Objectivity & Subjectivity in Ethics
INTRODUCTION
The dispute between those who claim that morality is subjective, and those who claim that it is objective, as it stands now, has no hope of being resolved.
This is because the very terms that people use in this debate are inconsistent and contradictory, and there will never be a way to legitimately resolve a contradiction.
The core problem is that people treat "objectivity v. subjectivity" as a mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive pair of options. Morality is either ‘subjective’ or ‘objective’ the way that statements are either ‘true’ or ‘false’. There is no way that anything can fit in both categories at the same time (they are mutually exclusive), and there is no third option (they are jointly exhaustive).
Yet, the things people say as they defend their side in this battle, they way the champions of each option try to 'prove' their view, is not consistent with these assumptions. They use these concepts in ways that do not allow for them to be either mutually exclusive, or jointly exhaustive.
If people do not use these terms consistently, we cannot expect their arguments that morality is either subjective or objective to make sense.
In what follows, I will explain some of the problems with how these terms are currently used, then suggest a set of distinctions that will allow us to bypass these inconsistencies and the arguments that spring from them.
A SENSE OF SUBJECTIVISM & OBJECTIVISM
(A) I think that morality is subjective, in a sense.
In what sense am I a subjectivist?
There is no value without desire. Or, more precisely, there is no prescription without desire. Desires are the only entities that pick out ends or goals and motivate the agent to seek out those ends. Where good and bad are used in the prescriptive sense, either they refer to the only real-world entities that prescribe, or the propositions they are used in are false.
This means that if you eliminate all of the desire from the universe, then you eliminate all value. If you look at a set of options from the point of view of a truly impartial observer, that impartial observer has no reason to choose either option. In the truly impartial observer’s eyes, both options are equally bland. If you want the impartial observer to make a choice, he has to be supplied with a set of desires. And if he is supplied with a set of desires, he is no longer impartial.
Value does not exist independent of desire. Because I believe this, I am a subjectivist.
(B) I reject the idea that morality is subjective, in a sense.
Many people who claim that morality is subjective make claims that, to me, make absolutely no sense.
These people hold a view that I call common moral subjectivism. I use this phrase because it is the most common form of subjectivism, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, those who defend it give a bad name to those of us who are subjectivists in the sense described in the previous section.
This is the view that each of us can invent our own ethics to suit ourselves. One person can say ‘it is wrong to execute murderers’, while another person says ‘we have a duty to execute murderers’, and neither of them are wrong.
This type of subjectivism is the view that science can tell us nothing about the wrongness of slavery or rape, whether church should be separate from state, or the ethics of homosexuality. It is the claim that science can provide us only with the facts, and each of us has to supply the values ourselves.
I oppose this view largely because of a problem I have with its logic. Ultimately, common subjectivism requires that we accept two mutually incompatible propositions at the same time:
(1) There is absolutely no objective reason for selecting A over not-A (where A is a moral claim). The views of those who accept A are just as well founded as the views of those who accept not-A.
(2) I accept A, which implies that I am perfectly justified in punishing any person who accepts not-A.
It appears to me that if (1) is true, the only intellectually responsible position to take with regard to (A) is, "I neither accept nor reject A or not-A; precisely because there is no objective way to defend accepting either claim."
Another area where I have problems with the logic of common subjectivism is that, ultimately, it says nothing more than "I, the speaker, have certain likes or dislikes, and everybody else has an obligation to act in a way that suits me. The true measure of whether you are doing your duty is whether I like what you are doing."
Naturally, this also means that "All people are morally prohibited from doing that which displeases me, because my displeasure is the measure of whether their actions are wrong. The more they displease me, the more their actions are to be judged morally contemptible."
This inference from "I like it when people do X" to "Therefore, people have an obligation to do X" is wholly invalid. The inference from, "It displeases me when people do X, therefore it is morally wrong for people to do X" is equally invalid. Yet, this "logic" lies at the root of common moral subjectivism.
Ultimately, this type of reasoning forces the subjectivist into a destructive dilemma.
How do we treat the sentiments of other people?
Either the sentiments that other people have generate moral obligations and prohibitions for me to obey, or their sentiments are irrelevant to my duties and obligations.
If their sentiments actually create moral obligations and duties binding on me, then each of us spends every moment of every day under a mass of conflicting duties and obligations. This implies that I have an obligation, right now, to be doing everything that anybody else wants me to be doing. At the same time, I am actually morally prohibited from doing whatever anybody else would condemn me for.
I am certain that my writing this essay does not suit some people. Using subjectivist logic, "It does not suit me that you write this essay, therefore it is wrong for you to write it," implies it is wrong for me to write this essay. While, at the same time, it suits other people that I write it. Therefore, I am, at this moment, both morally prohibited from and morally obligated to write this essay.
We can avoid this conclusion by saying that the sentiments of other people are not relevant to my moral duties and prohibitions. Only my own sentiments count.
That response provides a perfectly short and easy recipe for moral infallibility. It says that I am morally obligated to do exactly that which suits me, and that it is morally wrong for me to do exactly that which I am inclined not to do. This is an extremely easy moral code to live by. No wonder it is so popular.
But it also does not make any sense.
It means that, the next time you hear of a person pouring gasoline on live kittens and setting them on fire, all of those who say, "That’s wrong!" are mistaken. The sadist is only morally prohibited from doing that which the sadist himself does not like to do. And the next time you go to somebody who borrowed money from you and say, "You still owe me that money," if he has no interest in paying you, your statement that he owes you the money is simply mistaken. He only owes you what he wants to pay.
If this is what it means for morality to be subjective, then it is a nonsense claim that should be rejected.
(C) Morality certainly is not objective, in a sense.
The sense in which I am opposed to objectivism is the sense that says that values exist as absolute, intrinsic properties of actions or states of affairs.
If value exists as a desire-independent property, then how can I sense it? How do I measure it? What type of 'radiation' does it give off and what type of detector do I use to find it?
There is no evidence suggesting that these types of desire-independent prescriptive properties exist. Every time someone reaches for a desire-independent value to try to explain something in the real world, desire-dependent value offers to do the same work faster, easier, and with less effort.
Because of this, I reject objective morality.
(D) It is certainly the case that morality is objective, in a sense.
Intrinsic value properties do not exist, and there is no value without desire.
However, desires exist.
There is no value without desire. At the same time, there is no color without light. There is no gravity without mass. There is no life without water (at least, to the best of our ability to determine at this time). The fact that A is dependent on B does not imply that A exists in some alternate type of reality -- that A falls short of being 'objective'. It can just as easily be describing an objective dependency.
Desires exist. Humans have evolved to have hands, eyes, hearts, livers, bones, blood, and desires. None of these entities are any less real than any other entity. None of these entities are any less objective than any other entity.
If desires are objective, then whether anything in the world will fulfill or thwart those desires is also objective. This objective fact of the matter (whether a state will fulfill or thwart certain desires) is something that we can study, make theories about, and be wrong about. It is the type of claim that we can sensibly debate, bringing forth evidence to support our position in the same way that we debate and bring evidence to support any claim in the field of any science.
This is the sense in which I believe that morality is objective.
(E) Summary, In A Sense
These descriptions point out some of the ways in which our concepts of subjective and objective are confused. There is no contradiction in believing that morality is objective, while at the same time rejecting objective morality, because there is no single, clear definition of what objective morality means. Thus, you can reject objective morality in one sense (desire-independent value), while still accept it in another sense (that desire-dependent value exists).
If somebody asks you, "Do you think morality is objective?" the only sensible answer is, "Well, that depends on what type of objectivity you are talking about."
The standard debate between those who believe that morality is objective, and those who defend the claim that morality is subjective, is a debate between factions that wrongly believe that these are single, monolithic options. This false assumption means that they are never going to resolve their debate.
