Is there Objective Morality?

[Ken-1122]

Human nature can vary only so much before it is no longer human, and it is not subjective.

I don’t understand what you are saying here; give an example of human nature varying to the point that it is no longer human.

The claim that the moral senses are subjective is like saying eyesight is subjective -- one's perception is "in the mind" but if it is subject to opinion we are perhaps better off blind.

No; my eyesight tells me there is a tree on my front lawn and this can be demonstrated/proven to be true. My morality tells me murder is wrong, but can this be demonstrated/proven to be true? No. You can’t compare something objective like vision to something subjective like morality.

If we require morality to solve moral problems, and all problems are defined by an objective reality, it follows that all optimal solutions following from all moral problems defined by an objective reality, are also defined by the same objective reality.

But we don’t use morality to solve moral problems; we use laws to solve moral problems. Unlike morality, Laws are objective.

 

[TheWhat?]

I don’t understand what you are saying here; give an example of human nature varying to the point that it is no longer human.

We would probably call that speciation. Potentiality has limits.

No; my eyesight tells me there is a tree on my front lawn and this can be demonstrated/proven to be true. My morality tells me murder is wrong, but can this be demonstrated/proven to be true? No. You can’t compare something objective like vision to something subjective like morality.

Hume, a moral sense theorist, posits the following:

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.​

But we don’t use morality to solve moral problems; we use laws to solve moral problems. Unlike morality, Laws are objective.

Stanford's encyclopedia defines morality to be used as follows:

1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.

In either case, my argument assumes that codes of conduct are useless unless they solve some moral problem.

 

[Ken-1122]

Hume, a moral sense theorist, posits the following:

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.​

I agree. But some of our perceptions are subjective; like morality, and some of our perceptions are objective; like the tree on my front lawn​

Stanford's encyclopedia

defines morality to be used as follows:

1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.

In either case, my argument assumes that codes of conduct are useless unless they solve some moral problem.

Enforced Laws are codes of conduct that solve moral problems. Again; unlike morality, laws are objective.

 

[TheWhat?]

I'll take that further, using the definitions provided in my previous post.

P1: an objective reality exists.

P2: it is this same objective reality which defines all real moral problems.

P3: the effectiveness of any possible code of conduct as a solution to any real moral problem is defined by the same objective reality that defines all real moral problems.

C: there must exist a set of possible codes of conduct which could serve as optimal solutions to real moral problems, and because they are defined by an objective reality, the set can be described as an "objective morality."

 

[Kylie]

Just because there are objective morals and everyone knows them doesn’t mean people choose to acknowledge and folow them. People do have free will. People do ignore their conscience and deny the truth.

That makes about as much sense as claiming you can go out on a bright sunny day and really believe that the sky is purple with green polka dots.

I think I may have mentioned this to you before.
God doesn’t dictate moral laws like governments. He isn’t separate from the moral law. He is the moral law and we know of these moral laws because we are made in His image. We have a God like nature and we also have an evil side. God’s creation and morality are intertwined. So like the laws of nature moral laws are inherent in God’s creation and are like natural laws.

I don't think that's enough to claim that morality is objective. If God has a certain morality, then it doesn't follow that such a morality is objective just because we are made in his image. My daughter was made in my image, yet she and I hold very different viewpoints in some things. I can't declare that my ideas must objectively apply to her.

You're now, no doubt, going to say it's different when it comes to God, in which case I will say you are committing the fallacy of special pleading.

this is the evolutionary explanation for morality which actually cannot ground morality. Evolution is descriptive and not prescriptive. Evolution describes what does survive not what ought to survive. It tells us how we come to know morals and not why we ought to follow those morals.

So? How does this contradict what I said?

Who says that we should not kill or steal? So if evolution cannot ground morals and is only about survival then it doesn’t really matter what behaviour is used to help allow people to survive. Someone can make a case in the future that killing and stealing is good because there is not enough resources to go around for everyone to survive. There is no way to measure anything as far as being ultimately good so anything can go when it comes to evolution and survival.

We have already seen this with dictators like Starlin and Hitler. But also with how people scrambled to wipe out supermarket shelves and denying others so they could survive during the Covid 19 epidemic.

Which is what we'd expect to see with subjective, not objective, morality.

