Post by Terrapin Station on Dec 1, 2017 14:00:19 GMT
It's subjective, and there's no question about it. Believing that it's objective is like believing that the Earth is flat.
By the way, "subjective" refers to it obtaining mentally, versus obtaining in the world outside of minds. So even if there were a God who issued moral proclamations, if we're talking about the God being sentient/having a mind, we're still talking about subjective morality. And then it's just a matter of some people (subjectively) feeling that they should conform their moral stances to God's. If someone is positing a God that is the source of moral stances, but where that doesn't have to do with the God's mind, then . . . well, it's a mystery just what the person would be saying. They'd have to explain.
Even if ethics (and aesthetics) were objective, by the way, so that ethical and aesthetic judgments were somehow embedded in the non-mental world, that would have no normative weight for individuals conforming to those judgments. This is easier for folks to see with aesthetic judmgents usually. Say that objectively, Shakespeare in Love was the best film--however that would work that the world itself would somehow have "Shakespeare in Love is the best film" embedded in the fabric of spacetime or whatever. Well, so what? You still either personally like or dislike Shakespeare in Love, and if you dislike it, what does it matter that the world itself likes it/prefers it over all other films. Objective ethical or aesthetic judgments would still just be an opinion--it would be "the world's opinion" rather than your own, but why shouldn't you care about how you feel about it instead of how someone or something else feels about it?
In the above scenario, you wouldn't be wrong for saying "I hate Shakespeare in Love" or "I feel that Shakespeare in Love is the worst film, not the best." The only time you'd be getting something wrong is if you were to say, "The non-mental world feels that Shakespeare in Love is an awful film."
Of course, objectivists won't usually come right out and say that they believe that judgments like "Shakespeare in Love is the best film" are somehow embedded in the fabric of the world. Even if they believe something like that, they realize that it sounds absurd. What people often do is attempt to map "objective" to some sort of community agreement instead, but in that case, they're just forwarding the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
By the way, "subjective" refers to it obtaining mentally, versus obtaining in the world outside of minds. So even if there were a God who issued moral proclamations, if we're talking about the God being sentient/having a mind, we're still talking about subjective morality. And then it's just a matter of some people (subjectively) feeling that they should conform their moral stances to God's. If someone is positing a God that is the source of moral stances, but where that doesn't have to do with the God's mind, then . . . well, it's a mystery just what the person would be saying. They'd have to explain.
Even if ethics (and aesthetics) were objective, by the way, so that ethical and aesthetic judgments were somehow embedded in the non-mental world, that would have no normative weight for individuals conforming to those judgments. This is easier for folks to see with aesthetic judmgents usually. Say that objectively, Shakespeare in Love was the best film--however that would work that the world itself would somehow have "Shakespeare in Love is the best film" embedded in the fabric of spacetime or whatever. Well, so what? You still either personally like or dislike Shakespeare in Love, and if you dislike it, what does it matter that the world itself likes it/prefers it over all other films. Objective ethical or aesthetic judgments would still just be an opinion--it would be "the world's opinion" rather than your own, but why shouldn't you care about how you feel about it instead of how someone or something else feels about it?
In the above scenario, you wouldn't be wrong for saying "I hate Shakespeare in Love" or "I feel that Shakespeare in Love is the worst film, not the best." The only time you'd be getting something wrong is if you were to say, "The non-mental world feels that Shakespeare in Love is an awful film."
Of course, objectivists won't usually come right out and say that they believe that judgments like "Shakespeare in Love is the best film" are somehow embedded in the fabric of the world. Even if they believe something like that, they realize that it sounds absurd. What people often do is attempt to map "objective" to some sort of community agreement instead, but in that case, they're just forwarding the argumentum ad populum fallacy.