What would be the harm?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's easy to call, I keep telling you the same thing.  Perhaps you ought to wonder why you're incapable of meeting that low bar?

That harm is objective in the manner discussed by moral theorists is a simple matter of definition. If this is not enough for you...then..Jorm.....just allow yourself to say so. Allow yourself to say, "yes..okay, that's objective in that way but that way is not enough for me, i find it unsatisfying".

[Angrboda]

It's easy to call, I keep telling you the same thing.  Perhaps you ought to wonder why you're incapable of meeting that low bar?

That harm is objective in the manner discussed by moral theorists is a simple matter of definition.  If this is not enough for you...then..Jorm.....just allow yourself to say so.  Allow yourself to say, "yes..okay, that's objective in that way but that way is not enough for me, i find it unsatisfying".

Asked and answered already. I've offered a couple of ways forward on this, but it's obvious that demonstrating your claims isn't your interest here. You simply want to keep asserting the same things, believing that you're right, and repeating yourself instead of responding to the points made in response. That you have here simply repeated what has already been pointed out to you is a) a straw man, and b) a red herring, simply underscores where the river of illogic is flowing from.

Now, if you don't intend to present your argument again so that you can respond to my counter-arguments, which you haven't done yet, then I think we're through here. You can continue to believe that you're right, and your refusing to even challenge yourself on that score practically assures that you will come to no other conclusion, and meanwhile I and other philosophers who can plainly see your errors will simply go on dismissing you.

Actually, I shouldn't given you've been an uncooperative and irrational dick, but I'll extend yet one more olive branch. My understanding is that Harris' claim as to what constitutes a valid moral realism has been routinely panned as being bad philosophy. Do you think that Harris' argument was successful? If not, and given that it appears, prima facie, that one can draw a homomorphism between his moral realism and yours, in what way does your moral realism distinguish itself from Harris'. If it doesn't and apparently professional philosophers in the main don't agree with Harris, on what exactly are you resting your confidence that your theory is correct?

[The Grand Nudger]

Is a wound mind dependent, lol.  Yes or no. That's all that matters to ethical objectivity and subjectivity. That's the difference between them. There are many other ways to use either of those terms but this is the meaningful use in the context of realist and subjectivist moral propositions.

If I told you that my moral system was wound based, it would be an objective system, by definition.....even if it didn't satisfy either of us as a moral system. There would be no valid objection to the wound ala "yeah, but, wounds are just, like..your opinion, man". No, they are not. The objectivity of your run of the mill moral system is underwhelming, but it is objective. That's why they're called objective moral systems in the first place, instead of..just..like, our opinions, man.

As far as harris argument? Specify which part of the argument, because..as I've said more than once already..I don't think that -any- consequentialist argument fully succeeds. It won't surprise me to find that harris does a poor job in any particular (it's not exactly his wheelhouse), but if I knew which particular it was I could find you someone who states the same argument in a much more thorough way. Ultimately, the simplest response (in criticism) to any consequentialist argument is the same as the fundamental response to hedonism. It may be that pursuing the best consequence™ will not, in point of fact, yield that consequence. It could go south entirely, and yield the exact opposite. The subject of much dystopian fiction and a great many failed schemes irl. Note, in this, there's no need to launch some batshit objection on grounds of subjectivity. If the consequentialist is using objective metrics, then it's an objective consquentialism. If it's using -the wrong- objective metrics..it's still an objective consequentialism, but it's no longer a moral consequentialism. It becomes a run of the mill empirical plan. The open question applies. It becomes an instrumental good...good for - the ends of the plan, but not intrinsically good in a moral sense.

That sort of thing can be useful to some concept of intrinsic good, as the empirical observation of the boiled lobster helped some person to realize that what they were doing was wrong in our previous example, and that sort of thing opens itself up very well to empirical observation (which is why most versions of scientific realism include at least a tip of the hat)...but as described above, it has problems. What I've been trying to help you understand, is that those problems are not the problems you have been referring to. Problems of subjectivity, or problems of moral disagreement.

