Compassion qualifies as a discomfort, because through it, we suffer with others for real in some manner of a shared factual understanding of what suffering is. Compassion cares about others and seeks to do something about it. And that is why, compassion is the impetus for moral reasoning, and not immoral reasoning. The subjective determination to turn away from the discomfort of suffering with others (heartlessness), still would not make compassion immoral objectively (factually).
Compassion is a response to the suffering of others, along with the desire to alleviate it. That's a facts based moral intention and goal.
Not really. Your reasoning includes a phenomenal leap. You begin with a fact, people experience compassion, another fact, people experience a desire to alleviate suffering from others.
From those facts you leap to the conclusion “moral intention and goal.” No way! Logically you cannot proceed from a statement of facts of what people experience to a conclusion what they’ve experienced is “moral,” whether it is a “moral” intention or “moral goal.”
The facts themselves are just facts about reality. There’s nothing about those facts that communicate morality, any more than the fact objects fall to the ground at 9.8 meters per second square communicates morality.
Rather your logic rests upon unstated assumptions between your facts and conclusion, assumptions that must be true for your conclusion to be true.
An assumption is the “response” of “compassion” and “desire” to mitigate suffering are themselves morally based. If neither or both are not morally based, then your conclusion is false.
Yet, the assumption underlying your reasoning is the issue, whether the “response” is morally based or rooted in morality. This in turn renders your argument circular, a tautology, as you claim the “response” is moral intention/moral goal, because the response is moral.
Of course, your assertion of morality is dependent on your brain, thoughts, and your brain’s own moral judgment. Without you or any human beings on the planet, is there some fact in existence independent of us and our thoughts that demonstrates the response is moral? No.
Your example doesn’t satisfy the meaning of objective, which is to say based on facts and it dependent on us, our thoughts. Objective is “Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions; considering only facts…existing outside the mind; based on facts that can be proved.”
What you declare to be “moral” doesn’t “exist outside the mind” as there’s nothing “outside the mind” that shows the “response” to be moral. Contrast your example with “objective” reality, where the fact exists outside our mind and independently of us. Such as objects tossed up on earth descend at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared, and that occurs and happens no matter what we think or believe, that is a fact independent of our thoughts and us.
In your example, the facts are only what people experience, and what they experience doesn’t show the experience to be moral. The specific feeling and desire is just that, nothing more, and that fact doesn’t have with it anything showing the fact is moral, whereas falling objects have facts that show us they are falling and fall at a certain rate of speed.
The specific feelings people experience is just that, a factual experience, but that fact doesn’t show morality any more than the facts of falling objects to the ground at a certain rate do.
If you can assign moral values to certain facts, then enlighten us as to the moral value of the fact objects fall at a certain rate.
Rather, you and your thoughts attach moral value to the factual experiences. Your example is not one of “objective” morality.
Compassion is common in humanity. The etymology of the term "compassion" literally means to suffer with another. It requires two or more to suffer with one another. Both the circumstance of suffering and the moral reaction of compassion to alleviate the suffering can only exist in a shared objective reality.
It is rather perilous to assert “objective” morality based on what is “common in humanity.” Feelings of superiority, animus, for other races and sexes, and certain kinds of people is “common in humanity” and I suppose the “desire” and “response” to subjugate those who are rendered inferior can only exist in “a shared objective reality.” There’s no shortage of historical examples of this objective morality as human beings have subjugated others they deemed inferior, weak, infirm, for more than ten thousands of years.
Hate and anger for someone or other people is “common in humanity” and so, flipping the off driver who cut in front of you on the roadway, out of hatred or anger, must be moral as anger and hate are “common in humanity” and hence, both are a product of an “objective” morality of hate and anger.
And before you object by noting your examples involved helping people without harm to the person, that doesn’t matter because the “objective” morality is rooted in what’s “common in humanity” and you can’t cherry pick and select only those commonalities where people play by the rules of Marquess of Queensberry Rules towards others but ignore the emotions, feelings, the passion common to humans that has led them to treat other humans horribly.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Equally important is the fact some or all emotions, feelings. known to Homo Sapiens is shared by all Homo Sapiens tells us nothing about the morality of those emotions/feelings. It is just a fact we have them, just as it’s a fact objects fall at a certain rate. You assign “objective” morality on the basis it is shared, common, to us. But that’s the problem, the “morality” is rooted in our existence, and not something that exists independently of us that shows or declares what we feel or experience is or isn’t moral.
Finally, according to the field of evolutionary psychology, the emotions and feelings are a product of survival instincts, and not “objective” moral code.