The sense of moral objectivity that I’m currently sympathetic to is some kind of constructivist account like the one introduced by John Rawls.
I think morality needs to be objective in some sense so that we can use it to resolve conflicts between different sets of values that different people hold. We need to construct moral principles so that we can resolve disputes between different subjectively held sets of values and live together in ways that are as mutually advantageous as possible. I would define “advantageous” in terms of values and preferences, or perhaps some idealised form of them, so that would make morality stance dependent in a sense, but I still think it would warrant being called objective.
I would not think of morality as objective in the sense that there are moral facts and properties that exist independently of the judgments and attitudes of subjects. Rather I would think of it as objective in the sense that we can’t simply make our own subjective values the standard by which to make moral judgments when engaging in moral discourse and inquiry. We need to justify our moral views to others, explaining why our views are intersubjectively correct/better and why opposing views are intersubjectively incorrect/worse. This is necessary to ensure that there is a common subject matter that we can think and talk about together to solve practical problems associated with living together. We need a commonly agreed upon set of norms and values that we can use to criticise and adjudicate between different subjectively held norms and values.
I would need to flesh this out but that’s roughly where I am at the moment in this debate. I guess in short my view is that morality is intersubjectively constructed and can be constructed more or less rationally.
Regarding realist accounts: One reason I am sceptical of non naturalist moral realism is that I don’t think you can infer metaphysical truths from intuitions. And I think intuition is the main reason people are non-naturalists.
Even if you do have intuitions that entail the truth of non-naturalist moral realism (which I’m unsure most people even do) this would just tell you how you are disposed to think about morality. Why think that your intuitions give you access to mind-independent irreducibly normative facts? Why think your psychological states are in any way responsive to these facts or to anything that could inform you of them? I think this would apply to other Platonist-type views about things like mathematics as well.
One reason I’m sceptical of naturalist moral realism is that I don’t think moral/normative properties are the sorts of things we do/could observe or need to posit to explain what we observe
You could give some naturalistic reduction of moral/normative properties, but then I think you’re just changing the subject.
The sense of moral objectivity that I’m currently sympathetic to is some kind of constructivist account like the one introduced by John Rawls.
I think morality needs to be objective in some sense so that we can use it to resolve conflicts between different sets of values that different people hold. We need to construct moral principles so that we can resolve disputes between different subjectively held sets of values and live together in ways that are as mutually advantageous as possible. I would define “advantageous” in terms of values and preferences, or perhaps some idealised form of them, so that would make morality stance dependent in a sense, but I still think it would warrant being called objective.
I would not think of morality as objective in the sense that there are moral facts and properties that exist independently of the judgments and attitudes of subjects. Rather I would think of it as objective in the sense that we can’t simply make our own subjective values the standard by which to make moral judgments when engaging in moral discourse and inquiry. We need to justify our moral views to others, explaining why our views are intersubjectively correct/better and why opposing views are intersubjectively incorrect/worse. This is necessary to ensure that there is a common subject matter that we can think and talk about together to solve practical problems associated with living together. We need a commonly agreed upon set of norms and values that we can use to criticise and adjudicate between different subjectively held norms and values.
I would need to flesh this out but that’s roughly where I am at the moment in this debate. I guess in short my view is that morality is intersubjectively constructed and can be constructed more or less rationally.
Regarding realist accounts: One reason I am sceptical of non naturalist moral realism is that I don’t think you can infer metaphysical truths from intuitions. And I think intuition is the main reason people are non-naturalists.
Even if you do have intuitions that entail the truth of non-naturalist moral realism (which I’m unsure most people even do) this would just tell you how you are disposed to think about morality. Why think that your intuitions give you access to mind-independent irreducibly normative facts? Why think your psychological states are in any way responsive to these facts or to anything that could inform you of them? I think this would apply to other Platonist-type views about things like mathematics as well.
One reason I’m sceptical of naturalist moral realism is that I don’t think moral/normative properties are the sorts of things we do/could observe or need to posit to explain what we observe
You could give some naturalistic reduction of moral/normative properties, but then I think you’re just changing the subject.