Thank you for finally explaining what you mean, but I’m still not seeing any bearing on the topic under discussion — Pfhorrest

You say empiricist and hedonist claims are how the true, the real, the good, and the moral (TRG&M) are to be judged. You also qualify "claims" as being (assuming they're not in themselves inaccurate) sufficient ground to determine the TRM&G.

Empiricism refers to experience, hedonism a particular subset of experience. Informally - and you're welcome to tighten this up - how does it feel? And does it feel pleasurable? The question, it seems to me, is that if you're going to base such things as TRM&G on subjective judgments, how can you universalize them? And if you're going to go Positivist and call for a "return to the facts," given our new-found understanding of what facts both are and are not, how you gonna universalize that?

It seems to me your idea is exploded in the workshop - no mileage at all. Fortunately there are other ways, the underpinnings of those more-or-less obvious.

I think you might be misreading the phrase "meta-ethical moral relativism". It's not a meta level of "ethical moral relativism"; it's moral relativism, in the sense that applies in the field of meta-ethics, as distinct from normative ethics or descriptive ethics. The descriptive sense just says "people disagree". The meta-ethical sense says "there is no correct way to adjudicate those disagreements". The normative sense says "therefore we morally ought to tolerate differences of behavior". — Pfhorrest

Well put. Thanks for this. :clap:

You say empiricist and hedonist claims are how the true, the real, the good, and the moral (TRG&M) are to be judged. You also qualify "claims" as being (assuming they're not in themselves inaccurate) sufficient ground to determine the TRM&G. — tim wood

I feel like you're getting hung up on some kind of confusion about "claims" here. Any claim about anything, if it is correct, tells you about that thing itself -- that what it means for the claim to be correct, for it to successfully tell you about the thing it's about. So reality is however all the correct claims about it say it is like, and likewise morality is however all the correct claims about it say it is like. This seems like a really weird thing to have to say explicitly, this is just how language works.

Actually on topic, I say empirical and hedonic experiences are how to judge claims about both reality (what is true, in a narrow descriptive sense) and morality (what is good), and so how to assess what is real and what is moral.

The question, it seems to me, is that if you're going to base such things as TRM&G on subjective judgments, how can you universalize them? — tim wood

What is it that makes one able to say anything is right or wrong in some objective or universal sense, not just moral claims?

I say it is the ability to replicate the experiences of things seeming that way, controlling for differences in subjects and contexts. Descriptive claims about reality can be objectively true or false, despite disagreements between people or communities about what is true or false (different religions make differing factual claims too, not just moral ones), because we can each look at the world and see that it looks the same way, in the same contexts, for similar people, etc. And then say that reality is however it needs to be to look true to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it looks to other people in other contexts etc).

I say prescriptive claims about morality can be objectively "true or false" in a different sense, a non-descriptive sense (because they're not trying to describe at all), despite similar disagreements between people or communities about what is good or bad, because we can likewise verify that when a person of a certain kind stands in a certain context and experiences a certain phenomenon it seems good or bad to them, like it feels good or bad to them, it hurts or pleases them. And then say that morality is however it needs to be to feel good to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it feels to other people in other contexts etc). — Pfhorrest

I think you might be misreading the phrase "meta-ethical moral relativism". It's not a meta level of "ethical moral relativism"; it's moral relativism, in the sense that applies in the field of meta-ethics, as distinct from normative ethics or descriptive ethics. The descriptive sense just says "people disagree". The meta-ethical sense says "there is no correct way to adjudicate those disagreements". The normative sense says "therefore we morally ought to tolerate differences of behavior".

It sounds like you are asserting the meta-ethical sense of it here, but...

Different communities have different morals, so it certainly seems to be an accurate description — ChatteringMonkey
...this just sounds like the descriptive sense, which doesn't have to entail the meta-ethical sense. — Pfhorrest

Individual people disagreeing is not the whole story though. People do disagree, all the time, but if they want to be part of a moral community they have to accept that the group can come to a different agreement about a particular matter. The way those disagreements get settled is the group coming to an agreement, by whatever process that is.

So yes, there is no meta-ethical sense in which those agreements can be adjudicated. But that doesn't entail the normative sense that we should tolerate differences in behaviour. People are bound by the conventions of their group... the social contract.

The relativism only applies to different groups coming to a different set of conventions, but that's not relativism in the sense that everybody can do as he pleases. That's why I used the term meta-ethical moral relativism. Maybe that's not how it is commonly used, but I hope you see what i'm trying to get at, and why it is not just anything goes relativism.

I say prescriptive claims about morality can be objectively "true or false" in a different sense, a non-descriptive sense (because they're not trying to describe at all), despite similar disagreements between people or communities about what is good or bad, because we can likewise verify that when a person of a certain kind stands in a certain context and experiences a certain phenomenon it seems good or bad to them, like it feels good or bad to them, it hurts or pleases them. And then say that morality is however it needs to be to feel good to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it feels to other people in other contexts etc) — Pfhorrest

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I don't think it would work all that well in practice. Do you see how many qualifiers you had to get in to make it work, i.e. 'a person of a certain kind', 'in a certain context', ' experiencing a certain phenomenon' etc... Who other than maybe a philosopher has the time and ability to work out an equation with that many variables while going about his day? Utilitarism and consequentialism have the same kind of issues...

So therefore i'd say, fluid dynamics, while far from perfect, is the way to go... because we are only human.

The way those disagreements get adjudicated is the group coming to an agreement, by whatever process that is. — ChatteringMonkey

The question at hand here is exactly what the correct such process is.

But that doesn't entail the normative sense that we should tolerate differences in behaviour. — ChatteringMonkey

Where are the boundaries between these groups? If my neighbor in contemporary California keeps a slave, do I and the rest of the neighborhood have the right to tell him he's not allowed to do that? If a whole state wants to allow slavery, do the rest of the states have a right to tell it that it's not allowed to do that? If another country has one caste that holds another caste in slavery, are other countries allowed to come in and tell them they're not allowed to do that? Would that be a righteous liberation of an oppressed people or an unjust invasion of a sovereign state?

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I don't think it would work all that well in practice. Do you see how many qualifiers you had to get in to make it work, i.e. 'a person of a certain kind', 'in a certain context', ' experiencing a certain phenomenon' etc... Who other than maybe a philosopher has the time and ability to work out an equation with that many variables while going about his day? Utilitarism and consequentialism have the same issues... — ChatteringMonkey

The investigation of what is real is every bit as complex, but people don't generally have to do that complex investigation in their day to day lives. They can do a much simpler version of it for small particulars that matter just to them, and trust the results of people who do the much more in-depth investigation of more nuanced matters when it comes to those things. Those qualifiers are all there to cover my ass as to possible objections in tricky cases. In day to day life, just don't do things that hurt people. If you get into a really intractable fight about whether someone has really been hurt or not in a way that needs prohibiting... that's basically a legal case, and the laws should be formulated by legislators and executed by lawyers and judges that do this kind of deep thinking about the nuances, because that's their job. They are the "scientists" of "morals".

I go into this in much more depth in my essay On Politics, Governance, and the Institutes of Justice, which may be more on the level of abstraction you're concerned with, but rests ultimately on the building blocks you're contesting here.

The question at hand here is exactly what the correct such process is. — Pfhorrest

There is no 'correct' process. How would you determine if it's correct or not?

Where are the boundaries between these groups? If my neighbor in contemporary California keeps a slave, do I and the rest of the neighborhood have the right to tell him he's not allowed to do that? If a whole state wants to allow slavery, do the rest of the states have a right to tell it that it's not allowed to do that? If another country has one caste that holds another caste in slavery, are other countries allowed to come in and tell them they're not allowed to do that? Would that be a righteous liberation of an oppressed people or an unjust invasion of a sovereign state? — Pfhorrest

If freedom of speech is a right in California, then you have the right to tell them anything you want, barring the usual exceptions like inciting violence. You probably also have the right to critique the mores and laws of California... and to convince and seek support to change those laws if you don't agree with them. But there's no guarantee it will work. And if it doesn't work you can allways disregard the law or mores, at your own peril.

