“Universalist” and “Subjectivist” aren’t opposed or conflicting terms. “Subjective” simply says that moral statements are really statements about the attitudes or opinions of people (or something else with a mind). The opposing term is “objective”. “Universalist” and “relativist” are on a different dimension from subjective and objective. Universal vs. relative is about how variable or not variable morality is.
You could have a metaethical theory that morality is both objective and relative. For example, you could define morality as what the law says and it will be relative from country to country as laws differ. You could also have a subjective and universal meta-ethics. Morality judgments could be statements about the attitudes of people but all people could have the same attitudes.
I take Eliezer to hold something like the latter—moral judgments aren’t about people’s attitudes simpliciter: they’re about what they would be if people were perfectly rational and had perfect information (he’s hardly the first among philosophers, here). It is possible that the outcome of that would be more or less universal among humans or even a larger group. Or at least it some subset of attitudes might be universal. But I could be wrong about his view: I feel like I just end up reading my view into it whenever I try to describe his.
“Universalist” and “Subjectivist” aren’t opposed or conflicting terms. “Subjective” simply says that moral statements are really statements about the attitudes or opinions of people (or something else with a mind). The opposing term is “objective”. “Universalist” and “relativist” are on a different dimension from subjective and objective. Universal vs. relative is about how variable or not variable morality is.
If morality varies with individuals, as required by subjectivism, it is not at all universal, so the two are not orthogonal.
You could have a metaethical theory that morality is both objective and relative. For example, you could define morality as what the law says and it will be relative from country to country as laws differ.
If morality is relative to groups rather than individuals, it is still relative, Morality is objective when the truth values of moral statements don’t vary with individuals or groups, not when it varies with empirically discoverable facts.
You could also have a subjective and universal meta-ethics. Morality judgments could be statements about the attitudes of people but all people could have the same attitudes.
The link supports what I said. Subjectivism requires that moral claims have truth values which , in principle, dpened on the individual making them. It doesn’t mean that any two people will necessarily have a different morality, but why would I assert that?
Subjectivism requires that moral claims have truth values which , in principle, dpened on the individual making them
This is not true of all subjectivisms, as the link makes totally clear. Subjective simply means that something is mind-dependent; it need not be the mind of the person making the claim—or not only the mind of the person making the claim. For instance, the facts that determine whether or not a moral claim is true could consist in just the moral opinions and attitudes where all humans overlap.
“Universalist” and “Subjectivist” aren’t opposed or conflicting terms. “Subjective” simply says that moral statements are really statements about the attitudes or opinions of people (or something else with a mind). The opposing term is “objective”. “Universalist” and “relativist” are on a different dimension from subjective and objective. Universal vs. relative is about how variable or not variable morality is.
You could have a metaethical theory that morality is both objective and relative. For example, you could define morality as what the law says and it will be relative from country to country as laws differ. You could also have a subjective and universal meta-ethics. Morality judgments could be statements about the attitudes of people but all people could have the same attitudes.
I take Eliezer to hold something like the latter—moral judgments aren’t about people’s attitudes simpliciter: they’re about what they would be if people were perfectly rational and had perfect information (he’s hardly the first among philosophers, here). It is possible that the outcome of that would be more or less universal among humans or even a larger group. Or at least it some subset of attitudes might be universal. But I could be wrong about his view: I feel like I just end up reading my view into it whenever I try to describe his.
If morality varies with individuals, as required by subjectivism, it is not at all universal, so the two are not orthogonal.
If morality is relative to groups rather than individuals, it is still relative, Morality is objective when the truth values of moral statements don’t vary with individuals or groups, not when it varies with empirically discoverable facts.
Subjectivism does not require that morality varies with individuals.
No, see the link above.
The link supports what I said. Subjectivism requires that moral claims have truth values which , in principle, dpened on the individual making them. It doesn’t mean that any two people will necessarily have a different morality, but why would I assert that?
This is not true of all subjectivisms, as the link makes totally clear. Subjective simply means that something is mind-dependent; it need not be the mind of the person making the claim—or not only the mind of the person making the claim. For instance, the facts that determine whether or not a moral claim is true could consist in just the moral opinions and attitudes where all humans overlap.
There are people who use “subjective” to mean “mental”, but they sholudn’t.