Subjective Morality?

[DLJ]

The question that needs to be deemed irrelevant is: "Why should I care?"

Chemist: Water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Detractor: Why should I care?

There is nothing in the universe that needs to make you care. If you don't care, you don't care. That has no bearing on whether or not something is true.

Science: aims to discern what is true about nature. If you don't care, you don't care. That doesn't change the fact that science can produce applicable truth statements.

Like the scientist seeks to understand the properties of nature, the ethicist seeks to understand if there are right or wrong actions.

Detractor: Why should I care?

Just like nothing in the universe will force you to care about scientific facts, nothing in the universe will force you to care about moral facts. Just because you don't care about something doesn't make it any more or less true.

Scientist: What are the properties of nature?

Logician: How might I arrive at correct conclusions?

Ethicist: How can I determine what actions are right?

It doesn't matter if you don't care about these questions. These questions will be pursued by those who do care.

People expect too much from ethicists. They want them to produce an entire and infallible rendition of the prefered oughts, seamless and complete. But they don't demand that of scientists. Scientists understand our universe step-by-step. First we observe stars in our own galaxy and note laws of gravitation. Then we discover that there are a whole plethora of galaxies. Then we learn that our universe is expanding. If only ethicists were allowed the privilege of learning the truth step-by-step.

Oh boy! So much wrong with that that it's not even wrong.

A 'detractor' is not going to say "Why should I care?" when presented with a scientific fact, he/she will be saying "no it's not, because..."

If you want to pick apart the 'morality system' as a continuation of the conversation in Rob's thread to discover which parts are intrinsic and which parts are contextual, that would be time well spent and worth caring about.

In this thread, the "I don't care" relates to the question "which club do you support?" and/or the statement "morality is either objective or subjective."

Possible Evaluation Output:
It's a goal!
It's a miss!
or
The goal-posts are in the wrong place.

When looking at objective vs. subjective... the goal-posts are in the wrong place.

[bennyboy]

There are plenty of things I take to be wrong that I don't feel bad about.  I'm sure there are plenty of other things taken to be wrong that are..more or less, just things that make this or that person feel icky.  Those would not be "the preferred set" of moral justifications..to a realist.

I'd like an example of something which is immoral which nobody has negative feelings about.

[Belacqua]

I'd like an example of something which is immoral which nobody has negative feelings about.

How about this, as a thought experiment:

A person with no family or friends has died. He was a loner, with no connections. 

I have been on a shoplifting spree. I am about to get caught. Instead, I plant evidence that the friendless dead man did all the stealing. He gets the blame, and the police close the case.

My family is happy, because I don't go to jail. I am happy, because I escaped punishment. The dead guy isn't sad, because he's dead. There are no negative feelings. 

Have I done a moral thing?

[bennyboy]

We have all kinds of feelings about honesty, theft, and death, which go into making mores. It's not about any specific real incidence. I'd say that most people would consider your action immoral.

[Belacqua]

We have all kinds of feelings about honesty, theft, and death, which go into making mores.  

When I experience the feeling, it is subjective, by definition. Because I am a subject. When I reflect on the feeling, or tell others about it, or discuss whether it was appropriate, it is objective, because it is an object of contemplation. I don't think this really does away with the topic of whether a given thing is moral or not.

It's not about any specific real incidence.

I'd say that such feelings are relevant in any specific real incidence, though of course cases will vary.

 I'd say that most people would consider your action immoral.

Do you?

[vulcanlogician]

A 'detractor' is not going to say "Why should I care?" when presented with a scientific fact, he/she will be saying "no it's not, because..."  

Correct!

If you give someone a fact, and the response is "Why should I care?" that person isn't a "detractor." I chose that term out of politeness to those who would ask the question.

Just out of curiosity, what IS the proper term for someone (who when presented with a scientific fact) says "Why should I care?" I mean, there is no doubt that such people exist. What shall we call them?

Moral statements are beliefs. And those beliefs can sometimes be true. Those are the goal posts on my side of the field. Those are my uprights. That is something for my... "detractors"... to aim for. Where are my opponent's goal posts? At this point, I wouldn't even mind if my opponent moved his goal posts around. I'd just be happy if he gave some kind of general location in the first place.

Are moral judgments beliefs?

[bennyboy]

When I experience the feeling, it is subjective, by definition. Because I am a subject. When I reflect on the feeling, or tell others about it, or discuss whether it was appropriate, it is objective, because it is an object of contemplation. I don't think this really does away with the topic of whether a given thing is moral or not.

