The age-old idealist distinction between the apparent and the real is fraught with confusion.
A. An appearance can only be an appearance to someone. An appearance is a conscious experience. Without consciousness, there are no appearances.
B. Every appearance must have an object—the thing that it appears to be. Because an object is a conscious experience, there are two possibilities: (1) an object is entirely generated in the brain without the influence of anything real outside the consciousness; or (2) something outside the consciousness is the operative cause of an experienced object through the sense organs. If (2) is the case, the fact that the brain actively conditions sense impressions to make them sensible would not remove the fact that something real outside the consciousness triggers objects of experience.
Clearly, if (1) is the case, the following would hold: Either (a) the senses serve no purpose whatsoever; or (b) the senses are not themselves real. In either case, it would be patent illogic to propose that “appearances are concerned with self-preservation.” If the senses foster self-preservation, there must, at a minimum, be a spatio-temporal correspondence between an object as experienced and the object itself. From this, one may properly conclude that the real world is spatio-temporal both as it appears and as it is.
(C) “Values” cannot be experienced through the senses, because they have no spatio-temporal content. Therefore, as objects of experience, values have no existence outside of conscious experience.
(D) Moral values are not only mind-dependent but also entirely dependent on human nature—more particularly, on the fact that humans are social animals. Moral values govern the interactions of individuals in human societies. Like it or not, human morality is “the morality of the herd.” Moral values can be based upon cultural mores or upon the natural sense of rectitude embodied in the so-called golden rule. However, moral values are public and not subjective. Obviously, human society would not be possible if every subject did as he pleased in opposition to every other subject. This does not mean that freedom and individualism need be suppressed. It only means that both freedom and conformity should have reasonable limits. Finding the reasonable middle ground is always a work in progress.