Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

Here's a bit from the interview I linked to above:

The general idea is that ethics aspires to provide a specification of what it is to live well, to flourish.  Now, that claim is complex and contestable in several ways.  For example, it’s possible to deny that ethics aims at a specification of human flourishing.  As Nietzsche points out, theistic ethical views typically deny this, taking service to God or some other end to be a higher and worthier pursuit than flourishing.  But suppose, like Nietzsche, we take these theistic views to be discredited.  And suppose, like Nietzsche, we look at ourselves and others, we look at culture, at history, and we wonder whether we could be in some way better than we are.  For Nietzsche I think these problems arose when he contrasted the urgency and vitality of Greek life with the bovine mediocrity of contemporary life.  They arose also when he contrasted the perceived meaningfulness and the stringent devotion that arose in religious contexts (think of the peasants laboring to construct cathedrals that wouldn’t be completed in their lifetime) with the anomie and open-endedness of contemporary life, the lack of overriding goals, the perceived inability to justify devotion to any particular goal.  All of this leads Nietzsche to want to make claims about human flourishing.  His texts are brimming with claims about health, power, flourishing, splendor, vitality, growth, and so forth.

But what are those notions?  What is health, or power, or flourishing?  To figure that out, we need to examine human psychology.  We need to ask what our deepest aims are, what we’re driven toward, what’s changeable in us and what’s fixed, what’s reinterpretable and what’s past our reach.  We need to examine how our conscious lives relate to what’s non-conscious, how our social and cultural judgments about value impact us, how our conceptual repertories and our languages affect what we see and do.  We need an accurate and unprejudiced moral psychology.  And that’s what Nietzsche aspires to give us.

Good link.  It deserves mention that a faith based deontology and a secular deontology are fundamentally equivalent in their assumptions.  Both propose that we have obligations and that their fulfillment is necessary to and will produce human flourishing (conversely, that failure to fulfill those obligations will lead to suffering and pain).  So, while a believer may reject the notion that human flourishing is -the- goal, their metrics and assertions strongly suggest that it is at least -a- goal, or an intended end state of affairs.  It is, therefore, a relevant fact of the matter we're discussing.  

The current quality of their life and final disposition of their souls is commonly taken to be a comment on their having made themselves present before god and acted in accordance with his will, which is in service to the good.  Now, we may not agree with them on the whole god thing, or what their moral duties are...and we may point out that..if their god exists apart from their mind they've failed to demonstrate as much.....but do we disagree that fulfilling obligations which are necessary to and produce human flourishing are  -good- things?  

Probably not.  

Here's a fun q.  How would we explain the success of faith based deontology at producing whatever amount of flourishing they have..if there was nothing in that deontology that pointed to an objective truth with an upstream causal relationship to human flourishing?  How do we explain their success...as naturalists, if those facts (whatever they are) are not natural facts?

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If we accept that ethics is the field which asks, "how best may we flourish?" then I think that the concept of moral facts becomes quite easy to accept.
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Agreed.  And if we don't accept that premise?  What then?

-Then you can call the field fleeflarp instead of ethics and assess whether or not the field of fleeflarp is making objective statements about fleeflarp which are true.  

If it is, then there are fleeflarp facts, so..too..then, would there be moral facts, you've simply rejected the word, not the truth content to which it refers.

[Belacqua]

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If we accept that ethics is the field which asks, "how best may we flourish?" then I think that the concept of moral facts becomes quite easy to accept.
...

Agreed.  And if we don't accept that premise?  What then?

To me that's a little like refusing to accept the premise that zoology studies animals. 

But OK, I'm not picky about definitions. If you want to argue that ethics is about something else, that's a possibility. In the article I linked to, the guy suggests that religious ethicists and Kant look for something other than human flourishing as their goal. As long as we define our terms at the beginning, I'm easy.

Rob's thread on the Harris's Moral Landscape covered this ground.

Sam Harris, Michael Shermer and Matt Dillahunty have all bought into this notion.  

It's a strange reaction I have: Harris and Dillahunty make my eyes bleed. Take them away! 

Incidentally, a few years ago I had a good face-to-face conversation with the latter, over a pint or three, to put him straight.  He agreed with me but thought that the semantics of my version of morality would be too confusing for yer average audience so continues to espouse 'objective' morality but now at least when he does so he will note that this is axiomatic.  So, I'll claim a minor victory on that one.  

You're a braver man than I am. 

Every fact I have ever heard about the Professional Atheists makes me like them less.

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while a believer may reject the notion that human flourishing is -the- goal, their metrics and assertions strongly suggest that it is at least -a- goal, or an intended end state of affairs.  It is, therefore, a relevant fact of the matter we're discussing.  

I thought so too. If those guys accept a priori that there is a heaven, then the greatest flourishing would be to go there. And that would make questions about our ethical behavior very much about flourishing. Though not perhaps, as you point out, the only goal. 

