Morality is Necessarily Subjective, but Non-Arbitrary

On review, I must admit that my initial argument was written in aselfish, obscure, and masturbatory style which I regret and which Con rightlycriticizes. I want to clean up several points, but not before first thanking Con for accepting this debate and, perhaps, for ribbing me out of my pedantry. First, while morality concerns things like sensations (suffering, etc.), and intentions (e.g. to do harm), neither of these causally participate in theoutside world as sensations or intentions. That is to say, a cup is not brought to my lips directly by my intention tolift it there, but by the lifting itself. Its being lifted, so far as the cupis concerned, is fully accounted for without invoking this private notion thatI have of “intention”. The lifting operates in the external world as theact of lifting; intention doesn't act in the external world as intention. This is really what informs the distinction that I've tried to makebetween the objective and subjective: intention and sensation are part of aprivate causality that does not function out in the world in the form that it appears to the privileged parties with access to it. Conscious beings are theseprivileged parties. Because morality concerns things like sensation andintention, morality is bound up with this private causality, and therefore issubjective in the way that I've described. Taking Con’s example of gravity, I would point out that gravity does notbehave according to a form of private causality. Gravity operates causally outin the world, like the immediate action of lifting the cup. Mechanicallyspeaking, it explains everything that it accomplishes. The things thatmorality accomplishes aren't explained by the behaviors it motivates: the outside worldisn't causally influenced by the relief of suffering as the relief ofsuffering, but rather by the behaviors that are performed in the process. Morally speaking, these behaviors as behaviors alone don't explain everything they accomplish; suffering and its relief are needed to furnish this account. This is the distinction I'm attempting to make between subjective and objective mechanisms, and thus why morality is subjective. In this fine specimen of foggy prose, which Con found duly amusing: “This is because properties arising from objectivemodalities of interaction and detection do not essentially and necessarilydiscriminate between participating parties; the same properties arefunctionally available to all," I meant to say that objective mechanisms are accessible to the analysis of thirdparties. Because all separate participants are third parties with respect toeach other in the external world, I was trying to express that objectivemechanisms are those which are available to the analysis of these parties. Now, I realize that "subjective" is often used as a byword for"dependent on opinion, and able to vary along with it", so Con isright to point out that I interpret subjectivity differently. But in sodiffering, my description of subjectivity doesn't exclude Con’s description of it.It’s just that Con focuses on the arbitrary elements of subjectivity, such as opinion and preference. But my claim, as Con also notes, is to be taken as a whole: that morality issubjective and non-arbitrary. Con does consider this as a whole in the beginning, but seems to neglect the2nd component later on in response to my treatment of subjectivity. So when Con says, “Let us stipulate that there is a moral rule against TBFF(torturing babies for fun). Is this subjective because the object of the rule (babies) are people? No, it isobjective if TBFF is wrong even if you like doing it,” what he is emphasizing is precisely satisfied by the condition ofnon-arbitrarity that I've advanced. Despite the admitted unclearness of my initial argument, the part in which Iargued deductively that harming others is irrational was given pretty cleanly. For morality to be non-arbitrary is for it to not vary with preference/opinion. The factthat harming others is irrational provides exactly this stability. So I advance that TBFFis non-arbitrarily & actually wrong, but that this wrongness is subjective becausethe data which qualify babies as morally eligible beings aren't accessible tothird party analysis. So far as the external world itself is concerned, smashing arock is no different from smashing a face, while we are the privilegedaudience to our own ability to suffer and be harmed. We know that a faceimportantly differs from a rock, but only because we have privileged access to the datawhich informs this knowledge. It is true that when I draw this line between rocks and people, it seems I draw one between people also. One may then ask: How can we know which things are eligible for moral treatment when we can’t directlyverify the presence of consciousness by third party analysis? This, however, is a question that leads to the hard problem ofconsciousness, which really has philosophy by the throat more than anythingelse. It's one of the most (possibly the most) intimidating, elusive, and nebulous problems in all of modern science and philosophy. Thomas Huxley, the famous 19th century naturalist, opined, “that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result ofirritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of theDjin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.”[1] The philosopher David Chalmers, who has done much to articulate our perplexity on this matter, adds: “Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.” [2] (It seems Chalmers uses 'objective' in the same way I am using it.) The relevance of this is that a solution to the hard problem of consciousness (whatever that may look like) would very likely render thecurrent distinctions between subjective and objective obsolete. Therefore, if Iwant to show that morality is necessarily subjective, then I must show that the things which qualify beings for moraltreatment are just as necessarily subjective. This would force me toclaim that the hard problem of consciousness is insoluble, for the followingreasons: -If we could account for andunderstand how physical processing actively gives rise to consciousness, thiswould likely eliminate a categorical distinction between function and sensation (e.g.sound waves vs. loudness; action vs. desire). -Because of this lost distinction, morality would explain everything that it accomplishes purely in terms of external function, much like gravity. We would have to acknowledge that the“outside world” is causally influenced by the relief of suffering as the relief of suffering, rather than simply by thebehaviors which relieve suffering. The point is that I don’t want to claim the hard problem to be impossibleto solve; I couldn’t defend that claim and I’m not sure it’s true (though thehard problem seems damn hard). Because I don’t want to make this claim, I mustissue a restricted concession to Con on the point that morality is necessarilysubjective. I concede that the data which qualifies moral beings may not necessarilybe privileged knowledge which is inaccessible to third party analysis, but thatit may only circumstantially be so.In short, I concede that morality may only be circumstantially subjective. Con was right to say that my position was a tall order, and that is ultimatelybecause the hard problem was implicit in my resolution. However, I wholly maintain my argument that moral rules are non-arbitrary.Con glossed over these and did not address them. They are clean deductions, and they still stand as I see them. In summary: -Morality is subjectivebecause it is explained by privileged access to "private" data. -Morality is non-arbitrarybecause it is irrational to harm others. I really do appreciate the opportunity to argue this out, so you have my thanks, Con. [1] The Harder Problem ofConsciousness, Block[2] Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmers