Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:35 am
The key to answering this question is the difference between factual and moral assertions – and how this relates to what we call objectivity and subjectivity.
We use the word
objective to mean to ‘relying on facts’. And facts are true regardless of what anyone believes or claims to know, and regardless of their source. But all factual assertions are falsifiable, because they assert something about reality that may not be the case. So evidence is needed to justify them.
By contrast, we use the word
subjective to mean ‘relying on judgement, belief or opinion’. Judgements can be individual or collective. They can be more or less rationally justifiable. And because they express values, we often refer to such judgements as
value judgements or just
values.
The difference between objectivity and subjectivity has been called the
fact-value distinction. But discussions about specifically moral values are about how we ought to behave, so here the difference has been called the
is-ought distinction.
Given this understanding of objectivity and subjectivity, moral assertions are subjective, because they express value judgements, rather than make falsifiable factual claims. And two examples illustrate the distinction.
1 The assertion
people eat animals and their products is a fact – a true factual assertion. But the vegan assertion
eating animals and their products is wrong expresses a moral judgement, not a fact. The two assertions have completely different functions.
2 That some states execute some criminals is true. But that states should execute some criminals – that execution is morally justifiable – is a judgement. If there were a moral fact of the matter, we could not argue about the judgement.
An argument that objective morality is evidence for the existence of anything – let alone a god – is unsound, because morality is not objective. It is rational to have sound reasons for our moral judgements, such as wanting to promote individual well-being. But they remain judgements, so they are subjective.
Trouble is, the assertion
morality is subjective seems wrong and offensive. It seems to mean that whatever someone judges to be morally right or wrong is indeed morally right or wrong – so that anything goes, and moral relativism and anarchy is the result.
But that is to forget the is-ought distinction. To say an action is morally right or wrong is to express a judgement, not to state a fact. So an action is not – and does not become - morally right or wrong just because someone believes it is.
The expressions
objective morality and
moral fact are contradictions – or they could be called oxymorons. But our moral values and assertions matter deeply to us, so the mistake of believing there are moral facts is easy to explain. It is an understandable misunderstanding.
But, ironically, if there were moral facts, their source would be irrelevant. The assertion
this is good because I say – or a god says – it is good has no place in a rational moral debate. An argument from authority is as mistaken for moral as it is for factual assertions. So the theistic argument from objective morality undermines itself.
The full version of this argument is at:
http://www.peasum.co.uk/420676773