect.

@Spongebob
As for lincoln - he never considered himself an abolitionist and had alot of typically shitty views on the subject of racial equality. You may be wondering what accounts for the legend of lincoln..and that, might be our moral intuitions. Of imagining what the best version of the man was,..and, being generally well regarded, shifting him in memory closer to that picture of a better thing. Had the south won, would you believe him to have been a simple villain as a citizen of The Confederate States? Slave labor was detestable, but the sudden imposition of poverty and economic disruption was also intolerable - for many of the same reasons. It became a feature of his public speaking that he saw the whole thing as a shit sandwich and would do whatever was better for the country. It was the union he had in mind, not the immediate welfare of any of it's constituent groups...and, we're talking about a person who by consequence of his position made more than one abhorrent decision with vast and far reaching moral import. When we introduce the fact that not every situation has a morally acceptable outcome, we dispense with the binary thought attached to objectivism and the need to lionize our heroes to conform to that standard at the same time.