Simon is using Matt D’s guidelines. Once we all agree on ‘well-being’ then we can reach an objective conclusion as to which actions better facilitate well-being. What @simon-moon (Loved you in the Stand by the way,) misses, is that the choice to use “Well-being” as a moral foundation is subjective. The next issue we have with ‘well-being’ is: ‘Well-being for who?’ My country, my ideology, my species? You can not possibly include everyone. That which benefits or is ‘well’ for one population may decimate another. So even well-being, when accurately carried out as a moral foundation, must necessarily be subjective. In it’s subjectivity, it may lead to more rational and useful decisions, but it is not objective.
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One of the things that trips people up is they think somehow that “Objective” is more valid, or more important, than “Subjective.”
Quite the opposite is true.
Absolutely everything we care about in our lives is subjective.
In fact, the decisions of what we will care about is also subjective.
This all boils down to values. We each, individually, get to “choose” (to the extent we really choose anything, anyway. Free will is another whole discussion) what we will value. Our values are unique, no two human beings share a set of values. Our morality springs from those values. It is subjective. But so are aesthetics. So is love. So is pleasure.
People need to understand something about the subjective nature of morality:
Just because something is subjective, does not mean it cannot be enforced or socialized. Laws are society’s adoption and recognition of shared morality – if you want freedom to operate within a society, you must obey its laws, or you will face consquences.
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I disagree, if I get sick then I have zero interest in subjective opinions, I want only objective facts, this would also be true if I was deciding whether to believe any claim of course.
Again I don’t agree, why would I care about someone’s subjective opinion on what the pain in my abdomen meant, or why my car has broken down, or whether a deity exists, and I could go on and on of course.
If by “this all” you mean morality, then yes it is subjective, I don’t see how it can be otherwise, however if your morals don’t remotely reflect the morals of anyone else, then it’d be a pretty miserable existence, and possibly a very short one. So animals that evolve to live in societal groups must necessarily be able to understand what is and is not acceptable behaviour to that group, this then suggests the precursors to human morality is in our evolved past, and since other animals exhibit morality this reinforces that idea.
Well our values are shaped by many things, and though we have some autonomy it seems unlikely we get to craft an entirely unique set of values. It is likely we would get a broad consensus on some actions, for example things like rape and murder or harming children are good examples where you’d likely get a broad consensus, though the idea they are immoral would still subjective of course.
Well many theists and religious apologists perhaps would do well to realise this, if the arguments they present are any indication.
Indeed, though this is describing little more than pragmatism, and need not reflect our subjective views of morality.
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