Detached9

Objective: True independent of others' minds.
Subjective: True dependent on others' minds.

Since morality has no existence outside of our minds, morality is a subjective issue. To claim there is an objective morality, you have to somehow prove that a non-sentient being can contemplate right and wrong. Actually, don't even bother trying, since if you aren't sentient, you aren't able to think about such matters.

Don't get me wrong, there are some universal or almost universal morals. That isn't the point though. The point is where the sense of right and wrong comes from; the mind.

When people confuse universal with objective, I feel like they've been reading too much C.S. Lewis.

One Winged Angel

Well, duh.

Detached9

Yet people still argue about whether morals are objective or not...

99Percent

No.

Objective: True, regardless of your own feelings, immediate perceptions and interpretations.
Subjective: True according to your your own feelings, immediate perceptions and interpretations.

Detached9

You basically just re-worded my definitions to mean the same thing. Where do feelings, perceptions, and interpretations come from? The mind.

Replace "regardless" with "independently", replace "according to" with "dependently", and replace "your own feelings, immediate perceptions and interpretations" with "others' minds". Same thing.

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, both proposed definitions fail in the following area.

They would both classify "My wife is tired and she wants to go to bed," as "subjective" -- when, in fact, it is objective. It is a true fact about my wife -- as true as statements about her height and weight, as susceptible to proof or disproof by observation and experiment. And, yet, it is not independent of minds, because it is an objective statement ABOUT minds.

A better definition of "subjective" as opposed to "objective", is that a "subjective" claim follows the following pattern.

"Agent believes that X is true, therefore X is true."

Now, this does not apply to the statement above. My belief that my wife is tired and she wants to go to bed, does not makeit true that my wife is tired and she wants to go to bed. And even when we talk about my wife's perspective on the issue, it is more accurate to say that she believes it because it is true, than it is to say that it is true because she believes it. Even in her own case, she forms the belief based upon perceptual evidence, in her case from perceiving certain facts about her own body.

Following this pattern, a 'subjective morality' is one that holds that "Agent believes that capital punishment is wrong, therefore capital punishment is wrong." Or, what would be intuitively more plausible, "The Akkala tribe believes it is wrong to take a bath at night, therefore, it is wrong, among the Akkala, for anybody to take a bath a night."

Nothing else is required, for an action to be wrong or right, other than the belief that it is so.

And I think that this is where subjectivist theories of ethics fail. Because even if you were to go to the Akkala and ask them, they would not say that taking a bath at night is wrong because they believe it. They would say that taking a bath at night is wrong because it disturbs the forest spirits who need to sleep, or give some other reason. And, furthermore, if the only thing that can be said against taking a bath at night is that it is believed wrong, then it is not wrong in fact. To be wrong in fact, one has to be able to claim something more than that it is believed wrong.

Or, in other words, if the only thing behind the claim "it is wrong to take a bath at night" is that it is believed wrong, than the Akkala would hold that the statement 'it is wrong to take a bath at night' is false. Which is exactly opposite of what the subjectivist claims, which is that the existence of a belief is sufficient to make the statement true.

Okay, I confess, the Akkala tribe does not exist. I invented it for illustrative purposes -- to illustrate a problem with subjectivism, in that, as an account of ethics, in most (perhaps all) cases, it yields the wrong answer.

Subjectivism says that "if X is believed true, then it is true." Yet, for people making moral claims, it is very seldom the case that "if X is believed wrong, than it is wrong." Instead, they hold that "if the only thing that can be said against X is that it is believed wrong, then it is NOT wrong. To be wrong, something more is required."

Which leads to the conclusion that either morality is objective, or it does not exist. Subjectivism is not a viable alternative, because it is incoherent.

Subjectivism holds, "X is believed true is a sufficient condition for X's being true" AND "X is believed true is not a sufficient condition for X's being true." Which is a contradiction. Which is the death of subjectivism.

At least in this sense of the word.

And if one insists on going back to the more 'traditional' definitions of subjectivity -- the 'mind dependent' definitions -- one faces a different form of incoherence, derived from the fact that minds are real -- they exist -- they are a part of the objective world, and there is no legitimacy to treating minds, or statements about minds, as anything other than objective.

[Note: The above definition does NOT require that one either accept intrinsic values or be a moral nihilist. It categorizes propositions about the mind as objective, and leaves open the possibility that moral claims are, in some sense, objective statements about minds.]

Vylo

"objective" morals are simply those morals which are agreed upon my a majority in the society.

Alonzo Fyfe

This doesn't work either, because if it were true than the minority would always be wrong.

In fact, if this were true, and somebody conducted a poll showing that 75% favored capital punishment, 15% opposed, and 10% were undecided, we would have to interpret this as saying that 75% of the people believed that a majority favored capital punishment, 15% believed that a majority opposed it, and 10% had no opinion on whether a majority of the people supported capital punishment or not.

To put it mildly, such an interpretation . . . to put it mildly . . . seems somewhat inadequate.

contracycle

I don't think the quotes around 'objective' were accidental.

Alonzo Fyfe

Quotes are commonly interpreted as "so called objective morality" or "what other people say is objective morality." (commonly referred to in philosophy as involking the use/mention distinction).

My point was, and remains, that as a theory of what other people mean when they talk of 'objective morality' (notice the use of quotes), this account fails, and fails precisely for the reason provided.