That is not very strong grounds. There is a vast array of empirical experience with a high degree of consistency. To write that off as an illusion seems absurd. Especially in the light of the testing done by science In comparison the idea that morals are objective truth seems to be just a natural - but basically unfounded - assumption. It is very easy to say that it could be wrong because there is no solid reason to say that it is right.
The status of abstractions is highly controversial in philosophy - and that can’t be settled by an ad populum argument. Indeed we can say exactly the same thing about morality - what does it mean for morality to be objective? What makes a moral proposition true? How can we objectively resolve moral disputes? Surely - if morality is objective - there must be a better way than voting.
Our shared, universal conscious experience tells us that solid objects are not mostly empty space. And it is wrong to do so. That is one reason why anyone who accepts scientific realism can happily reject your argument.
And do we have an objective way to resolve scientific disagreements?
You still don’t understand the main point of the post. You access reality through your consciousness. You can never get outside of it and see reality exactly as it is, so you have no objective way to verify that, for example, an alien mind would perceive the same world as you.
What you call an objective way to refute a flat Earther, for example: telescope images, the Earth’s curved shadow during lunar eclipses, Coriolis effects or whatever, are just shared human perceptions in the end. So you actually refuted him by appealing to shared universal human perception that is repeatedly observed and cross-checked.
If you didn’t trust this as revealing objective reality then you wouldn’t have objectively refuted him at all. You just have showed his dream is radically different from what we universally perceive and feel. And if he were to come to you and say, for example, no, I don’t agree that the telescope images are real. They’re fake. Or the Earth’s curved shadow is fake, or whatever, you would dismiss him as irrational or as denying reality. And if he told you I look through the telescope and I see a flat Earth, you would say that he is either mistaken or lying.
The same applies to morality. If someone were to come to you and say I find many horrific acts fine and morally good, we would dismiss him as irrational and denying that same universal moral awareness that we share.
Do you mean that we access reality through our senses?
How different can the perception of an alien mind be from out own, given that we are constrained by the same laws of physics? If the alien mind perceives a hydrogen atom be a simple unit of matter as we do, and that a hydrogen atom is “real”, then the laws of physics should require we have equivalent perception of all matter. That doesn’t mean identical perception, but there should be an underlying equivalence.
When we move to immaterial concepts like Morality, it is less certain we could have the same perception. We should have a broad understanding that some actions are “better” in some sense than others, but there will be disagreement in specific examples. For my part, I prefer to think in terms of Ethics; the principles of Beneficence, Equity, and Justice. These concepts are not perfect either, but they avoid some of the problems encountered trying to define Morality.
Fortunately, we do have good general agreement on things than are very bad or generally good. No one disagrees with you there. The disagreement starts because not all acts are equally good to all people.
This is where Ethics comes in. It’s easier to ask if an action is:
Beneficent - is it beneficial to those who receive the action.
Equity - does the action benefit the recipients fairly?
Justice - Are the cost or consequences of the action distributed equally (or equitably)?
Again, not a perfect solution for Morality, but it helps to break the question down into smaller questions, which might be easier to resolve. We hope.
Yes. We judge the disagreeing positions by how well they explain empirical evidence, and if necessary find new empirical evidence to judge them by.
I concur. Which is why “sense experience” is part of empirical evidence (but moral judgements are not).
This would also seem to demonstrate where ethics and morality diverge. Morality and social mores will frequently include varying emphasis on issues such as group loyalty, purity, honor, and ‘saving face’. These are not universal across cultures. Thus while ethics may at least approximate to universality (though may vary considerably in the relative weighting of these principles), morality will vary considerably more.
Yes, we do. That’s how science progresses. By its reliance on the empirical evidence.
Please don’t confuse disagreement with a lack of understanding. I get that you are arguing that agreement is the only criterion but I’ve already dealt with that by pointing out that simple agreement is not enough. It’s the deeper investigations made possible by the richness of the empirical world that get us closer to the truth.
And I’ve addressed this, too. You still don’t understand that morality is a near-perfect example of “fitness beats truth” because it does not rely on the existence of a complex self-consistent illusion.
Nor do you seem to understand that the apparent solidity of objects is a clear counter-example. Our perceptions can be systematically incorrect and we can universally agree on things that are not true.
I do not deny that there is an objective underpinning - I deny that that underpinning is the objective truth of morality. Which is another point you have yet to address.
