I've said all I'm going to say in this thread. I lack the time or energy required to continue responding unproductively to what appears to me as so many distortions and so much sophistry from some of those here. — Janus

The "I can't actually address the objections brought up, but I'm not about to drop my spiel" tactic.

It's normative because its the feeling or the kind of feeling that allows people to live together more or less harmoniously. — Janus

But now we're back where we started. If a feeling that one should torture a child turned out (by some convoluted chain of events) to bring about an harmonious society later down the line, does that make it morally OK to do it?

If not, then making an harmonious society is clearly not what determines that which is moral. If it just wouldn't be possible, then what physical law prevents such a scenario?

It's a question, how can a question be distortion and sophistry?

The "I can't actually address the objections brought up, but I'm not about to drop my spiel" tactic. — Terrapin Station

Yes. The irony of accusing us of sophistry.

I get what you're saying, but I disagree. I think that, in the fields where moral decisions are made, the 'way the world is' is sufficiently complex that no single model stands out as being objectively best with the clarity you believe. Of course, there are models which are so bad they can be discarded from consideration, but that still leaves most options that normal adult humans consider, in play. — Isaac

Ultimately I agree with this, but I think you understate how much rationally persuasive wiggling room we can derive from comparing/discarding bad models alone (and remaining skeptical/waiting for evidence concerning "best" models; all we need is reasonably "better").

When we consider "what should we do next" by wondering what is the most optimal possible course of action, we run into severe problems of data gathering and computation, and there will always be possible courses of action we have yet to consider, which might be even more optimal for our given values. The most coherent way I think we can talk about these kinds of considerations is to put them on a spectrum of less morally praiseworthy to more morally praiseworthy (obligation flies out the window, because we're much more aligned about what we want to avoid than we are in our visions of a perfect future). Sometimes we can say with reasonable confidence that some positive (and complex) sets of actions are better than others, but by their very nature these positions are less certain and fundamentally tentative.

When we consider "what should we do next" by wondering first what courses of action we can rule out as sub-optimal (usually by comparing them to their absence) we can get much more rational confidence behind us given that we only need consider two courses of action and their possible outcomes (opposed to all possible courses of action). The resulting statements of negative moral obligation amount to things like "don't murder and torture people" and "don't gouge your eyes out". In practice this moral approach captures an arguably greater portion of moral conclusions at large: usually, but not always, moral arguments seek to forbid us from taking specific courses of action (a negative obligation stemming from a negative conclusion), but sometimes they seek to establish positive obligations from positive conclusions (e.g: worshiping god on Sunday is morally obligatory); the former sort of moral proposition is usually the more well founded (and testable)).

When it comes to actions like vaccines, it's fundamentally a harder argument to make (especially to say that vaccines are the best possible or morally optimal course of action), but if we focus on just comparing taking vaccines to not taking vaccines, we have a decent shot at coming to reasonable conclusions about which action is "better" in general (it was never really in contention for "best"). Strictly speaking, it would be more ideal if we had technology that could eliminate diseases in the first place; such a technology is probably possible, but we don't yet have access to it. Moving from the general case to the specific case, differing particular circumstances (such as compromised immune system and age) do change the calculus of whether or not vaccines are better than no vaccines, but here perhaps we can make an even more confident conclusion about which option is better because we can move beyond the general statistical assessment to become more precise. We will never know with absolute precision whether a given vaccination will be better or worse in the long run, but reasonable people can be convinced by reasonable evidence (maybe that's a naive mantra; I have to assume/hope that it's not). If I give you an unweighted dice with six sides, and all sides but one displays a value of 6, you would be remiss to bet on anything but 6, statistically speaking.

