Is Morality Objective?

[EvieTheAvocado]

I failed to notice how he justifies ramming a priori knowledge through the independent demonstrability-defined scientific definition of objective. For something to be considered scientifically it by definition must be examinable, meaning it must have some form of evidence or proof (in the more mathematical realms), which he declares don't apply to those thoughts; they just are.

They are observable in exactly the same way.

Take the axiomatic ought that suffering is bad, for example. Suffering can be observed. Take also the fact of evolution... evolution can be observed.

Both are empirical matters.

You may say that only the suffering can be examined, the badness of the suffering cannot itself be examined. But that's where the axiom comes in. The axiom is that suffering is bad. That badness itself cannot be observed... but that is just like how we can't observe the fact that evidence itself is relevant to evolution. It's like you saying "Sure, we can observe the evidence for evolution, but we can't observe the fact that evidence itself is even relevant."

We take it as an axiom that evidence and logic are important and relevant to reality. In the same way, we can take it as an axiom that suffering is bad. Once we take those axioms, suddenly things make sense. Sure, you can't make sense of objective morality WITHOUT axioms. But you can't make sense of science, logic, mathematics without axioms either.

So if you are to say that morality can't be objective in ANY sense and is ENTIRELY subjective, then you must, by exactly the same logic, admit exactly the same of literally everything. You must say that, ULTIMATELY, everything is subjective, and nothing is REALLY objective, because everything is ULTIMATELY based on axioms that can't themselves be justified. Otherwise you are special pleading.

But note, that by doing this, you are simply only using one sense of objective and ignoring the other sense when most people would say that logic, science and mathematics are at least objective in some sense... and there's a big difference between having a biased an unbiased judge, or an objective or unobjective judge, at a court case, for example. Even if all premises are ultimately unjustified.

Perhaps EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE. And NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE (except, perhaps, reality itself, because that fact is itself relative)... but objectivity and absoluteness are not always the same thing, and subjectivity and relativity are not always the same thing.