The first half of my content comes from:
faculty.plattsburgh.edu/kurtis.h … ought.html
Searle’s solution to the is/ ought problem is to first make a distinction between a descriptive and evaluative statement. He claims the empiricist view of nature sees evaluative statements as subjective.
Next he claims that empiricists don’t make the distinction between two certain kinds of descriptive statements, those referring to “brute facts” and “institutional facts”.
To explain institutional facts, he uses the example of a baseball player. After striking out three times in a row, a baseball player ought to leave the plate as this is how the game of baseball is played.
Now, the article doesn’t give us a moral institution, perhaps Searle has not thought of one for us. I find it hard to see how such an institution would be anything but arbitrary, though I remain hopeful that we can find something more.
As a baseball player, the man ought to leave the plate. His obligation to act as a baseball player is the fact that he cannot remain at the plate and still be considered to be playing baseball.
So what kind of game is morality? What rules do we follow that make us moral, rules that would un-define us in someway upon their violation? Are there rules?
We all know that there are some vague rules to morality, “Thou shall not kill.” “Respect thy parents.” etc… Despite these rules, “morality” is undefined. It’s a baseless institution, it has rules, but not definite rules. Much like art.
There are many, many, many rules and theories to art. However, none of them are requirements. In fact, if you threw out all of the “rules” to art and made up your own rules, you would still be doing art. Art is an unfixed institution.
What makes something art and something else not art? An artist deciding to create art. But what does he create? It can be anything, a painting, a melody, a poem, a cement shape, etc. What do these things have in common? They create an experience for the audience.
If morality is like art, then you don’t need to derive an “ought” from an “is”. It would be an impressive feat, like the Mona Lisa, but breaking that rule would just make you all the more artistic. If morality is an art form, would it be completely subjective? You have to at least do something to have art, you have to create an experience in the audience. If you don’t create an experience (As opposed to creating a non-experience, whatever that means.) then you aren’t an artist.
What is it that a moralist creates? They create an intellectual stimulation. As long as your moral theory or attack on some moral theory makes people think, it is objectively moral. What you think is up to you, so long as you think it. The only thing to disqualify you from being moral is to stop thinking about it.
So, here it is:
Morality is the provocation of thoughts.
To not do so would disqualify you from being moral.
A moral person ought to provoke thoughts.
Why?
Maybe we have not done enough differentiating morals from Art and that is why we are confused?
In years way yonder art was always done as a testament to truth (religion).
Now we have split morality away from art. The big, fat, huge, multidimensional/multilayeral split has happened between morality and art. What can we do to mend these now torn away fragments of our shared existence? 
I don’t think this is specific to morality–it seems a general rule for all philosophy. The philosopher qua artist creates intellectual stimulation.
It seems true that you could apply this rule to moral theorists just as well, but it seems the moral theorist still has all the usual requirements bearing down on him–namely, that if he is to “make people think” and thereby establish an “objectively moral” theory, he must do so with acceptable premises and sound reasoning–which can’t just be “well, I’m acting as moral artist, therefore I can create whatever I want”. He still has to bring up arguments that actually convince people that his moral stance is grounded on something–otherwise, he hasn’t stimulated anybody intellectually. That “something” that his moral position is grounded on must at least carry the veneer of an objective fact about morality. So acting as a moral artist in philosophy does not, by itself, free one from the usual suspects (that is, arguments) that typically require some substance, some objectivity and facticity.
I agree with this exactly!
So, this brings up the question of how you define “moral objectivity”.
The demand to face the rationality behind your actions makes you question yourself. Thought precedes action. Anyway, much of what you think is what you’ve been told. So you question the way in which you have been brought to a position where you have to understand a decision you will make or have made concerning behavior. If the knowledge that you have acquired from sources that have, through some authority given to them, been shaping and molding you – if that knowledge and way of thinking and living did not come from you, then, by virtue of your own right to express yourself according to your confidence in feeling that you are capable, you should and most likely you will question those sources.
The desire to establish the criteria with which moral principles will be formed I don’t think is in the interest of individual enterprise especially when the individual foresees that whatever is going to govern his conduct may curb what he has to profit from his own desires.
To form morals standards that ensure dependable commonsensical living should have a small degree of tolerance that allows for individual expression to come in and bring along with it a freedom to show strong character that is designed to change a system to a more sensible way.
Morality is pleanty defined. There’s more than one moral system, but that doesn’t mean morality is untrue or irrelavent just because one system disagrees with another.
Morality is like hunger. We all have an instinctual understanding of when we need to eat. Likewise, we have natural impulses within us that tell us what’s right and when to do good. But how we go about doing the right thing, when and where, under what conditions, is as variable and ellusive to precise exposition as when and where and how to get food.
A lot of what explains the what, when, where and how comes from cultural input; and a lot of that from the outgrowth of religion.
I think the more natural side of our approach has to do with stopping the harm we normally do due to conflicting schemes that condition the mind. Remove the external artificial encasement of conditioning and we are no longer victimized.
If I understand you correctly, it’s the “more natural side of our approach” that I’m getting at. Yeah, cultural conditioning only mucks up any lucid understanding of what’s right and wrong.