1) I think discussions about whether morality is subjective often get tied up with discussions about the validity of a particular set of beliefs that is supposed to provide a foundation for morality.
To make that concrete -- I think "morality is subjective" often means something like "there is no extra-human, rational authority to which we can appeal to determine the validity of moral judgment". And I think it's common for this to get tied up with discussions of religion -- people who say "morality is subjective" also tend to be people who don't believe in the truth of a particular religion, and vice versa, because for people who believe, religion does provide that kind of extra-human authority.
So it seems like the claim that "morality is subjective" is more often a claim about the existence of that kind of authority, and not so much about the nature of morality itself.
2) I think something very important in the nature of both aesthetics and morality is the character of moral and aesthetic judgments as having an implicit *claim for universality*. You sort of allude to this but not quite explicitly. I think this is in Kant, but it's been so long since I read him I'm not sure. I don't think it's quite true that moral / aesthetic statements *are* universal, so much as that they *claim to be* universal. I don't believe that's just a consequence of the fact that we make these claims in natural language. We could (and often do) make statements in natural language that don't claim universality. It's something distinctive to certain domains of judgment. Somehow it *matters* that in making a moral or aesthetic judgment I'm not just talking about my own personal experience.
Historically we have dealt with this through appeal to external authority. Without those authorities the claim for universality feels groundless, but at the same time we are reluctant to abandon it because our lived experience e.g of morality says otherwise. So we're in this confusing space where we want to make universal claims but we don't know how.
To me what it seems like we're missing is a more well-understood conception of the dynamic by which moral and aesthetic judgments emerge from active social discourse. The best articulation of this I've found is Arendt's public sphere (Habermas also discusses this but I think is too focussed on a narrow understanding of politics).
Mike, thanks for this awesome comment. You make some very helpful and subtle points. I agree that one thing meant by "morality is subjective" is a query for authority -- that's a nice addition. I will look into Arendt and Habermas more. I have seen their views mentioned in various places but never really studied them.
I might ask, if morality is subjective why do we argue about moral issues as if we’re seeking truth rather than just sharing our preferences? When someone says slavery was/is wrong they seem to be making a claim about slavery itself, not just expressing personal distaste.
I think it's correct to suggest that the way morality looks and feels to us puts pressure on the belief that it is subjective. One explanation is that we express moral judgments through natural language which aspires to be objective and represent the way the world truly is.
I’m tempted to answer that the boundaries of my tribe are “x” meaning variable to each tribe. The real answer is that I’ve written a whole book to define this boundary; you can read an introductory sample at https://www.tribeing.org. But I’ll give a simple quote to try to at least give a direction of a much larger answer:
“A Tribe of Knowing and Being Known, where faces are familiar, and names are spoken with care. Here, Love roots itself in shared lives. 150 hearts, not as numbers, but as intertwined pulses.”
Morality is subjective but we make universal laws for ourselves to keep people like that in check... Morality is what society decides what is objectively right and wrong. Today we can agree that slavery is wrong but this wasn't always the case, we can agree that there's nothing wrong with being gay too but it wasn't always like this, and not everyone has even agreed. These morals comes primarily from empathy and then a few other things. And it gets passed down to other generations. No action is good or bad in the real sense. We know of some communities that still practice cannibalistic traditions. As we evolve and we become more civilized we learn new things and even we are doing somethings wrong. Who knows, the next generation might criticize us for animal slavery or something else.
The mixing of subjective and objective is why I started studying ethics in the first place! It's what makes it such a fascinating field!
Here's another attempt to show why this mix is necessary: one way to ground moral rules is to look at what is necessary to have a functioning (and therefore surviving) society at all. For example, a society where wanton killing is allowed will breakdown almost 100% of the time, so societies need a rule against wanton killing. And for further development of a society some more rules will be necessary (e.g. some property rights scheme). Suppose we do an inventory of all these necessities and find like 20-30 things a society will have to establish some moral rules on in order to function. (some will relate to social viability, some to human needs, some to human flourishing, some to logical necessity, some to relations between people, etc.).
The thing with this approach is that it underdetermines moral rules. So e.g. the property rights scheme. There's many different ways to figure out a scheme that works well enough (e.g. collective vs private ownership). So the grounding only shows us which rules are necessary, but not what the content of these rules should be. So we can reasonably disagree on the content of rules, but agree that there needs to be a rule at all. This way the objective part is the necessity of a rule, and the subjective part is the specific instantiation of it.
Of course this approach also underdetermines moral rules in the sense that there are rules without this type of objective grounding. But I like this story because it shows how subjective (or rather cultural relativity) and objective can exist alongside one another.
Very nice article. A couple of thoughts.
1) I think discussions about whether morality is subjective often get tied up with discussions about the validity of a particular set of beliefs that is supposed to provide a foundation for morality.
