Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

-all moral positions can agree on the fact that human beings are necessarily subjective agents.  This practically ensures that even if morality were a sign on the side of the road, somebody..somewhere, would disagree with somebody else about what it says.

Nevertheless, we insist that it is at least possible for a person, who is a necessarily subjective agent, to be in possession of a fact, and to be able to use systems like reason or the scientific process to further reduce the likelihood of error and make true and accurate statements.  Obviously, even that won't be compelling to everyone, see our many creationist threads.

When I entered the thread, it was on this caveat: that we must consider, at least pragmatically, the matter to be dualistic: that there are subjects and objects, mind and material states to think about.  I do not deny that there are objective facts which a subject might observe, have feelings about, and form ideas about.  You do not deny that any system of thought, including a moral system, involves subjective agency.  I haven't really tried to say that since all our observations are done through mental agency, we should not consider the possibility of objective facts; you haven't tried to argue that the Universe is deterministic, including our brains, and so we don't really need to consider the subjective experience of moral ideas at all.  So we're on the same page up to that point, at least.

Sure. 

Now, I'm willing to assert (I have, actually), that ALL morality, at its root, has feelings upon which it is predicated.  I can refine that-- I'd say they are feelings about social order specifically, rather than about beauty, about mathematics, or about cats.  This, as I see it, is not a point I'm trying to make-- it is a category description.  I would like to believe that we all agree still, up to this point, if not about the need for feeling, but about the category of the content which morality considers.

Absolutely, we're a super feely bunch.  

For most objective truths, I expect there to be a fair chance at directly observing the truth (or following the same path of inference which arrives necessarily at it).  For example in discussing gravity, science teachers are perfectly happy to describe all the relationships, experiments and so on by which one might arrive at an understanding comparable to their own.

Agreed.

I'd very much like, and it's now been asked a few times, for any EXAMPLE of a moral fact, and a description of the process of (purely rational) inference by which it is arrived at, or if it is an observation rather than a conclusion, how that observation leads to a correct moral view.  I believe I can describe how feelings lead to moral views, and to make at least a reasonable speculation about how and why people or groups of people arrive at different views.  Can you do so for moral realism?

You just quoted me answering your question.....?

A moral naturalist (for example) only requires the items in that first page..that we're both on, up above, to justify their system and conclusions.  The ability to perceive a material state and make factual propositions about that state is all that moral naturalism requires.  If you agree that this is possible then you have accepted the fundamental validity of moral naturalism as a factual and accurate position on how moral conclusions can be derived.   

Our ability in both of these regards, however... is not uniform among individuals..or even uniformly consistent within one individual.  We can fail to observe some relevant state, we can fail to account for some relevant factual statement.  We can make mistakes of inference (and mistaken observations).  We can even lose our shit and deny those states we do see and reject those factual statements we do understand.  We can adhere to a factual statement and an observation of a material state in one instance and differ from it the next. We can be completely unaware of some relevant fact or material state.

Two people can see a road sign, and think that it says different things.  Why would any morally relevant fact or observation be immune to those flaws common to us that apply to all statements of fact, to all observations? As Vulcan noted previously, realism isn't about a different kind of fact, it's about the -same- kinds of facts as any other fact. The things we are observing are -just as real- as your toe. The propositions we might make are just as objective as a statement about your toe. Not more real, not more objective. They are subject to our shortcomings just as much as any other....but these are comments on a moral agent, not the moral system. Our failure to see that the sign says "stop" does not mean that the sign says "go" or that there is no sensible way to arrive at a fact of what the sign says.

All of this...... just a long winded way of saying that people can be wrong. It's a thing that we do. That people can be wrong is all that's required to explain why two people might disagree. Hell..those two people might both be wrong -and- disagree with each other.

[bennyboy]

Why do you suspect there are any real moral facts? What is the mechanism by which they might be established, or verified?

Right now, it really does sound borderline theistic: "Don't ask for examples, don't ask how to find them. . . just be assured that they are definitely there."

I really do want some example, any example.

[The Grand Nudger]

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40 pages, Benny...40 pages. It's useless to keep hitting the reset every time you get your questions answered, every time you have an example presented.

[bennyboy]

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40 pages, Benny...40 pages.  It's useless to keep hitting the reset every time you get your questions answered, every time you have an example presented.

This is your normal strategy, bub, and I'm on to you.

You haven't yet provided any satisfactory description of a moral fact, nor really defined anything accurately, nor explained where you think ideas about "ought" originate.  But once the thread gets deep enough, you'll claim to have done it all inside-out, upside-down, and backward, despite having done very little but paraphrase a couple wikipedia pages.

Been through this process before, na?

Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

[Angrboda]

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40 pages, Benny...40 pages.  It's useless to keep hitting the reset every time you get your questions answered, every time you have an example presented.

This is your normal strategy, bub, and I'm on to you.

You haven't yet provided any satisfactory description of a moral fact, nor really defined anything accurately, nor explained where you think ideas about "ought" originate.  But once the thread gets deep enough, you'll claim to have done it all inside-out, upside-down, and backward, despite having done very little but paraphrase a couple wikipedia pages.

Been through this process before, na?

Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

Nobody needs to provide you a damn thing, benny. You keep going on about this when even if we aren't able to provide an example that meets with your approval, it doesn't prove a damn thing one way or the other. You're just being a disingenuous twat and trying to deflect from your inability to demonstrate that morality is subjective. I provided an example, that rape is wrong. You in all your cluelessness simply didn't understand the point I was making. That rape is objectively wrong may be true, unless and until you show that it is not. I'm not the one claiming something, you are. So get to work and demonstrate that morality is predicated upon feelings and not predicated upon an objective truth. So far you haven't done squat but piss and moan about irrelevant shit and deflect.