What it will take to resolve the objective/subjective debate is a set of consistent and more precise definitions of what it means to call something objective or subjective.
OBJECTIVE, SUBJECTIVE, RELATIVE, & ABSOLUTE
Here, I am going to start down the road to a clearer set of distinctions by looking at how we use terms like objective and relative. I will also look at some distinctions closely related to these. For example, the objective/subjective distinction when discussing morality is often associated with a fact/value distinction. I will show that some of the way we use these terms raise some serious, but too often ignored, questions. These questions will suggest that we switch to a clearer set of terms and distinctions.
(A) Values Are Facts
It is widely assumed that something can either present a fact (e.g., "the earth is 4.5 billion years old"), or a non-face value (e.g., "that is a very good story"). Facts are said to be objective while values are subjective. Nothing can be both a fact and a value, and nothing can be both objective and subjective, or so it is thought.
This looks good on the surface, until you start to ask some questions about what this really means.
For example, even though people speak of values as referring to some type of subjective non-fact entity, those same values are said to be able to influence things in the real world. They cause us to behave one way or another, or to choose one thing over another. These non-fact values somehow cause the world to be different than it would have otherwise been.
How can a non-fact entity influence the flow of matter through the physical universe?
As I sit here, typing this paper, the carbon compounds in my finger press against the keys, sending electronic signals into the computer. It is not unreasonable to assume that we can trace the causes of these finger twitches back to events going on in my brain. My brain has the structure that it does because of some interaction between some DNA molecules and their environment.
Does it make sense to say that, in addition to these facts, the causes of my typing these words also depend on some separate and distinct non-fact entity called a value? A reasonable first guess seems to be that the term ‘value’ simply refers to a subset of the facts that cause me to be typing this essay.
In other words, if values refer to something that plays a causal role, then they have to be referring to something in the physical world. They have to be referring to something factual. We simply need to determine which facts they are.
Any talk of non-fact values ultimately should be treated with the same level of suspicion as talk about immaterial souls or ghosts – as an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof.
(B) Individual Differences
Values are facts. However, different people value different things. I value writing philosophical papers on the nature of value. Very few people that I know value spending their free time on this type of activity.
Subjectivists often assert that the claim that values are objective means that everybody must like or dislike the same things. The claim that values are objective somehow requires that everybody must like or dislike liver and onions equally. The subjectivist then gladly points out that people have different preferences as proofs that values are not, in fact, objective.
However, height is objective, yet this is not said to require that everybody be the same height. Location is objective, even though we take it to be a basic assumption that no two people can occupy exactly the same space at the same time. We differ in our ages, our weight, our eye color, how much hair we have, who our parents are, the precise sequence of our genetic codes, and yet in none of these cases do we take these facts as proof against the objective nature of these properties. Nowhere else do we take proof of individual differences as proof that we are dealing with non-fact, entities.
(C) Aggregates
In a world of individual differences, we also have aggregates -- propositions that are true of groups that need not be true of any individual within the group.
We can talk about the average height of the human male, the center of population in the state of Michigan, the total weight of the people who play for the Denver Broncos, among a number of other things.
These aggregates have two characteristics that are relevant to this discussion.
First, the aggregates depend very much on the traits of the individuals that make up the group. As those individual traits change, the aggregate will also change. As people move about the state of Michigan, the center of population shifts, and the average height of the human male seems to be increasing over time.
Second, depending on the size of the group, the truth of the aggregate is substantially independent of what is true of any given member of the group. I can fly from Hawaii to Augusta, Maine, and the center of population for the United States will make only the most imperceptible of changes. When I die, the average height of a human male will change only slightly.
Why are these aspects of aggregates important?
They are important because we can aggregate values just as we aggregate location, height, and weight. When we talk about these value-aggregates, we are talking about real-world entities that very much depend on what is true of individuals that make up the aggregate. Yet, depending on the size of the group, the truth is also substantially independent of what is true of any particular member of the group.
