I don't think there's such a thing as objective morality anyway. If there is, no one knows what it is, since no one has ever given me an example of a moral rule that's objectively correct. Indeed, since such a rule is a concept, an abstraction, about proper behavior, how could a moral rule exist independently of the brain that holds the concept? (Take the number 2 as an example of a abstract concept with no real counterpart. That's the reason you don't trip over uninstantiated 2s on your morning walk. Or stub your toe on moral rules with objective existence.)
Yours is the definition of objective morality (or objective anything) that I use as well. Objective relates to the word object, and an object is a thing outside of the mind that can in principle be apprehended by the minds.
To me, the phrase
objective morality means essentially the same thing as
absolute morality, but both are very different from universal morality, which can be purely subjective notwithstanding a consensus if the heads of those moral agents are the only place this moral value lives..
Either a moral statement has truth value or it does not.
It can be subjectively true - true for me or true for you - but not objectively true.
Moral statements are always opinions that cannot be demonstrated. You can say that slavery is wrong, but you cannot demonstrate it. You can demonstrate that it steals a persons freedom and labor, and subjects the slave to situations such as having spouses and children sold off, and beatings. Those are objective truths. They are there in physical reality for all to see.
A person with a healthy sense of empathy and compassion will object, but he cannot argue that he is correct - that his opinion is demonstrably true. A sociopath witnessing the same circumstance might be indifferent to the plight of the slave. If that sociopath were a slave owner, and you went to him telling him that he is wrong, and that that was not merely an opinion, but true in some objective sense the way that it is true that the sun warms our planet
The slaver might ask me to prove that he has the truth, but the person with the conscience won't be able to do it. The best he can do is to say that it pains him to witness somebody being treated in such a manner, and the sociopath could then rightly say that that is his subjective perception, and that his own is different, and the sociopath would be correct.
So the empath lines up everybody he can find, and they all agree with him to the slaver that slavery is wrong, and the soiciopath deals with them one by one as he did the first empath, arriving at the same conclusion in each case: That's your subjective reality, not mine.
Even in the unlikely event that they win over the sociopath and the consensus becomes unanimous that slavery is wrong, all that we have is what can be called a universal moral value until somebody comes along that disagrees. At no point does this value become objectively real as Blu defines the term. It does not exist outside of minds, and if all of those minds perished, so would that moral value, at least until somebody else came along and declared it as his subjective value.
Objective morality has a truth value. If I said that it is wrong to stab a woman in the neck for helping her children would you say that this is not necessarily true? In what way is it not necessarily true? Do some people think this is necessarily true? If so then you can understand objective morality. Objective morality suggest that there is a universal truth to some moral claims.
I would say that it is true for me. It is not necessarily try for the psychopath., and I think you are conflating objective truth and universal truth as defined above.
If you are going to say that morals have no truth value in that they cannot necessarily be true you are arguing that they are not objective.
Yes. Exactly, provided that by truth we are talking about objective truth - that which is true whether minds exist to know it or not.- and not subjective truth, which is something that is true to the individual, but not necessarily true for others - something such as "Brussels sprouts are nauseating to me.
I cannot demonstrate that experience, even if I eat Brussels sprouts in front of others and begin retching. Nobody but me knows if I am experiencing nausea or faking it.