To make that concrete -- I think "morality is subjective" often means something like "there is no extra-human, rational authority to which we can appeal to determine the validity of moral judgment". And I think it's common for this to get tied up with discussions of religion -- people who say "morality is subjective" also tend to be people who don't believe in the truth of a particular religion, and vice versa, because for people who believe, religion does provide that kind of extra-human authority.
So it seems like the claim that "morality is subjective" is more often a claim about the existence of that kind of authority, and not so much about the nature of morality itself.
2) I think something very important in the nature of both aesthetics and morality is the character of moral and aesthetic judgments as having an implicit *claim for universality*. You sort of allude to this but not quite explicitly. I think this is in Kant, but it's been so long since I read him I'm not sure. I don't think it's quite true that moral / aesthetic statements *are* universal, so much as that they *claim to be* universal. I don't believe that's just a consequence of the fact that we make these claims in natural language. We could (and often do) make statements in natural language that don't claim universality. It's something distinctive to certain domains of judgment. Somehow it *matters* that in making a moral or aesthetic judgment I'm not just talking about my own personal experience.
Historically we have dealt with this through appeal to external authority. Without those authorities the claim for universality feels groundless, but at the same time we are reluctant to abandon it because our lived experience e.g of morality says otherwise. So we're in this confusing space where we want to make universal claims but we don't know how.
To me what it seems like we're missing is a more well-understood conception of the dynamic by which moral and aesthetic judgments emerge from active social discourse. The best articulation of this I've found is Arendt's public sphere (Habermas also discusses this but I think is too focussed on a narrow understanding of politics).
Mike, thanks for this awesome comment. You make some very helpful and subtle points. I agree that one thing meant by "morality is subjective" is a query for authority -- that's a nice addition. I will look into Arendt and Habermas more. I have seen their views mentioned in various places but never really studied them.
I might ask, if morality is subjective why do we argue about moral issues as if we’re seeking truth rather than just sharing our preferences? When someone says slavery was/is wrong they seem to be making a claim about slavery itself, not just expressing personal distaste.
I think it's correct to suggest that the way morality looks and feels to us puts pressure on the belief that it is subjective. One explanation is that we express moral judgments through natural language which aspires to be objective and represent the way the world truly is.
The Institution of Marriage is not subjective? :)
Morality is subjective relative to my tribe.
What are the boundaries of your tribe?
I’m tempted to answer that the boundaries of my tribe are “x” meaning variable to each tribe. The real answer is that I’ve written a whole book to define this boundary; you can read an introductory sample at https://www.tribeing.org. But I’ll give a simple quote to try to at least give a direction of a much larger answer:
“A Tribe of Knowing and Being Known, where faces are familiar, and names are spoken with care. Here, Love roots itself in shared lives. 150 hearts, not as numbers, but as intertwined pulses.”
Very cool, thanks for sharing your website. It is super interesting.
If you substitute the word “relative" for subjective, does that change anything?
Morality is subjective but we make universal laws for ourselves to keep people like that in check... Morality is what society decides what is objectively right and wrong. Today we can agree that slavery is wrong but this wasn't always the case, we can agree that there's nothing wrong with being gay too but it wasn't always like this, and not everyone has even agreed. These morals comes primarily from empathy and then a few other things. And it gets passed down to other generations. No action is good or bad in the real sense. We know of some communities that still practice cannibalistic traditions. As we evolve and we become more civilized we learn new things and even we are doing somethings wrong. Who knows, the next generation might criticize us for animal slavery or something else.
The mixing of subjective and objective is why I started studying ethics in the first place! It's what makes it such a fascinating field!
Here's another attempt to show why this mix is necessary: one way to ground moral rules is to look at what is necessary to have a functioning (and therefore surviving) society at all. For example, a society where wanton killing is allowed will breakdown almost 100% of the time, so societies need a rule against wanton killing. And for further development of a society some more rules will be necessary (e.g. some property rights scheme). Suppose we do an inventory of all these necessities and find like 20-30 things a society will have to establish some moral rules on in order to function. (some will relate to social viability, some to human needs, some to human flourishing, some to logical necessity, some to relations between people, etc.).
The thing with this approach is that it underdetermines moral rules. So e.g. the property rights scheme. There's many different ways to figure out a scheme that works well enough (e.g. collective vs private ownership). So the grounding only shows us which rules are necessary, but not what the content of these rules should be. So we can reasonably disagree on the content of rules, but agree that there needs to be a rule at all. This way the objective part is the necessity of a rule, and the subjective part is the specific instantiation of it.
Of course this approach also underdetermines moral rules in the sense that there are rules without this type of objective grounding. But I like this story because it shows how subjective (or rather cultural relativity) and objective can exist alongside one another.
But its effects are very objective — as witnessed by the everyday effects of the lack of morality on the world stage — for everyone to see.
If the moral is subjective, then people can excuse theirself for doing something right for them but it is actually wrong for other people?
Well, yes and people do this.
It's basically what we see almost everywhere.
https://substack.com/profile/96936526-soren-marius/note/c-332818386?r=1lpopa&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
This more or else follows then, right?