Objective Morality

[FSTDT]

In the "my perspective on morality" thread, I mentioned I had an idea of how morality is objective.

So, I'm going to use this thread to present some of my ideas, its not at all hard to read and I promise to keep it short. (I dont take credit for these ideas, they come from a lot of people on a lot of other forums, and I've thanked them for allowing me to use their ideas.)

Basically, morality is objective is because moral statements can come from simple axioms, without having to concede morality to simple expressions of peoples personal opinions.

Here is a presentation, divided up neatly into a bulleted list, and my annotations included in nested lists:

Step 1: An axiomatic foundation for ethics

• To get to the axiom, I present a series a truisms. I dont actually define what morality is in the first place. Instead, I simply allow that morality concerns itself with the difference between good and bad behavior (this is the first truism).
  
  
  • I choose this way of understanding morality because it is non-confrontational, and its a basic truism that we can all agree upon.
    
    
  • By choosing not to define morality any more explicitly, I avoid making any presumptuous statements like immediately equating morality with opinion.
    
    
  • I also find this definition has a strong precedent in philosophy, you can find it at the top of any "Intro to Morality" text ever written.
  
  
• The second truism is that the phrase "behaving morally" is definitionally the same idea expressed in the to the words "producing good behavior".
  
  
  • Again, this is a non-confrontational understanding, making natural use of the way we use language.
    
    
  • I've presented this fact to people before and have been accused on lingual gymnastics. Of course, I find this accusation to be a knee-jerk reaction, because when I've responded "what makes it linguistically wrong", I never get a satisfactory explanation (and in some cases, I've heard "my apologies, I was being presumptuous. Your truism is valid").
  
  
• The third truism is really just a clarification of what is mean by the word word "good" which is used above. The clarification is as follows:
  
  • The word "good" doesnt really have any functional meaning yet, until it is understood that morality deals with value judgements rather than factual judgements.
    
    
    • A value judgement is a distinction between things which are important or desirable, a factual judgement is a distinction between things which are simply true or false.
    
    
  • It makes no sense to refer to "good" in terms of factual judgements. If we meant good in this way, it would have no moral component, and it would instead be more closely related to functionality (such as in the way that a pen is "good" if it writes smoothly and reliably, and "bad" if it doesnt).
    
    
  • That being said, we clearly understand that when we mean good, we are using this word in the context of a value judgement.
  
  Now, it can be clarified that when I say, "producing good behavior", I clearly mean "producing good [in terms of a value judgement] behavior".
  
  But, since the above is a bit of a mouthful to say, so I simplify the terms as "producing desirable behavior".

I've stepped you through the thinking process, which I hope you will find very logical and believable.

After that process, it should make a lot of sense that the axiom for all objective behavior is stated as follows: "'moral behavior' is equivalent to 'producing desirable behavior'". Simple isnt it? (I've put it in bold and italics so people who skim through my post dont miss it.)

This is a very unremarkable axiom, but it is an important foundation from which all other moral theories (if they are to be objective) should be built upon.


Step 2: Explaining this axiom

I will freely and openly admit that the axiom says nothing about which particular behaviors are desirable. That is a good thing, I assure you.

I believe the following behaviors flow logically from the "producing desirable behaviors" axiom itself, so they serve as basic moral standards:
- Pleasure and pain
- Happiness and suffering
- Satisfaction and frustration of preferences
- Perhaps a few others that have yet to be mentioned.

Now, you might say to yourself "you picked those out of thin air. Why should they serve as moral standards at all?". I did not choose these particular standards arbitrarily; I chose them because there desirability or undesirability is an intrinsic component in their definitions.

As these particular states are desirable in and of themselves without reference to anything else, and it is already an axiom that moral behavior is "producing desirable behavior", it is really no surprise that the qualities cited above are the most basic moral standards.

Essentially, to build up to higher moral standards, you have to work through those more basic standards. Here is an example of how this is done, also presented in a neatly bulleted list:

• Traditional feminist theories believe that forming relationships is an integral part of morality. However, it should be asked "on what basis should forming relationships serve as a moral standard".
  
  You cannot justify forming relationships as a moral standard without reference to other things, because forming relationships does not describe a state that is desirable in or of itself. If you tried, you would find yourself in a situation where you answering that question with "because I value forming relationships" - this is obviously no good, because it renders the justification as nothing more than expression of opinion, and that isnt objective morality at all.
  
  
• So, to avoid this subjectivist trap, you would say that forming relationships is moral standard because it contributes to long-term happiness and satisfaction of preferences.
  
  On this basis, forming relationships clearly reduces down the more basic moral standards, and therefore reduces down to the axiom "producing desirable behavior".

Final comments:

I will present these comments as a neatly bulleted list no less, because some of the thoughts are not immediately related to one another.

• What is important to realize is that I have not yet defined a particular way that we should behave. The only thing I have done is explained how, if someone were to define a moral theory, that moral theories can be justified objectively without ultimately being a subjective expression of opinion.
  
  
• Yes, it is true that the way I've explain objective morality makes it strikingly hedonistic, but obviously the reasons for this hedonism are purely concidental. However, the way I've presented objective morality makes it very dynamic, in that objective morality can easily accomodate certain hedonistic theories like utilitarianism just as easily as it can accomodate non-hedonistic theories like feminism (which I've described above).
  
  
• The purpose of this thread is to show that morality can have a real objective backbone, not to defend any particular moral theory.
  
  
• Many people find it tempting to note that many competing, yet objective, moral theories can be established from this single axiom. This is true (in fact I've stated this fact explicitly.)
  
  However, I've been confronted with "if lots of objective theories are established, then its a subjective choice to decide which one you like the most, therefore morality still isnt objective at all". To which, I reply that these moral theories have certain merits, some more meritorious than others; the merits of any particular theory can be discerned by a simple exercise of reason (such as calculating which one produces the greatest amount of desirable behavior). As long as you discuss only the merits of particular theory for what they are, then you dont have to discuss your opinion.
  
  
• I am indebted to the number of people who helped me come up with this theory of objective morality, and I thank them.

(For those who want to critique me, I would appreciate if you could address my comments in blocks, such as saying "I disagree with your second truism for reasons x, y, and z", because I find line-by-line dissections of long posts like this to be incredibly tedious.)

See, that wasnt so hard to read. Hope you enjoyed