There are a number of professed atheists in this forum. I was curious as to what sort of moral imperative atheists are beholden to when presumably no one is looking. Speaking as a theist, I am constantly cognizant that there is a God who considers what I do and is aware of what I do, even though that awareness on my part may not always result in the moral behavior which I aspire to. But let’s take a fairly mundane example — say theft. We’re talking about blatant theft in a context where one could plausibly or even likely get away with it. I affirm to you that as a Christian, or more relevantly possibly, as a theist, I would never do that. Possibly it has just as much to do with my consideration for the feelings and rights of some other individual, who has “legal” possession of said items, as it has to do with my awareness of an omniscient creator who is aware of what I’m doing and who would presumably not bless me if I violated his laws. I mean, I care about the rights of other people. And, considering other moral tableaus, those of a sexual nature for example — I would personally never consider going to a prostitute for example, in that I feel empathy for that person, and how they are degrading themselves in the sight of God, and how I would not want to contribute to their degradation, so that my own human lust would never result in me victimizing another human being in that way. So in summary, there are all sorts of constraints on my personal behavior that stem directly from my belief in God, and I am honestly curious about the inner life of professed atheists in such matters. In other words, do atheists for example, in such junctures of moral decision, only consider whether they can get away with it, i.e escape the detection of human authorities? I am just honestly curious about the inner life of atheists in such matters.
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Is there a commenter who doesn’t agree with this? It might be interesting, after 500 comments if we could move on to consider what WJM develops from this assertion. Let’s allow for the sake of argument that WJM has at his disposal an objective moral framework. What harm can that do?
What is that objective moral framework?
Anyone, including WJM, is invited to supply an answer.
PS and why does WJM, if he does, think random commenters at a random blog need to hear?
I mean, if WJM’s ideas are original and could help others, why not get in touch with, say, Neale Donald Walsch? I’m sure WJM could learn something about promoting ideas from him.
Seconded. KN has persuaded me to attempt to look at some modern philosophy. And he has shown that not all modern philosophers have isolated themselves from the real world and scientific endeavour.
One hopes that KN gains a little something from the feedback! 🙂
How to earn money from the internet is a much harder problem.
I think WJM is not here to argue for his morality. He is to argue that all atheists must be moral relativists if they want to be logically consistent with their world view. And once they accept that this is true, as Robin has, then he is content.
So he is arguing against those atheists he sees as irrational; his original purpose is not to argue for anything.
Keith’s point is that WJM is in no better position and his approach leads to subjective morality as well. WJM has spent a lot of time trying to counter that argument. Not to promote his point of view to others as much to defend that it is not subjective in Keith’s sense or, better, that Keith’s worldview and its checks for validity are not what WJM cares to use.
They both seem to have tremendous energy for their debate.
Bonus commentary from my scorecard: KN thinks WJM’s demand that atheists provide metanorms (eg, “who defines flourishing”) is an invalid approach to this issue.
Well, If it helps, I agree with Robin that the atheist can only have a subjective morality as there is no alternative. 🙂
I am unconvinced ( to say the least!) that any objective moral framework can be found. What I was suggesting, that rather than arguing about that, which seems pointless and futile, we could examine WJM’s moral framework on its merits. Whilst I have seen much from WJM claiming how objective this moral framework is, I haven’t noticed anything about what it consists of. But, then, if WJM doesn’t want to discuss the merits of his objective morality, well, what’s left to discuss?
Well, if your analysis is correct (and I thank you for your input) then we seem to be at square one. The general view here is that morality can only be subjective, a matter of choice and circumstances, and WJM’s claim that he can derive an objective morality is unsupported.
Agreeing to disagree and moving on would seem to be a sensible course to me.
Many philosophers would disagree that atheists must be moral relativists. I personally think moral relativism is wrong and welcome various arguments against it from a secular perspective.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about emotions and subjective feelings driving how we DO act, I am referring to discussions of how we OUGHT TO act. Moral relativism is the view that there is no way to call one culture’s/person’s moral code better than another. WJM thinks that is the best an atheist can do. KN disagrees as do many other philosophers.
(BTW the usual starting point against moral relativism is to say that relativism is self-contradictory because the relativist is himself using an absolutist argument, namely that “we all must treat ALL moral positions equally.” But that one seems too facile to me.)
WJM’s framework depends on God existing and being the ground for the objective moral framework. So if you do not accept that, then you cannot use WJM’s reasoning. If you do accept that starting point, then I understand his thoughts as a variation of Aquinas natural law approach to ethics, and there is lots of info on that.