The only part of his argument that I can recall being satisfied with, on it's own grounds, is his opening intuitivist gambit. I see why he would want to do that, as well, establish some brute fact, any brute fact, from which to procede and and with which to make valid inferences. If he's wrong in that statement, it's nigh impossible to see how. The rest of his stuff may be soup sandwich, it may not follow, etc (I;m allowing for the possibility of my misremembering his presentation..because it did follow, though I saw him offer it up in a vid and not in the book - for all I know he made corrections after his big "send me your philosophy major hate mail" campaign). I do recall him becoming suddenly myopic after delivering it. We go from the greatest suffering of the greatest number of creatures or beings - asserting harm and creatures or beings that can be harmed as the morally relevant parties..but then decides that -human- well being is the metric or goal, later. That's pretty much trash, it expresses his personal bias as a human for humans....that much is certainly subjective in a meaningful sense, lol..and this bias causes an inconsistency between his initial principle and later statements and conclusions. Not really a lethal one, but irksome.

[Huggy Bear]

[The Grand Nudger]

Jump on in, huggy, the waters fine, lol.

@Jorm
More for you whenever you get the time from your irl stuff.

After rereading harris argument, and the criticism of that argument, and his response to that criticism, I'll lay out a few observations, and particularly as they relate to what seems to be your main concern.

By far, the most common criticism of the argument was some formulation or another of what harris calls the value problem.  The entrant that took the cake (so to speak) launched a variant of the open question, conceding in effect that while science might provide some illumination of value on basis of empirical grounds, it did not provide the initial value itself.  Pretty much our lobster example from earlier.  Science can tell us that some thing x is or isn't the thing we value, but we come into that question already having had a concept of value.  

As to what we should value, you appear to be concerned that this could be a fundamentally and necessarily a subjective question.  One of harris responses to that is, essentially, an argument described by putnams exposition of the fact-value dichotomy.  He buttresses this between noting that if the fact value dichotomy holds, and is a problem, it's a problem for all knowledge, if that makes morality necessarily subjective it makes logical discourse necessarily subjective, and makes science necessarily subjective - and because of that it;s easy to miss.   While this would be true, I don't think that it would actually allay anyone's concerns, if their concerns where of the sort you've expressed.  Mostly..because a person expressing concerns of subjectivity isn't exactly going to find comfort in some notion that a whole bunch of other shit is just as subjective.  

To make -really- short work of that case (and you should check it out because no post that would fit on these boards will do it justice, lol) value objectivists contend that it is or may be the valuing, itself..or at least our valuing..the act of, that's necessarily subjective - but that value -itself- does proceed or is derived from fact.   As you point out, the valuing is contained within a mind and would thus qualify as subjective as moral theorists discuss it..or so it seems at first glance.  Does this actually mean that the thing valued, or all values are subjective.  Is the value...contained within that mind?  In a word, no.

Enter universal conditionals, and value foundation.  The simplest way to describe this is to discuss oxygen.  Is oxygen valuable?  Is whatever value oxygen has subjective in the way that moral theorists discuss it?  We certainly value it (though we often don't pay for it, lol).  Our valuing is subjective.  Some..in a sense... value it more than others...astronauts, for example, lol.  Or at least considerations of it's value are more pressing and urgent to some than to others.  A man breathing in the fresh mountain air is unlikely to come to the same realization as a person fifty feet underwater and drowning.  Is that value, itself, objective (again as moral theorists describe it), though?  It seems difficult to argue some case in which it;s not.  Regardless of whatever relative unit value we subjectively assess (and thus whatever disagreement of value may arise as a consequence of that)..all breathing things require oxygen - whether they have a mind to apprehend that necessity or the value of that necessary thing.  This is not a mere artifact of mind.  This is the objective value of oxygen.  If there is some disagreement as to whether or not oxygen has value between two people..one saying yay and one saying nay...well..one of them is objectively wrong...and this much could probably be demonstrated by putting the naysayer in a vacuum and asking them to reassess their value formation.  What of relative, value, however?  Might it be the case that there is a correct answer between two competitors for value?  Is oxygen objectively more valuable than a candy bar?  Here again we can employ the vacuum chamber..and hand one guy a candy bar while pumping oxygen in the other room. See who's willing to trade with whom for what.  

This exposition puts the contention that all value is subjective and so all value systems must, themselves, be subjective to the coals.  That there is a dichotomy between fact and value.  As a contention of universality, it is false prima facie...regardless of how many individual instances in which it may be the case that some value or some relative value of some things is meaningfully subjective, and regardless of the fact (if it is a fact) that the valuing, the act of assigning value, is meaningfully subjective.  