Clearly, there are some things that cannot be aggregated. "What is the total eye color of the people living in Mobile, Alabama?" How do you aggregate eye color? This is a nonsense question -- a question that has no answer. Perhaps value is like this. What, for example, is the average of my fondness for chocolate ice cream and my wife's preference for kiwi lime? Is the average, perhaps, butterscotch pineapple?
The fact is, we aggregate desires all the time. A group of people at work want to go to lunch together and are trying to decide on a restaurant. To make that decision, they look for the restaurant that will best fulfill an aggregate of all of their desires. They weigh each individual's preferences (including ice cream preferences) as well as their budget and say, "This restaurant will best fulfill that aggregate of desires."
There is no "average" between my desire for chocolate ice cream and my wife's desire for kiwi lime. However, we can recognize that a pint of chocolate ice cream and a pint of kiwi lime is better than a quart of chocolate or a quart of kiwi lime, relative to this particular desire aggregate.
The person who says that we cannot aggregate desires would have to conclude that a benevolent person, given a choice between two options -- (a) a nuclear weapon goes off in New York City, or (b) a person in LA suffers a scratch on his hand -- can do nothing but cry, "I don't know what to do!"
The claim that we cannot aggregate desires not only flies in the face of everyday experience, it is easy to reduce to absurdity.
Within the scope of this paper, I do not have room to defend the claim that moral concepts are desire aggregates. Ultimately, I believe that moral statements are best interpreted as statements that evaluate desires according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. In other words, morality is ultimately concerned with what it is good for us to like (with 'us' being a key concept).
If this is true, then moral questions (e.g., "Should we ban capital punishment?" and "Are homosexual acts immoral?") are very similar to questions like, "Which restaurant should we go to?" There are only two key differences.
(1) Moral questions ultimately evaluate desires, rather than restaurants.
(2) The evaluate desires relative to an aggregate of all desires, not just the desires of those people who are going to lunch together.
So, the question of "Should we ban capital punishment?" becomes "If everybody hated capital punishment, would we be better off?"
Of course, we need to add provisions for such things as "ought" implies "can" and similar restrictions. There is no sense to be made of prescribing options that are not possible, for example. So, we look only at possible options.
For the purposes of this paper, it does not matter whether I can defend this whose thesis of moral value. The important points to draw out of this part of the discussion are:
(1) Desire-aggregate claims describe something that exists in the real world -- they are objectively true or false.
(2) Claims about desire aggregates are substantially independent of the desires of any given person -- just as there is one and only one total mass for all the people on Earth.
(D) Relativism
When people talk about objective morality, they often use the term relative rather than subjective. However, they typically treat these two as identical. "When I say that morality is relative, I mean that it is subjective."
It is a strange definition of relative.
Take a look at the following statements:
(1) The earth orbits the sun at an average distance of 93 million miles.
(2) John is taller than Sally
(3) 5 > 3
(4) P -> Q
(5) I live in Colorado
All of these statements take one thing and describes how it stands relative to something else. The first describes the motion of the earth relative to the sun. The second describes John's height relative to Susan's. All of these statements support relativism about the subject the statement is about.
Yet, we are hardly justified in saying that astronomy, biology, math, logic, and geography are fields of study that lack objectivity. If any of these statements were to appear in a scientific journal or presented paper, the person who protested, "This paper can be dismissed because these claims are all relative," would rightfully be laughed out of the room. And rightfully so.
Relativism does not imply subjectivism. Most objective statements are statements describing how one thing stands in relationship to another – nearer to or further from, larger or smaller, heavier or lighter, balder, fatter, richer, poorer, better, or worse.
As a corollary to this, some people like to argue that (subjective) value claims cannot appear in any (objective) scientific research -- or it would lose its objectivity. Yet, the whole purpose of as scientific paper is to make a value judgment – to report how one theory is better then its competitors. If better cannot be objective, then no defense of any theory in any field of science can be objective.
