Thats exactly what I said above, subjective morality is no morality, so the only choice is between an inherent morality or none at all.
Right, good. But you were talking about "subjective morality", as if you thought that's what I was advocating.
No its not circular; its just an if-then statement.
Why should you respect the source of your existence? I said that your argument was circular because you were advocating respecting something - in other words, having a moral feeling towards it - before you had shown why we are obliged to take any notice of the objective standard of morality. It's like this:
"Why should we respect an objective standard of morality?"
"Because it is the source of our existence."
"Why should we respect the source of our existence?"
"Er... because the objective standard of morality says so."
Do you see the circularity?
No Im not. Thats my argument; how I see the situation when I assume a materialist view.
Well, okay. As I've said, though, you were talking about "subjective morality" as if you thought I was advocating it. I wasn't.
I agree; I think that is the choice we have. But I look not so much to whatever object causes a feeling of disgust, but to the fact that we all possess a capacity for disgust. However, calling a feeling just a feeling is predicated on your determinist idea that they are entirely explained as meaningless electrons dancing around a small section of your brain. But human feelings can influence human actions, for they certainly seem very real and powerful to us who experience them.
Feelings seem real, yes. My feeling of disgust when eating a tomato is very real. Does it mean that when you eat a tomato with great gusto, one of our feelings is somehow
false? Or could it be that my disgust and your enjoyment are rooted in
us, arising most convincingly in ourselves but not telling us anything about tomatoes except that they contain certain substances which arouse disgust in me and enjoyment in you? In other words, our feelings when eating the tomato may tell us something about the physical properties of the tomato - that it has the ability to make us feel disgust or pleasure - but they do not allow us to make a grand, cosmic
value judgement about the tomato itself that
it is inherently disgusting or
it is inherently delicious.
If you don't see my point, look at it like this: we would be as mistaken to project our value experiences onto the tomato as we would be to describe a pin as "hurty" rather than "sharp", or a teddy bear as "feel-good-y" rather than "soft". Do you see that there is nothing inherently hurty or feel-good-y about objects themselves, but that they simply have physical properties which cause these feelings in us?
Why are moral judgements not the same? There are natural properties which make certain acts, say, cruel. We can delineate these without making value judgements (if you'll excuse the value-baggage that comes with vocabulary like "cruel" and just think about what makes an act cruel or not cruel). A cruel act might be an act which needlessly causes suffering. Note that I'm not saying whether cruel acts are "right" or "wrong". I'm just describing cruel acts.
Now, acts, like foods or pins, cause feelings in us. When I perceive an act that I think is cruel, I feel angry, sad, frightened, horrified, &c. Perhaps when you see an act that you think is cruel, you feel more frightened and less angry than me; your feeling may be qualitatively different, in other words. And perhaps a crazed sadist feels excited, aroused, powerful, and happy when she sees a cruel act. Just as with the tomato, the same physical reality - the cruel act - has caused each of us to have different feelings. And here is the crucial part. I think that, just as we are in error to suppose that a tomato
is either inherently disgusting or inherently delicious in a grand, cosmic sense, so we are also in error to suppose that cruel acts
are either inherently frightening or inherently arousing in a grand, cosmic sense. No feelings about a tomato or a cruel act are
incorrect, because they are subjective. They are our response to the natural qualities of the tomato and the cruel act.
But just as we are prone to projecting our feelings about tomatoes onto the fruit itself - "Yuck, that tomato was disgusting!" - we are also prone to projecting our feelings about acts onto the acts themselves. And this is where the mistake lies. We think that because the properties of acts, which are very real properties, have the ability to give us certain feelings, there must be something in the acts themselves that somehow resembles the feelings we have about them. And because the feelings we have about acts are generally more significant and more deeply-felt than the feelings we have about foods, to the extent that they can cause us both the greatest happiness we will ever experience and also the greatest sadness, it is unsurprising that we get particularly heated when talking about these feelings - much more heated than when arguing about whether or not tomatoes taste good.
The significance of our feelings towards acts also leads us to wish some acts to be performed a lot, and others never or seldom to be performed. I wish that cruel acts were never performed; our crazed sadist presumably wishes they were frequently performed. And - guess what? - we project these wishes onto the acts too. I feel so strongly that I do not want the cruel act I am observing to be performed, that I make the error of thinking that there is something about the cruel act that makes it not-to-be-performed.
