onceuponapriori

What is the best argument that concludes with "Morality is Objective"? Does such an argument exist?

I believe that certain morals are objective based on intuition, and the fact that I believe that God has guided my reason to identify certain morals. Obviously, these can hardly be public arguments.

I know that Ayn Rand made some progress in the field of Objective Ethics, but I believe that she was inconsistent in several important places, where her system was at odds with her (and other's) intuition.

Thanks in advance.

Alonzo Fyfe

First, try this thread (and, from there, the three links in the second post), which discuss this issue in some detail.

Ultimately, it depends on your definition of 'objective'. So, you need to be a bit more specific of what you are asking.

Intuition is a poor source of information about objectivity, since intution tells you only what is in your mind. There is nothing about intuition that allows one to infer the conclusion that one is perceiving a property of the thing being evaluated, rather than just one's own culturally acquired tastes and preferences.

I rejected intuitionism one day when discussing interracial marriage with a racist. When an interracial couple went by, I could tell that he could just see that this was wrong. What he was responding to was not an 'intuition' but his own prejudices.

Ayn Rand fails in her defense of objectivism because she makes some basic logical mistakes -- attempting to derive 'ought' from 'is' and failing to keep straight the distinction between 'means' and 'ends'.

Yet, you will find in the threads referenced above, that I defend a form of objectivism.

Enjoy your reading.

onceuponapriori

Thanks Alonzo. I've yet to read the threads, but I wanted to thank you in advance for taking the time to reply to me.