The reason evolution can't give us genuine morality is because it doesn't follow that because things are some way that they therefore ought to be that way. Evolution can only make things be some way. Evolution can't make it to where things ought to be some way.

Now, it's true that if we don't behave in certain ways, that will be detrimental to us and our species. But evolution doesn't care about whether our species survives or not. In fact, natural selection is one of the twin pillars of evolution, and that entails that many things die off so that those that are suitably adapted to their environment can survive and reproduce. So the fact that we die if we don't behave in a certain way doesn't mean that it's right or moral for us to behave in that way, and evolution can't make it morally right for us to behave in such a way as to ensure our survival.
How Do Moral Absolutes Prove That God Exists?

I can't see how you think this supports the case for objective morality.

Not their personal views but objective morals have to come from beyond the person. By C. S. Lewis using the argument against God that the universe was cruel and unjust this caused him to wonder where he got the morals of just and unjust from in the first place.

For those morals to have any weight to use against God they must come from beyond his own personal views because subjective moral are just opinions. That made him realized that these morals were objective and independent of himself and that there had to be a moral lawgiver to ground morality.

Yes, I agree. If there is an objective morality, it must come from beyond any conscious entity. It must be an inherent property of the universe.

Unfortunately, you haven't shown that morality comes from anything more than ourselves.

Look at the opposite of Honesty. Purposely lying and misrepresenting others is a moral issue. So honesty is a virtue as they say that prevents people from lying. Yes but that doesn’t change honesty being an objective moral and moral guide. In your scenario you still referred to the value of honesty to determine not to use it.

But there are cases where that isn't true. If I meet with a friend and tell her her make up looks like she was standing in front of an exploding can of paint, that may be the truth, but it's still something I would say is immoral, since I would be hurting her by saying that. Yet a small white lie, being dishonest, could be the moral thing to do.

As I mentioned objective morality doesn’t mean that we have to rigidly stick to being honest in every situation. That is more like absolute morality. Objective morality means that in any situation there will be an objectively right or wrong thing to do that is beyond human opinion.

If it's objectively true, then it MUST apply in every situation. You can't say that being honest is not always the correct thing to do when you have been pushing the ideas that there is always something that is objectively right to do and that honesty is objectively morally right.

So in your scenario the objectively right thing to do was to not be honest because a greater moral wrong would have been committed in hurting your friend. This is the same for example where it is objectively right to kill a crazed gunman with a gun to a child’s head.

Yet you have been pushing the "Honesty is objectively morally right" position for a while now, and yet now you claim that it isn't always.

So being honest or not killing is not necessarily a strict rule we have to stick to in every situation under objective morality. Sometimes it’s morally right not to be honest or to kill. But this doesn’t make dishonesty or killing a moral good or a subjective moral. This is a common misunderstanding.

Exactly. A person in the situation must weigh up the value of each and choose the outcome with the highest value.

Let's say there is a gunman about to shoot and kill a child. You can stop him, but only by killing him.

So, let's say you conclude that by killing the gunman you lose 50 morality points. But by saving the child, you gain 100 morality points. Thus, you would conclude that killing the gunman and saving the child gives a net gain of 50 morality points, so that or the moral thing to do.

But someone else could conclude that killing the gunman loses them 50 morality points, forcing the child to watch someone killed in front of their eyes and live with that for the rest of their life costs another 20 morality points, but saving the child gains them only 50 morality points, because a life is a life, and no person has more right than another to live. Thus, killing the gunman costs negative 20 morality points, so it is more moral for this person to do nothing and try to find another solution, maybe negotiation.

Yet this is subjective morality, not objective, since it is different for each person.

Why not, if you look up honesty it will tell you it’s a moral quality. It’s associated with integrity, trust, truth, fairness, moral character etc. It is actually a foundational moral that other moral values stem from. Honesty is closely linked to truth and truth is one the greatest moral values.

Honesty is a moral value though. If someone is dishonest then they are untrustworthy, as opposed to having integrity, being sincere and trustworthy. That seems to speak about moral values. This is how significant Honesty is as a moral value

Honesty or truthfulness is a facet of moral character that connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness, including straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Honesty also involves being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty#:~:text=Honesty%20or%20truthfulness%20is%20a,loyal%2C%20fair%2C%20and%20sincere.