I do not deny that these feelings are real feelings or that they have a deep and lasting power to affect the way humans behave. But I do not believe they reflect anything "out there". I think the explanation I have given is perfectly simple. We are prone to make the mistake of thinking that the world is inherently the way we perceive it.
I think we already talked about this. Theyre intangible, so I dont know where they reside, if they do. Thats like asking where the self resides. What theyre like can be gleaned from almost any stories ever told by humans, from ancient Greek plays to current Hollywood movies.
But how do they arise?
What is the relationship between the natural properties of an act that make it cruel, and the non-natural property of moral wrongness? Why do those natural properties produce that moral property?
If you say morality is really that alien to you, I dont know you, so Ill have to take your word for it, however unlikely it sounds. But if I were to search through your past posts in the Ethics & Morality forum, would I ever find you making statements to the effect of I think people should [do this or that]
or I think they shouldnt [do this or that]
? I mean I see your name in this forum a lot; surely you contribute something more than these circumstances make me feel sad and these make me feel happy?
I use the language of morality for several reasons. It is difficult not to because our language is constructed in a way that presupposes the existence of an objective morality. It is also much more persuasive to use the language of morality. And finally, I have strong feelings that this or that ought or ought not to be done, even though I know they don't reflect anything in the real world. I don't claim to be special. It's only a few people who can really internalise the implications of Mackie's error theory, just like it's only a few people who can really internalise the implications of determinism. (I haven't managed the latter, either.)
But my
feelings about things are different and seperate from what I can calculate, what I can work out to be true. When I sit down and try to work out how objective morality could
work, I find it impossible. And so despite my feelings and perceptions - which are, after all, often mistaken in other ways - I must reject objective morality hypotheses.
When I mentioned aesthetics, I wasnt really referring to modern art, because Im sure youd agree at this stage in human history, theres more to modern art than beauty. Artists often attempt something other than simply producing something pretty. Modern people finding ugly art attractive is a very recent phenomenon, just over 100 years old, and could turn out to be a short-term fad.
I dare say people have been saying "Modern people finding modern art attractive is a very recent phenomenon, just over 100 years old, and could turn out to be a short term fad" for as long as the human race has been daubing on walls. It's quite funny that you don't see how this undermines your point. Tastes in what counts as beautiful change constantly. You look at the history of art and presumably say "Well, it's all lovely until 100 years ago." If you can't see why that's amusing then I don't think I'll be able to explain it to you!
But actually Ill back off a little, and I won't say beauty or morality are objective. I think saying that can tend to diminish the person of God. Asserting a strict objectivity is almost like limiting God to having to follow some rules over and above Himself; like theres something written in stone which He could not alter. The Christian God is described as unchanging, but at the same time is described as living and dynamic.
So instead of objective, Id just say that human morality is true and important, because it somehow corresponds or relates to the nature of ultimate reality, which pre-existed even the creation of the universe.
Still, I could make a pretty decent scientific case for the objectivity of beauty: I could start a thread with both my picture and some movie stars picture in it, and create a poll asking for votes on who is more beautiful. Suffice to say, the percentage results would be overwhelmingly lopsided, and a bit depressing for me. 
Why would most people agreeing about something make it the case that they are judging by an
objective standard?
Suppose that they all choose the photograph of the person with the most symmetrical face and the most instances in their face of the golden ratio. (People tend to do this.) Well, we can conclude that symmetrical, golden ratio faces inspire a good feeling in us. Can we conclude that a symmetrical, golden ratio face is inherently beautiful on a cosmic level? No, of course we can't, just like we can't conclude that tomatoes are inherently delicious or pins inherently hurty.
I addressed something like this in the last post. But the way you state it, it sounds like a creature asking its Creator what makes you God?. Nothing makes Him God, He is self-existent, uncreated and eternal, and thats a basis for His authority. And the question itself goes to the heart of the most important and fundamental sin - pride. Im not sure what else to say about that.
You still haven't explained why we should take heed of a self-existent, uncreated, eternal being.
Until you have established an objective standard of morality, you cannot say that we
should do anything. What is it about God that makes her to-be-obeyed?
