Felicia asked:

"Subjectivism is when a person says that something is morally good or bad and it means that this
person approves or disapproves of that thing."

Keeping in mind this definition of subjectivism, do you think Ethical Subjectivism is a strong ethical
theory or a weak one?

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In approaching this question we could look at the problems related to the modeling in logic of the
relationships between the concept of a good act or bad act and the concept of a right act or a wrong
act. For example does every good act imply that the act is automatically approved, does every
approved act imply that the act is necessarily a good act? Can there never be a good disapproved act
or a bad approved act? However I thought it might be interesting to look at what may be one root of
concern with this way of channeling thinking and that is its inherent egocentricity.

We could imagine our thought strands flow in channels much in the way that felled logs are sent
down a river from the logging site. The logs are flagged once with a yellow or green representing
good or bad as a measure of log quality and flagged secondly with a second coloured marker to
represent the type of tree from which it came, say red and blue. A sorter is employed upstream from
the mill to switch the flow of logs, by means of clever technology into the appropriate channel. So
when the mill and the logger are coordinated they could get logs marked red- yellow or blue -yellow
and know that they are the best quality of that type or red -green and blue -green and know that they
are the worst quality of that type. The problem with the system is that the sorters decisions are based
on whether he likes Yellow or Green that particular day or even that moment. He may even decide
that he doesn't like the log names and switch them around. So the mill could be in the position of
never being sure if the factual part of the sorting was correct and would be faced with the problem of
deciding if the right kind of logs been sent to the right department and secondly they could never be
sure if the value attached to a log from one decision will be the same as the value attached to a log at
the next decision. The problem becomes even more fraught with difficulties if our internal thought flow
system has another demon logger at the initiating end of the flow. If we have such difficulties with the
internal coherence of subjective valuations how can we hope to have external coherence between
two like-minded individuals let alone a whole society?

Given that ethical problems have both a factual and a value content, subjectivism implies on this
analogy that our ethical decisions could not be relied upon to be consistent in matters of fact and truth
or matters of value and if this is the case how could ethical generalisations be formulated to produce
codes or standards of behaviour for individuals or countries as exemplified in the Universal
Declaration Human Rights.

Ethical Subjectivism may not be seen as completely wrong however if considered as a theory of how
people actually do behave sometimes or as a theory of how children learn ethical codes. Children and
young adults need the approval of parents and peers for a long time and guide their behaviour to
keep in line with these sources until they begin to question their basis. Similarly on a larger scale,
states, which do not have mechanisms for moderating the dominance of individuals or parties, can err
towards egocentricity in their law making.

Whilst ethical subjectivism may a reasonably accurate model of how families and young peoples
actually do sometimes behave and therefore could be taken as a strong partial theory in this respect,
it is not a model of how good governments behave and it could considered as a weak complete
theory of ethics in this respect.

The original question does raise the further interesting question of how should philosophy incorporate
the work undertaken in games and decision theory as exemplified by Henry Hamburger Games as
Models of Social PhenomenaFreeman 1979, Richard Jeffrey The Logic of DecisionChicago 1996), S
Brams Theory of MovesCambridge, 1996. The general thrust of such analysis is to follow thorough
patterns of inference and abstract the properties developed from them based on a hybrid concept
formed from fusing together the disparate bedfellows of what we 'Have', the propositional content,
with what we 'Want', the value content and quantifying them. While I am not suggesting that question
of ethics and morality should be analysed mathematically by philosophers as do game theorist what I
do think is that a qualitative version of the same hybrid fusion can make sense of the ninety degree
difference between subjectivism on one axis and objectivism on the other axis where by objectivism
we mean that moral judgements have a propositional content and are susceptible to modeling in logic
or variant logics.

It is possible I believe, to develop a framework for the analysis of practical situations based at root on
the concept of 'qualitative expectation' as I hope to show in future answers to posted questions.

Neil Buckland