Moral positions relate to the effect actions have on people. Fields covering the effects on people are mainly psychology, sociology and human biology. None of these fields has the rigour of basic physics (or even chemistry) and to treat them as such is a mistake. Models can, and frequently do, come completely undone as new information emerges, and multiple models exist simultaneously. — Isaac

It's actually very interesting that psychology and sociology should rank high on your list of considerations to make. High on my list are things like economics (which is in truth a lot more sophisticated than many people realize), medical science (which admittedly has it's weak areas), game-theory, complexity science (an interdisciplinary approach to heuristically modeling complex systems), and a spat of other useful perspectives that are typically related to moral quandaries.

It really reveals the way in which your perspective of morality is more focused on the relative and subjective way people feel about moral values,and also their actions, as opposed to the more strict empirical approach I take to the way actions conform to relative values in the first place. How people feel about actions can ultimately affect their values (hence the emergence of virtue ethics, which is in my view ultimately confusing an imaginary value inherent to actions with their situational utility), so in practice I don't expect to always manage to disentangle the two, but at some point I'm willing to depart from subjective feelings pertaining to actions or their outcomes in favor of an empirical (or our best effort at empirical) attempt to quantify whether or not actions comport with reported values in an objective sense (even if I need to meta-ethically disregard their virtues as value-utility-proxies). If someone wants to go on living as a primary moral value, but they believe that the actions, or lack of actions, required to stay alive are for whatever reasons are not really required for survival, as an observer we could say they have made a mistake (a statistically bad gamble) (and in hindsight, if they die because of it, we might even say so with approximate certainty).

To unite the semantic difference between us, we can imagine that how people feel about proposed actions is actually a values-report; that the way people feel about actions actually impacts their values hierarchy, such that relativism keeps it "true for them" that their actions serve their actual moral values. While this is a sensical interpretation, I can still make room for my position in so far as a given value-hierarchy might not actually be internally consistent, and also in so far as the way perceptions of actions actually affect people's values-hierarchies is malleable to reason based persuasion. We can challenge values hierarchies directly by exploring how one of their values (or the action which serves it) forseeably subverts one of their more fundamentally important values. We can also, and mainly, mitigate the subjectivity in how proposed actions are perceived by more objectively exploring the ramifications of proposed actions. So long as people believe we can say they are neither right nor wrong from the strict relativist standpoint, but in practice, if we can get people to change their mind then the statement "morally incorrect/immoral/morally inferior" actually does have relevant and consistent meaning within relativism.

Most models are complex. This means they rapidly become quite unpredictable over long periods of time. Even your sacred cow of the success of vaccination has only been measured over a few decades. What about 100 years, 1000 years? Do you think anyone has any hope of reliably predicting the effects on societies over those timescales? — Isaac

Vaccines might be extraordinarily dis-eugenic, you're right, but these are risks of a different nature. The first vaccines took the form of crushed up scabs from people who survived the pox being snorted/blown into the nasal cavity. Back then they had no sweet clue what was going on, but the immediate benefits were apparent enough for them to assume a causal link. They indeed had no way of knowing that many generations down the line this practice might one day lead to a dependence on foreign intervention into our immune systems, but the costs of what you're describing are truly horrific. To ensure that future generations will have robust immune systems, we either need to let people die naturally from disease, or we would need to sterilize anyone deemed too weak to survive a disease without the vaccine. The price of eugenic progress (or even keeping our current eugenic health) is the hardhearted natural or artificial selection. Some people will fundamentally believe that the upward health of future generations is more important than any amount of happiness, including access to life, for ourselves and our more immediate descendants.

Most people just aren't willing to extend their sphere of moral consideration that far. Like anti-natalism, once self-consideration has been completely mitigated or removed from a moral equation, it becomes something else entirely: an incompatible set of moral values. Thankfully most people don't go that far, else we would not permit ourselves to thrive if it posed any risk to others.

Basically my feeling is that, in the face of such uncertainty, feeling good about one's decisions is more important than the extremely fragile result of some utilitarian calculus. That's not to say that these models are useless, far from it. I think it vitally important that when one's approach is overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence, one is well advised to change it, but the key word here is 'overwhelmingly'. Not only is a preponderance of evidence not enough, but most of importantly, I personally must be overwhelmed by it, not others telling me I should be. — Isaac

I would say that in the face of relative uncertainty we're forced to go with our guts, but the results of our evolving decision-making fields do tend to be more reliable than reading the portents from sheep-guts. By "utilitarian calculus" I'm trying to point to higher quality evidence based assessments (wanna-be calculations) of the outcomes of proposed actions in the first place. I realize that people will go with their guts, but it's also apparent that more experienced and well-informed guts make more reliable decisions. Magnus Carlsen or Bobby Fischer can only be trusted when they tell you what chess move you should make, but I'm not saying we're obligated to do what they say, or even that they're always right. The crux of my point is that it is most important for us to try to become experienced and informed, like them, that we too can make more reliable decisions (that we're sometimes impelled to trust preeminent experts on specific matters is not a complication we cannot use reason to assess). No matter what your values are, relatively speaking, being able to better serve them by avoiding the bad moves and tending toward better moves is in my view the most significant way to assess the meta-ethical quality of a framework or proposed action in an of itself (relative values aside).

It's not a perfect approach (or one that seeks perfection), but the vector of reason and evidence is hopefully a more persuasive method. If we have to redefine what we mean by some words in some contexts to expose more of that overwhelming persuasive power, that's what matters. In practical moral debate we just can't meaningfully bring the moral-epistemic implications of relativism without also neutering the persuasive power of our language; if and where we have fundamentally different starting values, to import relativism would be to give up an attempt to influence their values directly. If we don't need to influence their values because they are not in competition with our own, then we don't need relativism at all; we can focus on how our moral agreements empirically serve (or more easily: do not disservice) our mutually compatible values.

---

Despite my addiction to verbosity and post length, I think I'm getting a clearer picture of the differences between our views as our discussion progresses. Thanks for your patience!

wondering your thought on this as well. Can you imagine, except for some incredibly minute exceptions, that any human being could actually be honest with their conscience, and say it would be moral to needlessly torture innocent children?

Despite my addiction to verbosity and post length, I think I'm getting a clearer picture of the differences between our views as our discussion progresses. Thanks for your patience! — VagabondSpectre

I don’t even read your posts because they’re so long. I’m being lazy, though. I just read your opening few sentences, then skipped to this last part.

I just read a little more of your post but gave up again. I would find it more enticing to read if you mixed in some short sentences with your more complex ones. But, you don’t have to take my advice.

I don’t even read your posts because they’re so long. I’m being lazy, though. I just read your opening few sentences, then skipped to this last part. — Noah Te Stroete

I'm well aware of contracting attention spans in the era of click bait. You would be better off having read the second to last paragraph:

It's not a perfect approach (or one that seeks perfection), but the vector of reason and evidence is hopefully a more persuasive method. If we have to redefine what we mean by some words in some contexts to expose more of that overwhelming persuasive power, that's what matters. In practical moral debate we just can't meaningfully bring the moral-epistemic implications of relativism without also neutering the persuasive power of our language; if and where we have fundamentally different starting values, to import relativism would be to give up an attempt to influence their values directly. If we don't need to influence their values because they are not in competition with our own, then we don't need relativism at all; we can focus on how our moral agreements empirically serve (or more easily: do not disservice) our mutually compatible values. — VagabondSpectre

That one paragraph doesn't fully summarize the entire post though...

I've considered making TL;DRs, but all that would really do is to encourage laziness. If we could really compact all this communication into denser language without sacrificing precision and our ability to locate meaningful differences, we would probably be doing that in the first place.

At some point additional information becomes superfluous to the point of a post, but I would rather err on the side of too long and have a better shot at meaningful exchanges than err on the side of to short and risk passing (and speak past) each other like ships in the rhetorical dark.

I think it is more engaging to mix up sentence lengths. I find it cognitively exhausting to read many consecutive complex sentences.

