Is morality subjective or objective?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is morality subjective or objective?". Your opponent's style: Philosophy Student

I argue that morality is subjective because of Mackie's queerness argument. even if you think that morality is objective, you must agree to an extent how strange it is that it would be objective. It is completely unlike anything in the universe for there to be some unseen force that dictates the bases of how we act, and how it only seems to effect us.

You're smuggling in an assumption: that objective morality requires a spooky, non-physical force. It doesn't. Moral facts could be objective properties of actions themselves, like how logical truths are objective without needing invisible entities. The fact that morality *feels* different from physics says nothing about whether it's real. You've mistaken unfamiliarity for impossibility. Why should we think objective moral facts are stranger than objective mathematical facts, which also aren't "seen forces" but remain undeniably real?

Sure you can say something about how its convergence from actions. Or properties from actions. But you can't tell me why something like murder is wrong is a fact, how you'd detect it, or why it would have any pull on an agent who wouldn't care. You can see the logic for something like 2+2=4, we have mathematical proofs that it is so. But you can't do the same for 'wrongness' without ending up hand waving at intuition which just isn't convincing.

You're conflating epistemology with ontology. Yes, we lack a proof for moral wrongness, but that doesn't make it subjective, it makes it *hard to know*. We can't prove the external world exists either, yet you don't call physics subjective. The real problem is your demand that moral facts must work like mathematical proofs. Why should they? Moral facts could be irreducibly normative, binding agents precisely because they *constrain* rational behavior. Your intuition pump is backwards. The question isn't why wrongness has pull without proof, it's why you expect moral reality to match your preferred epistemology.

Even if i were to grant it. So what? why should anyone care about being rational in that sense. showing something is a rational requirement doesn't show its binding on someone who doesn't value consistency for its own sake. morality can only bind someone if they already care about it. Someone can wholeheartedly see murder as completely fine and the same way someone could move a bishop in chess incorrectly. The rule for how a bishop moves only obligates people who play chess.

Your chess analogy proves the opposite. A bishop moves diagonally whether you care or not—the rule doesn't bind you emotionally, it *defines the game*. You're confusing psychological motivation with rational obligation. A psychopath who doesn't care about consistency still *is* irrational when they contradict themselves. Morality binds the same way: it's built into what rational agency means. Your murderer isn't exempt from wrongness because indifferent to it. So why does your subjective theory bite the bullet on this—that Hitler was acting perfectly consistently within his own values?

you're misunderstanding my point. No one has shown rational agency forces universalizability. You can be a coherent, non contradictory, fully rational egoist who reasons perfectly well toward "i get what i want screw everyone else". Nothing breaks. You're arguments thus far have just been 'is-ought'.

You're right that coherent egoism works logically. But you've abandoned objectivity, not established subjectivity. If a rational egoist can be perfectly consistent while endorsing slavery, that proves morality isn't *derived* from rationality alone, not that it's subjective. The egoist is still *wrong* about what matters. Your move requires showing why subjective preference beats objective constraint. Why should we think your feelings constitute reality instead of just missing it?

If i abandon objectivity then subjectivity wins by default. Of course that doesn't mean i win all across the board but neither do you because god damn this is a question i don't think anyone will answer. But anywho, the best argument against it being just opinion hasn't closed the is-ought gap so subjectivism wins by default because its the only other option. i'm not claiming subjective feelings track reality. I'm claiming feelings are the reality. because moral properties have no independent causal footprint to check your feelings against. With a physical fact you can be wrong in a way that can be checked. you can feel a bridge will hold a car but that could be completely different to whether the bridge can actually hold the car, and the bridge can prove you wrong by collapsing. with something like 'murder is wrong'. there is no analogous collapse. if theres nothing capable of proving my feelings wrong even in principle then 'missing reality' is just a category error.

False dichotomy. You've presented only two options when there's a third: moral facts exist but aren't causally detectable like bridges because they're constitutive of rational agency itself. Your "nothing can prove me wrong" argument proves too much—it also applies to logical truths, yet you don't call them subjective opinions. The real issue: you're demanding empirical verification for something that isn't empirical. Why accept that demand? If moral wrongness constrains rational thought the way logical contradiction does, it's objective regardless of your detection method.