If objectivism happens to parallel any form of utilitarianism wouldn't that make your epistemological problem intrinsically insurmountable? (yikes, philosophical tongue twister ...in over my head again). It seems you at least have hope that it's not.

Kind of a moral objectivist's version of Pascal's Wager, there

Undesirable (in some subjective sense) seems to be the only motivational thing you can insert there.

That's not right. The ontology of error theory is that moral properties don't exist. What distinguishes error theory from non-cognitivism is not the ontology, but whether moral statements are truth-apt propositions.

Oops, sorry. I took your use of the word "says" and ran with it towards a semantic perspective.

So it's not what we choose to do, it's what we desire to do? And morality for others is what we desire them to do?

If I say "stealing is bad", I mean "I dont want to steal and I dont want others to steal"?

I'm not particularly concerned with epistemology. In a broad sense, I dont expect that the universe is knowable to me - why should it be? I am speaking about my beliefs as to how things are - I dont think there's a lot of practical difference (except that it's consistent to declare the other guy "wrong" - as I understand it so far, it seems a subjectivist can just say the people on the other side of a moral issue are just "doing stuff I'd rather they didnt").

Not sure how I've ended up as Captain Save-a-Subjectivist ITT, but yeah, I think a subjectivist would be happy to concede that (given that it's pretty much the fundamental subjectivist claim).

Meaning the opposing football team are immoral if they win? What's the distinguishing feature between a moral preference and just a general preference (from the subjectivist's point of view)? How do you know which preferences are just "icecream flavor" variety and which ones are moral issues?

Are you defending your views ITT or attacking an absent third-party? This is like hanging out with The Riddler

Anyway.. I don't know. Possibly a subjectivist believes that the demarcation between moral and non-moral statements is the subject matter. To take an example I've heard from moral objectivists (but seems open to the subjectivist too) moral statements are statements about how we should treat conscious creatures.

Getting this back onto your moral philosophy... given that you believe moral statements are predicated on intrinsic but (seemingly inscrutable) moral properties, how do we know that 'murdering someone' has such moral properties but 'drinking water' does not?

Isn't this also a problem for you?

I just meant, IMO for a moral claim to be meaningful (to use your example) "bad" does have to imply motivation by something more consequential than simple personal preferences. I don't have a problem with the existence of gray area in the middle between more obvious moral an non-moral choices. That seems inevitable however you approach the subject.

I don't see how that passage addresses what I'm asking. The remarks you emphasized just summarize the difference between a cognitivist expressing dislike and a non-cognitivist expressing dislike. It doesn't address what it means for a statement to be made true by a subjective attitude.

Well, argue it I don't agree that it's ok for the same atomic proposition to be true for someone and false for another. I wouldn't be sure in the first place that subjectivists think they need to be relativists about truth in order to make their moral theory correct, that might be a bridge to far.

No, i didnt intend that as an attack, just a question. I genuinely don't understand it. People seem to consider their moral opinions factual. I understand if they are objectivists - disagreeing with me from that perspective means you think I'm wrong in my views. A subjectivist who disagrees with my moral positions seems to be saying something more than he has different preferences than I do. I just don't understand exactly what else is being said.
I accept it as mysterious. I think it's a mystery as to how we can grasp mathematical truths and I feel similarly about our ability to understand moral ones.

Obviously, once the ability exists it can probably be selected for. As a non-materialist, this is less of an issue for me than it would be for most modern people, I suspect. I nonetheless recognise it as a weakness.

Not if I'm correct. Part of our mysterious ability to understand morality is the ability to recognise it.

No me neither. I didn't mean to point to indeterminate or difficult cases - we all have difficulties there.

Can you give me some examples of say three things you prefer that arent moral issues and three moral beliefs (which are also preferences, but also something more?)

I don't understand how the subjective account of morality distinguishes between "I'd prefer for the barista to make me a nice coffee" and "I'd prefer he doesn't rip me off".

Is that something an objective fact?

These meta-ethical disagreement play out like this:

People say things like "murder is wrong". But the argument is about what people are actually meaning by that statement.

Objectivists take this to mean ~"Murder has the mind-independent property of being wrong/immoral". This is truth-apt, and perfectly coherent.

Subjectivists take this to mean ~"I don't like murder". Truth-apt, and perfectly coherent.

Non-cognitivists take this to mean ~"Murder? Yuck!" or "Don't murder". These meanings are not truth-apt, but it's still a coherent hypothesis about what people might be saying when they make moral statement.

Error-theorists use the same meaning as objectivists, but deny that such properties exist. Truth-apt, perfectly coherent.

Now, if the subjectivists are correct in their analysis of moral language, statements like "murder is wrong" are equivalent to "I don't like murder". Surely you think it's ok for a statement like "I don't like Mondays" to be true for me, but false for you? It just sounds like you are saying subjectivism is incoherent because it doesn't give an objective grounding to moral statements. But it isn't trying to.