The current quality of their life and final disposition of their souls is commonly taken to be a comment on their having made themselves present before god and acted in accordance with his will, which is in service to the good.  Now, we may not agree with them on the whole god thing, or what their moral duties are...and we may point out that..if their god exists apart from their mind they've failed to demonstrate as much.....but do we disagree that fulfilling obligations which are necessary to and produce human flourishing are  -good- things?  

Probably not.  

Here's a fun q.  How would we explain the success of faith based deontology at producing whatever amount of flourishing they have..if there was nothing in that deontology that pointed to an objective truth with an upstream causal relationship to human flourishing?  How do we explain their success...as naturalists, if those facts (whatever they are) are not natural facts?

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Good points, but now it's my bedtime. I look forward to pondering this more tomorrow!

[The Grand Nudger]

We do shift work round hur....when ones going down anothers coming up. 

I'll add, to the above, that refusing to accept some basic premise of inquiry will not render moral facts non-existent. Whatever premise one does (or doesn't) accept simply constrains what those facts could be, which facts a person is referring to when they use the term. Beyond noncognitivism and hard nihilism, all positions on the moral spectrum refer to facts. All of them. Every single one. Their disagreements about which facts are the relevant facts define their positions in relation to each other - but there's no necessity that an acceptance of one leads to a rejection of any fact that those others refer to.

The subjectivists contention that moral facts concern internal states of mind dependent judgement -is- a subjectivist moral fact - even though they reject the realists basic premise that these facts refer to mind independent variables. The only statements that a subjectivist will accept -as- morally factual are those which conform to this working definition..because that's what they're talking about..that's what they think morality -is-. They don't even have to reject that "skullfucking causes harm" is a fact, they're simply contending that this fact is not what moral facts aim at. That's not -why- it's wrong, even if that is true. A realist, otoh, rejects the basic subjectivist premise that morality is about mind dependent judgement, but doesn't need to reject the notion that mind dependent judgement is occurring, that the act of our judgement is factually mind dependent. They simply contend that our judgements can be driven by reference to externalities.

What I would love, and I'm basically just aping vulcan at this point from another thread - is to help people to get to the point where they are at least disagreeing on points of fact, not disagreeing on the existence of facts...because it's pretty absurd to have this sort of discussion in the presence of that particular assertion. If there are no moral facts - then errybody is wrong for the same reason. A subjectivist, for example, can disagree on point of moral fact, but cannot maintain that there are no moral facts...because they're proposing moral facts themselves.

Insomuch as their facts do not match a realists facts, they think the other guy has it wrong, but not necessarily because what the other guy is saying isn't objectively true - more because he's looking at the wrong facts. Morality, they contend, aims at some other truth.

[bennyboy]

You've said the word "fact" perhaps 1000 times in this thread. Would you please give an example of one fact, specifically one which demonstrates that morality is not subjective?

[Dr H]

So no moral facts then.

Is that a moral position?

If anyone can think of one, please let me know.

Depends on the answer to the question above.

[The Grand Nudger]

The subjectivists facts are variable.  They are facts about peoples perceptions or states of belief.  Facts about their opinions and minds.  They may even be intersubjective facts.
-This culture has a strong taboo against waving with their left hand.  They think it causes lethal bad juju.  They think this because.... [insert -long winded observations of cultural development and it's historical context and/or explanation of the relevant areas of the mind that might cause this common belief as an artifact of biology- here]  

-and

The  cornell realists facts are those mind independent facts of some matter or act x that substantiate themselves in the natural world.  They are facts about what we contend to be able to know empirically and are capable of providing both physical evidence and a convincing demonstration of.
-We can establish by scientific process that some act x causes pain or harm by a variety of mind independent metrics.  If causing pain or harm is wrong, this act objectively does that, and so is wrong.  

You've said the word "fact" perhaps 1000 times in this thread.  Would you please give an example of one fact, specifically one which demonstrates that morality is not subjective?

See above, same answer as before, to the same question, which was just me quoting myself having previously answered the same question.

A subjectivists moral facts are facts about people and their judgements. Do we have facts like those? Yes, we do. The realists moral facts are facts about externalities. Do we have facts like those? Yes, we do. Both think that there are facts, both refer to facts, each thinks that the other has the wrong set of facts. No amount of listing off moral facts will demonstrate one or the other to you, because those facts can come equally from any cognitive position.

[bennyboy]

I can objectively say that, "X holds the moral position Y, based on (insert way of knowing/inferring that)." If you want to talk about the mechanics of mechanism, like brain function, then fine. You could locate the "morality genes," perhaps, and those would be objective. I'm fine with that, but I predicted that immediately upon entering this thread-- if you want to reduce reality to a physical monist world view, then discussion of morality means very little. In my view of things, the things you quoted are essentially an example of objectivists wrongly conflating a material monist world view with a dualist or idealist concept.

But this goes back to our old discussions about mind, na? In the essence, we're always going to be talking about the same issue: you will conflate the subjective and objective into physical mechanism, since the brain is presumably deterministic. And I will conflate all into the subjective, perhaps with a pragmatic dualism-- there's a thinking/feeling subject, and the objects or ideas which the subject contemplates.

