Is there a case to be made for objective morality? If so, what is it?

Self-sacrifice to a degree where you're still in a position to greatly help people.

Utilitarianism to the point where you don't inflict cruelty on the few.

File: 1486751092528.jpg (64KB, 500x801px) Image search: [Google]

64KB, 500x801px

>>3094986
neat

>>3094974
Make it so that people have to suffer the consequences of their moral systems/ideology. Moral relativists will shun back to something that looks a lot like bourgeois/socially-constructed/Judeo-Christian/[insert buzzword] morality fairly quickly.

>>3094974
Depends on what you mean.

A case for (weak) objective morality (or rather a sort of natural law) is that moral constructivism is generally a dud. Human morality is not infinitely malleable and there are intersubjective phenomena shared among humans (e.g. pain) which are biological in origin. Humans can't be made to follow completely arbitrary, constructed systems of ethics. While it's possible to construct any number of systems, some will be more or less preferable, more or less viable and so on. This is contingent on many factors (resulting in different specific rule sets), but the ones rooted in human biology are invariant.

Whether it's actually possible to meaningfully articulate those objective components of the shared human experience is another issue. The best humanity has been able to do approximate them in special cases. Civilisations have created their social and legal structures incrementally, organically, essentially treating ethics like an experimental science where growing social problems become proof of the system not being (or no longer being) fit for purpose, correct, or 'in tune' with what a theoretical perfect all-encompassing objectively correct system might dictate in this very specific situation.

Perhaps this is the best that can be done. Perhaps research (e.g. in neuropsychology) will give a clearer insight. Or perhaps we will be able to make our biology more malleable and thus transcend any shared human moral invariants through becoming something other than human.

File: 1498741487757.jpg (143KB, 432x810px) Image search: [Google]

143KB, 432x810px

>>3094974
You can make a case for anything. But there is no objectively sound case for objective morality because morality is about values and values are subjective and not subject to logic. You can say "we should apl do X because it makes Y easier" but if people don't care about Y then there's no real argument for why they should unless Y is instrumental to something else they desire. And even if it is they can just say that Y has negative value to them. You can't really argue values because they just aren't subject to reason. You use reasoning and logic to fufil your values but not to select any that aren't just meta goals.