And, as I understand his posts, Keith is trying to examine WJM’s framework critically.
That is also how I would act, but Keith and WJM seem to have different ideas about when to call it a day on move on. To each his own…
But, from what hints have dropped here, I suspect that subjectivity is something none of us can escape and relativism is a pejorative term that covers a wide range of points of view and philosophical arguments. I view subjectivity as a handicap that needs acknowledging and objectivity a goal that can be approached using the scientific method of observation, experiment and model-testing. Relativism seems to require a concept or explanation of what truth is.
Missed this before. If that is so, then I am certainly not a moral relativist. We certainly can evaluate and compare different moral systems using all sorts of criteria. (None of them objective, of course!) .
According to the Wikipedia entry on moral relativism:
And just to illustrate how “relativist” is used pejoratively, see here.
I’ve never, ever claimed to be able to “derive an objective morality”.
That’s the problem. Implications are not-stand alone processes. They depend on the conceptual groundwork that precedes it, and how the logical problem is framed. You are gathering your inferences based on your concept of what morality is and how it is experienced, which is entirely different from mine.
You see, it is at this point (well, usually long before now) that I stop responding because you are simply insisting on imposing your own metaphysics and demanding that my experience and worldview organization must be what you characterize it as under your worldview. For instance, I’ve already said 2 or three times that I do look to see if the results of my model are accurate – I look with my conscience at the very terrain the model predicts will be moral and immoral.
You are still making arguments about my worldview as if I agree that morality is only a subjective feeling and not something I factually experience through my conscience. Your “feeling” based assertions and arguments are not applicable to my worldview perspective of what morality is and how it is perceived.
It is usually also at this time (or well before now) that I tell you that unless future questions/challenges are not framed as non-sequiturs that assume a worldview framework not applicable to my views, I will not respond further because I have already responded. That usually leads to you – at least for a while – reposting your questions or challenges over and over with some tagline about how I will not answer those questions or challenges or refuse to address them.
I’ve spent more effort in this particular exchange because I’ve found it fruitful to some degree and because I think it has been a particularly enlightening exchange – at least potentially – for open-minded observers.0
It is true that I don’t think that there are any meta-norms, or putting the same point differently, that there’s no normative magic. Nothing can bring norms into existence by the snap of metaphysical fingers — not God as traditionally conceived, and none of the God-substitutes: the Forms, Nature, History, Culture, the People, the Party.
The question, “who gets to define flourishing’ is a question about authority. So we’d have to think, “well, what is authority?” And the simplest answer, though perhaps a bit trite, is: authority is itself a collective enterprise. What makes me an authority about certain texts and arguments in the Western philosophical canon isn’t just that I’m knowledgeable about those texts and arguments, but that I am recognized by others as being an authority on those matters.
This leads us to an important point: it’s not that I am an authority on those topics, and others then notice that fact about me. Rather, very nearly the opposite: that it is my being recognized as an authority that makes me an authority. (In academic jargon, my authority is constituted by intersubjectivity.)
So the question, “who gets to define what counts as flourishing?” is answered by: we do. And how exactly we do that is going to depend on the messy details.
What I’ve been urging here is that we do, in fact, know a lot about the natural and social conditions that promote and hinder human flourishing. We know a lot about the impact of trauma and violence, about the importance of play and of nature, about how to foster creativity and independence, and also about how to promote subservience and compliance — about the short-term and long-term effects of economic inequality, political instability, and cultural exhaustion. We can learn from psychologists, economists, ecologists, sociologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, and historians. And of course there’s a lot that we don’t know!
And in light of all this knowledge, I’m saying, the reasonableness of a moral framework depends on whether it takes this knowledge into account. A moral framework that aimed to promote individual well-being at the expense of the well-being of the community would be irrational, because we know that individuals need communities for their own best flourishing. A moral framework that aimed to promote general flourishing by condoning massive economic inequality would be irrational, because we know that massive inequality is correlated with anxiety, paranoia, diminished faith in the future, and other Bad Things.
In other words: from the thought there are no meta-norms it does not at all follow that all norms are created equal. Thinking that the latter follows from the former is just a mistake.
(I am trying to explicate my views without using the terms “objective”, “subjective,” “relative,” and “absolute” because I find all of those notions terribly confused. It would take a whole different project to work out how those notions ought to be used.)
keiths says:
Except keiths leaves out the intervening two paragraphs. This is the actual full quote:
keiths: “What are your criteria for which parts can and cannot be sensed accurately, and why? Please be specific.”