[The Grand Nudger]

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40 pages, Benny...40 pages.  It's useless to keep hitting the reset every time you get your questions answered, every time you have an example presented.

This is your normal strategy, bub, and I'm on to you.

You haven't yet provided any satisfactory description of a moral fact, nor really defined anything accurately, nor explained where you think ideas about "ought" originate.  But once the thread gets deep enough, you'll claim to have done it all inside-out, upside-down, and backward, despite having done very little but paraphrase a couple wikipedia pages.

Been through this process before, na?

Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

This is pretty simple...and we've been over it many times.  We both take a cognitivist position.  We both think that our propositions can express beliefs.

We both accept that our beliefs are..at least sometimes...  true.

A true belief..is just another term for a fact.  This is the only justification I need to have to suspect that there are moral facts (or any facts).  

This is why the next question is whether the facts of which our beliefs are constituted are mind dependent.  Subjectivism says they are.  Subjectivism, Benny...says that the facts which constitute our moral beliefs, are facts referring to some mind dependent x. Those are a subjectivists moral facts. You either think that there are moral facts, and those facts refer to mind dependent properties or variables...or you aren't a moral subjectivist.

Yes, a moral subjectivists facts can refer to nothing more than the fact of a person holding an opinion..but that's -their- problem...your problem (purportedly, lol), as subjectivists, not my problem, as a realist. I'm certain that there are moral propositions which reduce to a true statement of someone holding such an opinion...those simply aren't the things I as a realist include in my moral facts. I call them....wait for it.......opinions.

I will include things, such as what will happen to you, if I cut your toe off. There are facts to be had here, and because I am a moral realist, some of them....will be my moral facts. Unless you want to tell me that there are no toe facts, and no facts of what would happen to you if I cut off your toe, you are not objecting to a moral realists moral facts - you have been presented with many examples..even your own....but because you do not understand the subject you are debating with me...you simply haven't realized it.

Yes, this bit right here has been done inside-out, upside-down, and backward - in this thread. Smart money says that we'll be back here again in a few pages, lol.

[DLJ]

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Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

He can't. And I think I've worked out why.

Question to you: Were you once a theist or deist and have since deconverted or were you never indoctrinated in the first place?

(I'm deliberately avoiding the question "Have you always been an atheist?" - which might give you a clue as to where these meta-ethicist schools have gone wrong).

[The Grand Nudger]

Goodness, we've got another one who thinks that there are no toe facts, and no facts of what would happen to him if I cut off his toes.

[Angrboda]

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Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

He can't.  And I think I've worked out why.

What would it matter if he couldn't?

[bennyboy]

Nobody needs to provide you a damn thing, benny.  You keep going on about this when even if we aren't able to provide an example that meets with your approval, it doesn't prove a damn thing one way or the other.  You're just being a disingenuous twat and trying to deflect from your inability to demonstrate that morality is subjective.  I provided an example, that rape is wrong.  You in all your cluelessness simply didn't understand the point I was making.  That rape is objectively wrong may be true, unless and until you show that it is not.  I'm not the one claiming something, you are.  So get to work and demonstrate that morality is predicated upon feelings and not predicated upon an objective truth.  So far you haven't done squat but piss and moan about irrelevant shit and deflect.

And this is why I compare this position to theism. You claim it's objectively wrong, then put the burden of proof on me to prove it's not. If it's objectively wrong, show that this is so.

I can easily demonstrate that at least some mores are based on feelings or individual ideas-- moral values have differed vastly over history, among cultures and individuals. There are very few opinions about whether 2 + 2 = 4, or whether apples are red (or green). That's because those are ACTUALLY objective facts.

If you are claiming there's a Truth™, and that some people are sage enough to get it right, and some not, then I'd argue that Christians hold this exact same position. Why should faith be a requirement for an understanding of a supposed objective truth?

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Are you going to provide any good examples, or are you not?

He can't.  And I think I've worked out why.

Question to you:  Were you once a theist or deist and have since deconverted or were you never indoctrinated in the first place?

(I'm deliberately avoiding the question "Have you always been an atheist?" - which might give you a clue as to where these meta-ethicist schools have gone wrong).

I was exposed to fundamentalist Christianity at an early age by great-grandparents who raised me for a couple of years.  Plenty of it sank in for sure.

But I've never been a card-carrying member.

And FYI I don't identify as an atheist, but as an agnostic or ignostic. Give me any specific definition of God (like Biblical Sky Daddy) and I'll probably declare as gnostic atheist for that God. Not given a good definition, then I'm pretty open to all kinds of possibilities, more a marriage of QM and philosophical ideas than spiritual ones.

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We both accept that our beliefs are..at least sometimes...  true.

My beliefs, as I see them, are only true-in-context. Given X, then it may sometimes be said that Y is true.

Given a material Universe, and that dishes are real, and discounting a very particular and special trick, I will say it's true that there are several dirty dishes on my desk right now.

Given that other people are real, that I accept the idea of social contract, that it is always wrong to do harm, and that psychological distress (as evidenced in screams or negative-seeming facial expressions) represents harm, then I'd say that rape is wrong.

See, we can negotiate very many axioms, and arrive at a working moral system, without having to believe that something is objectively wrong. Just wanting some things to be so, and others not to be so, is good enough.