There are international conventions and treaties between nations to try to settle disputes like that. But yes, generally intra-group moral conventions don't apply between different nation states... that's why it often ends in war.

I go into this in much more depth in my essay On Politics, Governance, and the Institutes of Justice, which may be more on the level of abstraction you're concerned with, but rests ultimately on the building blocks you're contesting here. — Pfhorrest

I'll read it tomorrow, I have to get some sleep now.

There is no 'correct' process. How would you determine if it's correct or not? — ChatteringMonkey

By doing philosophy. That's what philosophy is all about: coming up with the correct processes by which to determine the correct answers to particular questions. How did we come up with the correct process for figuring out what is real, i.e. the scientific method? Philosophy.

Exactly how to do that philosophy is itself a philosophical question, but my approach is to rule out the approaches that can't work (can't result in a process of mediating disagreements and converging toward a common consensus) and run with whatever's left.

Two particular things that can't work out are:
- Just assuming nothing will possibly work, and so not trying at all.
- Just assuming some arbitrary person or group, including a majority, is automatically right.

Some immediate consequences of ruling those things out are:
- We can't demand that nobody hold any opinion until it's justified from the ground up, because the consequent infinite regress would be equivalent to assuming nothing will possibly work; so we have to let people hold their tentative opinions, agreeing to disagree, until they can be shown wrong.
- We can't accept appeals to things beyond our common, shared experiences, because if each person can't at least in principle verify for themselves what's being appealed to, we'd be asking them to just take the word of whoever is making that appeal, just assuming that they're right.

What's still left is assuming that something or another is the objectively correct answer, but not taking anybody's word for what in particular it is, instead letting people hold their own (different) tentative opinions about what it is, until they can be shown wrong by appeals to our common, shared experiences.

When applied to morality, this generally means letting people do what they want until it can be shown that they're hurting someone, but just as with the scientific method, there's a lot of nitty gritty details that matter in the edge cases.

If freedom of speech is a right in California, then you have the right to tell them anything you want, barring the usual exceptions like inciting violence. You probably also have the right to critique the mores and laws of California... and to convince and seek support to change those laws if you don't agree with them. But there's no guarantee it will work. And if it doesn't work you can allways disregard the law or mores, at your own peril. — ChatteringMonkey

You get that I'm not talking about my literal right to say words to him, but about the morally compulsory force of those words, right? It feels like you're being intentionally obtuse here and not engaging honestly and charitably.

But let me be more technical in case you really are just being accidentally obtuse:

- Are neighbors morally bound to the morals decreed by their neighbors?
- Are parts of the same country morally bound to the morals decreed by other parts?
- Are countries morally bound to the morals decreed by other countries?

Where are the boundaries of "the group" whose consensus is what matters?

If you keep going smaller and smaller, you get a group size of one, every individual their own "group", which is exactly the kind of individualist relativism, or egotism, equivalent to moral nihilism, that you say you're against. But if you keep going bigger and bigger, you get the group of everyone everywhere, which is getting awfully close to an objective morality.

All that's left is to sort out who in that group-of-all gets to make those decisions. Is it a simple majority? A plurality? A supermajority? Some special elite subgroup, or individual? (And if so, which?) Or only a unanimous consensus of everyone? (And what if that doesn't happen?) I expect you'll probably say "whatever the group decides is appropriate" but who in the group gets to decide which part of the group is the appropriate part to be making those decisions? It just pushes the question back further.