WJM: “That depends on one’s individual sense of conscience and/or their particular psychological biases. [Please note this sentence directly follows and is intended to directly answer the question. “That depends on one’s individual sense of conscience and or their particular psychological biases cannot be reasonably construed to include “unviersality” as a criterial. -wjm] Some people just have better sight than others. Some are color blind. In any event that has multiple witnesses, usually some of those witnesses will describe the event in completely different, contradictory ways. There was an example I read in a psychology book where people looking at a film of a staged event were later asked if the saw anything strange; many of them had not even noticed that in the middle of the stage number a man in a gorilla suite ran through the center of the stage. They didn’t believe it until they watched the tape again. [note that this is the actual entire paragraph that actually follows my quote of kieiths question. In this paragraph, I am directly refuting that universality is a criteria because of how dependent it is on other subjective factors.]
“This is where you and I differ fundamentally on what morality is. I consider it an objectively existent commodity that I have access to through a sensory apparatus, even if my interpretations of that sensory input are fallible. [this is the second paragraph, where once again I note that sensory input is fallible in acquiring objective moral data.]
“Some aspects of the moral landscape are pretty much universal to everyone with a conscience – such as, is it moral to torture a child for personal pleasure and is it your moral obligation to intervene in such a situation, regardless of what that those people believe – just as “is the sky blue” pretty much gains a universally similar reply. [Now we are three paragraphs away from keith’s question, where he asks me for the “accuracy criteria”. Please note that I’ve spent two paragraphs describing the difficulties in trying to come up with any kind of consensual, broad-based criteria for determining the “accuracy” of one’s moral views.
Here I am making an observation in relation to my prior two paragraphs that, despite there being such problems of subjectivity, people still have wide moral agreements.
Taken in context with what was said directly after keiths question, including two paragraphs of describing why consensuality was not a particularly good or effective means of establishing what is moral – and in the context of long arguments I’ve produced elsewhere in these forums that mere consensuality or broad-based agreement on “what is moral” can lead to immoral as well as moral behavior given social and cultural norms, which I have repeatedly rejected as a criteria for “what is moral”, it should have been within keiths knowledge base that “unviersality” or “consensuality” is certainly not a criteria I would advocate.
If everyone on Earth but me felt that it as okay to torture children for fun, I would still know it to be wrong. Keiths should know this about my position by now. How can anyone who is familiar with my views on morality at all possibly think that I consider “universality” (in terms of universal agreement) a “criteria” for determining what is moral when I have a long, consistent history of denying unviersality (widespread consensual agreement) as a criteria for the validity of anything whatosever? Especially after my first line in response, and my first two paragraphs, defied that very connotation?
Which is why I said I would be the last person to imply that “universality” (in terms of consensual agreement about what is moral) is a criteria for determining what is moral.
Once again: of late, I generally don’t take this much time or effort in responding to keiths straw men and non-sequiturs, but every now and then I think it’s appropriate to take some effort for those of open mind who may not be familiar with keiths.
Kantian Naturalist,
I’d be interested in that link, KN. If you’re more comfortable doing it this way and you have twitter, we could follow each other, so you could send it via PM.
I started a correspondence with Peter recently, after I saw his thesis posted on the web. That work, which is right up my alley, got me more interested in the Hall/Carnap/Bergmann wars and resulted in my writing a paper partly on that subject. So it ultimately influenced my decision to put some of my papers on Hall into a book. I’m hoping he’ll have a chance to review it somewhere….Please say hi to him!
FWIW, I’ve been getting pissed off or making wise cracks about this or that all over the web for decades, and I still managed to get an adjunct position this fall. (Maybe it’s lucky I’m not interested in a permanent or tenure track appt.. though.)
and a few comments later writes
Are you just quibbling over “derives”, WJM?
KN said:
It may not be a necessary logical conclusion, but unless you can explain how one judges these “inequalities” without explicitly referring to a meta-norm or implicitly treating one norm as if it were a meta-norm, it’s a point that that amounts to sophistry. The norms may not be equal, but according to what system of evaluation would such inequality be understood in any meaningful or practical way?
