Ethical subjectivism
Ethical subjectivism (also known as moral subjectivism and moral non-objectivism)[1] is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
This makes ethical subjectivism a form of cognitivism (because ethical statements are the types of things that can be true or false).[4] Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion;[5] to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all.[6]
Ethical subjectivism and moral relativism[edit]
Ethical subjectivism is a completely distinct concept from moral relativism.[13] Moral relativism claims that statements are true or false based on who is saying them: they include indexicals in the same way that the truth of the statement "I am in Senegal" is dependent on who is making that statement.[14] Depending on the variety of moral relativism, these statements may be indexed to a particular society (i.e., cultural relativism, when I say stealing is wrong, it is only true if stealing is not acceptable in my culture), or indexed to an individual (individualistic relativism).[15] Ethical subjectivism, on the other hand, claims that the truth or falsehood of ethical claims is dependent on the mental states and attitudes of people, but these ethical truths may be universal (i.e. one person or group's mental states may determine what is right or wrong for everyone).[16]
While these positions are often held together, they do not entail each other.[17] For example, someone that claims that whatever their king wants to happen is the morally right thing for everyone to do would be an ethical subjectivist (right and wrong are based on mental states), but they would not be a moral relativist (right and wrong are the same for everyone).[18] Conversely, a moral relativist could deny moral subjectivism if they thought that the morally right thing to do was to follow the written laws of your country (this morality is relativist since "the laws of your country" picks out different laws for different individuals, but not subjectivist since it is dependent on the written laws, which are not in anyone's head).[19]
Some universalist forms of subjectivism include ideal observer theory (which claims that moral propositions are about what attitudes a hypothetical ideal observer would hold). Although divine command theory is considered by some to be a form of ethical subjectivism,[20] defenders of the perspective that divine command theory is not a form of ethical subjectivism say this is based on a misunderstanding: that divine command proponents claim that moral propositions are about what attitudes God holds, but this understanding is deemed incorrect by some, such as Robert Adams who claims that divine command theory is concerned with whether a moral command is or isn't "contrary to the commands of (a loving) God".[21]
Terminology[edit]
There is some debate among philosophers around the use of the term "ethical subjectivism" as this term has historically referred to the more specific position that ethical statements are merely reports of one's own mental states (saying that killing is wrong just means you disapprove of killing).[22] While this is an ethically subjective position (the truth of your statement does depend on your mental states), it is not the only one. Due to this ambiguity, some philosophers have advocated that the general position discussed here be referred to as non-objectivism.[22]