I find it cognitively exhausting to read many consecutive complex sentences. — Noah Te Stroete

I find it cognitively underwhelming to only read or write in curt and simplistic fashion :wink: .

To be fair I think my writing style has its moments, though the volume can be off-putting to some; my downright playful overuse of the semi-colon, for instance...

I find it cognitively underwhelming to only read or write in curt and simplistic fashion :wink: . — VagabondSpectre

Not what I was saying at all.

then what is to prevent others for assigning other values in the same circumstances? — Isaac

Nothing. That's why you need, first, reason, and second as necessary a gun. A bigger, better gun than the other guy.

There is no accounting for what some people think. Nor is being thought virtue of a thought.

Is there nothing that you hold is plain wrong - or right - not because you feel that it is, but because it is?

Not what I was saying at all. — Noah Te Stroete

I know, I'm only joshing ya!

I finally read that post I was referring to in its entirety. I agree that choosing the “better” option is what normative ethics is based on, similar to my previous suggestion of choosing the “lesser of two evils”. That said, meta-ethically I believe that ethics is based on a duty to do no harm (instinctive avoidance of pain in conjunction with finding oneself living in a community). I think the positive duties (duties to perform some actions) are more problematic epistemically than the negative duties (duties to abstain from certain actions), as telling someone they MUST act in a certain way is not descriptive of the variations we see in different societies; and in order to have a moral truth, it is easier to know what all societies abstain from than what they all commonly do.

But now we're back where we started. If a feeling that one should torture a child turned out (by some convoluted chain of events) to bring about an harmonious society later down the line, does that make it morally OK to do it?

If not, then making an harmonious society is clearly not what determines that which is moral. If it just wouldn't be possible, then what physical law prevents such a scenario?

It's a question, how can a question be distortion and sophistry? — Isaac

Yes. The irony of accusing us of sophistry. — Isaac

I haven't accused you of distortion and sophistry...yet...I had thought you are one of the more reasonable respondents in this thread.

Although the way you frame the question does distort the sense of what I said regarding the purpose of morality being to engender harmonious human community. I have been arguing that moral feelings and thoughts are always aimed at social harmony. Introducing a ridiculous thought experiment involving a scenario where somehow killing one baby is supposed to produce (what, endless?) social harmony somehow by magic has nothing whatsoever to do with what I had been saying.

It is not "making an harmonious society" (whatever that could even mean) that determines that which is moral; the intent to live well and harmoniously with others is what makes attendant thoughts and feelings moral thoughts and feelings. The intent to serve only your own interest is what makes attendant thoughts and feelings immoral or amoral.

As I see it, Terrapin is an unrelenting sophist, and I can't be bothered to respond to his posts. S is also tending that way, so I am done responding to him as well. To me both of these posters are more concerned with insisting ad nauseum on their own inadequate views and with winning arguments than with discussing any issue in good faith and with an open mind. I just can't be bothered with that kind of shit anymore; I've already wasted too much time on it.

The problem with all of these kinds of threads that consist in people basically shouting at one another "yes it is", "no it's not" "yes it is" "no it's not" etc. etc. etc. is that the interlocutors are starting from such basically incompatible assumptions that all that results is pages and pages of talking past one another. Such "conversations" are basically worthless shit, devoid of genuine insight, totally boring and unproductive and not worth wasting any precious time on.

The most coherent way I think we can talk about these kinds of considerations is to put them on a spectrum of less morally praiseworthy to more morally praiseworthy — VagabondSpectre

I don't see how we can do this in the face of such uncertainty, without assigning an ordinal value to each option, we cannot order them, and if are admittedly unclear about the details, how can we be clear about the ordinal value we assign. Throwing out the nonsense, we agree on, the unreasoned and the insane, but all we have left after that is a pool of equally viable options. I don't se any logical reason why, in some areas, one option may not still rise slightly above the others. I see no logical reason why it might not be the case that all the options just happen to be very obviously ordinal. But I cannot see what worldy force would make this the case for all decisions.