Relationships – relative states – are objective. They exist as a matter of fact. It is perfectly acceptable for any science to include the study of relevant relationships.
(E) Subjectivism
Those who defend moral relativism actually tend to be most interested in discussing a particular type of relationship – relationships between objects of evaluation and psychological states. The claim is that morality is relative in the sense that there is a psychological state – a belief or a desire or some other type of moral attitude – essential to that relationship. This is the type of relativism that can be called subjectivism.
There are three things to be said about this form of subjectivism.
(a) Subjective statements are objective.
First, they are as objective as any other type of relationship. An individual’s psychological states are as much a part of him as his white blood cell count, for example.
Let’s go ahead and distinguish relationships to white blood cell count from other types of relationships. We will call these relationships lymphojective. Lymphojectivity would not represent a different type of truth – something that is in any way qualitatively different from non-limphojective relationships. The objective truth of these relationships does not change just because we give them a new name.
Neither is it the case that statements about relationships to mental states describe an alternative type of reality. These statements also describe objective, real-world relationships, regardless of what we call them.
(b) Subjective claims need not be about me.
Second, relationships between things in the world and my psychological states are not the only relationships between things in the world and psychological states that exist. My desires are only a small part of the desires that exist.
Why do I bring this up?
Because many people who defend subjectivism state that the only thing that a person can talk about, when they use terms like good and bad, are their own psychological states – how things affect them. If I say that capital punishment is wrong, I have to be saying that I do not like capital punishment. All my moral claims are about me, and about nothing other than me.
However, I am no more bound to limit my value claims to statements about my own desires, than I am limited to talk about location by describing distance and direction from my physical body.
Imagine how impoverished our language would be if we limited people to talking about location only in terms of relationships between things and themselves. I would be prohibited from saying, for example, that the Empire State Building is in New York. I could only say that the Empire State Building is a particular direction and distance from me.
To make life simpler, we allow people to report the location of things by making reference to other things we are both familiar with. I can tell my wife that the remote to the TV is on the table, knowing that it will help her find the remote, because she knows where the table is.
So, there is no law or custom that prohibits people from talking about relationships between objects and the desires of other people. We do it all the time. "I like…", "She really hates it when…", "They would be happy if…". Where it is possible to talk about all of these types of relationships, why assert that all moral claims have to report only things like "I like…" or "I want…?"
(c) Cultural differences do not prove subjectivism.
Third, differences in attitudes across time and across cultures do not prove that moral values are subjective.
For example, the subjectivist points to a case where one culture believes that it is immoral for a person to have sex with somebody other than their spouse; another culture believes that this is not only permissible, but obligatory. One culture accepts slavery, while another culture condemns it. There is no absolute right or wrong in any of these instances, just the different beliefs of different people in different cultures.
We can do the same thing with science. We can look at, for example, ancient Greek science, and compare it to modern science. Yet, nobody argues from this that science is subjective.
Moral subjectivists typically add that we have no way to evaluate the moral claims of another culture, except to apply our moral standards to those claims. Yet, we also have no way to evaluate their scientific claims except by holding it up against our knowledge. This is not thought to infer the subjectivity of science.
(F) Relative vs. Absolute
People take the distinction between absolutism and relativism as a true example of opposites. Yet, the line between even these concepts is not as clear as people assume.
Einstein, in his theory of relativity, said that there is at least one absolute -- the speed of light in a vacuum. Many qualities once thought to be fixed, such as mass and length, turn out to change as an object approaches the speed of light. Therefore, Einstein said that mass and length are relative.
It is strange, I think, how Einstein was able to present a theory of relativity, without raising even the slightest hint of concern that he was making physics less objective.
More to the point, Einstein’s statement about the speed of light does not describe a true absolute. Note that Einstein was talking about the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light through water, or through glass, is less than the speed of light through a vacuum.
So, the speed of light is relative. It depends on what the light is traveling through. Under some circumstances, "Light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second" is true. However, if you change the circumstances and pass the light trough glass instead, "Light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second" is false.