Already answered:
What I’ve been urging here is that we do, in fact, know a lot about the natural and social conditions that promote and hinder human flourishing. We know a lot about the impact of trauma and violence, about the importance of play and of nature, about how to foster creativity and independence, and also about how to promote subservience and compliance — about the short-term and long-term effects of economic inequality, political instability, and cultural exhaustion. We can learn from psychologists, economists, ecologists, sociologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, and historians. And of course there’s a lot that we don’t know!
And in light of all this knowledge, I’m saying, the reasonableness of a moral framework depends on whether it takes this knowledge into account. A moral framework that aimed to promote individual well-being at the expense of the well-being of the community would be irrational, because we know that individuals need communities for their own best flourishing. A moral framework that aimed to promote general flourishing by condoning massive economic inequality would be irrational, because we know that massive inequality is correlated with anxiety, paranoia, diminished faith in the future, and other Bad Things.
I guess that would depend on what you mean by “derives”. From what? In what sense? It’s a pretty generic term that could be interpreted many different ways – which is why I probably wouldn’t be using it in a claim.
Sophistry;
The use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving [Oxford Dictionaries]
@ WJM,
I suggest you remind yourself of the “assume others are commenting in good faith” rule and try to avoid accusing fellow commenters of sophistry.
From what? Presumably the “objectively existent commodity that I have access to” that you refer to here.
ETA link
Derive:
Obtain something from (a specified source) Oxord Dictionaries
The specified source in context of my misunderstanding of your claim to derive your moral framework from “an objectively existent commodity that I have access to”.
Alan Fox said:
That answer treats “we” (whomever that means) as the choosers of the “flourishing” not only AS the applicable norm in general, but also what definition of flourishing is “better” (in inequality of norm terms).
So you see, that answer doesn’t answer my question, which includes:
KN’s “flourishing” norm, if used as the arbiter between norm inequalities, is being treated as a meta-norm – in the same sense that keiths is employing his feelings as the meta-norm evaluator of what games are “better” that gives him the motivational right to go and try and talk others out of their card game rules – or force them out, if necessary.
KN repeatedly asserts that meta-norms do not exist, but repeatedly employs a norm as a meta-norm – “human flourishing”. :What makes it “better” than the other norms ( or games) ? At least keiths was able to finally admit it: “Because I Feel Like it”. Robin agreed with this long ago. What gives KN the right to proselytize or force his “we” norm of “human flourishing” on others? “Because he feels like it, because he can.” There’s no other ultimate rationale because there is no assumed objective arbiter of which norm is better than another norm without imposing one norm’s values as the arbiter.
If KN admits that his moral norms are not ultimately justified by anything other than “because I feel like it” and enforceable “because I can”, then he wouldn’t have to try to rationalize his “norm” in logical terms, which would require a real or proxy meta-norm from which to draw objective comparisons between norm. His basis is non-rational – “because I feel like it” and “because I can”.
Might makes right (because I feel like it, because I can) is a tautologically impenetrable premise as long as you admit that everyone else has the same right, whether they pursue moral norms you like or not.
I find it puzzling that this question has been posed, since I already answered it in the paragraph that led up to this conclusion. To restate my main thought: different moral frameworks are more or less reasonable to adopt in light of what facts about the natural and social conditions of human flourishing are recognized and taken into account by the framework.
Now, there is this question, “why should I care about human flourishing?” Obviously not everyone does. There are lots of people in the world who don’t care about anyone besides themselves, or they care about their immediate relatives and friends and not about anyone beyond that. I don’t know if it’s the proper task of philosophy to argue someone out of their egoism and selfishness.
And I also suspect that the “why should I care about _______?” style question has something interesting about it. It operates at a level of excessive individualism; it says, “well, that’s your deal, but it’s not mine — give me a reason why it should be my deal as well as yours?”
Whereas I tend to think that if someone doesn’t care about truth, beauty, goodness, decency, knowledge, virtue, or justice — if none of that means anything to that person — then there’s something fundamentally deficient in that person’s character that cannot be resolved by any logical argument, rational justification, or conceptual analysis.
KN has the same opportunity to say what he thinks in this forum as you. The difference is he takes that opportunity! It’s also weird to talk of proselytism and forcing in context of writing comments on a blog. I wonder if you comprehend the concept of universal rights and responsibilities. Do you see intellectual adversaries as people?
Can’t possibly comment!
Alan Fox said:
No, I don’t derive my model from an objectively existent commodity that I have access to, although I derive parts if it from that source.