Strictly speaking, it would be more ideal if we had technology that could eliminate diseases in the first place; such a technology is probably possible, but we don't yet have access to it. — VagabondSpectre

This is an interesting example of the sort of long-term thinking which makes rational calculus complicated. I would say that, coming down a notch from from ideal, strictly speaking it would be more ideal if we had an easy, free medical intervention which made the complications which can sometimes arise from childhood diseases a trivial matter. A deep wound often used to be a death sentence, now it is an almost trivial matter because we have antibiotics. If complications like encephalitis were to go the same way as a result of better medicines, then there would be no need for vaccinations at all, no matter how small the risk. But that's not going to happen when the world's third largest industry is currently making billions out of an injection which they can sell to every child on the planet whether they need it or not. What CEO in their right mind is going to invest in a drug which only a small number of people will need, to replace a drug they currently sell to everyone?

If I give you an unweighted dice with six sides, and all sides but one displays a value of 6, you would be remiss to bet on anything but 6, statistically speaking. — VagabondSpectre

Again, you're missing the point because you're simply assuming knowledge rather than taking account of uncertainty. You're presuming, in this situation, that you know the dice has six sides, five of which are a 6. Of course in that situation, you would be best off betting on six. But in the situation I'm describing, vaccination particularly, you do not know that the dice has five 6's, you are told that the dice has five 6's by a relatively small group of of people. A group who have a vested interest in you betting on 6, a group who have demonstrated themselves, at least in some instances, to be untrustworthy, and incapable of understanding statistics. And on top of that, they're not even talking about your dice, just dice in general. The situation no longer seems so obvious.

It really reveals the way in which your perspective of morality is more focused on the relative and subjective way people feel about moral values,and also their actions, as opposed to the more strict empirical approach I take to the way actions conform to relative values in the first place. — VagabondSpectre

Not entirely, but it still highlights a difference between us. I don't see the point in keeping people alive if they're not going to be happy. It's people's happiness that matters to me. Why do people do risky sports? Because the increase in happiness is worth the reduced life expectancy. So psychology and sociology are important considerations. We can't just presume people want to remain alive for as long as possible at all costs, want to have as much wealth as possible at all costs. Clichéd though it sounds, this is just not the case.

We can challenge values hierarchies directly by exploring how one of their values (or the action which serves it) forseeably subverts one of their more fundamentally important values. We can also, and mainly, mitigate the subjectivity in how proposed actions are perceived by more objectively exploring the ramifications of proposed actions. So long as people believe we can say they are neither right nor wrong from the strict relativist standpoint, but in practice, if we can get people to change their mind then the statement "morally incorrect/immoral/morally inferior" actually does have relevant and consistent meaning within relativism. — VagabondSpectre

I'm in agreement with this. In contrast to some relativist, I also think that it is possible for people to simply be incorrect about how they feel. It's possible for someone to report that they feel good in a society which, for example commits FGM, but for them to be mistaken about that, and that they would, in fact, feel much better in a society which doesn't. The difference between us is simply the fact that I stop a lot earlier than you in such determinations. You seem to think that you can continue to demonstrate internal inconsistencies right down to the level of fine decision-making. I think we lose certainty so rapidly as we get more complex, that only the very basics are approachable like this.

To ensure that future generations will have robust immune systems, we either need to let people die naturally from disease, or we would need to sterilize anyone deemed too weak to survive a disease without the vaccine. — VagabondSpectre

It's funny how often I hear this type of argument in so many fields. People seem willing to believe we live in a world of remarkable, often unimaginable, technological marvelry, and yet, when you ask them to imagine an alternative to one single aspect of it, all they can come up with is the same world but just without the thing in question.

I'm not sure I talking about a hard-hearted eugenics. I'm talking about a better system. One in which taking a prophylactic drud at birth is not the only way we can think of to tackle social infections. And I'm not talking about the disadvantages to the immune system either. I'm talking about the disadvantages (in a potential future) of having a private company responsible for injecting something into every child in the world. Are you seriously suggesting you can't see a risk there?