But as you have said, there are cases where honest can be immoral. We can't conclude that honest is automatically the moral option to take.

 

[essentialsaltes]

C: there must exist a set of possible codes of conduct which could serve as optimal solutions

This presupposes some sort of moral scoring system. Where we can assign some number of points to different outcomes and then see which number is bigger.

But I submit there is no such objective scoring system. (This is also where Sam Harris fails.)

If there is a level of hunger where stealing food becomes (potentially) a permissible act.
And if the harm to rich person is less than the harm to a poor person if you steal some of their wealth.

Then it seems you should be able to determine (if such an objective moral calculus existed) based on how hungry you are, how rich someone has to be for it to be permissible to steal food from them. It seems ludicrous that there is an objective answer to this.

 

[Kylie]

Just because people allow this sort of thing doesn’t mean it’s a justified moral position. What we can say is that we can show that this is objectively wrong and reject any subjective claim that this is morally good. That’s unless you can give some justification for why its morally good to assault children.

But just saying a person has a subjective view and thinks this is morally good is no arguemnet for subjective morality. Because if we can show that this is objectively wrong then it becomes a broken objective law. Just like the same person may claim they disagree with the law on this matter. It just means someone is legally wrong and they havent created a new subjective law where its OK to assulat kids.

Yes, as you say, we can say that it is a subjective position, and such a person may indeed believe that this sort of thing is morally good.

And again, I agree that if you can show that it is objectively morally wrong, then I have a problem.

But it all depends on that IF you have in there. You've not yet shown that morality is objective.

But you were saying that people in our society see things a certain way because of the society they live in and not because of their personal view. Therefore their relative situation (the society they live in) has a bearing on how they see things.

Your society’s moral norms that are determined by your society’s culture, environment, traditions, politics, and beliefs etc. is relative to you. Another person’s society which may have different culture, beliefs, politics, and customs will be relative to them (from where they stand).

It’s not subjective but rather relative morality because people in that society are influenced by the same outside force of their societal moral norms whereas subjective morality is more about individual views or opinions within the borders of that. So you could say subjective morality comes from the inside to the outside of a person and relative morality comes from outside to inside of the person.

Yeah, it really just seems like you are trying to muddy the waters here.

Yes it is objective because the person themselves is trying to promote a moral position that only applies to them onto other people. That is saying I know the ultimate truth about morality that it’s objectively true enough to apply to other people. Objective morality means beyond the human so taking a personal moral view from within and applying it outside the person makes the moral objective.

No it isn't. A person can believe their subjective opinion is an objective fact and go around acting like it's an objective fact, but it's still just a subjective opinion.

Yes but if they are claiming subjective/relative morality they can claim that their personal morals are objective truth for themselves. But the moment they then push their views onto others like they should also live by their morals they are taking an objective moral position beyond themselves.

That contradicts the subjective moral position and shows that subjective/relative morality is actually impossible to live by and that people know that there are moral truths that apply to everyone (once again lived moral experience cannot be denied). It keeps exposing the hypocrisy of a subjective/relative morality in secular society.

Strawman argument.

I clearly stated I was talking about a situation where a person believes and acts like their opinion is an objective fact.

There's a whopping big difference between, "I believe this and it is objectively true," and "It is objectively true that I believe this."

It is, for example, objectively true that I think that Star Trek is one of the greatest franchises ever made. That is a very different thing to me claiming that "Star Trek is one of the greatest franchises ever made," is an objectively true statement.

But isn’t subjective morality about what you think is right. If you have another person standing next to you they will have their subjective opinion on what is right and wrong which may be different to you. How can you then say to that person they should hold the same moral view as you and deny their personal moral view? That contradicts the very idea of subjective morality.

No it doesn't. My subjective opinion that they should hold the same subjective opinions as me does not make any of those opinions objective. AT most, it merely shows that I believe they are objective (but we already know that believing them to be objective doesn't make them objective).

As someone mentioned (likes and dislikes with food), it’s would be like someone who likes peas saying to another person they should also like peas and they are wrong for not liking them. Its a sort of enforcement. What they should say is "in my opinion peas are the best to eat" or in my opinion execution is wrong.

Perhaps, if we all spoke with perfectly clear and unambiguous English, but we don't do that. We use shorthand. If someone says to me, "Oysters are the best!" I'm not going to get all angry and attack them believing that they are calling me misguided because I think they look and taste like soggy snot.

