Objective Moral Judgements can be made in Moral Nihilism

Introduction Although Envisage appears to have forfeited his round, within minutes after his allotted time ended he was posting in the comments section explaining that he had his argument finished but had not been able to post it in time. He posted his argument in the comments section. Although I find this to be poor conduct, and of course expect conduct points to be given to me, I will accept Evisage’s argument and respond to it for the sake of a good debate. His argument can be found here - http://sharetext.org... Gibberish To put it simply, Pro’s argument appears to be nothing more than self-contradictory gibberish. Pro continually states that these moral statements are “free of bias and impartial,” yet at no point demonstrates or proves this. For example, “it is subjective in that each person will have their own preferences, their own perceptions of pleasure, pain, and hence differing self-interests, but what those self-interests are is an objective fact in that it is impartial, and not a matter of anyone’s opinion of whether it’s true of false.” Pro’s statement that it is not a matter of anyone’s opinion is simply fallacious. Of course it is a matter of opinion because, as Pro states, it is subjective upon said person’s preferences. These moral facts necessarily cannot be unbiased since the truth value and determination of these moral facts relies on the preference of the individual. In response, Pro gives the contradictory argument that these moral facts are unbiased, but we have no reason to believe this simply because Pro never demonstrates that they are unbiased. Take his one of his analogies for example: “If instead we were to determine that ‘I feel cold at temperature X’, and the temperature was <X, then we have a subjective answer (in that it depends on who I am, and what I perceive as cold), that is objective (since it is unbiased and impartial, as it’s a fact that below temperature X I ‘feel cold’).” If we really cut the fat off of this, Pro essentially states that ‘I feel cold at temperature X’ is both a subjective and objective statement. Subjective in that the truth of the statement depends on how said person perceives coldness and objective in that the statement is unbiased and impartial. However, how is the statement unbiased and impartial if the truth of the statement relies on the biases of the person that the statement applies to? Just because a statement is true does not mean it is objective, as I argued previously. Myoptic Moral Egoism Here Pro appeals to a greater self interest through the use of his ‘slave’ analogy. The problem with this analogy is that if he is not appealing to an objective self interest, then whatever this greater self interest may be is still not objective (obviously) since it relies on the bias of the individual. In particular, the preference to be free as opposed to being a slave inherently relies on personal mental biases. “To prefer” essentially means to have a bias towards, and therefore it is not objective that these slaves would want to be free. Appeal to Objective Moral Egoism Pro takes his slave analogy further with his ‘ideal health’ analogy, which appeals to objective moral egoism. “However, if we change the person, and hence their height, weight, genders, species even. Clearly there is an objective ‘best’ body fat quantity, but this will not be the same as the person before, because the circumstances have changed. The determination of the ‘ideal fat content’ is indeed objective, and free of bias, however the statement ‘X amount of fat is healthy’ is entirely subjective depending on the other variables.” First off, Pro’s analogy is flawed in regards to what he must argue. As shown in my opening argument under ‘Flaws in Moral Egoism in Regard to the Resolution,’ he must be arguing for subjective moral egoism and not objective moral egoism since objective moral egoism would appeal to actions possessing inherent moral value which is in direct contradiction with moral nihilism. This analogy appeals to objective moral egoism, and therefore contradicts what Pro must argue in order to win. This analogy does not rely on changeable preferences, but rather on variables that possess no bias. It is comparable to the following: 2 + 3 = 5 2 + 2 = 4 Different variables hold different answers, but these variables have no bias. They are objective because they simply are and cannot be anything else. These facts do not rely on preferences which are changeable, but rather they rely on unchangeable and objective variables. What Pro must argue for is subjective moral egoism, which is comparable to this: Each person has different preferences, and these preferences yield facts, but not objective facts since the truth value relies on the preferences of the individual. Objective facts do not rely on the preference of the individual. 2 + 2 cannot potentially equal 5. It must necessarily equal 4. Given the same individual, a preference could at one time be true and at another time be false. These are subjective preferences, and this is what my opponent must argue in favor of. This being said, my syllogism still stands, for my opponent must argue that subjective moral statements can be objective, but my opponent cannot since they are inherently contradictory which affirms my defense of premise 2. If objective morality exists, all acts X must inherently be moral or immoral. This is because to be objective means to not adhere to preference, and therefore cannot be subject to change. Conclusion Pro’s response is a confusing, seemingly contradictory mess. I think this may due both to his failure to explain how these moral facts are impartial and free of bias, and due to his obvious rush to finish writing his argument and submit it. Over to you Pro.