The question we then turn to, with the above in mind...is whether or not harris "well-being" is a value like that.  If it has value in the way that oxygen has value.  Do we require well-being, in the way that we require oxygen?  Or is well being more like the candy bar.  Here, I fully diverge with harris in principle, as his notion of wellbeing is thoroughly hedonistic..but to give the question the broadest and most charitable range of interpretation, and yes, including pleasure in well-being without excluding all other things....I'd answer that it's more like oxygen than a candy bar.  Pleasure itself, as an aside, being a little more like a candy bar than oxygen, lol.  Important, nice to have...there's certainly an amount of pleasure which, if it drops below a point we begin to see objectively negative impact on health, on life, etc.   But maybe not as important as other aspects of well being, just like the chocolate pales in comparison to oxygen in our vacuum chamber.  Well-being, for it;s part...as a broad set, a compound proposition, is more like oxygen in that..in both cases, we can do with a little more and a little less of each.  The mountain climber has less oxygen than some guy standing at sea level trying to rescue the drowning man...the drowning man has less than both.  A person subjected to constant misery and sickness and..maybe, stabbed in the gut by his neighbor is suffering from a pronounced lack of well-being not entirely unlike the drowning man..and it's not a stretch to imagine that both men are approaching similar fates.   

These different positions that each person finds themselves in, above, may help to explain whatever subjectivity or relativity there is in their individual conceptions of oxygens value, just -how valuable- oxygen is...but above around and outside of each mans mind..oxygen -is- valuable.  If any of them fail to perceive that value, it's not because the value of oxygen is subjective, but because they have either failed to immediately apprehend value as the drowning man might...or failed to rationally infer that oxygen has value (by, for example..watching the drowning man).  These are failures of agency, and of subjectivity, but not of the objectivity of values like those.  

In sum, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent reasonable agency, would be able to answer the question "does oxygen have value" objectively, and correctly.  Further, that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent rational agency, would be able to answer the question of "does oxygen have more value than a candy bar" objectively, and correctly.  In the same vein, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value.....etc etc etc, to the questions of wellbeing, and whether wellbeing is more valuable than this or that.

Obviously, this immediately opens up harris hedonism to those very same questions value and relative value, but theres no reason to assume that this question (of pleasures worth and relative worth) would be different from any previous question.  That it would be somehow impossible to assess that pleasure has objective value, or that pleasure is objectively worth more or less than some other x.   While that's a whole can of worms in and of itself..since the enterprise of this post was only to establish the sensibility of objective value and the inadequacy of the blanket subjectivist claim..I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to explore that one further.

[bennyboy]

If I'm attempting to drown myself, then what value does oxygen have to me? I might see oxygen as my enemy, and wrap a rope around my neck, or fill a car with carbon monoxide, in order to prevent oxygen from doing the harm of forcing me to continue living a life to which I've attached a strong negative evaluation.

In all your examples of so-called objective evaluation, you seem to me simply to be choosing subjective evaluation which are based on stronger and stronger feelings, and which are more and more common among individuals. As much as we hate rape, most of us would dislike a total lack of oxygen that much less.

But we're still at circular reasoning-- a "correct" evaluation of the value of oxygen depends on a "properly" functioning organism, which is at least partly defined as. . . an organism which can "correctly" evaluate the value of oxygen. . . n'est ce pas?

I also find it quite convenient that we are including only people in this moral view. What about the suffering of animals? Is a moral argument, or lack thereof, which is dependent on special pleading not therefore intrinsically subjective? What is uniquely valuable about human hedonic states, that we might so easily disregard the implied objections of other animals?

[The Grand Nudger]

If I'm attempting to drown myself, then what value does oxygen have to me?  

The same value that it had before you attempted to drown yourself.  That you're doing so would probably indicate that you;re acting irrationally..but there may be some instance in which yuou might want to drown yourself for rational reasons.  Neither of these possibilities diminishes the objective value of oxygen as described. They're comments on your agency, and your subjective or relative -valuing-.

Hell, it's no stretch to say that it might even be..more properly, a comment on your state of general well-being.

I might see oxygen as my enemy, and wrap a rope around my neck, or fill a car with carbon monoxide, in order to prevent oxygen from doing the harm of forcing me to continue living a life to which I've attached a strong negative evaluation.

We can see things many ways, not all of the rational or true.  

In all your examples of so-called objective evaluation, you seem to me simply to be choosing subjective evaluation which are based on stronger and stronger feelings, and which are more and more common among individuals.  As much as we hate rape, most of us would dislike a total lack of oxygen that much less.

My examples of objectivity are those examples that rise to meet the criteria of objectivity as discussed by moral theorists.  That's all they have to do.  

