Peterdjones comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 01 June 2011 12:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (316)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Emile 02 June 2011 12:34:23PM 2 points [-]

Here are some common uses of the objective/subjective distinction in ethics:

  • Moral facts are objective1 if they are made true or false by mind-independent facts, otherwise they are subjective1.
  • Moral facts are objective2 if they are made true or false by facts independent of the opinions of sentient beings, otherwise they are subjective2.
  • Moral facts are objective3 if they are made true or false by facts independent of the opinions of humans, otherwise they are subjective3.

Hmm, that doesn't cover the way I understand "objective" and "subjective" - I see them as referring to whether the answer to a question varies from one person to another, i.e. whether they are function of the person speaking. "Is that play interesting?" is subjective4, "Does that play follow the three unities of classical drama?" is objective4 - so to match your pattern it would be something like "Moral facts are objective4 if they are made true or false by facts independent of any single human, otherwise they are subjective4".

i.e. it seems to me that some things are considered "objective" if they are merely social customs that may not hold in another society in another age.

But my thinking around this isn't very clear, I'm mostly reacting to the fact that none of the definitions you listed seemed to fit the way I understood the words.

Comment author: Peterdjones 08 June 2011 10:51:12AM 1 point [-]

I see them as referring to whether the answer to a question varies from one person to another, i.e. whether they are function of the person speaking. "Is that play interesting?" is subjective4, "

Answers can vary because people make mistakes about objective issues. You need to specify ideal agents to define objectivity, or to define subjectivity as answers that properly vary with individuals, ie the individual has the last word on their favourite flavour of ice cream.