Replacing the Objective with the Subjective

“In the beginning”: There are also sorts of things I care about, want, etc. Among these are various people, all animals (including humans), music, “nature” (as in hiking), literature, astronomy, cinema, world peace, universal happiness, protection from catastrophe from asteroids and comets and climate change and you name it, etc. ad inf. But of particular relevance to our philosophical difference(s) of opinion are the following: that people behave in certain ways, that people think in certain ways, that people care about certain things.

Speaking with the vulgar or in shorthand, we could say that I care about truth, rationality, morality, and compassion. But, for various reasons, I want to conditionalize or even eliminate the three first and hold on only to the last. The general reason for this set of preferences is that I think the bulk of my (and most people’s on reflection) preferences would more likely be satisfied (i.e., and again with the vulgar, “the world would go better”) if this set were satisfied.

Morality … or moralism (the belief in morality or objective values) … is the kingpin here. This is because the moralist attitude spreads beyond our judgments about how people ought to behave in order to procure the good life or treat other people or other sentient beings (or human institutions or nature or whatever) with due consideration or respect – in other words, the traditional purview of morality or ethics -- to our attitudes toward everything we like or don’t like or even believe or don’t believe: thus we may have a moralist attitude toward (what we consider to be) philistinism or stupidity or ignorance or what have you, and we condemn people for these (perceived) traits or lapses, just as we would someone who loved setting cats’ tails on fire.

The problem with the moralist attitude is that it (as a matter of empirical fact) lends itself to arrogance and intransigence and aggressiveness and others of that ill ilk (that is, things I think most of us don’t like when we’re not being that way ourself). This is how it makes the world worse than it could be, since these attitudes lead to stagnation and excessive conflict and agonizing or crippling guilt feelings and so forth.

However, absent the moralist attitude, then I, like every other reasonable person, would, as already noted, like people to behave in certain ways, think in certain ways, care about certain things, and so forth. So if “morality” just referred to a preferred set of guiding rules of thumb of behavior, and “truth” to what one believed with good reason, and “rationality” to being prone to engage in informed and logical reflection under favorable circumstances (e.g., not drunk), I’d be all for all of them (plus compassion, with only the qualification that it go hand in hand with the others).

My specific reason for wanting to eliminate those vocabularies is that (as a matter of empirical fact) they all lend themselves to being moralized in the noxious sense. But we need not throw out the babies with the bath water because an alternative vocabulary (and set of concepts) is readily available, to wit: “I want x, I like x, and I believe x, and here’s why.” In other words, the solution is to avoid objectifying what can be subjectivized with just as good and even better results.

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