For example, I have internal, necessary requirements on the model; such as, the model must provide me with the capacity to care about being good. Therefore, I assume there are necessary consequences. My experience of immorality damaging me doesn’t necessarily mean that damage is necessary nor does it mean it could lead to my annihilation. Therefore, I assume there are necessary moral consequences that could lead to my annihilation. This cannot be derived from my experience, but it doesn’t contradict it.
Also, I assume that god is by definition the source of morality. As keiths points out, there’s no way I can derive that from my experience. I don’t derive it from my experience but – once again – it doesn’t contradict my experience.
You took my comment the wrong way. I’m challenging him to explain his “right to proselytize” through his “no meta-norm” philosophy without ultimately referring to might makes right or referring to a meta-norm proxy. I’m not indignant or saying he shouldn’t be offering his views here.
William J. Murray,
So a better answer would have been “partly” rather than “never, ever”. 🙂
My point then is, as it always was, that you are not in any advantageous position to know about life the universe and everything from anyone else. It is subjective, what you have selected to decide to believe.
The more interesting point might possibly be that there may be novel aspects to your particular rules for living. But unless you want to discuss them, how are we to know?
William J. Murray,
Fair enough.
keiths:
William:
The intervening paragraphs do not list any criteria. They just describe problems.
If I ask for criteria, and X is the only thing in your response that even looks like a criterion, then of course I will infer that you think X is a criterion!
If X isn’t a criterion, then you haven’t answered the question at all. How is that my fault?
Again, the question is:
If you can’t answer, then your morality reduces to this:
1. I feel that X is objectively moral/immoral.
2. I don’t actually know whether X is objectively moral/immoral, because my conscience is fallible and I don’t know when it is right and when it is wrong.
3. I have nothing to go on except for the indications of my conscience, because I explicitly reject consensus as a basis for morality.
In other words, your morality is subjective — it is based on what your fallible conscience tells you, and you have no way of recognizing and correcting its errors.
We moral subjectivists also go by the dictates of our consciences. The difference is that we don’t make the silly mistake of pretending that there is an objective morality or that we have access to it.
Excessive according to what non-meta norm? Yours? Who cares? You’re still talking as if your norm is a meta-norm.
Let me fix this statement for you to so that it contains the qualifiers necessary to make it apparent to the reader that you are not advocating your particular set of norms as objective meta-norm:
__________________________________
“I tend to think that if someone doesn’t define and care about truth, beauty, goodness, decency, knowledge, virtue, or justice the same way I and the group that shares my particular views do — if none of that means
anythingabout the same thing to that person as it means to me and my group —— then there’s something fundamentally deficient in that person’s character that cannot be resolved by any logical argument, rational justification, or conceptual analysis considered valid and applicable by my group’s set of norms..”________________________________________
You see, KN, when you properly qualify what you say to strip it of implied objective value and emotional, rhetorical appeals for your particular group and which vilify any “other” substantially outside of your group’s norms, it loses the appeal those in your group would so quickly lap up.
I have never ever made the claim you said I made. My answer is accurate.
William,
When you quote someone, could you indicate who you are quoting? Otherwise we have to go back and scan through the comments to figure out who you are responding to.
Alan,
I’m happy to move on if William can’t come up with a criterion for determining whether something is objectively moral. We should give him one last chance, though.
Answer already given and re-given:
For the record: this was my original answer. I then restated this answer and told keith it was the answer to that question.
He is now claiming again that I have not answered the question yet again. I won’t be answering the question again.
I think KN is not making the claim you are attributing to him. Though all norms are equally subjective does not mean we can’t order them pragmatically and make useful judgements on their efficacy.
And Richard Rorty and I agree with him!
And we can acknowledge our personal bias and move on to consider things like social justice, protection and support for victimized minorities, fairness in general.
The reason I don’t think of human flourishing as a meta-norm is because I treat human flourishing as the goal or aim of moral norms, rather than as some separate norm to which we have mysterious cognitive access and which tell us which moral norms we ought to have. Much like objective knowledge is the goal or aim of our epistemic norms, which are reasonable to adopt if they promote successful inquiry, so human flourishing is the goal or aim of our moral norms.
This does mean — and I’ll be the first to acknowledge this — that I do seem to be committed to the following.
Fairly clearly, if someone doesn’t think that objective knowledge is valuable or important, then she just won’t care about the relevant epistemic norms. They will have no grip on her; she just doesn’t care about whether or not her own beliefs are true or false. This kind of person is the epistemological analogue of a sociopath.