The crux of my point is that it is most important for us to try to become experienced and informed, like them, that we too can make more reliable decisions (that we're sometimes impelled to trust preeminent experts on specific matters is not a complication we cannot use reason to assess). — VagabondSpectre

We are agreed here, as I think we've now firmly established. Where we disagree is simply over the strength of evidence contradicting one's 'gut' that is required to make one change. For me it is very high, for you it seems to be merely a preponderance.

Can you imagine, except for some incredibly minute exceptions, that any human being could actually be honest with their conscience, and say it would be moral to needlessly torture innocent children? — Rank Amateur

Yes, unfortunately I can because people do torture children. They do so to greater or lesser degree all the time. The insane and the psychopathic may well believe it their moral duty to torture children. Right at the other end of the scale, but still very relevant, anyone buying products resulting from child labour (but arguing that it's "someone else's problem") is complicit in minor torture of innocent children. What about the swathes of religious nutters like Calvinists who (used to) beat their children on a daily basis to "beat the devil out of them". I'm afraid there are huge sections of society who think it is morally OK, sometimes even their moral duty, to beat innocent children.

That's why you need, first, reason, and... — tim wood

Still not understanding this "first reason" thing. How can you reason first. You must have some objective first to reason toward. Can you give me an example of how someone might arrive at any conclusion with reason alone, no objective at all?

Is there nothing that you hold is plain wrong - or right - not because you feel that it is, but because it is? — tim wood

Yes, but I'm a deflationist about truth claims. Something "just is" if and only if, when I treat it that way, it works. The desk in front of me "just is" solid because when I treat it as such it responds as I expect. In fact, physicists seem to be telling me that the desk is not 'really' solid afterall, but, not being a physicist, I don't care.

But "murder is wrong" is not a proposition similar to "this desk is solid" because there's no test I can think of which clarifies it. I treat the desk as if it were solid and so long as it responds appropriately I'm happy to believe it is in fact solid. What would be the equivalent with murder being wrong. I treat murder as wrong and then what response should I be expecting to see if I'm right about that? Every one I can think of has problems of the sort I outlined in my scenario.

↪Isaac wondering your thought on this as well. Can you imagine, except for some incredibly minute exceptions, that any human being could actually be honest with their conscience, and say it would be moral to needlessly torture innocent children? — Rank Amateur

I can but even if we accept for the sake of argument that no such people exist, then all you have then is universal intersubjectivity. It doesn't get you an objective morality.

I haven't accused you of distortion and sophistry...yet...I had thought you are one of the more reasonable respondents in this thread. — Janus

Well then please ignore my last comment.

the intent to live well and harmoniously with others is what makes attendant thoughts and feelings moral thoughts and feelings. — Janus

Same problem still applies. If the intent is what makes it moral, then what of the situation where you may have to, for example, murder some innocent to save others. Your intent behind committing the murder is to save the others (the harmonious society), but that does not make you undertake the murder with relish, safe in the knowledge that it is best for the community. Something still tells you murder is wrong, even when your intention is purely the best interests of the group. If that something is not morality (because by intention, you've determined this action is, in fact, moral) then what is it?

To me both of these posters are more concerned with insisting ad nauseum on their own inadequate views and with winning arguments than with discussing any issue in good faith and with an open mind. — Janus

I disagree strongly here. I don't see how you can justify that kind of accusation. What does "good faith" even mean in this context, and what types of argument are you identifying as examples of "bad faith" As far as I read the discussion, it started out with Tim simply declaring, without argument, that some things were simply "wrong". Some relativist have tried to make their case and been met with just a repeated assertion that "some things are just wrong". I tried to explain my position with a thought experiment (a perfectly normal, common philosophical tool) and you took the hump and said you weren't engaging anymore.