So, we have a claim that is both, at the same time, relative and absolute. We have the possibility of absolute relationships.
If we can allow relationships to be absolute, then the same principle can be applied to other relationships. "Mount Everest was taller than K2 in 1995" is an absolute. Certain geological events may conspire to change the relative height of the mountains at some time in the future. However, for all people -- past, present, and future -- for all time, until the end of time, it will remain true that Mount Everest was taller than K2 in 1995.
The boundary between what is absolute, and what is relative, does not seem to be so easy to find as many who debate moral absolutism or relativism seem to suggest.
(G) The Point of This Exercise
The point of this exercise has been to bring to the foreground some of the relevant facts concerning the concepts of 'objective', 'subjective', 'relative', and 'absolute'.
Many people make assumptions when these concepts are used in moral discussions that are false. These false assumptions routinely find themselves into the debate, and do nothing but obscure the facts of the matter. It is important to see these assumptions and to recognize the degree to which they get in the way.
Because of these assumptions, it is extremely likely that two people can argue past each other and not even be talking about the same thing. Like one person shouting, "I live on Objectivist Street" and the other shouting back, "No I do not, you idiot, I live on Subjectivist Avenue," the debate heads nowhere.
This is the situation that the vast majority of people who debate the objectivity of ethics find themselves in. They would benefit, I think, from a clearer set of distinctions.
A MORE PRECISE SET OF DEFINITIONS
(A) What am I?
When I am asked whether I think that morality is objective or subjective, I typically answer objective. I immediately find myself being attacked by people accusing me of things I did not say, because they are using one of the mixed-up, self-contradictory definitions of objective discussed above.
What I mean by the term is that moral statements, like scientific statements, have a truth value that is substantially independent of the beliefs and desires of the speaker.
I do not mean that moral truths are universal and unchanging. There are a great many scientific claims, such as claims about the distance from the earth to the moon, that are claims about things that do change.
I do not mean that moral statements refer to something independent of psychological states – that they would persist even if all of the people were to disappear. But, then again, a great many scientific claims, such as claims within the field of medicine and human biology, would also cease to make sense in a universe without humans. This does not prevent these claims from being objective.
(B) Three Levels of Objectivity
In the debate over whether morality is objective or subjective, we can distinguish between three levels of objectivity. Each level excludes another set of propositions from the category objective and puts them in the category subjective.
(a) Broad objectivism; narrow subjectivism
The broadest sense of objectivity simply states that a proposition has a truth value – that is all. If this is what we mean by objective, then even statements like, "I (Alonzo) like chocolate ice cream" and "I really enjoyed that movie" would count as objective. They have a truth value. Anybody who thinks that "I (Alonzo) like chocolate ice cream" is not true – is not objectively true – is making a mistake. "I like chocolate ice cream" is true just as "I live in Colorado" is true, just as "I have blue eyes" is true, and "I am sitting at my computer writing a philosophy essay" is true.
Some utterances, such as "Close the door," or "Do you know the way to San Jose?" have no truth value. Yet, these are not the types of things we would classify as "objective" or "subjective". They are a different type of claim, one to which the concepts of "subjective" and "objective" do not apply.
Emotive utterances, such as, "Cockroaches! Ewww!" may be classified as non-truth-bearing subjective utterances using this distinction. However, every emotive utterance can be associated with a truth-bearing proposition that does exactly the same work. "Cockroaches! Ewww!" can be associated with "I feel ewwwness towards cockroaches" -- which is objectively true or false. If the speaker really does feel ewwness towards cockroaches, then her statement "I feel ewwwness towards cockroaches!" is true.
Because statements such as "I like chocolate ice cream" describes an objective fact, there are limits to what these types of propositions can imply. The inference, "I like chocolate ice cream, therefore God exists," is clearly invalid. Anybody who tries to draw more out of "I like chocolate ice cream" other than the fact that the agent (in this case, me) has a preference for chocolate ice cream is making a mistake.