But suppose there was someone who said, “I care about following the epistemic norms, but I don’t think that epistemic norms should aim at objective knowledge — maybe our epistemic norms should aim at getting more people to agree with us, or at making us more interesting people to talk to.” This kind of person cares about following the epistemic norms, and thinks we all should, but has a different conception of what those norms are properly aimed at.
Here, I actually feel quite torn. For on the one hand, I’m inclined to follow this Rortyian line of reasoning all the way out, and say, “ok, well there are no meta-norms, so there’s no norms are set in stone, and so there’s nothing preventing us from changing how we conceive of our epistemic norms and what we take their aims to be”.
But, at the same time, I also want to say, “no, that’s not an option — if we abandon the conception of our epistemic norms as aimed at objective knowledge, then they aren’t epistemic at all — to be concerned with getting other people to agree with us or to make us more interesting people, however laudable, just aren’t epistemic, and you can’t make them epistemic by mere fiat.” And, continuing that thought, “if you think that epistemic norms do not aim at objective knowledge, then there’s something you’re fundamentally not appreciating or getting about the very nature of an epistemic norm.”
By analogy, I would say, if someone says that a moral norm doesn’t not aim at, does not take as its goal, promoting human flourishing, then it’s not a moral norm at all, but something else, and the people promoting it are badly confused as to what a moral norm is, or what human flourishing consists of. Of course there’s plenty of room for having the conversation about what the proper aim of moral norms is, but I have to say, if it’s not promoting human flourishing, then I just don’t know what else it could possibly be.
I concede you never used the word “derive” I concede that makes your claim “never, ever” to have derived your moral landscape “objectively” strictly correct.
keiths,
I’ll say this in case I’ve mistaken an attempt to find out my personal criteria for an attempt to elicit from me criteria other people/anyone else should use.
One of the criteria I personally use to determine if something is an objective moral commodity or not is if a self-evidently true statement, in the form of an “ought”, can be made about it in the universal sense.
Such as: one ought not ever torture children for personal pleasure (no matter beliefs otherwise, culture, norms, etc.),
and
“I am always obligated (ought), even to my own physical detriment, to attempt to intervene in such a situation”
I’m ambivalent on Rorty’s take on ethics. I think he sees quite rightly that there are no meta-norms, but infers from this that there’s no objectivity in either knowledge or ethics, and I think that’s a mistake. More specifically, Rorty’s mistake lies in not distinguishing between “concept” and “conception.” In the the philosophical tradition, we have specific conceptions of say, what counts as objective knowledge, what counts as meaning, and so on. And then someone like Rorty comes along and points out what is deeply mistaken about these conceptions, as embedded in the philosophical tradition. But then Rorty throws it all away, says he has no use for the very concepts of objectivity and meaning, etc. — whereas he should have said, “well, since those old conceptions aren’t going to work, we need to re-conceive of these notions”.
So instead of saying,
I would prefer to say
You say that first thing many times, then you say that second thing.
Do you have any other examples of something that is such a “objective moral commodity” that is not child-torture related?
If not, I find your first statement hard to believe.
William and I have disagreed throughout this thread, but I think he’s right to criticize KN’s claims for an objective morality based on “human flourishing”.
KN writes:
KN seems to be assuming that “egoism and selfishness” are objectively immoral. He may feel that they are immoral, and so do I, but that doesn’t make them objectively immoral.
“Egoism and selfishness are immoral” and “human flourishing is morally important” are subjective moral statements.
As you might as well say “that which precludes reproduction is immoral” and leave it at that.
I don’t understand what you mean by “objective” and “subjective” here.
KN,
I see that while I was entering my comment, you submitted one in which you softened your position considerably.
Earlier, you wrote:
That statement designates “human flourishing” as the absolute standard against which moral judgments should be evaluated. But “human flourishing is morally important” is a subjective moral judgment, not an objective one. What you really mean is that some moral judgments feel better to you because they promote human flourishing.
Now you have backed off considerably:
I agree with the second statement, but I emphasize that the first needs qualification. It’s a subjective judgment.
Aha — now I think I understand why you said earlier that we can only judge moral progress in retrospect. It is not enough to have sound reasons that a proposed change will promote flourishing. Instead, you must wait to ensure it actually has.
KN,
To elaborate, I think that this statement is mistaken:
Human flourishing is not the universal aim of our moral norms. Muslims, for example, see fulfilling Allah’s will as the goal. For them, whether something promotes human flourishing is irrelevant to its morality. The only thing that matters is whether it lines up with Allah’s will.