It does if subjective morality is only about the subject (person) who holds the view. If he is truly a subjectivists or a moral relativist for that matter he should be saying “I have my view and someone over in the Amazon will have a different view because they have different beliefs, customs and culture and have a right to their different view”. In that way they are being true to their relative moral position.

I suppose you also complain about people who call it "sunrise" and "sunset" because it's the rotation of the Earth and not the movement of the sun that causes it?

Actually its what is called moral realism and an arguemnet can be made from experience that we intuitively know certain morals are real and true for everyone because when lived they stand on their own and cannot be denied. You can make a case that trying to contradict them is objectively wrong.

Its a bit like we intuitively know our physical world is real and an arguemnet can be made that because we accept what we percieve with our sense is real and true until someone proves otherwise. Its the same logic with morali realism.

Experiences are subjective, not objective. Any argument built on a person's experiences is going to be subjective, not objective.

 

[Ken-1122]

I'll take that further, using the definitions provided in my previous post.

P1: an objective reality exists.

P2: it is this same objective reality which defines all real moral problems.

P3: the effectiveness of any possible code of conduct as a solution to any real moral problem is defined by the same objective reality that defines all real moral problems.

C: there must exist a set of possible codes of conduct which could serve as optimal solutions to real moral problems, and because they are defined by an objective reality, the set can be described as an "objective morality."

You were doing good till the very end where you blew it. The codes of conduct are the enforced laws of the land, and those laws vary from country to country, even city to city sometimes. Laws are objective; morality is not.

 

[TheWhat?]

This presupposes some sort of moral scoring system. Where we can assign some number of points to different outcomes and then see which number is bigger.

But I submit there is no such objective scoring system. (This is also where Sam Harris fails.)

There need not be a scoring system. Only effectiveness, or fitness, depending on how you want to look at the formation of effective systems over time. We don't even need to define what effectiveness is if reality itself dictates the optimality of solutions to real problems.

If there is a level of hunger where stealing food becomes (potentially) a permissible act.
And if the harm to rich person is less than the harm to a poor person if you steal some of their wealth.

Then it seems you should be able to determine (if such an objective moral calculus existed) based on how hungry you are, how rich someone has to be for it to be permissible to steal food from them. It seems ludicrous that there is an objective answer to this.

Your counterpoints are presupposing that we must be responsible for performing some kind of moral calculus to determine what is optimal. This is not part of my argument.

 

[TheWhat?]

You were doing good till the very end where you blew it. The codes of conduct are the enforced laws of the land, and those laws vary from country to country, even city to city sometimes. Laws are objective; morality is not.

Who said optimal = uniform? I assumed nothing of the sort.

Reality dictates that slower speeds are closer to optimal for roads in residential zones while faster speeds are more optimal for freeways. Or, the codes of conduct for flood plain farmers may differ drastically to nomadic herdsmen. Optimality as dictated by reality requires what it will, and that doesn't render anything that is defined and exists objectively to be subjective in the slightest.

 

[Ken-1122]

Who said optimal = uniform? I assumed nothing of the sort.

Reality dictates that slower speeds are closer to optimal for roads in residential zones while faster speeds are more optimal for freeways. Or, the codes of conduct for flood plain farmers may differ drastically to nomadic herdsmen. Optimality as dictated by reality requires what it will, and that doesn't render anything that is defined and exists objectively to be subjective in the slightest.

What on Earth does this have to do with anything I've said? Again; laws are objective, morality is not.

 

[Moral Orel]

Haven’t we agreed that it is not relative in the same sense as the first, since the first distinction is arbitrary and the second is not?

No, it's in "the same sense", it's just faulty reasoning. Just because the reasoning is faulty doesn't mean that "relative" isn't being used the same way.

In post #365 I argued that using “relative” in such an unrestrained sense is not meaningful, and that on your understanding even absolute moralities would be relative.

