I'm not sure why Jeremy keeps referring to himself as "Jeremy" instead of "I." Anyway, I think that people often overlook the very plausible non-cognitivist claim. Non-cognitivism essentially says that moral statements are expressions rather than propositions. When we say "Rape is bad!" what we're actually doing is something similar to "BOOO!" or "Yuck!" Expressions like "Boo!" or "Yuck!" are not true or false. They are merely expressing our sentiments on an issue, much like we might say "Yum!" when eating tasty food.
Evolution has produced in us some very strong sentiments, and the strongest are those that are tied to survival. Hence, we aren't as opposed to theft as we are murder.
To the topic of moral obligations: Moral obligations can clearly be stated at least as if-then conditionals. If you want to reduce suffering and maximize happiness, then you shouldn't kill innocent babies or p*ss in your neighbor's punch bowl. The difficulty comes in demonstrating a compelling obligation if one rejects the "if." If I don't share the goal of minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness, I probably won't be motivated by such a conditional. However, it might make sense to respond to such a person by saying "Well, you SHOULD share that goal, thus you should still avoid killing babies." Obviously, the question could further be pressed to "Why should I share that goal?" It has been argued in the literature before that, if two people don't share a certain number of foundational ethical beliefs, they can't have a moral disagreement. In most moral disagreements, what the two sides are essentially doing is arguing for conformity. For example, one might say something like "The reason you shouldn't have an abortion is that you wouldn't kill an infant baby, and this is the same thing!" Of course, if one doesn't agree that killing infant babies is wrong, or that causing suffering in general is wrong, there is little to which an opponent can point.
I say all of that to say that moral obligations probably only make sense to people who have already agreed upon some basic moral tenets. They can be very basic such as "It's not good to cause needless suffering." Once those "rules of the game" are in place, all sorts of moral obligations can be derived from those simple premises. However, such obligations might not be felt by someone who does not agree to those basic tenets.
This hits the nail on the head.
Very good response.
This post ladies and gentlemen serves to show the importance of understanding the nature of moral disagreement.
The fact that Mark and Archaeopteryx and others claim Jeremy is a psychopath is clear.
But why do they make this claim?
It is because in their eyes, their views are so self-evidently true as to be all but undeniable and anyone who ventures to disagree with them
must be morally handicapped i.e. psychopathic or sociopathic. That is, they must lack something that if they had, would lead them to come to the same conclusions.
It is clear that for them, at least in some respects, morality is not a matter of subjective opinion but a matter of objective fact and anyone who denies these facts is just as wrong as one who denies two and two is four.
It is as if they are saying, stealing Mark's iPad is wrong and no reasonable person with a moral compass would deny this. To deny it would be indicative of the detractors true lack or privation of that which any reasonable homo sapien would possess in the way of a moral compass which they have as a result of various socio-biological evolutionary processes.
It is as if to say, so what! I could care less if Jeremy's view is that stealing is just fine and dandy, that don't change the fact that it is wrong!
How they arrive at this conclusion is irrelevant to my point. The point is that for Mark and for anyone else who wishes to label the case study protagonist as psychopathic, sociopathic, morally handicapped or lacking a moral compass, they are affirming the existence of at least one objective moral value/duty.
We can err when it comes to facts. We cannot err when it comes to opinions.
It is said of a man that when he adds two and two and gets five that he made an error in his arithmetic and rightly so.
If this same man were to say that he thought chocolate was delicious, we would immediately distinguish this statement as fundamentally different from his statement regarding five being the sum of two and two. We may personally think chocolate to be the most disgusting food on earth, but we would not say the man had made an error in stating chocolate was delicious.
