Really? Self-sacrifice and penance are almost the basis of one the most popular moral theories in the world. Just go ask the closest Christian you might have.
> Self-sacrifice and penance are almost the basis of one the most popular moral theories in the world
You can't make those objective, though. That is my point. (It's not like I haven't actually heard of Christian morality before.)
Ultimately, the only thing that actually matters for any living organism is pleasure. Thus, only pleasure, ultimately, can be good or bad for an organism.
I mean "pleasure" in the broadest possible sense, but it's always either a physical sensation or an emotion.
Subjective things can only truly matter if they bring pleasure or cause pain. So my point is still correct. (We need a definition of subjective, though, so this probably isn't clear.)
It's true that someone could subjectively think, mistakenly, that something matters, which doesn't. So someone could be wrong about what matters. e.g. Someone could think that God's approval matters, when in reality, only pleasure and pain matter for their own sake.
That's a big "if", though. For others, stealing might increase one's pleasure. This decrease v. increase of pleasure about something is what's called an "opinion".
It's not objective if it changes based on who you ask and how you observe it.
> > It's not objective if it changes based on who you ask and how you observe it.
> Sure it is.
No, its not. "Objective" means, exactly, that its truth is not dependent on who you ask or how you observe; "subjective" is the word that describes claims that are dependent on those things.
If I get pleasure from doing X, that is an objective fact.
If I value Y, that is an objective fact.
Anyway, I'm not going to present a full epistemological theory of objectivity in the comments of HN. That would be futile. If you want to know about it, you can go research it. I don't mind chatting about it, I'm just pointing out that you can't expect too much from me here. Generally, the most I try to do in an online philosophical discussion is get people to think (when I disagree with them), not try to prove something. It's just not possible to prove much without, like, writing a book.
I think what javert meant is this:
The sentence "Goodness of stealing is directly proportional with the net pleasure." (positive net pleasure = good) is objective.
And the sentence "Badness of stealing is inversely proportional with the net pleasure" (negative net pleasure = bad) is equally objective.
These roughly convert to:
If stealing brings you pleasure it is good for you.
If stealing brings you pain it is bad for you.
If being stolen from brings you pleasure it is good for you.
If being stolen from brings you pain it is bad for you.
But to clarify for anyone wondering, I would also say that stealing is never pleasurable unless someone is severely fucked up, in which case overall their life is going to be unpleasurable (shitty) in general.
So it's not like my argument is an excuse to steal.
In fact, if I were to write it all out carefully, it would be the ultimate and most compelling justification for practically never stealing.