Whatever one great principle you think human morality flows from, there will be plenty of cases that violate it.
Timeout. I did not claim there was a great principle human morality flows from; I merely think there is more regularity to our intuitions (“godshatter”) than you or Greene would lead one to believe, and much of this is accounted for by that fact that instincts must have arisen that permitted social life, cooperation, accumulation of social capital, etc.. But yes, intuitions are going to contradict; I never said or implied otherwise.
Sure, we have some intuitions about minimizing total harm, but there are plenty of people who would have an instinctive moral aversion to many actions that minimize total harm. Many people are actually opposed to torture.
Of course. Minimizing total harm is just one factor. So sure, there are cases where people believe that the torture is worse than whatever it is alleged to prevent. This is not the same, of course, as “not valuing reduction of total harm”.
Then it is a matter of degree: there is a lot of regularity to our moral instincts. But to attack the idea that there are objective moral truths out there it is enough to see that our intuitions do not fit any one great moral principle.
I suppose you could extract one particular regularity—such as “minmize total harm” and call that the objective moral truth. But then someone else will extract some other, distinct regularity such as “never use a person merely as a means” (the golden rule) and call that the objective moral truth. And they contradict each other.
Timeout. I did not claim there was a great principle human morality flows from; I merely think there is more regularity to our intuitions (“godshatter”) than you or Greene would lead one to believe, and much of this is accounted for by that fact that instincts must have arisen that permitted social life, cooperation, accumulation of social capital, etc.. But yes, intuitions are going to contradict; I never said or implied otherwise.
Of course. Minimizing total harm is just one factor. So sure, there are cases where people believe that the torture is worse than whatever it is alleged to prevent. This is not the same, of course, as “not valuing reduction of total harm”.
Then it is a matter of degree: there is a lot of regularity to our moral instincts. But to attack the idea that there are objective moral truths out there it is enough to see that our intuitions do not fit any one great moral principle.
I suppose you could extract one particular regularity—such as “minmize total harm” and call that the objective moral truth. But then someone else will extract some other, distinct regularity such as “never use a person merely as a means” (the golden rule) and call that the objective moral truth. And they contradict each other.