Cute Puppies wrote:I'm confused. I believe subjective morals to be a moral system formed by what people experience and witness around them - essentially what they perceive. So in a way, are non-moral relativism somewhat similar to subjective morality?
No. Moral systems can be a posteori, however I formulate it in the a priori (I have a dispatch on a priori and a posteori:
https://www.nationstates.net/nation=nov ... /id=999469 ). Even then, what you're saying is wrong. You're formulating your own moral system from what you see of other's acts, yet you provide no axiology for such a thing. I blame this to be due to a misunderstanding of how morality formulates itself into our daily lives. Morality is a code. By proclaiming "Murder is morally wrong", I declare "I shall not murder for it is wrong." What many people miss, and what often leads to the misconception of moral subjectivism is that they never think as to
why it's wrong. For me, murder is self-contradictory when applied to the maxim (although I gotta admit, i'm more willing to shift on this because i heavily lean towards virtue ethics. Hume is keeping me deontological though.) As this morality, to which is to be applied equally to all universally as a system of guidance, to formulate as to why it is true is to do so in the realm of reason. Since reason is inherently a priori, it is independent of experience.
It's important we properly define what these two things mean. When I say "subjective morality", I refer to the fact that what is moral is dependent on the being defining it. For example, murder is bad because I deem it so. (This is not to be confused with emotivism although the two are closely connected.) There is no inherent right or wrongness of actions, only from what I deem it so. Consequently, other's perceptions on the right and wrongness of actions are equally valid as well. Murder is bad for I deem it bad, but another might deem it as good. We are correct to ourselves and wrong to each other, although none are truth for subjective morality is non-cognitivist in nature (moral statements cannot be expressed as true/false statements as they do not reflect an aspect of the world. I shouldn't have to say this but ppl were dumb enough before to confuse this but don't get non-cognitivism confused with truth relativism.)
Non-relative, objective, universal, whatever you call it morality is very much the opposite. In defining this, I would wish to cast away the notion that objective morality is "everyone having the same morality". As I have stated before in a previous post, when I use the term "objective morality" and thus "non-relative morality", I mean that morality applies to all rational beings equally. If I murder someone then the murder is wrong, even though someone might see it as right. This moral system is, as I've stated before earlier, is derived from reason rather than experience. Since non-relative/objective morality is (generally) derived from reason alone, this contradicts the empirically founded subjective morality.