Is morality subjective or objective?
Lot’s of people disagree about morality. Many of them think that since we disagree about it, that means that morality must be subjective, as opposed to objective. But this reasoning doesn’t make sense. It’s analogous to saying that science is subjective since many scientists disagree about scientific theories. The reason we disagree is that none of us are infallible, and so people are making mistakes.
Another reason some people think morality is subjective is that they think there is no objective way for people to agree. But this is not true and I’ll explain why by explaining objectivity.
Morality is objective. This means that every question has only one correct answer.
Morality is also contextual. No two people are ever in the exact same situation, so no two contexts are exactly the same. A consequence of this is that what is right for me is not necessarily right for you, and vice versa.
The objectivity of morality refers not to moral conclusions, but rather to the standard by which moral conclusions are determined. Judges should come to their conclusions using one standard. Analogously, scientists should come to their conclusions using one standard.
Often, judges and scientists get the conclusions wrong, but the method by which they reach their conclusions ensures that their conclusions will be revised in the future when new evidence is found. In the US judicial system, all court cases can be appealed -- which means that any court decision might be wrong and so it's important to keep them all open to revision. The same goes for science. All scientific theories are treated as our best theories to date -- which means that any scientific theory might be wrong and so it's important to keep them all open to revision. The same goes for moral ideas. Everybody should treat their moral ideas as fallible, just like court decisions and scientific theories -- which means that any moral idea might be wrong and so it's important to keep them all open to revision.
So what is the standard and how does it work?
Let’s consider science first. The standard for science is this: A theory is scientific if and only if it can, in principle, be ruled out by empirical evidence. So if there is a theory that is claimed to be scientific, and if it cannot, in principle, be ruled out by empirical evidence, then it is not scientific. Instead, it is what we call scientism.
The standard for morality is similar, and it actually applies to other kinds of knowledge too, not just morality. The standard is this: An idea is objective if and only if it is intended to solve a problem. Note that this even applies to science. The problems that scientific theories are intended to solve are explaining physical reality while making testable predictions about it, and where the predictions don't contradict our empirical evidence.
An objective idea is one that can either be true or false. And the way to determine whether it is true or false is to determine whether or not the idea fails solves the problem it’s intended to solve. So if a person finds that a moral idea fails to solve the problem it's intended to solve, then that is it’s flaw. And if the idea is flawed, then it’s false. And when we explain why the idea doesn’t solve the problem it’s intended to solve, this explanation is what we call a criticism of the idea. It refutes the idea.
So if an idea is flawed, then it's refuted. And if it doesn't have a flaw, then it's unrefuted.
Now I've made that sound pretty simple but it's a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, people are fallible, which means that any of our ideas may be mistaken, which means that even our criticism can be flawed. That's why it's important to keep all our ideas on the table -- to make sure that all of our ideas are open to criticism.
So to clarify how refutation works, if an idea has an unrefuted criticism, then the idea is tentatively refuted. And, the unrefuted status of the criticism is also tentative. So if somebody comes along with a criticism of that criticism, then the original idea is now unrefuted.
A second thing to consider is how criticism works. A criticism is an explanation of a flaw in an idea. Now some ideas are vague -- their purpose (aka goal) is not clear. In other words, the problem that the idea is intended to solve is not clear. This makes it hard to find a flaw in it. For this reason, the fact that the idea is vague is a useful criticism of the idea. In other words, if the idea's purpose is unclear, then it's refuted.
Now people often disagree about what things are unclear, but this is a soluble problem. One way to do it is to identify what problem the idea is intended to solve. The people discussing the idea might go back and forth a bunch of times before the problem is established, but once that is agreed on, then it's easier to figure out if there is a flaw in the idea. Since the idea is a proposed solution for the intended problem, if we can explain how the proposed solution fails to solve the problem, then we've found a devastating criticism of that idea.
As an example, consider the case where somebody claims that some event caused some other event. If the claim doesn't have an explanation for the causal relationship, then that is a criticism of the claim -- that it's unexplained. It's a criticism because without an explanation, we can't find out if it's reasoning is wrong. So it's wrong for not having any reasoning.
So ideas that are intended to solve problems are objective. Those that don’t are subjective. And morality is about solving problems. A moral philosophy should be able to provide a method to answer questions like 'should I learn to read,' 'should I learn epistemology,' 'what and when should I eat,' 'how should I raise my children?' These are all ideas that are intended to solve specific problems. And for this reason, it's possible to find out if they fail to solve the problem.
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Topic: Is morality subjective or objective?