How is that discussing with an open mind?

wondering your thought on this as well. Can you imagine, except for some incredibly minute exceptions, that any human being could actually be honest with their conscience, and say it would be moral to needlessly torture innocent children? — Rank Amateur

What bothers me about comments like this--and they tend to be legion--is the apparent assumption that it goes without saying that the popularity (or as others prefer, "prevalence," just to avoid Aspieish confusion) of something has some significance for its normative merit. Basically it seems to be an endorsement of an argumentum ad populum. Or it's an endorsement of conformity for its own sake--as if (almost) everyone doing, saying, etc. something is a good reason to have to follow suit.

the question was not do they, the question was, would they be acting in accordance with their conscience. I understand that we humans can rationize or justify just about anything, to others and to ourselves. Just because they do it, or say it, does not mean they are acting or talking in conflict with their conscience.

I can but even if we accept for the sake of argument that no such people exist, then all you have then is universal intersubjectivity. It doesn't get you an objective morality. — ChrisH

Other than the label you apply to it, is there some pragmatic difference between universal subjectivity and objectivity?

What bothers me about comments like this--and they tend to be legion--is the apparent assumption that it goes without saying that the popularity (or as others prefer, "prevalence," just to avoid Aspieish confusion) of something has some significance for its normative merit. Basically it seems to be an endorsement of an argumentum ad populum. — Terrapin Station

It was a question, not a comment. And I was just hoping for an honest response of what people truly think about it. Conscience seems an important concept in this discussion. Wondering if you, in your understanding of conscience and in your interaction with your own conscience, can you imagine that, without some very very small exceptions, many human consciences find needless children torture morally permissible. If your honest answer is yes, we can handle the popularity issue after that.

So what's the point of drawing attention to "except for some incredibly minute exceptions" as if that's of no importance for imagining this?

how about, instead of wondering, guessing, or thinking tactically on what this does or does not do to your argument and position, you just honestly answer the question. It is just an opinion, it is not provable, just want to know what your honest thought is on it.

I added the "except" part because I have been on this board awhile and absolute statements would send me down 15 posts about absolutely instead of the concept at hand, thought would try and get it out of the way.

the question was not do they, the question was, would they be acting in accordance with their conscience. I understand that we humans can rationize or justify just about anything, to others and to ourselves. Just because they do it, or say it, does not mean they are acting or talking in conflict with their conscience. — Rank Amateur

My answer would be much as Terrapin's above. The incrediblely minute exceptions are what we're talking about from a meta-ethical position. And they're important because at one time, people who thought women should be allowed to vote were the incrediblely minute exception.

To be more specific to your question. Yes, I can imagine it because, without any (to me) unnecessary 'spooky stuff' I have no reason to believe that conscience is anything other than an activity of the brain an brains vary for all sorts of different reasons. So even if you bring it down to the very basic values (by which I mean values that are not derived inductively from other more basic ones), I see no factor in the world which would prevent some brains from developing some particular base value.

Other than the label you apply to it, is there some pragmatic difference between universal subjectivity and objectivity? — Rank Amateur

A proposition is subjective if its truth value is is dependent on personal feelings, tastes or opinions (i.e. existing in someone's mind rather than the external world)

A proposition is objective if it's truth value is independent of the person uttering it.

In other words if it's subjective it reflects how people feel rather than any mind independent reality. This was essentially what the OP and the ensuing exchanges have been about.

how about, instead of wondering, guessing, or thinking tactically on what this does or does not do to your argument and position, you just honestly answer the question. It is just an opinion, it is not provable, just want to know what your honest thought is on it. — Rank Amateur

Because it's a pet issue of mine. I see that appeal to the crowd, to the status quo, come up again and again, in all sorts of guises.

At any rate, there's no moral stance that I can't imagine someone sincerely having. I wouldn't be able to guess how common any stance would be, but I don't think that's relevant to anything. That irrelevance was just my point immediately above.