My contention is that if you say, “My morality is relative,” your listener will assume you are a moral relativist. If you say, "My morality is relative to who we are speaking about," your listener will assume that you are making an arbitrary distinction on persons or groups. If you say, “My morality is relative to competence or knowledge,” then the listener may well understand you correctly, for you are appealing to non-arbitrary moral factors. But once you go on to explain, “This means that if you aren’t trained in CPR you shouldn’t administer CPR, or if you are not an open heart surgeon you should not do open heart surgeries,” what would your listener think? Would they think that you have made a useful distinction with the word “relative”? Isn’t all morality “relative” in that sense? I suppose I still don’t understand what a non-relative (absolute) morality is supposed to look like.

All I'm trying to show is that relative and objective are not opposed. Remember my corrected claim: it's relative vs absolute and objective vs subjective. Proving something is relative doesn't prove it's non-objective. If we agree that there is some relativity in any morality, including objective ones, then we don't have beef. What more did you think I was trying to prove?

 

[o_mlly]

I did not say they were objectively immoral, I said they were immoral. Do you know the difference?

You claim that these acts that in the most vicious manner violate human rights are merely a matter of taste (subjective) and not a matter of truth (objective). Yet you cannot give us an example of how a rational person could ever prefer to commit these acts as good acts. Your position is irrational.

If you do not read and respond to reasonable questions then there's no point in further exchanges between us.

Can you make an argument for circumstances that would make the acts of rape or murder moral acts?

 

[stevevw]

What are you even saying? People who like chocolate like chocolate (and have no reason to lie about it to you or to themselves). Why would someone react like that?

I think you have missed what we were talking about. I was saying that under moral realism despite people claiming their subjective morals they act/react like morals are objective. I was trying to apply that to likes and dislikes for food but as I said it’s not a good example as likes and dislikes are changeable whereas objective morality is not.

Well... that's why it's being used as a comparison to subjective morality.

Yes that’s why I pointed it out. But I think it’s a poor example for subjective morality as well because subjective likes and dislikes (pleasure and displeasure or pain) doesn't = moral right and wrong. It’s not morally wrong to dislike peas. It’s not morally good that chocolate cake is yummy.

I daresay many people, myself included, have changed their minds about moral issues like homosexuality and other hot button issues of the day. We certainly see that people acquired moral beliefs they did not have before, as they also may develop a taste for beer when it was noxious at first.

Sure people can change their moral values after thinking about things. But I am talking about a reaction to a moral situation where the person has no time to think about things. They are caught out and their reaction is usually how they really feel about morality.

So they claim subjective morality but act/react like the specific moral situations are objectively wrong. That the other person should not act that way not just as their personal opinion but as a moral wrong sent out into the world from beyond that person. Therefore contradicting their own subjective moral stand because subjective morality is jus a personal opinion.

In reality subjective morality cannot be improved because there are no better morals in fact there are no ultimate right and wrong at all. Subjective morals are just different likes and dislikes without being ultimately right or wrong because there is no way to ground them outside humans.

Morality being subjective does not mean 'anything goes' and 'nothing matters'. If you don't like Brussels sprouts, you are not indifferent if someone serves you Brussels sprouts. If you don't like rape, you are not indifferent if people rape.

But because under subjective morality there is no outside human and independent grounding or measure for what is really morally right and wrong rape is just a different behaviour. There is no way to ultimately determine rape is morally wrong.

In fact under the evolutionary view of survival rape could become morally good just like killing is it was determined that we didn’t have enough resources or that we needed more humans to keep the species viable. Without an independent way of grounding morals nothing is ultimately wrong and anything can be rationalised as good if a justifiable need was argued.

It is important to keep in mind that morality is a separate kind of thing from the law.

But as a society, we the people (in a democracy) can set the laws to forbid things, including many of the things the majority finds immoral, like murder and rape and theft.

Some people may feel that theft is morally justified in some situations. But that has no effect on the law.

But laws are written by people. I don't think anyone would consider them objective facts of nature. Nor are they sure signs of morality. In various places and times, abortions have been both illegal and legal. This alone doesn't tell us anything about whether they are moral or not.

All of this is just to say. If morality is (in essence) subjective, this does not prevent society from having laws that apply universally.

Some parts of the law are underpinned by morals. In fact there are many ethical and moral considerations when determining what is law. The same for companies in makeing their ethicalk standards that employees must follow or else.

Considering as I explained above that there is no ultimate grounding for morality whether it is laws, company policy or in social settings under subjective or relative morality there is no way to really say that anyone even as a group such as a government can enforce their moral view on others and deny the right or others to express and even enact their personal moral views.