What about the proposition, "I want everybody to deposit their money into my bank account?" Does this proposition imply, "Everybody has an obligation to deposit their money into my bank account?" Many moral subjectivists use this inference. They claim that moral statements are simply utterances of personal preference, and yet they also infer obligations and duties from these utterances. To do this, they need to explain, what seems to me to be inconceivable, how a you can derive an obligation from a personal preference.
(b) Middle objectivism; middle subjectivism
A narrower sense of objectivism excludes those statements that depend on the speaker's own psychological states. Using this distinction, if I am reporting on my own psychological states, the statement is subjective. If I am not reporting my own psychological states, then my statement is objective.
This narrower sense of objectivity creates some very strange results. If I were to say, "I like chocolate ice cream," then that would be subjective on this account. I am reporting on my own psychological states. However, if you were to say "Alonzo likes chocolate ice cream," that statement would be classified as objective. You would not be reporting on your own psychological states.
We can bring about the strangeness of this result if we look at what happens if I were to say "Alonzo likes chocolate ice cream." I am still talking about my own psychological states, so this statement would be subjective. However, I am uttering exactly the same sentence that somebody else would be uttering under conditions that would make that statement objective. So, we have exactly the same proposition being, at the same time, both subjective and objective, not depending on its content, but depending on who says it.
Using this category of objectivity and subjectivity, we are not really classifying propositions. We are classifying actions – speech utterances. It’s the same proposition in both cases. It is not being classified as objective or subjective based on any change in the proposition. It is being classified only on the basis of who states that proposition.
This level of objectivity is also ambiguous about how we classify statements about psychological states that include our own, but also includes others. Take, for example, a group of co-workers going out to lunch together. One of them reports "We like to go to Duffy’s." This person is not strictly reporting his own psychological states how Duffy's sits in relation to his own psychological states. He is reporting how Duffy's stands in relation to the desires of all those in the group that goes to lunch together. Most of those psychological states belong to others. So, for the most part, his statement concerns the psychological states of others, not himself. Do we count this as objective or subjective? Or is it a little of both?
There is one last point that I want the reader to keep in mind about this distinction. All subjective statements at this level are still objective in the broader sense described in the previous section. They all still have a truth value.
(c) Narrow objectivism; broad subjectivism
We can restrict what counts as objective still further by cutting out all statements having to do with any psychological states. Using this distinction, "I like chocolate ice cream" and "Alonzo likes chocolate ice cream" would count as subjective, because both of them report psychological states.
However, statements like "5 > 3" and "The earth is 4.5 billion years old," would count as objective. These are not statements about psychological states.
However, narrow objectivism would also exclude statements like "Three people were injured today in an accident on I-70," and "The world health organization is reporting an outbreak of Swine Flu in Vietnam."
These would count as subjective because calling something an injury, or classifying something as a disease, requires making a value judgment. It is not blind chance that makes injuries something to be avoided. Injuries, disease are bad in the same way that circles are round and bachelors are not married – it is a part of the meaning of the term. Value judgments require making references to psychological states, so would be subjective at this level.
Every proposition using the words like, damage, dangerous, harm, toxic, and healthy, to name a few, become subjective when we employ this distinction. Rational and irrational are also subjective, because we cannot talk about how rational a person is without talking about their psychological states.
Religious ethics also end up being subjective under this description. Religious ethics base their moral claims on what God likes or does not like, or on what God commands or does not command. This means talking about God's psychological states, and all talk of psychological states are here being called subjective.
SUMMARY
(A) The Typical Debate
When two people get together to debate whether morality is objective or subjective,
the debate seldom has any hope of making any real progress.
This is because both of them are wrong.
They discuss the issue as if there are only two options. We have to either accept that moral statements must refer to some property in the nature of certain types of acts or states that is absolute, unchanging, and completely independent of all other factors, for all time. Or we have to hold that moral assertions describe the arbitrary sentiments of the speaker.