Given this, our positions on morality are likely to be different, too, for the exact same reasons. You will measure things AROUND what I call morality, and say it's a measure of morality. X% of people believe Y, X brain region lights up when upsetting picture Y is shown to a test subject, and so on-- much like you insist that a particular frequency of light is "red," whereas I insist redness is purely experiential and has no meaningful objective existence.

For me, morality is predicated on subjective experience. If google decided we should/shouldn't do something, I wouldn't consider it morality, because google presumably doesn't have any subjective experience of insult, or violation, or any real understanding of loss.

[Angrboda]

The moral realist would say that morals are more than simply ideas as well, that it's true, our conception of morals is an idea, but that it is an idea that refers to something in the real world.  In the same way, physical realism consists of ideas, as that is the only access we have to reality and the world, but the ideas themselves are postulated to refer to something, a cat, which exists in a reality that is independent of the idea itself.  There really is no difference between cat realism and physical realism, both depend on ideas which are inferred to represent independently existing realities, but neither actually has access to that reality.  The only difference is you're willing to make that inference with regard to physical realism, but not with respect to moral realism.  But the fact of the matter is we have no different access to the existence of an independent physical reality than we have to an indepently existing realm of moral facts.  You simply have a double standard regarding the two, likely based upon some hypothetical difference between the phenomenology of morals relative to the phenomenology of the physical world within our thoughts (our perceptual experience).   There is definitely a difference in the phenomenology of the two, but that fact alone isn't decisive.  There is a difference between the phenomenology of numbers and that of physical reality, but we don't on that account conclude that numbers are necessarily subjective.

"It's wrong to kick cats."  This debatable moral assertion is dependent on the real existence of cats.  If cats are not real, then it's not wrong to kick them.  Very few people would get outraged on either side of the debate about whether it's wrong to kick unicorns, methinks.

Let's take an extreme world view, and assume that EVERYTHING is experiential, and NOTHING is real beyond that experience.  It will still be true that there are experiences we call things, experiences we call properties of things, and much more dependent feelings and ideas about the properties of things.

"All is mind so far as I can know" is a fine philosophical position.  But there's still a need to differentiate between ideas which are shaped like cats, meow like cats and rudely ignore you like cats, and ideas which are about feelings and beliefs about how people ought to treat cats.

In short, whatever world view you take, they cannot be on the same semantic level.  There's no reason to say, "The descriptions about our experience of shapes and colors which we call cats are not substantially different than descriptions of our feelings about those shapes and colors."  They ARE substantially different, because ideas and feelings which are intrinsically ABOUT things are not peers to words which are labels for things-- whatever thing-ness might be.

The only caveat would be the material monist view that we argued about once upon a time (with regard to free will, I believe)-- if you argue that feelings and ideas are really just physically deterministic mechanisms, and that the agency of thought is essentially an illusory byproduct, then okay.  But at that point, morality ceases to mean much anyway.

Well, first off, an argument based on some hypothetical "semantic level" is pathetically ridiculous. But more substantively, I noted in the original post that responding to the phenomenological differences isn't definitive, as the phenomenology of numbers is also different from that of perception, yet no one in their right mind would argue that numbers are necessarily subjective due to that difference. Likewise that's not a sufficient argument against the objectivity of morals, and note, it isn't the moral feelings and intuitions which are claimed to be objective, but rather the things they refer to, the moral reality itself. Your arguments simply aren't a successful refutation of the points I made.

[DLJ]

...
A subjectivists moral facts are facts about ...
The realists moral facts are facts about ...

I think I've got the idea now.

Thou joineth a club / choose a belief system and then thy facts will materialise before thee.

If you join the Baptist's club then these are your facts, study them well.
If you join the Islamic club then these are your facts, study them well.
If you join the... etc.

Over here, in IslaMalaysia, in conversation with a club member, I notice the switch from "I believe..." when discussing politics or relationships or other stuff at the 'social world' information layer to "Muslims believe... when talking about the quran. It means "Muslims are taught to believe...".

[bennyboy]

Well, first off, an argument based on some hypothetical "semantic level" is pathetically ridiculous.  But more substantively, I noted in the original post that responding to the phenomenological differences isn't definitive, as the phenomenology of numbers is also different from that of perception, yet no one in their right mind would argue that numbers are necessarily subjective due to that difference.  Likewise that's not a sufficient argument against the objectivity of morals, and note, it isn't the moral feelings and intuitions which are claimed to be objective, but rather the things they refer to, the moral reality itself.  Your arguments simply aren't a successful refutation of the points I made.

Numbers can be non-arbitrarily represented by putting forward a thing, then another, and calling that number of things by a name, "one" or "two." If someone would like to clearly lay out objective morals, then they are free to do so.

DLJ's way of explaining it is good. Supposed objective "moral facts" are also facts about any other idea you'd like to apply to the real world. That's because they aren't moral facts, but just facts which one subjects to a moral treatment.

I can pretty easily give examples of subjective morals-- all of them, really, since mores are ideas, and since they vary greatly among individuals. But would you care to demonstrate that any particular more is objective?