Humans will favor many value judgements over others, but none are objectively better than others. Some will be objectively better for carrying out different tasks (reality based) but not objectively superior in bizarre concept of innate value of actions.
-I assumed you had thought about what I had said before but what I wrote was more for the forum than just a response to your post.
of course it is not objective in the way say mathematics is objective but it's not subjective as in what is my favorite color, either.
(i think that's why i called it semi-objective)
What I guess I meant was that within a paradigm where a goal is stated there are measurable degrees of better and worse actions for that goal. And some goals are universal due to just being human. Life is better than death. Things that allow life like Growing crops is good. efficiantcy over inefficantcy, And so on.
What they disagree on is the methods not the goals. It is not easy. But it is knowable and objectivity is possible but not for most because they are not smart enough.
"Humans will favor many value judgements over others, but none are objectively better than others. Some will be objectively better for carrying out different tasks (reality based) but not objectively superior in bizarre concept of innate value of actions." I am breaking it down task by task, that's what morality is, it is your value system on what tasks are good and bad which is based on what works and doesn't work for your aims. The aims are not always the same but then again most people don't live in rality either. I will not disagree on the innate value hierarchy because that is true. I just want to throw in a dose of pragmatism. I think the belief in a possible objective moral system like the belief in an objective reality is what furthers us in that direction even though we will never know everything about reality or morality.
here see my thing on realism vs anti-realism
http://www.ancreport.com/forum/rpd247/Philosophy2Science.html-that explains it better.
For example somethings that seem great have hidden consequences because of people's inabiliaty to think wholistically. Out West In the 1970 and 80s The forrest reserve put out natural fires to protect homes and wild life. The obvious goal was to save the forrest and the people who lived in it or used it for an income. Lumber companies also cut down dead trees for lumber. The trees were dead so why not?
Well the underbush grew so think that soon they had impossible fires to put out and lost more in the end. Soil was ruined and more timber was lost.
Cutting the dead trees removed shade from the rivers and the water tempatures rose and fish did not spawn. In the winter the snow melted too fast because the sunlight had nothing blocking it in patches and the as a result the water for irrigation went too fast and caused flooding.
Then they got the idea of clear cutting the underbrush that was prone to fire and leaving the trees. They let sheep and livestock eat a lot of it up and they cut the rest. Well the lack of vegitation caused the rain water to sink below where the plant roots would normally have soaked it up and it got down to the hard coal layers in the ground and made saline deposits pushed up into the soil and on the hillsides making it worthless.
People will see one problem and try to fix it without thinking about what they might be doing to everything else.
I was going to say you can judge it based on the results. But even if say you prevent fire if you cause flood etc then is was still wrong given that your ultimate goal was protection from all natural disasters and usefulness of the land. It has to be wholistic. My first example about a person getting too close to a fire is pretty simplistic and pretty much common sense.
But the usefulness of at least aiming at learning objective moral truths is that it allows for change and progress. Having a dogmatic moral system based on faith be it a religion or just ridgid tradition is dangerous and stagnition. I mean some things are just clearly true. Don't stare at the sun if you have the value of keeping your eye sight. Don't jump off of high cliffs, don't eat your own lips. etc. But somewhere the obvious is going to become not so obvious as the truths get more complex and harder to know, as they involve more relationships with other things and so on. However being hard does not making them objective impossibilities. Typing on this computer is pretty damn complex but we have done it.
I think there is an objective moral system given our value judgments witch stem from common needs in our environment instrinsic to being humans. Not being able to make people agree on it doesn't make it not so, it just means a lot of people are wrong.
If people can not tell the difference between real and not real then they don't know the difference between right and wrong. What ever moral system we develope should damn sure be based on our actual objective reality. But they are not. We have a ton of moral theories that are based on Religious bullshit. For Christianity morality and sexuality might as well be synonymous. But they can't give an objective argument. Things get turned into moral issues which are not moral issues like wheather or not to work on Sundays or eat shell fish or pig. Can a woman be allowed to teach etc.
Now I don't think that a moral objectivity has been discovered, but I think it is possible. And just like our desire to learn more about our objective reality we must strive to make our moral systems relate to it.
Now I guess one could say well what good is it if you can't know it. And I say that knowing is a matter of honesty. You know you exist. You know you don't have a secret invisible thumb on one of you hands. You can't sincerely doubt that. I base knowing on beliefs that you can not even ssincerely doubt. (thats when you think you 'know' something. And you can 'know' a moral truth just as well as you could 'know' magic trolls don't exist. It is not provable but that it is not doubtable is a good enough standard for me. Otherwise people would just believe in everything. So we do know stuff, we just don't know how we know it. But everyone has made up their mind that it is not arrogant to not fear melting into the floor if they take another step. We base truth on predictive power, consistancy, and explanitory power.
ah I gtg this is more of a thing to talk about not write about. My thing was more of a stance against cultural relativism and not so much on if or not moral system could be objective. But by doing away with supernatural at least we would all start with the same playing cards. You get no where with the my god is better than your god let fight crap.