Neither option actually makes much sense.
The absolutist option creates a hurdle that "objective morality" must clear that "objective physics" and "objective mathematics" could not pass.
The relativist option suggests that it is somehow coherent to hold two attitudes at the same time: "There is absolutely no reason for accepting A and rejecting not-A (where A and not-A are moral positions)," and "I accept A".
Neither option actually makes sense. Yet, people on both sides insist that these are the only two options available. They each see the absurdity in the opposing view, and assert that as a result there is no choice but to accept the position they do.
Subjectivists recognize that there is no such thing as intrinsic value -- no such thing as value without desire. When confronted with the claim that something can have objective value, they instantly demand the individual to prove that objective values exist. "What argument can you give me for holding that these intrinsic values you talk about are real?" When the opponent fails to answer the challenge, the subjectivist says, "See, morals are a matter of personal opinion. Morals are subjective."
The so-called absolutist then looks at this claim and is amazed at how illogical
it is. The subjectivist logic can only be understood as containing claims
like, "If I want you to do X, then you have an obligation to do X" -- such
as, "If I want you to shine my shoes, then you have an obligation to shine
my shoes." There is no way that a personal preference that a person do or
refrain from doing something can generate an obligation that the other person
do or refrain from that action. Yet, this absurd implication rests at the
core of the subjectivism.
Or, if the subjectivist wants to deny that they are inferring obligations
based only on his or her preferences, he heads from the frying pan into the
fire. The subjectivist offers no alternative to how duties and obligations
can come about. If personal preference cannot generate obligations, than nothing
can. Consequently, there are no obligations or duties.
Or, if the speaker’s preferences can only generate obligations and prohibitions for the speaker alone, we end up with a pointless and impotent morality that says merely "You are obligated to do only that which you feel like doing, and prohibited from doing only that which do not want to do."
Both sides see the clear flaws in their opponent's argument. They then bring
this false dichotomy into play that allows for no other options, and assert
that they must be correct. They fail to see that their own position is equally
flawed, and that there are other options.
So, the debate goes on, without end.
(B) Clarifying the Terms
When classifying things as subjective or objective, we really have three different classification schemes that we can use.
(1) Loose objectivism/strict subjectivism expands the objective category as much as possible, and restricts the subjective category accordingly. This distinction identifies every statement that has a truth value as objective. "I like ice cream" is objective. It has a truth value. Anybody who disagrees with this statement is making a mistake.
(2) Middle objectivism/middle subjectivism removes claims about the psychological states of the speaker from the objective category and puts it in the subjective category. The statement "I like ice cream" becomes subjective on this set of distinctions, because the speaker is talking about his or her own psychological states. However, statements like "Alonzo likes ice cream." or "We should order a pizza." are still objective, because these speakers are not talking about their own psychological states.
(3) Narrow objectivism/broad subjectivism further removes statements about any psychological states out of the objective category and places them in the subjective category. Using this distinction, even "Alonzo likes ice cream" and "We should order pizza" become subjective. However, "He was injured in a car wreck," "She believes that there is no God", and God's commandments are also subjective, because these statements also contain claims about psychological states.
Using this set of distinctions, my personal view is that morality is objective(1) – objective in the broad sense that moral statements have a truth value. Moral claims are substantially objective(2) in that they ultimately refer to all desires, of which the desires of the speaker make up a very small portion. Moral claims are also subjective(3). They refer to relationships between objects of evaluation and desires, and desires are mental states. Remove all of the mental states from the universe, and value would cease to exist. However, this "empty world test" does not prevent moral statements from being objective in the first two senses.
This set of distinctions drops the concepts of "absolutism" and "common subjectivism" from the debate. They have no effect but to confuse the debate and to keep people arguing and defending positions that make no sense. Both positions are internally inconsistent and absurd.
With these changes, and in particular putting an end to debate grounded on the false assumption that two (absurd) positions are the only options available -- perhaps it would be possible to move the debate forward.