And we're still at circular reasoning-- a "correct" evaluation of the value of oxygen depends on a "properly" functioning organism, which is at least partly defined as. . . an organism which can "correctly" evaluate the value of oxygen. . . n'est ce pas?

Except that it doesn't..since oxygen has value even to creatures that do not possess any such organ or mind, and even when those that do fail to apprehend it, and even when those that do lose their shit and try to drown themselves and een when those that try to drown themselves have rational reasons for doing so..as noted.

It is only the apprehension of value that requires some mind to apprehend it (lol..and this, only maybe - some thing without a mind might also be able to do so..idk). Not the existence of value. Your personal apprehension, thus, may be meaningfully subjective. Existence, not so much. Even the existence of that apprehansion isn't subjective by the criteria that moral theorists are discussing. It, too, exists, and isn't some artifact of our imagining it thus.

Do you value it..maybe not. Is it valuable. Yes. Do you see it? Maybe not. Does it exist? Yes.

---

It;s important to keep in mind that value objectivism is in no way shape or form a claim that there are no subjective values or valuing...whereas value subjectivity actually is the claim that there are no objective values or valuing.

The one can allow for both, while noting that not all values and valuing are alike. The other simply cannot..and must instead assert that all values and valuing, that certainly seem disparate, are in fact all the same. This leaves us in an odd position..most people focus on the fact that this would mean that no value is true value..it also means that no value is false value. Can you spot the paradox? All value statements are thus equally. Oxygen and candy bars are just as valuable as each other. The statement "Oxygen is more valuable than a candy bar" is in a subjectivist sense true..but so is "candy bars are more valuable than oxygen".

Kind of a pickle...and it doesn't seem to adequately describe the relationship here in reality, between ourselves, oxygen, and candy bars. Value objectivism states, otoh, that fact and value are relational..that while it;s certyainly possible for there to be a meaningful subjectivist value statement that is, on it's own terms, true, a meaningful objectivity is also possible.

[tackattack]

Can I add what I think would be a realists perspective (at the very simplest level), just to make sure I'm following?
1. Ends are goals
2. The means to an end describe instrumental value
3. objective morality isn't a value proposition but a statement of intrinsic value.
4. Moral objective good/bad, isn't about value either but about it's intrinsic value
5. Oxygen is a thing that can be good or bad based on your value and goal, but aside from your value and goal we can measure oxygen objectively
6. Morality is objective like oxygen in that it is measurable thus a hard fact
.

Something close to that, for us less classically trained?

[The Grand Nudger]

Can I add what I think would be a realists perspective (at the very simplest level), just to make sure I'm following?
1. Ends are goals
2. The means to an end describe instrumental value

These are consequentialist.

3. objective morality isn't a value proposition but a statement of intrinsic value.

All moral systems are propositions regarding value, not all moral syustems (even realist systems) are exclusively about intrinsic value.  Consequentialism often sides in practice (if not in theory) to instrumental value.  The value of something to point towards or reach for "the good" - not necessarily that the thing being done is good in and of itself.    Non natural realism also does this, proposing that natural things might be tokens of and good-for, but not the thing itself.

4. Moral objective good/bad, isn't about value either but about it's intrinsic value

This one will ring more for virtue ethicists than consequentialists (and it needs revision, it contradicted itself from one breath to the next).

5. Oxygen is a thing that can be good or bad based on your value and goal, but aside from your value and goal we can measure oxygen objectively

More that we can measure it objectively, and it has at least some objective value....though, it's more used for an analogy than to make a moral case.  To make a moral case by oxygen, consider depriving someone of it.  

6. Morality is objective  like oxygen in that it is measurable thus a hard fact

Can be, not is.  Can be.  Realists accept that not all moral evaluations are objective or fact based.  
.

Something close to that, for us less classically trained?

Yea, sure, you get the thrusts here and there, but there isn't a single realist position beyond each different positions underlying realism.  There are disagreement as to the nature of that real thing, the best way to know about the real thing, whether or not we can know..or know enough about that real thing, and the best way to..i suppose I would say test for effect, in whether we stay close or stray to that real thing.

[bennyboy]

Hell, it's no stretch to say that it might even be..more properly, a comment on your state of general well-being.  

And therein lies the rub. You insist there are objective truths, and that if someone can't see those-- well, they aren't functioning properly. But how do you KNOW whether someone is in a "state of general well-being"?

. . . because he makes the Right Evaluations ™?