Objectivity (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Objectivity (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It seems that I have misunderstood what philosophers meant by the word objective. I thought that it meant having an existence independent of mind. This other definition that I found in Wikipedia seems to be closer to common usage. A proposition is considered objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are independent of the judgement of a conscious entity or subject.

Let's see what implications this has for whether I believe in objective morality. Morality, according to my definition is the optimized assignment of blame and credit to actions. It is optimized according to the interests of the one making the assignment.

Now because the assignment is optimized it will not depend on the judgement of the one making the assignment. It is the best assignment that can be made, and it will still be the best regardless of which one is actually considered best by the one making the assignment. They can and probably will make assignments that are less than ideal.

They will also be independent of the judgement of the one who's action is being evaluated. However, where we need to pay some attention is whether they can be independent of the judgement of those to whom the judgement is communicated.

On this matter I suppose that we should say that actions can be harmful to others regardless of whether or not they are judged so by others. To the extent that moral and ethical pronouncements communicate information that would effect the extent to which rational beings will value time with various other individuals they are conveying information that is true or false based on standards that are independent of the judgement of any individual. They are statements about what is in the best interest of the individual.

However, this is not quite what morality is. Morality doesn't include all of the values that a rational being would have regarding the behavior of others. It only includes those that would motivate the rational assignment of blame and credit. Suppose that these others habitually assign blame in some irrational or perverse manner. Then it would make no sense to communicate your assignments of blame and credit to these individuals. In fact it would be best to avoid them altogether and find people who have better moral and ethical values if possible.