but the claim “dying is bad” is a moral judgement and therefore subjective. That is, the only sense in which “dying is bad” is a true claim is by interpreting it as “I prefer that people won’t die.”
Then by extension you have to say that medical science has no normative force. If it’s just subjective, then when medicine says you ought not to smoke if you want to avoid lung cancer, they’re completely unjustified when they say ought not to.
Yes, medical science has no normative force. The fact smoking leads to cancer is a claim about causal relationship between phenomena in the physical world. The fact cancer causes suffering and death is also such a relationship. The idea that suffering and death are evil is already a subjective preference (subjective not in the sense that it is undefined but in the sense that different people might have different preferences; almost all people prefer avoiding suffering and death but other preferences might have more variance).
Then by extension you have to say that medical science has no normative force. If it’s just subjective, then when medicine says you ought not to smoke if you want to avoid lung cancer, they’re completely unjustified when they say ought not to.
Yes, medical science has no normative force. The fact smoking leads to cancer is a claim about causal relationship between phenomena in the physical world. The fact cancer causes suffering and death is also such a relationship. The idea that suffering and death are evil is already a subjective preference (subjective not in the sense that it is undefined but in the sense that different people might have different preferences; almost all people prefer avoiding suffering and death but other preferences might have more variance).