Can somebody give me a good argument in favor of objective morality?

[Aegon]

I read something that says a majority (56%) of philosophers identify as moral realists.

From my perspective, morality is almost obviously subjective. Humans decide what is right and what is wrong within their own community. I can't think of a single thing that is moral or immoral today that wasn't the opposite in another time or in another culture across human history. Murder, rape, treatment of women, torture, the list goes on...all were acceptable in certain contexts at some point (and we still didagree today on the morality of a few of these things). Because the society deemed it so. And if we were not here to dictate moral rules , then there would be none at all. No animals are abiding by them, that's for sure. And obviously no religious text can be called objective moral law, because then we can have all sorts of fun pointing out what people in biblical times thought was perfectly fine that is appaling to us today.

A universe that was not created for us, that existed for so long before us, could possibly have within it an objective morality waiting for an advanced species to discover and implement? Seems very wrong. Am.i thinking about it in the wrong way? I'm sure there are arguments in favor that I haven't considered.

[Angrboda]

I read something that says a majority (56%) of philosophers identify as moral realists.

From my perspective, morality is almost obviously subjective. Humans decide what is right and what is wrong within their own community. I can't think of a single thing that is moral or immoral today that wasn't the opposite in another time or in another culture across human history. Murder, rape, treatment of women, torture, the list goes on...all were acceptable in certain contexts at some point (and we still didagree today on the morality of a few of these things). Because the society deemed it so.

You are confusing an ontological question with an epistemological one. The one asks what is there, and the latter is the question of how we know things. One can assert the existence of objective morals without needing to assert that we thereby have complete knowledge of what those objective moral truths are. As a consequence, it's possible that the changes in our understanding of morals reflects changes in the knowledge we have of those objective moral truths, and doesn't imply the non-existence of those moral truths. So for example, it may have been thought that slavery was morally acceptable because we had a flawed understanding of the moral truths that apply to slavery. When our knowledge of the morals of slavery improved, we came to realize that it was immoral. The objective moral truths did not actually change, only our understanding of them.

And if we were not here to dictate moral rules , then there would be none at all. No animals are abiding by them,  that's for sure.

Is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius not equal to Pi if there is nobody around to think of the concept? The existence of true propositions isn't necessarily dependent upon there being knowing subjects to perceive the truth of those propositions. Moral realism is the claim that there are moral propositions which are either true or false. The moral propositions would still exist, even if there is nobody to comprehend them, and by equal measure, if those moral propositions have truth content (are true or false), then moral realism would still be true. For example, if it were shown that torturing a cat is objectively immoral, it would remain so even in the absence of any cat torturers around to do the deed.

And obviously no religious text can be called objective moral law, because then we can have all sorts of fun pointing out what people in biblical times thought was perfectly fine that is appaling to us today.

You seem to be assuming the necessary truth of progress, that our current understanding is better than the understanding we had in the past. This isn't necessarily a truism. Just as it's possible to gain knowledge, it's possible to lose it. There is nothing about moral realism which entails that we necessarily have better morals today than they did in the past. Perhaps they had everything just right, and over time we have fallen into error. This is another argument similar to your first one in that the relativity of morals across time and between various cultures does not itself justify the conclusion that there are no moral truths.

A universe that was not created for us, that existed for so long before us, could possibly have within it an objective morality waiting for an advanced species to discover and implement? Seems very wrong. Am.i thinking about it in the wrong way? I'm sure there are arguments in favor that I haven't considered.

Mmmm. I think this returns us to my second objection. It also raises the very real question of what we would mean if we were to say that animals, such as chimpanzees, have morals (as evidenced by their behavior). Is our definition of what a moral truth is too "human-centric?" What ultimately does it mean when we say that we are moral beings if animals also are moral beings? What exactly is the "stuff" that makes a given proposition moral (e.g. "Killing is wrong.") and another proposition not a moral one (e.g. "Stephen Hawking was smart.")?

[The Grand Nudger]

I read something that says a majority (56%) of philosophers identify as moral realists.

Unsurprising.

From my perspective, morality is almost obviously subjective. Humans decide what is right and what is wrong within their own community.

