I’m sure it would, but I think the point was in the second part of the post:
The preference of one person is their subjective preference and is relative to other people’s preference.
How that becomes objective morality is the part that’s not explained in a way that I’m understanding it.
But then, morality becomes a majority decision – I fail to see any objectivity in that. What about when two desires contradict each other? Who gets to cast a tie-breaking vote, and in what manner would something like that not be purely subjective?
Are you clear on the meanings of prima facie and “all else being equal”? I put the qualifiers there for a reason.
As I said previously, “As for some specifics, I encourage you to read about preference utilitarianism. I find this highly influential, except that I believe some strands of PU consider the preference, not the individual holding the preference, as holding primacy when resolving conflicting preferences; I believe that the individual holds primacy. But at that level of detail I’m afraid I’m not equipped to give a clear defense of my position.” I’m still not equipped to give a clear defense of the ways in which competing desires ought to be weighed. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be. John Stuart Mill, for example, has proposed one system for doing so, and it is not a subjectivist system.
You’re confusing the subjectivity of the desire and the subjectivity of the moral system. The existence of the desire is an objective truth: if you deny, for example, that I like to eat wild blueberries, you’re objectively incorrect. It is upon that existence that the objective moral system is built.
That quote doesn’t mean what you think it means–and even if it did, it’s a claim, not an argument. It’s really weird to me that you’re disputing that utilitarianism is a type of objective morality. Google “utilitarianism” and “objective morality” and you’ll find dozens of links that describe branches of objective morality, among which is utilitarianism. This isn’t a point in dispute by folks familiar with the terms; it’s a little like denying that heavy metal is a type of rock music.
So we are wrong, but you don’t understand the particulars well enough to explain why? Objectively, that sucks. 
Actually, the first link I arrived at with that google search told me that “Utilitarianism never claims an objective morality”; however, that may of course just be some random dude’s rambling, for all I know. But it is somewhat strange to me how you claim an objective morality can be based upon something as fundamentally subjective as desires and preferences; not only would that entail the assumption that, if desires act at cross purposes, the majority is objectively more right, it also seems somewhat inconsistent in that desires are not something absolute, but quite to the contrary, highly malleable – I can desire A now, and B tomorrow, on exactly the same, subjective basis. Can it really be an objective morality if it is liable to be changed by a well-placed ad campaign?
To suppose that you can derive objective good from desires, you must also suppose that there are desires that are objectively ‘right’, which takes you back to step 1.
Sure, there exist base needs shared by all of us, mainly to ensure survival – food, shelter, that kind of stuff. But they’re absolutely insufficient to derive the totality of our moral judgements from – you cannot, for instance, conclude from those anything about possession of luxury items. And even those base needs are predicated on us being humans, and a thus derived morality would conceivably not apply to alien life forms, or even animals, and so could hardly be considered objective.
While ‘maximizing the fulfilment of desire’ might not be the worst guiding principle for morals, what you arrive at with it is not so much objectivity, but rather a momentary convergence of subjectivity. If the society at large desires A, and I desire B, which is diametrically opposite to A, there is still nothing that objectively makes fulfilment of desire A more right than fulfilment of desire B, yet both cannot be realised concurrently.
And re-reading the wiki article on preference utilitarianism, it states that “Since what is good depends solely on individual preferences, there can be nothing that is in itself good or bad” – to me, the very negation of objective morality.
LHOD, I don’t have time to respond more fully right now. But I would be interested in hearing your response to my “So what?” That is, even if I accept that your statement to Bob that “action X is immoral” is a statement of objective fact, so what? Nothing happens to Bob if he does action X (assuming it is not also illegal). I would find it hard for you to argue (as some have above) that everyone thinks that action X is immoral and everyone accords the same punishment to those that do action X (such as shunning) and everyone would always know that Bob did action X.
Therefore, to the extent that nothing happens based on the determination that action X is immoral, what use is it to believe in a system that holds that the immorality of action X is an objective fact?
Curses–my long post was just lost by my stupid computer (no fault of the hamsters this time). I’ll just offer you a short explanation:
John prefers not to encounter spiders. This is objectively true. Under preference utilitarianism, all things being equal, it is wrong to expose him to spiders. This is an objective truth: exposing him to spiders is objectively wrong, if preference utilitarianism is correct.
Jane adores spiders. This is objectively true. Under preference utilitarianism, all things being equal, it is not wrong to expose her to spiders. This is an objective truth: exposing her to spiders is objectively not wrong, if preference utilitarianism is correct.
Your quote is pointing out that exposing a person to spiders is not in itself good or bad. It’s not saying that, given the consequences of such exposure, such an act lacks objective moral weight.
As for this, my apprehension of moral systems guides MY actions. Realistically, for me it guides my votes, guides my efforts to persuade other folks of what I believe to be the correct course of action, guides my choices on lifestyle issues (e.g., whether to eat meat, whether to buy shoes made in sweatshops, etc.), guides who I befriend, guides who I help.
