How would we determine if such an objective subjectivity is real?
The more moral, the wiser and the more attuned to beauty a person becomes, the better they are able to discern the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
Very similar to how the more expert a person becomes in any area, the better – all things being equal – they can discern the objective truth of things.
Take geology, for example. The more expert a person becomes in geology the better they can identify rock types and minerals, how they are formed, how they are broken down and how they transform into other types of rocks. Expertise in that area permits the person to know better the objective truth about the nature of rocks and minerals.
Rocks and minerals are pretty straightforward because their nature is relatively simple.
Biological sciences are more complex because the nature of living organisms is much more sophisticated than inorganic minerals. The sentience of some organisms makes their study even more complicated.
Add the psychological, intellectual and spiritual dimensions to a sentient being and things become even more difficult to completely understand.
The mere complexity of attaining to a sound objective understanding of beings imbued with personhood, however, isn’t sufficient to put the endeavour completely out of reach. After all, those personal beings is us. We happen to be the beings we are attempting to objectively understand.
I wouldn’t think it is a defensible position to merely assume that because we are subjective, that there is no objective basis for understanding the nature of who and what we are as subjective and thoughtful moral agents.
The assumption that everything reduces to the merely material could very well be an error – an error based upon the proclivity of humans to make things simple and comprehensible, (to our current mode and it attendant limitations) of thinking/knowing. Cognitive biases kick in and are far more effectual.
The beauty in music, for example, is better appreciated by those who have spent years studying music theory and composition. For those who haven’t, their rough and primitive assessment of certain kinds of music might approximate some rudimentary appreciation of the beauty in music, in the same way that moral agents with malformed or unformed consciences have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong.
The inherent difficulty with developing as moral agents, however, is THAT development is much more contingent upon the willingness to make tradeoffs and even give up self-centredness or objects of appetite, etc., so progression in the moral arts isn’t as straightforward as progress in scientific fields such as geography, precisely because we are so invested in the outcomes.
In those more “arms-length” endeavours nothing much hangs in the balance of knowing or not knowing, believing or not believing some particular fact about, say, minerals.
In moral or spiritual endeavours, personal investment in a particular belief costs something substantial. That is why moral or religious truths are much more difficult to find universal (read as ‘objective’) assent.