I really think "incoherent" is the wrong word here. I think what you are arguing is that what people mean when they make moral statements lines up with objectivist accounts, and therefore the subjectivist analysis of moral language is false or implausible. But that doesn't make it incoherent, and you need to justify your claim that it is.

Yeah, I think robust moral realism has the advantage in that it does seem like people are making objective claims with their moral statements. But subjectivists and non-cognitivists deny that people mean what they seem to mean.

I'll return to this when I'm less sleepy.

I'm actually a little confused about what my position is and probably not really one to defend subjectivism. I may be a little more than just that, because I think when it comes to extremes of behavior morality functionally involves consequences that make it seem to be objectively real in those cases (quasi-realist?) I just like pestering objectivists because I don't understand how the position isn't semantically incoherent

My instincts are decidedly utilitarian/fitness oriented, so any examples I listed for moral statements would include significant increase/decrease in well-being in some way, and non-moral statements would not include anything consequential in that sense.

Nicer coffee isn't an increase in well being?

I appreciate you may not have an interest in it. But if you get bored, I'd appreciate it. I suspect I'm missing the point, but from what I've heard the subjectivist is also relying on something beyond their own preferences - I suspect it's something objective, but I'd like to understand what it is, since they/you obviously don't agree.

We (I'll pretend that we are a unified group that somehow has voted me mouthpiece) are of the opinion that subjective like and dislike of an action of something is subjective. We are of that opinion because "like" and 'dislike' are subjective.*

We generally separate moral as a subset of preferences by acknowledging that moral things have something to do with the intentions of similarly minded agents. You can't be raped by a tree if you fall out of a window and the tree, minding its own business of course, ends up in your butt even though most people would find the tree unpleasant. A lion can't murder you. We don't describe the sex habits of other animals different from us as being rape (or immoral) because they force sex.

We generally acknowledge that what we mean by "subjective" is opinion. "I don't like that sort of thing" is inherently subjective.

We also, quite easily, acknowledge that rape is yucky and bad.

*Smrk2 really hates when people use single and double quotes incorrectly and inconsistently.

It is that we understand that there are underlying assumptions that are subjective.

Once we get over arguing about the underlying assumptions (being mean is bad) we can argue as if the subjective things are objective.

Thanks for the "clarification'.

So my barista? I don't want him to make me yucky coffee. I don't want him to engage in yucky business practises.

1. I'd prefer he not swindle me - a preference about an intentional being and hence* a moral view (which i clumsily express as "he shouldn't swindle me" sounding objective but meaning subjectively)?

2. I'd prefer he not make it too bitter - a preference about an intentional being but somehow not a moral view?

He may disagree with me about how bitter coffee should be and he may disagree about whether its the buyers responsibility to guard against fraudulent business practises. What's the distinguishing feature? I'm sure there probably is one, I just don't see it.

* as per your account above.

How do you (or the group) deal with irreconcilable differences of opinion? This is another thing that bothers me with accepting the subjectivist view, since I often find myself in the minority, so am uncomfortable with any kind of "most people think....so we'll allow that" solution. Even pretending to go along with the subjectivists might entail accepting what I consider to be objectively immoral standards.

What's the justification for imposing morality on others with different standards (including differing standards as to when morality should be imposed)?

Some other random, possibly clarifying assumptions/biases/possibly idiosyncratic terminology of mine:

1. Legality isn't even an attempt to mode, a moral code
2. Making people do things they don't want to do is wrong unless there is some more important moral principle
3. Morality deals with questions of right/wrong, ethics deals with questions where moral principles collide - murder is inherently wrong sans justification and is a moral issue. Murder to protect your children is an ethical question.

When you say "acknowledging", do you mean "having decided"?

An inconsequential increase. Doesn't seem to even reach the gray area.

FWIW I have an instinctive empathetic reaction to any action I take that affects the well being of others directly and significantly, so I "feel" like murder is overtly wrong and this strongly directs me. I associate moral/immoral with emotional reaction in that sense (my behavior and how I feel about it is also motivated by experiential knowledge of social consequences & simple common sense, but I don't think you are asking about that.)

At the same time my instincts don't seem to be strongly altruistic - I do NOT have the same emotionally motivating reaction to the thought of sacrificing my life to save the lives of 10 strangers as I do to the thought of murdering 1. So in terms of my instincts self-preservation seems to trump all else. Perhaps I'm just altruism-deficient, but this seems a very odd contradiction if my instincts were selected to fit an environment with an objective standard present (which I think an incoherent idea anyway). IMO my "moral" instincts, including empathetic, seem sufficiently explained by selection for self-fitness (including in a social context) and/or preservation of lineage.

Hope that gives you something to work with, Dr. Bunny