"I like chocolate because of its buttery texture" is a sentence which I can read. In that sense, it's objective. But that's not a very good way to look at morality. The question is whether there are some things which are moral without regard to the subjective preferences of a thinking, feeling agent. There are not, nor could be, unless you want to argue for God.

The point is to establish where mores come from, not what they are as they are being spoken or read.

[vulcanlogician]

There are plenty of things I take to be wrong that I don't feel bad about.  I'm sure there are plenty of other things taken to be wrong that are..more or less, just things that make this or that person feel icky.  Those would not be "the preferred set" of moral justifications..to a realist.

I'd like an example of something which is immoral which nobody has negative feelings about.

Can you provide an example of anything about which nobody has negative feelings?

[Belacqua]

The question is whether there are some things which are moral without regard to the subjective preferences of a thinking, feeling agent.  There are not, nor could be, unless you want to argue for God.

The point is to establish where mores come from, not what they are as they are being spoken or read.

Well, I don't think that any moral realist does argue that morals exist with no reference to thinking feeling agents. Morality is morality for people. Whether it depends on preferences or not is an additional question. I think it was pointed out earlier that if the cockroaches or the aliens take over, their morality might well be different. 

I'm afraid I may be going over ground already covered by Khemikal or vulcanlogic. They know the subject better than I do, and I haven't had the time to study the thread as I should. (My ancient mom-in-law comes home from her elderly day care in about 10 minutes.) 

But I think it is a true statement about the real world that robbery makes people feel bad in the vast majority of cases. It is true of the real world that robbery works against our desires and goals. It is true of the real world that no one would choose to live in a society where his stuff could be taken at any minute. So these are morally real statements, about objectively demonstrable reactions. Of course, if all the people in the world disappeared, the morals in question would be irrelevant. Moral realism doesn't posit that morals would continue to exist in such a case, in the way that (presumably) rocks and lizards would. 

So it may well be true, as you say, that morals are rooted, somehow, in people's feelings. And if that's the case, it seems to me to argue in favor of a certain kind of moral realism.

[DLJ]

...
Just out of curiosity, what IS the proper term for someone (who when presented with a scientific fact) says "Why should I care?" I mean, there is no doubt that such people exist. What shall we call them?
...

I'm agnostic on this but ... apathists? Maybe.

...
Moral statements are beliefs.
...
Are moral judgments beliefs?

I don't accept that 'statements' and 'judgements' are the same thing.

Judgements can be in statement-form but can also be in thought-form.

A statement (whether opinion, judgement, scientific fact or whatever; whether in the form of data, information, knowledge or wisdom) may or may not be registered as an 'event' (i.e. having significance) with the corresponding sensation of 'something's up'.

The significance weighting of the event (the 'something's up'-ness) will of one of the three types:
- informational
- warning
- exception

If it's an exception it will be processed as an 'incident' and mentally registered (logged) accordingly then classified (categorised and prioritised).  Priority is based upon 'impact x urgency' and the incident may or may not be tagged as being in the 'moral' category.

All this will happens so swiftly that the processor (the brain) will have had no to time for conscious analysis (rational discernment or judgement) or for root cause analysis or interpretation at the governance level or at the 'social-world' layer of information processing.

However, early on in the process, 'event correlation' has taken place which first assigns a significance (information, warning, exception) and later compares the event with a set of criteria or rules.  These criteria or rules could be loosely described as 'beliefs'.

Given that all of this needs to be explainable in terms of the ones and zeros of brain chemistry it can be thought of in terms of capacity thresholds.

For this one needs a baseline and two thresholds (all three of which change over time, with mood and personal development).  The two thresholds are the boundaries between three zones:
- Comfort Zone
- Learning Zone
- Panic Zone.

'Beliefs' can be described as "the overriding concept describing the maintenance conditions that arise from events.  The strength (stronghold-ness) of a belief depends on the value of the payoff in maintaining that belief for an individual."

In general then, we can think of the beliefs that we hold to be our Comfort Zone.

Note that early on in the process we are dealing with sensations of discomfort (and even dissonance) which have not yet been articulated.  Thus any judgement being made will be in the form of an auto-response rather than a considered rationale.

This is why it makes sense to distinguish two pathways of the Morality System:
1. The activities, workflows, controls and processes involved in the Moral Event/Incident part of the equation and
2. The activities, workflows, controls and processes involved in the creation of the criteria and rules that form both individual and group (social/organisational) ethics (e.g. our Code of Ethics).

Those are the goal posts on my side of the field.  I was wondering whether we were playing different sports on different fields.