Who gets to make the decisions about what is moral is only one of several questions about morality that philosophy has to answer. Other important ones are about what criterion by which to judge whether something is moral, and what process whoever is supposed to use to apply whatever criterion that is. (A fourth is what constitutes a moral character of a person, but that's kinda separate from this chain of questions here). Hedonism is only my answer to the criterion question, and your objections to that don't really seem to be about that question but about the others. Liberalism or libertarianism (broadly speaking) is my answer to the process question. A kind of anarchism (detailed in that essay you haven't read yet) is my answer to the "who" question, which is what you seem more concerned with.

You get that I'm not talking about my literal right to say words to him, but about the morally compulsory force of those words, right? It feels like you're being intentionally obtuse here and not engaging honestly and charitably. — Pfhorrest

I was being intentionally obtuse, but there was a point to it... Words never have a compulsory force by themselves, right. Only if you manage to convince him, will the words have an effect on his behaviour. People can change their minds when presented with good arguments, but more typically there is some other force doing the convincing. In case of the law we have institutions that enforce the laws. For morality this is a bit more nebulous, but generally the enforcing will be done by social pressures... if you don't follow the mores of the group, you risk being excluded from the group, which, for the social beings we are, will often be enough to convince people to follow that morality.

This is an important point I think that maybe isn't allways appreciated enough. For morality to work, it needs to have some authority behind it... and like I alluded to in the OP, ultimately that authority comes from the group agreeing on certain moral rules. That may be tacit, by consensus, by majority or even imposed 'agreement' in case of tyrants... but the point is that you need something like that for it to actually be something more than mere words. Are there better and worse ways of going about this? I'd like to thinks so, but ultimately it doesn't matter much what I think... I may have the most solid arguments and empirical evidence for a certain moral rule, If I don't manage to convince people that they should follow it, than it remains only my idea of what morality should be.

So yeah by all means propose methods to adjudicate disagreement, that certainly is a way a philosopher can have valuable contribution to the proces. But I don't think there one 'correct' way, nor will that way, even if we were to assume there is a correct way, necessarily be accepted in practice because it's correct. And then we still need to keep on living together with whatever morals that got agreed on, even if we think the proces by which they came to be was a bad one.

I may have more to say later, haven't found the time yet to read all of your text...

I'm stressed the fuck out by other stuff in life, banging my head against the same wall over and over again can start to piss me off. — Pfhorrest

A sure sign of genius is that once the same thing is tried over and over but in vain, one has the foresight to stop doing it and to look for a different solution. (-:

The great thing about morals derived from God or whoever is you can be certain they're right as long as you accept their supernatural source.

This certainty is what is missing from secular ethics and this is what leads to moral relativism which is essentially amorality. Living in society is helped by some shared ethical axioms. It is not clear where these come from without religion. Neither virtue ethics, nor deontology, nor consequentialism have been able to provide us with the certainty that has been provided by religious belief.

So the problem secular morality faces, is, I think, that it is the successor of religious moralities where morality was founded in metaphysics, with God as the pinacle of that metaphysics. — ChatteringMonkey

So as scientific thinking progresses, what we end up with is a morality that had lost it's foundation — ChatteringMonkey

Prima facie it appears as though morality has "lost its foundation" with the rise of secularism and its decidedly atheistic spirit. However, Plato's Euthyphro dilemma brings to light the fact that religious moralities never had any foundation to begin with if the foundation is thought of in terms of god's wishes in re how we shoud act/not act; we all must come to terms with morality being separate from god or else concede that murder, theft, rape, etc. are good if god commands them.

Secular morality is then nothing more than the recognition of the flaw in divine command theory and an attempt to get our hands on the moral truths it implies as having an existence apart from god.

What this all means, I think, is that we need to bite the bullet, and reconcile with the fact that morality isn't and can't be true or false. — ChatteringMonkey

Same as we allways did, we discuss these things with other people, come to some agreements and found institutions that can settle disputes if need be... this is basicly social contract-theory. The authority is in the morality being supported by the community. — ChatteringMonkey

There's enough convergence in what people want - certainly now that we will have a progressively better understanding of humanity - that it will mostly end up in something that works fine if people are educated in and accustomed to the idea of it. — ChatteringMonkey

That god has been successfully ejected from morality, to say nothing of the fact that god never really figured in it as explained above, doesn't imply that there are no moral truths. You mentioned convergence of moral values and that, to me, indicates a measure of objectivity to moral truths.

