[Serious] What is goodness?

[The Grand Nudger]

That would be too restrictive to cover alot of our day to day experience, where we notice that the things we want are very capable of harming us, or of harming others.

Not necessarily. In the first case it could just be that a past desire violated a future desire and in the second case it could just be that we don't desire the same thing as the other person.

I'm not sure what you mean by not necessarily, here.  We do find that the things we desire can hurt us, and hurt others.  That's why a thing can be harm™ even when that thing is wanted.  Isn't that the question you asked?  How a realist might see limiting harm to the unwanted?

One desire can be bad for another desire and this doesn't have to lead to all desires being equal and no desires being good or bad.

Why?

Because some desires are stronger than others. And, hence, some violations of desires are stronger than others.

There's big bad and little bad, but in a desire based system all violations of desire would be some value of bad, because desire is the good or bad making property.  In a desire based system, the fact that Jane does not want an education and actively desires to avoid being educated is morally relevant. In a realist system, not so much. Jane will be compelled to receive an education. In all likelihood, Janes desires will be manipulated to achieve that end.

There will always be some point at which an ethical subjectivist has to throw their hands in the air and give up whatever moral stake they've claimed as insupportable in the face of desire. A realist is under no such obligation. To a subjectivist, the statement "x is wrong" actually refers to some fact of y, the subject. Which is to say that moral statements purport to report facts, but do not report those facts they allege. "X is wrong" is not true, but a euphemism for "y feels a certain way about x". That statement may be true, y may feel a certain way about x - and it may be the case that our moral intuitions are powerfully informed by those feelings. We desire some things more than others and as such y may feel more strongly about one x than another.

The main issue with subjectivism, from an objectivists pov, and particularly with regard to our moral intuitions, is that it necessarily produces incoherent moral states and statements*. A single x, or a set of x's all qualitatively interchangeable can be in multiple simultaneous positions of rightness and wrongness, truth and falsehood, depending on the subject. Helping your neighbor, for example, can be good and bad at once, and is potentially equal to skullfucking their children. Skullfucking their children may be even better than helping them, if the skullfucking is desired and the help is not.

That doesn't seem to be an accurate description of the moral field - but it's an inescapable consequence of subjective moral grounding.

*Mind, as before, this isn't to say that the system is incoherent. It doesn't produce these statements by accident or because it was improperly formed, but because they follow and are alleged to be true representations of the disparate and conflicting nature of subjective agency, which is contended to be the ground of moral value. The comment goes to explain why a moral objectivist cannot accept subjectivist ethics as facts of the matter being discussed, not which (between the two) have it right.

[Porcupine]

I'm not sure what you mean by not necessarily, here.  We do find that the things we desire can hurt us, and hurt others.  That's why a thing can be harm™ even when that thing is wanted.  Isn't that the question you asked?  How a realist might see limiting harm to the unwanted?

That was indeed my question but you seemed to respond by trying to explain why harm can't merely be what is unwanted. I responded to that by pointing out that what you were saying could still be explained by harm merely being what is unwanted because it could be that our future self doesn't want what our present self wants, or something like that.

What do you mean when you say that "the things we can desire can hurt us"? Because I take it to simply just be the case that our past self can desire something that hurts our present self and our present self can desire something that hurts our future self. I am not seeing us literally experiencing something as both wanted and harmful.

So, to clarify things, I can follow up with the following question: how can our present self experience something as either (a) both wanted and harmful or (b) both unwanted and not harmful?

[The Grand Nudger]

In all of the usual ways. A crackhead wants crack in the past, present, and future. Their desire is always harmful, and removing them from the fulfillment of their desire is always helpful.

Again, realists do not refer to -any- fact of the subject as moral grounding. They can't, that's the defining issue between subjectivism and objectivism. Past present and future facts of the subject are still facts of the subject. Realists deny that facts of the subject are moral facts, therefore...for a realist, nothing can be explained, morally, by reference to those facts.

[Porcupine]

In all of the usual ways.  A crackhead wants crack in the past, present, and future.  Their desire is always harmful, and removing them from the fulfillment of their desire is always helpful.

The way I see it is: the desire itself is not harmful. The desire is morally bad because it leads to harm. But the harm itself that it leads to can still be understood in terms of a violated desire! Sure, the crackhead wants to experience the pleasure of the crack ... but the crackhead doesn't want the moments of experience involving the withdrawal and pain that comes about via that desire for crack. And what is the experience of that withdrawal and pain like? It's like "I really don't want to feel this way. Give me some crack." Desires can be in conflict. And, like I said, some desires can be stronger than others. When one first starts taking an addictive substance the strongest desire may indeed be a desire for pleasure---but once one becomes an addict the strongest desire tends to be the desire to not be in pain. More specifically---the desire to not be in the pain of withdrawal that one is in when one is not taking the addictive substance.

Again, realists do not refer to -any- fact of the subject as moral grounding.  They can't, that's the defining issue between subjectivism and objectivism.

Once again---that's not necessarily the case. There are versions of moral realism called 'minimal moral realism' that absolutely do not have this requirement for moral realism. See, for instance, Connie .S. Rosati---who in The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics wrote a chapter called 'Mind-Dependence and Moral Realism' in which Connie argues that the mind-idependence requirement for moral realism needs to be rejected. And Connie is not alone in this view.

  Realists deny that facts of the subject are moral facts, therefore...for a realist, nothing can be explained, morally, by reference to those facts.

This is silly to me because, in fact, the opposite is true---there can be no moral values without reference to the subject because it is only the subject that can suffer or have values. But this doesn't necessarily stop me from being a moral realist. I don't have to resort what is called 'simple subjectivism'. Once again, see Connie .S. Rosati and other minimal moral realists.

P.S. Minimal moral realism may be the minority sort of moral realism---but it is still, nevertheless, generally accepted in contemporary metaethics that the mind-independence requirement is only a requirement for robust moral realism and that it is not necessarily a requirement for minimal moral realism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Minimal moral realism contends, as all realist systems contend, that moral facts are objective facts, not subjective facts.

I'm not really concerned with whether or not something seems silly to you. You can agree or disagree with moral realism, of any kind. I think that you should understand what you're agreeing or disagreeing with. Your statement above, for example, that a given desire is bad because it leads to harm - is a realist statement. That's not coherent with desire as moral grounding.