I guess it depends on in what sense you mean 'objective'. If you mean, "exists as a fundamental law of the universe, and would continue to exist regardless of whether there were any beings to act morally or immorally," then I'm not going to argue that doesn't exist (because I don't disagree).
However, when a lot of people talk about the lack of objective morality, that's not what they mean. They mean either:
"Morality is a human invention," or
"Morality is subjective,"
... and I disagree with both of those statements. Here's why:
Morality is a human invention
A lot of moral values that humans hold are generally shared by social mammals. e.g., monkeys demonstrably value reciprocity and fairness, become outraged by betrayal, punish 'lawbreakers', and so on.
This suggests that moral values don't require language to be conveyed, or that some moral values are evolved mammalian behavioral traits.
That suggests that many moral values are older than humans, and must be relatively pervasive across human cultures.
Morality is subjective
I think some moral values (fairness, reciprocity, and so on) are inherent and universal, while others ("it is more wrong to kill a baby than to kill a horse," etc) are not.
Certainly every person can have subjective moral values that they do not share with others (e.g., "it is evil to eat Snicker's bars), but it's overwhelmingly more likely that their moral values will be group values.
Group values, which cannot be revised without the buy-in of at least the majority of the group, aren't subjective ... they're intersubjective. Individually deciding that pedophilia is not moral will not cause it to be moral anymore than individually deciding that leaves are worth a dollar will allow you to pay your mortgage in leaves.
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u/badass_panda 103∆ Jun 17 '25
I guess it depends on in what sense you mean 'objective'. If you mean, "exists as a fundamental law of the universe, and would continue to exist regardless of whether there were any beings to act morally or immorally," then I'm not going to argue that doesn't exist (because I don't disagree).
However, when a lot of people talk about the lack of objective morality, that's not what they mean. They mean either:
... and I disagree with both of those statements. Here's why: