Mo_,
If a person’s values are subjective, and thus their actions are moral or immoral for subjective reasons, in what sense is that morality objective?
To the extent that it is objective, how is it distinct from logic? i.e. “if I value something and an action will help me achieve it without having to sacrifice something else I value, then I should do that action” looks a lot like a logical statement about value, rather than a moral statement about action.
Finally, is morality itself not something that motivates you independently of your other motivations? It seems like I could say, “you ought to do X because it is the morally right thing to do.” Is that statement tautological? Does that comport with most conceptions of morality?
FJ,
How can a term that hasn’t been defined be ‘grossly debased’? And if it is grossly debased, aren’t you acknowledging that you have a personal understanding of what it means for a statement to be a moral statement that you aren’t sharing with us? I understand your Payless argument, but there’s a difference between saying, “that definition is simply uninteresting,” and saying, “that definition debases what the thing actually is.” It’s uninteresting to say, “God exists” when by ‘God’ you mean a Payless. But it can only debase ‘God’ is there is some grander implied definition.
Is the word ‘ought’ in the statement, “you ought to see Batman,” really the same word as the word ‘ought’ in the statement, “you ought not kill”? The words are shaped the same, but the sentiments behind the words seem clearly distinct: if you asked the first speaker, “why?” they would likely tell you something about how cool the movie is and how they know you like superhero movies; if you ask the second speaker, “why?” they will tell you something like, “because it’s wrong.” Aren’t we just dealing with homophones here?
Finally, have you gained ground by moving the definition of morality from “the topic concerning how you ought to act” to “the subset of the topic concerning how you ought to act that concerns things that really matter”? Is one definition better or worse, or closer to your own definition of morality? Is the counterargument to one different from the counterargument to the other? Couldn’t “the line between prudence and morality” be subjective while the spectrum itself is objective? Is your goal to reject question the line, or to question the things contained in the set that the line demarcates?