The great thing about morals derived from God or whoever is you can be certain they're right as long as you accept their supernatural source. — Txastopher

I don't think it's their supernatural quality that is the main spring in accepting religion-driven morals, but the (believed) absolute authority of the issuer of the moral creeds.

Once a firefighter was interviewed why there were no women in our town in firefighter groups, but there are women in the police force. He replied, "because in policing you carry a Smith and Wesson, and that gives you leverage; in firefighting, you can't rely on anything but your own brute strength."

Morals as dictated by religions are helped to be accepted by the equivalent of Smith and Wesson, by the promise of heaven (perfect existence) and hell (endless suffering). Those who believe, truly, are not moral due to choices or considerations or because of the elegance of a moral-ethical argument or theory; they are moral because God means business. You behave, you go to heaven, you misbehave, you go to hell. No moral choice here. It's all the selfish consideration on the most basic of potentially false promises.

Secular morality is completely different. They act moral, if they do, because their inner self tells them to do it. They can appear to act moral by the weight of the law; the law punishes the miscreants much like God does, so there is a lot of selfish acting among secularists, too. But if a Secularist acts moral, you bet your sweet toosh that s/he is acting moral because s/he is moral.

Secularist acts moral, you bet your sweet toosh that s/he is acting moral because s/he is moral. — god must be atheist

Nonsense, it’s immoral to bet on sweet tooshes.

Praxis, please don't misquote me. There was an "if" before "secularist".

Are you a journalist? I wouldn't be surprised if you were.

I don't think it's their supernatural quality that is the main spring in accepting religion-driven morals, but the (believed) absolute authority of the issuer of the moral creeds. — god must be atheist

OK. It doesn't really make any difference though. Certainty is still the quality lacking in secular morals. Indeed, maybe faith doesn't cause certainty, but rather the need for certainty creates the pragmatic adoption of faith.

Certainty is lacking in secular descriptions of reality too. That's not an excuse to substitute the Bible for science.

A secular system of morality as reliable as the physical sciences is possible. That won't give you the false certainty of religious morals, but false certainty just makes you more likely to be wrong. Critical humility about our own fallible answers, coupled with objectivist trust that there are answers to be found, is the only way to even gradually approach correct answers, to questions about either reality or morality.

This thread ought to have a practical definition of what ‘secular’ means. It originates from time. To my understanding, the ‘secular calendar’ was originally distinguished from ‘the liturgical calendar’ because it was concerned with affairs of state, not with those of religion.

As the scholar of religion Mircea Eliade noted, the religious calendar is basically concerned with recapitulating an eternal order in the world of human affairs, whereas the secular calendar is essentially concerned with more utilitarian or pragmatic matters.

A secular morality is not hard to envisage, insofar as it is based on something that resembles the ‘social contract’ of the European enlightenment, and the concomitant agreement of rights, responsibilities and laws necessary to maintain civil law and order to equitable access to basic goods.

However it is self-limiting in the sense that it can envisage no good beyond the physical or a peaceful and at least minimally prosperous life. Whereas religious lore is underwritten by (however it is put) a sense of cosmic purpose, that human existence is only one aspect of a larger whole which is working towards a greater end than the secular state is able to contemplate.

Personally, I think that there is such a subject as ‘the metaphysics of morals’, and the reason is that humans do have the capacity for sensing a domain beyond the physical. In Christian doctrine, that sense is the basis of ‘the conscience’. It suggests an aim beyond the physical, the pursuit of which provides the rationale for religious discipline. Obviously a secular philosophy can have no equivalent, by definition, although it is often sought through ‘the immortality of works’, through leaving a fortune to one’s descendants, and the like. But in important ways, the religious and secular aim are what Thomas Kuhn described as ‘incommensurable’, although in a rather different context.