That would be the meaningless subjectivity of having an opinion.  I have opinions, you have opinions, we all have opinions.  Is it simply your opinion that x is wrong, or does your opinion of -why- x is wrong report some fact?  Does every opinion of -why- x is wrong report a fact?  

And if we were not here to dictate moral rules , then there would be none at all. No animals are abiding by them,  that's for sure. And obviously no religious text can be called objective moral law, because then we can have all sorts of fun pointing out what people in biblical times thought was perfectly fine that is appaling to us today.

Oh, IDK, if we weren't here to describe a sunrise there would be no poems about sunrise....but the sun would still rise.  

A universe that was not created for us, that existed for so long before us, could possibly have within it an objective morality waiting for an advanced species to discover and implement? Seems very wrong. Am.i thinking about it in the wrong way? I'm sure there are arguments in favor that I haven't considered.

You're looking at it wrong.  An objective morality is not a morality that everyone would agree with, or one that would never change.  It isn't a morality that was waiting for us to discover in any sense other than that in this universe, for creatures like us, some moral statements are facts.  They could have been different, if we were different, or if the universe were different.  

I'll hand you the textbook description.  Moral realism is the assertion that some moral statements purport to report facts...and in so much as they get those facts right, the moral statements would then be true.  

Anything objectionable yet?

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What exactly is the "stuff" that makes a given proposition moral (e.g. "Killing is wrong.") and another proposition not a moral one (e.g. "Stephen Hawking was smart.")?

Between "Dogs have fur" and "Bill wears a banana hammock" which one is a purported fact about dogs, and what makes one a fact about dogs and the other..not so much?

[Aegon]

Okay, these are good posts. I obviously misunderstood the term. But moral facts aren't falsifiable right?. How could one demonstrate moral realism beyond the theoretical? I see the logic behind it, but whats the defense? It seems much more likely to me still that there aren't any absolute moral facts.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure they are.  If we contend that minorities are subhuman and that this provided the moral justification (or absolution) required to keep them in bondage...and it turned out they weren't subhuman after all.....then the purported moral fact would be falsified.

An objective morality is not and cannot be absolute, so that's not a problem. If for any given x y is the reason that it is wrong..that same x could happen in circumstances other than y and -not- be wrong. Conversely, the thing x is not absolutely wrong, it is objectively wrong.

(the above is fundamental to our understanding of murder and killing, for example)

[Shell B]

I mean, it's a really old debate, so I'm going to try not to get too wrapped up. However, I will say that I think it depends on what you think of as morals. Some things are inherently bad or unhelpful, but you have to be really specific. You can't broadly say, "Killing someone is bad," since sometimes killing someone is what's best for other living organisms. Morality isn't generally defined that way (bad or unhelpful). Morality is a more abstract concept defined by the individual, thus making it certainly, nearly definitively, subjective. I do think there are things that are objectively "bad" or "good" outside of morality. However, if you scale those things up to say the solar system or even the universe, they matter less, so maybe I'm wrong. We're pretty limited in our ability to see the big picture.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would there be objectively bad or good things outside of morality...but not within it? I really cant stress enough that the issue of moral realism is not whether we form subjective moral opinions. That's the most common and most central misunderstanding of the position. We do that. The question of moral realism is whether or not those opinions accurately report relevant facts. They may not have any special significance at the scale of the universe, or the solar system...but they only need to be significant within the much smaller realm of us to be what they purport to be.

[bennyboy]

The idea of subjectivism and objectivism being mutually exclusive and polar opposites is dead, no? Isn't subjective moralism that collection of ideas which a few billion brains have ground through in their constant interaction with their environments, i.e. isn't it just a class of objective function over the population?

Khemikal, my answer is kind of what I'd expect from you: that one is really just a label for our experience of the other, but has no existential meaning at all. Or is this what you're saying?

[Shell B]

Why would there be objectively bad or good things outside of morality...but not within it?

Because good and bad exist without morality.

[The Grand Nudger]

Squirrels exist outside of my yard too..that doesn't mean they don't exist within it as well.  Let me ask in a different way.  If you can establish that something is good or bad in some other context...is there any specific reason that the same process..whatever that is, couldn't be used to declare something good or bad within the context of morality as well?