A person who is a sociopath may correctly apprehend the moral nature of the universe and act against what is morally correct. Often their society rejects their behavior. When it doesn’t, moral people within that society push for such rejection to occur.
I was aiming at something else – if I desire A, and society desires that A not be done, who’s right there? Is it truly merely a majority vote? What if the majority vote changes – is then what’s ‘objectively right’ today ‘objectively wrong’ tomorrow? What if it’s just the conflicting desires of two people? If there were an objective standard, there ought to be a way of discerning whether or not A is right independent from how people happen to feel about the issue at the time.
And besides, the tenet that ‘preferences ought to be fulfilled’ is itself not an objective one; we just happen to like it better when our preferences are fulfilled.
Last point first: by definition, my preferences are things that I think ought to occur. (To forestall an objection, sometimes I have conflicting preferences, in which case I need to decide which ones deserve fulfillment). That’s the basis for my claim–and that of many utilitarians–for objective morality. Note that it’s not the only such possible basis; the history of claiming an objective nontheistic basis for morality goes back, I believe, at least to Aristotle.
As for the first point, again, if I am correct that, all else being equal, it is better to fulfill a desire than to thwart it, then we’ve established that there is an objective morality. How to handle conflicts is much less clear, which is why I’ve danced around it, but the fact that there are conflicts does not mean that there’s no way to make such a resolution.
It is possible that “majority rules” is the objectively correct solution to resolving conflicts. Certainly some utilitarians make a claim similar to this. I do not believe it is, however, since, as I stated before, I believe that desires exist at the level of the individual, not the level of the desire (or, for that matter, the level of the society). A society experiences no desires. A desire experiences no desires. Desires are experienced only by sapient individuals. We must weigh conflicting desires on the level of individuals.
And here we get some guidance. For a very simple example, Frank’s a bloodthirsty bastard. He really, really wants to see a public execution of a random schmuck. He also wants to eat French Fries, wants to talk with his wife, wants to play World of Warcraft, etc.
Jim’s a random schmuck. He really, really wants to live. He also wants to eat strawberry sundaes, wants to walk in the park, wants to play World of Warcraft, etc.
Do we execute Jim? Whose desires prevail?
Jim’s, of course. We weigh Frank’s bloodthirsty desire against Jim’s desire to live, and they’re both equal–but also Jim desires many other things predicated upon his continuing to live. Furthermore, we must weigh the implications of giving in to Frank’s desire: if we start to accommodate such desires, it’s going to lead to a lot more individuals getting a lot more of their desires thwarted. (Kant’s imperative figures in here obliquely, as you can see).
I have rules that guide how I act to. But we are discussing on what basis you can claim that Bob shouldn’t do action X. Also, just because Bob chooses to do action X while you think action X is immoral doesn’t mean that Bob is a sociopath or is “acting against what is morally correct.”
Saying “often their society rejects their behavior” or moral people push for such rejection to occur doesn’t answer my “so what?” You are just saying that there **could be **consequences, not that there **are **consequences, to performing an action that it is immoral under your system of objective morality.
(In reference to LHoD’s last post: )
I think you’re not doing yourself a favour with those simple examples. The whole thing gets way too smudgy around the edges for me to comfortably call it ‘objective morality’ – what if ten people want Jim dead? What about a hundred? When do the collective desires for Jim’s death outweigh his desires? And how does this suddenly make objectively morally right what was objectively morally wrong before? How does one relatively evaluate desires – if I want to play with the Wii, and so does my brother, am I objectively morally right if my desire is greater than his?
Or, suppose I am a neurologist who constructs a machine that can create and manipulate desires in people. Am I then suddenly the arbiter of objective morality? That seems contradictory to me. And if that is altogether too unrealistic a hypothetical for you (though desires can be, and are, certainly influenced by external factors working on physiology – just think alcohol), think about lobbying, ad campaigns, rhetoric – all tried and true measures to change what people want, what they desire. If somebody uses these tools to create a desire in people, do they also create tenets of an objective morality? I fail to see how something that arbitrary can be called ‘objective’.
Even if, by the way, desire doesn’t work at the level of society, morality has to; interactions don’t just happen between individuals, they also happen between the individual and the society they inhabit. I don’t see how we’re getting around the majority vote, and while that may be useful, I can’t exactly call it objective. If nobody’s desire is inherently more right than anybody else’s, the mere fact that more people have one rather than another desire can’t suddenly make it so.
And even further, you could just as easily cut out the middle man, and hold as right what the individual conceives of as right, and as wrong what they think wrong, and call this objective, because the individual objectively feels the way they do about those moral values. If it is enough to claim objective morality that the individual holds the fulfilment of desire to be superior to their non-fulfilment, it is similarly enough that they think it is better to do what they feel is good. Yet, I don’t think you would hold a morality devised that way to be objective in any way.
