The subjective/objective opposition in theories of value is somewhat subverted by the existence of subjective facts. There are qualia of decision-making. These include at a minimum any emotional judgments which play a role in forming a preference or a decision, and there may be others.
Whether or not there is a sense of moral rightness, distinct from emotional, logical, and aesthetic judgments, is a basic question. If the answer is yes, that implies a phenomenological moral realism—there is a separate category of moral qualia. The answer is no in various psychologically reductive theories of morality. Hedonism, as a descriptive (not yet prescriptive) theory of human moral psychology, says that all moral judgments are really pleasure/pain judgments. Nietzsche offered a slightly different reduction of everything, to “will to power”, which he regarded as even more fundamental.
How this subjective, phenomenological analysis relates to the computational, algorithmic, decision-theoretic analysis of decision-making, is one of the great unaddressed questions, in all the discussion on this site about morals and preferences and utility functions. Of course, it’s an aspect of the general ontological problem of consciousness. And it ought to be relevant to the discussion you’re having with Annie… if you can find a way to talk about it.
The subjective/objective opposition in theories of value is somewhat subverted by the existence of subjective facts. There are qualia of decision-making. These include at a minimum any emotional judgments which play a role in forming a preference or a decision, and there may be others.
Whether or not there is a sense of moral rightness, distinct from emotional, logical, and aesthetic judgments, is a basic question. If the answer is yes, that implies a phenomenological moral realism—there is a separate category of moral qualia. The answer is no in various psychologically reductive theories of morality. Hedonism, as a descriptive (not yet prescriptive) theory of human moral psychology, says that all moral judgments are really pleasure/pain judgments. Nietzsche offered a slightly different reduction of everything, to “will to power”, which he regarded as even more fundamental.
How this subjective, phenomenological analysis relates to the computational, algorithmic, decision-theoretic analysis of decision-making, is one of the great unaddressed questions, in all the discussion on this site about morals and preferences and utility functions. Of course, it’s an aspect of the general ontological problem of consciousness. And it ought to be relevant to the discussion you’re having with Annie… if you can find a way to talk about it.