//ps// this is a relevant OP.//

A lot of the statements here seem to be strawmen (e.x. equating "religious" morality with the text of the Bible;, equating "science" as a method or institution with "secular" or secularism") or false dicthomies.

In practice, there is no hard or necessary delineation between "secular" or "religious" morality, as far as history, law, and legal systems are concerned.

For example, the modern Common Law systems which most would consider "secular" developed or evolved out of older legal or moral systems, such as Rome and Exodus.

Likewise, there may crimes or moral wrongs which both "religious" and "secular" systems deem to be morally reprehensive (e.x. murder is a sin and crime in the Old Testament, as is also pushed as a crime in "secular" systems of law and government).

Likewise, in practice, other notions or concepts (e.x. religious freedom) may have varied in their existence and/or implementation through history, regardless of anything specifically "religious" or "secular".

For example, in some older "religious" forms of government, other religions were tolerated in regards to mutual coexistence (e.x. coexistence of different Abrahamic faiths), while likewise, in some "secular" or "atheistic" governments (e.x. Stalinist Russia, Maoist China), religious freedom was denied.

That god has been successfully ejected from morality, to say nothing of the fact that god never really figured in it as explained above, doesn't imply that there are no moral truths. You mentioned convergence of moral values and that, to me, indicates a measure of objectivity to moral truths. — TheMadFool

No it doesn't. Even if every person where to think exactly the same about morality that wouldn't make morality objective. It's an objective fact that all people think the same in that case, but it's still something people think... so it doesn't get anymore 'subjective' than that. Words have meanings.

Morality is something we create, like language is, we do not observe or find morality or language like we find objective facts about the world. And so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use terms like true or correct or whatever equivalent.

This may not seem like it is that important, but I think it matters. The language we use will inform the way we think and talk to eachother about morality. If people use descriptively inaccurate words to begin with, I don't think much progress can be made.

I actually argue that states are functionally no different than religions, as both appeal to faith as in taking someone’s word for it. Why do what the law says? Because the law says so. That’s no reason, so even “secular” state authority is in practice just like religion. A truly irreligious moral system would have to function more like science, with a decentralized “authority”, such as it were, about what is good or moral, akin to science’s decentralized “authority” about what is true or real.

No it doesn't. Even if every person where to think exactly the same about morality that wouldn't make morality objective. It's an objective fact that all people think the same in that case, but it's still something people think... so it doesn't get anymore 'subjective' than that. Words have meanings.

Morality is something we create, like language is, we do not observe or find morality or language like we find objective facts about the world. And so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use terms like true or correct or whatever equivalent.

This may not seem like it is that important, but I think it matters. The language we use will inform the way we think and talk to eachother about morality. If people use descriptively inaccurate words to begin with, I don't think much progress can be made. — ChatteringMonkey

What's the essential difference between objective and subjective? In my humble opinion the former has to do with sound logic and the latter can be chalked up to opinions that need not be argument-based. When you spoke of convergence I assumed it to mean finding a common ground in morality; a universal set of moral tenets emerging through consensus of various moral traditions. This consensus isn't just a matter of numbers and agreement simpliciter; consensus is arrived at through logical argumentation and that has translated in real terms as a convergence of moral codes. There is objectivity in the convergence of ethics.

There is objectivity in the convergence of ethics. — TheMadFool

The objectivity could be said to be in the deduction from subjective desires and preferences. The axioms in the system you describe would be subjective, which means the foundations of eveyr conclusion, thus moral idea, would be subjective also. The process of deriving a universal morality might have much that is objective in it. IOW if we generally agree we don't want children harmed, we can from that vague axiom derive logically certain conclusions (not that humans will ever agree on these but hypothetically). Still the axiom, hence the entire morality, has a subjective foundation and is subjective, if universal in this hypothesis.