I don’t see the application of a clear principle to a fact pattern here. It seems more that you have decided on a rationale to fit your preconceived notion of the correct answer.
But I won’t continue your hijack, which has to do with the design of a system of morality. This thread is about the impotence of a system of morality. The design doesn’t matter because it’s all show and no go.
Thanks for not continuing the hijack. The idea that, because there’s a difficulty in discerning an objective truth, that objective truth doesn’t exist is a foolish idea. Certainly we don’t apply it to any other area of study. If there is objective morality in simple cases, why would we assume that it ceasess to exist in difficult cases?
And claiming that a moral system is impotent appears to me to be ignoring the fact that humans discern that system and act on it–it’s like claiming the sex drive is, pardon the pun, impotent. Sure, a person may ignore it, and if they ignore their sex drive, it’s not like God’s fist is gonna smite them–but that doesn’t mean sex drives lack influence on your life.
The question isn’t whether Bob’s morality has an influence on Bob’s life. It’s whether LHOD’s morality has an influence on Bob’s life. I am saying that LHOD saying to Bob “action X is immoral” is the exact equivalent of saying “booboo flutterby peanut butter.” It’s meaningless because its consequentless. You haven’t ever argued against this. You’ve just said that the statement you said to Bob is an objective truth if you arrived at it through the correct application of objective morality. But that is beside the point. Bob can jump off a bridge if he doesn’t believe in the objective fact of gravity, but what happens if he engages in action X without believing in the object fact that action X is immoral?
So the argument is that which does not have inevitable and direct consequences is irrelevant BS? Is deep space astronomy also BS by that reasoning? If I say “Rand is wrong about whether alpha centauri is the closest star system to the Earth,” would you say that is non-nonsensical BS since the fact of your being wrong has no consequences for your life?
The statement is never without consequence. If you act in a way that LHoD finds immoral, than at the very least, it means that LHoD is not going to like you. That’s a consequence, right there. Whether you should care about that consequence is highly variable. If he lives next door to you, there’s a bit more. If he likes you, he might invite you over for a barbeque. Therefore, being immoral in his eyes would have the consequence of not getting a free hot dog. If he dislikes you, he might dump his leaves in your backyard. Therefore, being immoral in his eyes has the consequence of having a messy backyard. If LHoD is a blonde with big tits, the consequence might be not getting laid. If he’s an ex-con with anger management issues, the consequence might be getting shivved. If he’s just some random dude on an internet messageboard, the consequence might be that he’ll be snarky at you in a pit thread. None of these consequences are equal, and some of them are things you don’t particularly care about one way or the other, but they are still consequences, and thus, the phrase has a clear meaning.
You have assumed that (i) LHOD knows that Bob did action X and (ii) LHOD does not like people that do an immoral act even one time.
These are not easily dismissible assumptions. In this very thread, two posters disagreed about whether it would be moral to go back in time and kill Hitler. If I were to go back in time and kill Hitler the moment he was born, not a single one of you would know that I did that. And yet, people are willing to argue about whether doing so would be moral or not.
Indeed. If action X is “is a homosexual,” Bob would probably not care about the consequence of LHOD not liking him for being a homosexual.
Emphasis added.
All of your “mights” do not add up to “they are still consequences.” They add up to “they are possible consequences.”
Also, assuming Bob is not an idiot, and it is possible for people to find out that he did action X, he will know that some people think the way LHOD does and that some or all of those consequences might follow. Therefore, the fact that Bob still does action X shows that he doesn’t care about not going to a barbecue or getting shivved (or whatever), so those things aren’t consequences for Bob.
I don’t understand. I was assuming for the purposes of the argument that LHOD was correct that an objective morality exists so the statement “action X is immoral” is an objective fact (assuming the speaker has correctly applied the system of objective morality). I’m saying that there are still no consequences if Bob does action X, even given that the statement “action x is immoral” is an objective fact. I’m not saying that Bob says (or believes is true) the statement “action X is not immoral.” Bob just does action X.
I was asking a question to try to understand the nature of the principle you’ve offered that a statement is meaningless if it lacks consequences.
You wrote: “LHOD saying to Bob ‘action X is immoral’ is the exact equivalent of saying ‘booboo flutterby peanut butter.’ It’s meaningless because its consequentless.”
I don’t understand the relationship between meaning and consequence you’re defending. As best I can tell, by your reasoning, most statements are meaningless. Virtually any statement about emotions, metaphysics, objects with which you will never interact, etc. will be meaningless by your reasoning. Hence the example, “alpha centauri is the closest star system to the Earth.” Whether that objective fact is true or not, and whether you accept it to be true or not, has absolutely no consequences for your life (or certainly no greater consequences than being morally wrong). Is it therefore meaningless?
To put a finer point on it: what is the difference between saying to Bob that “your belief in X is factually incorrect” and saying “action X is immoral.” The consequence in both statements is either in Bob being convinced and changing his beliefs, or you (and others) acting differently toward Bob.