You could consider morality to be like money or artistic beauty. There are no money particles. There are metal circles and plastic rectangles. But the concept of money as a means of transaction is something that exists in peoples heads. Money shapes the world by affecting what people do. Changing when they pick up and use objects. Causing people to do work they otherwise wouldn’t. Such abstract and powerful forces can greatly shape the world. Little metal circles just sit there being little metal circles. That too is the force morality has in this world. All those people who consider morality and choose to do the right thing. There is light in this world, and it is us.
Different people have different preferences in paintings. Imagine you are programming a computer to calculate artistic beauty. Imagine coding a function func1(person, picture). This function takes as inputs a detailed brain scan of a person, and a particular picture. It calculates how much the person would enjoy looking at the picture. You can use this to define func2(picture)=func1(Bob,picture) . It happens that Bob has a rather simple taste in pictures. Bob likes red and symmetrical pictures. So we code func3(picture). This function just measures redness and symmetricalnes. It makes no reference to Bob. func2 calculates Bob’s thoughts, it reasons about how bob will think. And yet both functions produce the same answers.
Morality is similar. We can define moral1( person, situation) which measures how moral a particular person thinks a particular situation is. A large value for moral1( Alice, situation) means that Alice actually feels motivated towards the situation and tries to cause it to happen.
Now suppose that Eve is just evil. moral1( Alice, situation) might be wildly different from moral1( Eve, situation). But both Alice and Eve can (assuming both were knowledgable) calculate both of these functions. When Bob looks at a picture, they aren’t reasoning about their own reasoning, they are just thinking about how wonderfully red it is, the function within his mind is func3. When Alice looks at a situation, they aren’t thinking about their own thinking either (in general) they are looking at all the cute bunnies and thinking how fluffy they are.
So is morality subjective or objective? That depends on how you define your words. By morality, do you mean the equivalents of func1, func2 or func3? (Possibly with yourself or the average human in place of Bob?)This is just a question of definitions.
On to how you should think and act. Imagine god gave you the complete and unambiguous guide to morality. Totally complete, totally superseding all previous instructions. Can you imagine being disappointed in this guide? Feeling that it wasn’t as nice as it could be. Or perhaps horrified as god orders a human sacrifice? Can you imagine good news instead. That the guide to morality was everything you hoped it would be. What if you could somehow write the guide to morality, what would you write? Why not just do that. It is, after all, your choice.
You can if you want delegate. You can fully acknowledge that god is fictional, and try to work out what god would want if he did exist, and do that. You could try to work out what Harry Potter would do if he did exist, and do that. Even if god does exist, its your choice whether to follow his instructions or to do something else. You could go with what feels right, your instinctive sense of niceness. You could calculate, weighing up lives with statistics to choose the greatest good. You could delegate to a hypothetical version of yourself who was smarter and kinder, and try to figure out what they would do.
While it is your choice, choosing is in itself a process. Your choices are shaped by the kind of person you are. Which is itself shaped by the genes and words that lead to your existence as it is now. So in a sense, you are learning about the sort of person you are, a fact determined but not known to you. You must go through the process of choosing to learn this fact about yourself. It is your choice how you see the choice, you can see it as an onerous imposition of responsibility, or you can treat it lightly. A freedom from any external morality weighing you down. A feather that can drift in whatever direction their whims may take them.
This is, I suspect, where your morality came from all along. Some would have come from deep within yourself. From the genes that specify the brain circuits of empathy. Some will come from the ethical advice of friends and neighbours. Some may come from the bible. The ink and paper of the bible is still there. You can use it as a source of ethical advice if you think it is good. I would recommend not using the bible as a source of ethical advice. Maybe look https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ instead? But it is, after all, your choice. You can trust and rely on others, but it is your choice of who to trust. It always was. Even if the decision to trust was implicit and invisible.
You could consider morality to be like money or artistic beauty. There are no money particles. There are metal circles and plastic rectangles. But the concept of money as a means of transaction is something that exists in peoples heads. Money shapes the world by affecting what people do. Changing when they pick up and use objects. Causing people to do work they otherwise wouldn’t. Such abstract and powerful forces can greatly shape the world. Little metal circles just sit there being little metal circles. That too is the force morality has in this world. All those people who consider morality and choose to do the right thing. There is light in this world, and it is us.
Different people have different preferences in paintings. Imagine you are programming a computer to calculate artistic beauty. Imagine coding a function func1(person, picture). This function takes as inputs a detailed brain scan of a person, and a particular picture. It calculates how much the person would enjoy looking at the picture. You can use this to define func2(picture)=func1(Bob,picture) . It happens that Bob has a rather simple taste in pictures. Bob likes red and symmetrical pictures. So we code func3(picture). This function just measures redness and symmetricalnes. It makes no reference to Bob. func2 calculates Bob’s thoughts, it reasons about how bob will think. And yet both functions produce the same answers.
Morality is similar. We can define moral1( person, situation) which measures how moral a particular person thinks a particular situation is. A large value for moral1( Alice, situation) means that Alice actually feels motivated towards the situation and tries to cause it to happen.
Now suppose that Eve is just evil. moral1( Alice, situation) might be wildly different from moral1( Eve, situation). But both Alice and Eve can (assuming both were knowledgable) calculate both of these functions. When Bob looks at a picture, they aren’t reasoning about their own reasoning, they are just thinking about how wonderfully red it is, the function within his mind is func3. When Alice looks at a situation, they aren’t thinking about their own thinking either (in general) they are looking at all the cute bunnies and thinking how fluffy they are.
So is morality subjective or objective? That depends on how you define your words. By morality, do you mean the equivalents of func1, func2 or func3? (Possibly with yourself or the average human in place of Bob?)This is just a question of definitions.
On to how you should think and act. Imagine god gave you the complete and unambiguous guide to morality. Totally complete, totally superseding all previous instructions. Can you imagine being disappointed in this guide? Feeling that it wasn’t as nice as it could be. Or perhaps horrified as god orders a human sacrifice? Can you imagine good news instead. That the guide to morality was everything you hoped it would be. What if you could somehow write the guide to morality, what would you write? Why not just do that. It is, after all, your choice.
You can if you want delegate. You can fully acknowledge that god is fictional, and try to work out what god would want if he did exist, and do that. You could try to work out what Harry Potter would do if he did exist, and do that. Even if god does exist, its your choice whether to follow his instructions or to do something else. You could go with what feels right, your instinctive sense of niceness. You could calculate, weighing up lives with statistics to choose the greatest good. You could delegate to a hypothetical version of yourself who was smarter and kinder, and try to figure out what they would do.
While it is your choice, choosing is in itself a process. Your choices are shaped by the kind of person you are. Which is itself shaped by the genes and words that lead to your existence as it is now. So in a sense, you are learning about the sort of person you are, a fact determined but not known to you. You must go through the process of choosing to learn this fact about yourself. It is your choice how you see the choice, you can see it as an onerous imposition of responsibility, or you can treat it lightly. A freedom from any external morality weighing you down. A feather that can drift in whatever direction their whims may take them.
This is, I suspect, where your morality came from all along. Some would have come from deep within yourself. From the genes that specify the brain circuits of empathy. Some will come from the ethical advice of friends and neighbours. Some may come from the bible. The ink and paper of the bible is still there. You can use it as a source of ethical advice if you think it is good. I would recommend not using the bible as a source of ethical advice. Maybe look https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ instead? But it is, after all, your choice. You can trust and rely on others, but it is your choice of who to trust. It always was. Even if the decision to trust was implicit and invisible.