For example, let's say humans are a blight on the universe. Let's say we do terrible things to other species and prevent lovely species from evolvling into the great sentient creatures that are a potential product of life. We do this in our blundering way and the very fact
that we take care of our kids
is part of what leads to futhering our pernicious kind - or a kind that in the end has pernicious effects.

There is no objective goodness (or badness) in the thriving of our species, because there is nothing outside us to make it objective, unless one believes in a God, for example. What is subjectively good, even if it is for every human, may not be good in general, as many species on earth might testify if they could.

Mind dependant or mind independent is how the distinction is typically used.

There is convergence in what people want. But what people want isn't morality yet. I think there are different ways moralities get created, but because people generally want the same things, there will be a lot of similarities usually. This was meant merely to counter the often made point about relativism... and how it leads to anything goes, if we can have no truth about the matter. It doesn't, because people agree about certain things.

To be clear, I specifically don't want to derive a universal set of moral tenents from consensus between moral traditions. I think that quest for universality or objectivity is precisely where it often went wrong in philosophy.

Thank you!

The objectivity could be said to be in the deduction from subjective desires and preferences — Coben

Yes we allways have to start from something subjective no matter how you slice it.

And I don't even think it really works like that, simply deducing morality from desires or preferences in some kind straigtforward logical way. There's a lot more that goes into it.

From the time I've spend writing laws as a professional, I know it doesn't work like that. You can think in advance about how you want to formule a rule, state the goals you want to accomplish with it, and speculate about what you think will or won't work to accomplish those goals... but ultimately the real test is in how it plays out after it's implemented. And then you get feedback, some actual empirical evidence, to adjust the rules if necessary.... back and forth. It's a process.

So yeah, what philosophers have been trying to do in ethics over the ages, seems pure hubris to me, and doomed to fail.

The question is what will you do in the meantime, while waiting for a properly decentralized authority? It could take a while...

And I don't even think it really works like that, simply deducing morality from desires or preferences in some kind straigtforward logical way. There's a lot more that goes into it. — ChatteringMonkey

No, in reality even if we could agree on core values, how we see these playing out and prioritized are going to have individual and cultural differences. And the means itself will also have values in it. We want to all make kids safe. Peachy. Seems like a shared core value worldwide, except for certain people generally considered pariahs in most cultures. But then bang, the means of achieving that (let alone what that actually means) requires even more agreement on stuff that gut feelings and culture have their way with. And then how that core value is prioritized in relation to other core values, such as developing adults from children who are experts, or not undermining their strength and independence.

Certainty is still the quality lacking in secular morals. — Txastopher

Nah, there's no lack of moral certainty among secularists; you need to look a bit more into history and generally get out and meet more people. Being certain that you are right is more related to character than anything else.

Here's one right here:

A secular system of morality as reliable as the physical sciences is possible. — Pfhorrest

And by what standard, pray tell, do you judge the reliability of your system of morality?

Even if every person where to think exactly the same about morality that wouldn't make morality objective. It's an objective fact that all people think the same in that case, but it's still something people think... so it doesn't get anymore 'subjective' than that. Words have meanings.

Morality is something we create, like language is, we do not observe or find morality or language like we find objective facts about the world. And so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use terms like true or correct or whatever equivalent. — ChatteringMonkey

Well, morality is what people think in the same way in which electric charge, say, is what particles have. Morality (and language) is no more and no less subjective than facts about the world - it is a fact about the world. I think this subjective/objective dichotomy isn't helpful at all.

So yeah, what philosophers have been trying to do in ethics over the ages, seems pure hubris to me, and doomed to fail. — ChatteringMonkey

Right on. I generally agree with what you say, except it seems like you overestimate the degree to which morality is a social contract. First of all, we need to distinguish social mores and individual moral character. The genesis of social moral codes can plausibly be analyzed that way, but there are probably other contributing causes. And when it comes to personal morality, its development will vary greatly case by case.

No I agree it isn't a helpful distinction.

But I don't agree it's the same as the charge of a particle. It's a fact that we think yes, but what we think about are not facts. Ideas don't exist in space and time.