Yet we see society do this and I think even more so in recent times with political correctness and virtue signalling individuals and groups such as companies and governments and on social media have witch hunts, protest and condemn those who do not meet the specific moral standards one determines as right.

This is not just about "my personal view/opinion is that is wrong". This is proclaiming moral right and wrong to the world and universe like its objective.

 

[Ken-1122]

You claim that these acts that in the most vicious manner violate human rights are merely a matter of taste (subjective) and not a matter of truth (objective).

That's your problem right there! You have this absurd notion that subjective morality simply means it is a matter of taste, and that objective means it is a matter of truth. Objective means based on demonstrable facts
Subjective vs Objective - Difference and Comparison | Diffen
The subjectivist feels the immoral act is just as bad as the objectivist; the only difference is the objectivist would be able to provide demonstrable facts proving it wrong which is impossible. IOW if you can't demonstrate the moral dilemma as right/wrong using demonstrable facts, it is not objective. So I'm challenging you to provide demonstrable facts that Dkaih and Saobi are wrong. Are you up for this challenge?

 

[o_mlly]

That's your problem right there!

No, Ken. That would be your problem. When an irrational person becomes emotional to boot then it's time to say good-bye. Good-bye, Ken.

 

[essentialsaltes]

We don't even need to define what effectiveness is

Then how will you determine an "optimal" solution? If you can't determine whether one moral law is more effective than another?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Yes that’s why I pointed it out. But I think it’s a poor example for subjective morality as well because subjective likes and dislikes (pleasure and displeasure or pain) doesn't = moral right and wrong. It’s not morally wrong to dislike peas. It’s not morally good that chocolate cake is yummy.

Of course they are not equal. It is an analogy. Saying that morality is inherently subjective is just to recognize that all moral statements should have an "I think" prepended to them.

"Brussels sprouts taste nasty." is not an objective truth.
"I think Brussels sprouts taste nasty." can be an objective truth, if the utterer is sincere.

If morality is subjective... If moral facts do not exist... Then

"People should not murder." is not an objective truth.
But "I think people should not murder." can be, if the utterer is sincere.

If you sincerely believe that, then it is not hypocritical, or somehow admitting that the first statement is realllllly objective, if you react with shock and horror to a murder, or act to prevent one. Of course we act and react upon our sincere beliefs!

We do not tolerate Brussels sprouts on our plates. We sincerely detest Brussels sprouts.
We do not tolerate murder in our streets. We sincerely detest murder.

But because under subjective morality there is no outside human and independent grounding or measure for what is really morally right and wrong rape is just a different behaviour. There is no way to ultimately determine rape is morally wrong.

There is no outside human and independent grounding for the taste of chocolate or Brussels sprouts. This does not somehow prevent us from liking or disliking them sincerely. But we should recognize these propensities for what they are. Something internal and subjective, rather than external and objective.

I have no difficulty determining that rape is morally wrong. It's just that this is not some sort of objective fact like the shape of the earth.

there is no way to really say that anyone even as a group such as a government can enforce their moral view on others and deny the right or others to express and even enact their personal moral views.

Nevertheless. They do so. In some places abortions are illegal. In others, they are legal. It doesn't appear that these laws ground themselves in any objective moral facts. They are laws written by people. And people with different moral opinions write different laws.

 

[Ken-1122]

No, Ken. That would be your problem. When an irrational person becomes emotional to boot then it's time to say good-bye. Good-bye, Ken.

Oh so now I'm being emotional and irrational? Why am I not surprised you would respond this way; especially when considering how you've responded to others who tried to be reasonable to you.

When I am proven wrong, I admit my mistake and change my views on the issue in light of the new information. What do YOU do???

 

[TheWhat?]

Then how will you determine an "optimal" solution? If you can't determine whether one moral law is more effective than another?

You're assuming optimality is subject to us. An unfortunate byproduct of more modern conceptions of subjective morality, in my opinion.

Take evolutionary theory for example: a view that supposes that fitness is subject to our preferences, so that evolution should obey us, does not reflect how evolution works and is more akin to eugenics. In reality when we attempt this we end up with atrocities among other things, like breeds of canines with congenital defects.

I'm arguing the opposite: neither the effectiveness nor the optimality of any set of codes of conduct, are subject to us nor can they be.