Subjectivism

When people say that morality is subjective, they often mean simply that there really aren't any objective moral truths. But philosophers who defend versions of subjectivism frequently go on to offer us a new account of the moral dimension to compensate for the loss of objectivity.

Individual subjectivism: existential choice.

If alternative moral codes and ideals are possible, can each person simply choose which ones to adopt? According to many existentialists, most notably Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), there are no objective moral values or meanings. Each person, thrown into an indifferent, often cruel world, must create individual values through making choices and living life. Indeed, it is added, no values can be binding unless chosen personally. On this view a person's claim that abortion is wrong represents a moral judgment, but one that is motivated by (and only by) subjective, existential choices. Views like Sartre's are subjectivist in the sense that people create their own values for themselves, and different people (even within the same culture) may choose quite different values.

On accounts like Sartre's, disagreements about very important things (like the death penalty or forced clitoridectomy) boil down to simple differences in the values people have decided (often tacitly, and for no objective moral reasons) to adopt. But people who disagree about things like the morality of abortion rarely feel that their claims are merely expressions of their subjective commitments; indeed, most of them would see this as trivializing their view. Finally, views like Sartre's fail to do justice to the social nature of morality.

Individual subjectivism: noncognitivist views about ethics.

Noncognitivism is the view that moral claims do not (despite appearances) function to describe a moral realm and that they instead play a very different role. The most common versions of noncognitivism are species of expressionism, according to which moral claims serve to express a speaker's attitudes, feelings, or emotions.

In the 1930s the British philosopher A. J. Ayer (1910–1989) defended one of the earliest and most influential versions of expressionism. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, thanks to philosophers such as Allan Gibbard and Simon Blackburn, noncognitivism has enjoyed a resurgence, though the current versions are far more nuanced than Ayer's.

Noncognitivism avoids problems that threaten objectivism. It also explains the link between moral judgments and moral motivations, since such judgments are seen to be based on attitudes and feelings, which often have a powerful motivational force. On this view the claim that abortion is wrong serves to express the speaker's disapproval of, or horror at, abortion.

Objective versions of noncognitivism are possible, but noncognitivism has a strong tendency toward subjectivism. Most versions of noncognitivist subjectivism treat moral claims as expressions of a person's (subjective) attitudes or emotions and recognize that people (even within the same culture) may differ about these. Like most forms of individual subjectivism, this view is vulnerable to the difficulties, noted above, that threaten views such as Sartre's.

Group subjectivism.

There are several different types of group subjectivism.

Different human groups. Human beings are social animals who acquire most of their values and attitudes in the process of socialization; these acquisitions become part of a shared social heritage. Hence, it is often argued, there can be widespread agreement about right and wrong and what makes for a meaningful life within a group (such as a culture). But groups with different cultures, languages, or religions may share values that are quite alien to other groups.

This view allows a good deal of agreement and intersubjectivity within a culture, and morality does not boil down to simply what any particular individual thinks or feels or decides. Furthermore, it enables us to explain how moral arguments within a culture are possible; the partisans share enough values and beliefs that disagreement here and there is possible, and issues can often be evaluated within a shared framework of values and standards for moral justification. On this view the claim that abortion is wrong amounts to the claim that all or most members of the culture believe that it is or, more plausibly, that they subscribe to more general principles that entail this.

This view is subjectivist in the sense that moral facts and values are not based on any objective moral realm, but instead derive from (shared) attitudes and outlooks that may vary from group to group. Although ethical debate within a relevant group (such as a culture) is possible, there are no non–question begging methods to adjudicate disagreements between different cultures or the like. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to view some moral differences (as about the Holocaust) as mere differences in group opinions.

Species subjectivism.

Species subjectivism is the view that ethical matters rest on subjective aspects (like emotions) of human beings. Humans are similar enough, however, that specieswide values are possible. David Hume's (1711–1776) mid-eighteenth-century account of morality is the prototype for such views.

On Hume's view, morality is a matter of feeling rather than reason and is based on human sentiments that are ultimately grounded in human sympathy. Because Hume believed human nature to be constant, he concluded that many of the basic aspects of morality would be similar for all human beings. Still, in a letter to Francis Hutcheson Hume regretted the limitations of his view, stating that it "regards only human nature and human life." Recent "sensibility theories" are more sophisticated than Hume's but are recognizably inspired by it.

Species subjectivism underwrites a specieswide intersubjectivity that allows genuine moral argument and debate among humans. Hume went on to argue that we often "project" our feelings and attitudes onto the world, so they seem (wrongly) to characterize something objective ("out there"). This enabled Hume to explain the appearance that moral discourse and argument involve literal description.

Different versions of species subjectivism would offer different accounts of the claim that abortion is wrong, but all rest on views about human nature and human sensibility. Views like Hume's are subjective in the sense that, although all human beings have roughly the same moral sentiments, this is a completely contingent fact about us.

Many philosophers have argued that morality is based on things like reason that run deeper than emotions like human sympathy. In fact, as Hume himself lamented, his account may make morality seem uncomfortably contingent, resting on subjective (such as emotional) aspects of human life. Indeed, it is nowadays natural to view these aspects as the product of an evolutionary history shot through with randomness and chance.