I don’t understand why people insist on equating ‘objective morality’ with something magically universal.
I would not equate it with anything magical or universal. Certainly people have tried to ground morality in natural facts, though it is another question whether or not any has succeeded. And certainly it is logically possible to have a morality that is objective, but relative, though few find that avenue plausible. What proponents of objective morality (save you) all agree about is that moral facts are made true by things other than people’s attitudes. This does not mean that they don’t think people’s attitudes are relevant for moral judgments. For instance, there are moral objectivists who are preference utilitarians (probably most preference utilitarians are moral objectivists actually) they think there is one objective moral obligation: Maximize preference satisfaction (with what ever alterations they favor). In order to satisfy that obligation one then has to learn about the mental states of people. But they are moral objectivists because they think that what renders “Maximizing preference satisfaction is morally obligatory” true is that it is a brute fact about the natural world (or dictated by reason, or the Platonic Form of Good etc.).
This is the path Sam Harris takes. He takes as an objective moral fact that human well-being is what we should promote and then examines how to do that through neuroscience. He isn’t arguing that we should care about human well-being because there is a module in our brains for doing so. If he were his argument would be subjectivist under the usage of analytic philosophy, even though he is characterized correctly by reviewers as an objectivist.
This is part of why your position was so confusing to me. You were waving the banner of someone who makes the classic objectivist mistake and calling yourself an objectivist while denying that you were making the mistake.
Since you keep bringing up things like “Form of the Good” I assume you can see how hard it would be to justify objective moral judgments (in the way I’m using the term) naturalisticaly and Hume certainly is taking aim at both naturalistic and supernaturalistic (or Platonic/Kantian w/e) justifications for objective morality.
If that’s what Hume is arguing against, then his argument is against a straw man as far as I’m concerned. Just because I’m pointing out an idea for an objective morality that differs from individual to individual doesn’t make it any less ‘objective’ or ‘real’ - unless you’re using those terms specifically to mean to some stupid, mystical ’universal morality
Well his argument isn’t a strawman, it’s just an argument against actual moral objectivists, not you. You’ll encounter a lot of apparent strawmen if you go around taking labels of philosophical positions you don’t actually agree with. No offense.
1) Between normal humans there is a lot in common 2) You could theoretically reach into their brain and mess with the hardware in which their terminal values are encoded 3) You can still convince and trade based on instrumental values, of course 4) Humans seem to have terminal values which actually refer to other people, whether it’s simply finding value in the perception of another human’s face, various kinds of bonding, pleasurable feelings following acts of altruism, etc.
My point isn’t that the situation is hopeless, just that people’s moral beliefs are different from beliefs about other aspects of reality. You can’t present arguments or evidence to change people’s minds and resolve moral disagreements the way, at least in principle, one does with objective facts like in the natural sciences. That’s because those facts are personal. The reason I say “x is moral” has to do with my brain and the reason you say “x is immoral” has to do with your brain. Subjectivist philosophers say the question “is x moral?” is subjective because it depends on the brain you ask.
Treating morality as if it were no different from the typical examples of “objective facts” obscures this crucial difference and that’s why traditional terminology is the way it is. Tabooing words is often helpful but in this case you’re collapsing subjectivism into objectivism and obscuring the crucial conceptual differences (so much so that you’re affiliating with writers you actually disagree with). Most professional analytic philosophers are moral objectivists of the kind I’ve described. It isn’t some kind of obscure, monastic position I’m trying to shoe-horn you into. Most people, even professionals, make the mistake I’m talking about. And it’s a dangerous one. So dealing with the problem by using terms that dissolve differences on this question seems like a bad idea. And I’m not trying to be a semantic totalitarian here but it seems natural that someone interested in these questions would want to be able to understand how most people talk about the question and how their own views would be described. I wasn’t asking you to take a college course, just read the basic encyclopedia entries to the subject you started a post about. I don’t think that is unreasonable. In any case, I’ve tried to structure the above responses in a way that takes into account our differing usage. Hopefully, I brought some clarity and flexibility to the task.
I would not equate it with anything magical or universal. Certainly people have tried to ground morality in natural facts, though it is another question whether or not any has succeeded. And certainly it is logically possible to have a morality that is objective, but relative, though few find that avenue plausible. What proponents of objective morality (save you) all agree about is that moral facts are made true by things other than people’s attitudes. This does not mean that they don’t think people’s attitudes are relevant for moral judgments. For instance, there are moral objectivists who are preference utilitarians (probably most preference utilitarians are moral objectivists actually) they think there is one objective moral obligation: Maximize preference satisfaction (with what ever alterations they favor). In order to satisfy that obligation one then has to learn about the mental states of people. But they are moral objectivists because they think that what renders “Maximizing preference satisfaction is morally obligatory” true is that it is a brute fact about the natural world (or dictated by reason, or the Platonic Form of Good etc.).
This is the path Sam Harris takes. He takes as an objective moral fact that human well-being is what we should promote and then examines how to do that through neuroscience. He isn’t arguing that we should care about human well-being because there is a module in our brains for doing so. If he were his argument would be subjectivist under the usage of analytic philosophy, even though he is characterized correctly by reviewers as an objectivist.
This is part of why your position was so confusing to me. You were waving the banner of someone who makes the classic objectivist mistake and calling yourself an objectivist while denying that you were making the mistake.
Since you keep bringing up things like “Form of the Good” I assume you can see how hard it would be to justify objective moral judgments (in the way I’m using the term) naturalisticaly and Hume certainly is taking aim at both naturalistic and supernaturalistic (or Platonic/Kantian w/e) justifications for objective morality.
Well his argument isn’t a strawman, it’s just an argument against actual moral objectivists, not you. You’ll encounter a lot of apparent strawmen if you go around taking labels of philosophical positions you don’t actually agree with. No offense.
My point isn’t that the situation is hopeless, just that people’s moral beliefs are different from beliefs about other aspects of reality. You can’t present arguments or evidence to change people’s minds and resolve moral disagreements the way, at least in principle, one does with objective facts like in the natural sciences. That’s because those facts are personal. The reason I say “x is moral” has to do with my brain and the reason you say “x is immoral” has to do with your brain. Subjectivist philosophers say the question “is x moral?” is subjective because it depends on the brain you ask.
Treating morality as if it were no different from the typical examples of “objective facts” obscures this crucial difference and that’s why traditional terminology is the way it is. Tabooing words is often helpful but in this case you’re collapsing subjectivism into objectivism and obscuring the crucial conceptual differences (so much so that you’re affiliating with writers you actually disagree with). Most professional analytic philosophers are moral objectivists of the kind I’ve described. It isn’t some kind of obscure, monastic position I’m trying to shoe-horn you into. Most people, even professionals, make the mistake I’m talking about. And it’s a dangerous one. So dealing with the problem by using terms that dissolve differences on this question seems like a bad idea. And I’m not trying to be a semantic totalitarian here but it seems natural that someone interested in these questions would want to be able to understand how most people talk about the question and how their own views would be described. I wasn’t asking you to take a college course, just read the basic encyclopedia entries to the subject you started a post about. I don’t think that is unreasonable. In any case, I’ve tried to structure the above responses in a way that takes into account our differing usage. Hopefully, I brought some clarity and flexibility to the task.