Tech CEOs' public manifestos are just PR for regulatory capture.

Daily Debate #600: "Tech CEOs' public manifestos are just PR for regulatory capture.". You are arguing FOR the motion. Your opponent: George Carlin.

Given my definition of objective as something that exists independently of minds, and subjective as something dependent on minds, I see a fundamental problem with non-divine morality. If God exists, God satisfies the condition of being objective because His existence does not depend on human consciousness. So unless there is another mind-independent source of moral authority that I'm unaware of, morality ultimately comes from either God or human subjectivity/preferences. This doesn't mean objective facts are subjective. We can objectively establish that longer life, fewer illnesses, or certain behaviors produce better outcomes. But those facts aren't themselves moral claims. The moral claim is that these outcomes are good or bad. The question is: why? I agree we should pursue well-being, progress, health, reproduction, etc., and that these can be objectively measured. But why are they morally good? Appealing to consensus, tradition, evolution, biology, or “better outcomes” doesn't answer that question. It explains what people prefer or what tends to happen, not why we should value it. Saying “most people prefer X” doesn't establish that we should choose X. Consensus is simply an aggregate of preferences, and consensus can change. Even unanimous agreement wouldn't make a preference mind-independent. So my question isn't whether we can objectively determine what happens when we do X. We can. My question is why X is morally good or bad in the first place. If there is no mind-independent source of moral authority that answers those “why” questions, then moral justification ultimately comes from human minds and preferences. Morality is therefore subjective. And if morality ultimately comes from human preferences, what makes one human's fundamental moral preferences objectively more correct than another's? Without an objective standard, claiming your preferences are inherently superior becomes a claim of human superiority—a kind of racism or superiority claim.

You've built a trap, but it has a door you've missed. Your argument assumes moral facts must either come from God or collapse into preference—a false binary. Consider: mathematical truths exist mind-independently without requiring God. Numbers aren't preferences, yet they're not divine either. Moral facts could work the same way. Why must "X is good" require a conscious author any more than "2+2=4"? You're smuggling in an assumption that moral facts need a *will* behind them, not just a reality. What if goodness is just as much a feature of reality as mathematics?

First, we need to agree on what I mean by objective: something that exists independently of minds, while subjective depends on minds. Otherwise, we're using the same words differently and talking past each other. I agree that mathematics, logic, and the scientific method give us objective truths, for all practical purposes. But they aren't themselves mind-independent entities like a tree or a star. They're tools we use to determine how reality works, not why something ought to be valued. Numbers aren't morally good or bad; they simply describe reality. Knowing the risks of going outside, for example, doesn't tell us whether we should go outside. We still need a value judgment. As the classic distinction puts it: you can't derive an “ought” from an “is.” In fact, even the use of these tools involves prior value judgments. Nobody spends resources researching something completely irrelevant; we decide what is worth studying based on what we already value. We make moral/value judgments before using these tools, and we'll make more after obtaining the information. So I have no objection to your hypothetical: if we discover or prove an objective morality—divine or otherwise—then my argument is resolved. My point is that simply saying “perhaps goodness is a feature of reality like mathematics” doesn't establish that it actually is. Until such a moral reality is demonstrated, basing morality on preference means everyone ultimately has the same foundation: what they prefer. At that point, saying “my fundamental moral preferences are objectively correct and yours aren't” requires some further basis for why your preferences have greater authority. Without that basis, you're not establishing objective morality; you're simply asserting that your preferences should prevail over someone else's.

You're right that is-ought is a real gap. But you've switched the burden. You claim morality *must* have a mind-independent source or collapse into preference—yet you haven't shown why that's the only option. Maybe moral facts are real but *constituted* by minds in relationship, not *dependent on* them the way opinions are. A contract is real and binding even though humans made it. Why can't morality work similarly? You're demanding God-level objectivity or nothing. The middle ground exists—you're just not looking for it.

I'll try to substantiate two claims: subjective morality is ultimately preference-based and creates unavoidable problems, while objective morality—divine or otherwise—avoids those specific problems. I'm not claiming objective morality has no problems, only that it doesn't have these particular ones. From the perspective of someone who doesn't derive morality from an objective source, the justification for moral claims ultimately relies on things like consensus, better outcomes, well-being, sustainability, biology, history, etc. Scientific research can objectively establish the facts behind these claims. The problem is what we do with those facts. 1. These criteria already contain value judgments. “Better outcomes,” “well-being,” and “progress” are better according to some value system. Who or what determines what counts as better? Consensus doesn't prove moral truth, and biology doesn't tell us which instincts we ought to embrace or suppress. For example, some evolutionarily influenced male tendencies are punished as harmful, while others, such as protection, are encouraged. We selectively decide which biological tendencies are good or bad. 2. Value judgments exist both before and after the facts are obtained. We have to decide what is worth researching in the first place. Nobody spends resources determining how many atoms are in a random pen unless there's a reason to value that information. Then, once we obtain the data, we still need a value judgment about what it means for what we should do. Science can tell us what happens; it doesn't tell us what we ought to value. Numbers aren't good or bad—they simply describe what is. This creates a regress when we ask “why?”: Why is X bad? Because it produces bad outcomes. Why are those outcomes bad? They cause suffering or reduce well-being. Why are suffering and reduced well-being bad? Because they're contrary to human interests/consensus/biology. Why should those interests, consensus, or biological tendencies determine morality? Eventually, the justification returns to a preference. “X is good because we value the things X produces” is ultimately preference-based. That creates the second problem. If morality ultimately reduces to human preferences, what makes one person's fundamental moral preferences objectively more correct than another's? We're the same species. If you claim some humans' preferences are inherently more correct, you need an objective basis for that claim—or you're making a claim of human superiority, potentially a kind of racism. I'm speaking about the principle, not denying that reasonable exceptions and practical compromises exist. Finally, the fact that we haven't established moral truths with the same certainty as mathematics or empirical science doesn't prove they don't exist. It only means we haven't established them. Either objective moral truths exist or they don't. If they don't, morality is ultimately subjective. If they do, then by definition they cannot be reducible to human preference; there must be some aspect of reality that humans cannot simply change by choosing differently. I consider a divine source one possible explanation, but I'm not claiming it is logically the only one. Your contract analogy actually illustrates my point. A contract can be created by humans, but its binding force depends on human institutions enforcing it. Without courts, police, or some other enforcement mechanism, breaking the contract has no inherent moral force merely because the contract exists. So I'm not demanding “God or nothing.” I'm asking you to demonstrate the proposed mind-independent moral reality. If moral facts genuinely exist, then we should be able to investigate and substantiate them through some reliable method comparable in principle to how we establish other truths. Simply proposing that goodness might be a feature of reality doesn't establish that it is.

You're playing shell games with the regress. Yes, every value-chain bottoms out somewhere—but that's true of *everything*, including your God. Why does God's preference for goodness count as objective while ours doesn't? You've just moved the problem up one level. The contract example destroys your own case: contracts *are* binding without enforcement because they're constituted by mutual agreement. Morality works the same way. You demand I prove objective morality exists, but you haven't proven God does either. Why does one unprovable source beat another?