“Inherently ordered” is just another meaningless buzzword. You need to define it, if you wish to use it.
You need to define what is “good”. It seems to be an impossible task if you do not consider the “outcome” or the “consequences”.
If you wish to “drag” God into the discussion, you need to “prove” that God exists, and you have correct information of his value system. (It is very ironic that God is always supposed to agree with what the person thinks. And their opinions vary very widely. But God is always on their side. Curiousier and curiousier as Alice was wont to say.)
So there are lots of instances when killing is a “moral” course of action - and observe - there was no need to refer to God.
It is interesting how you bounce between “no objective moral order” and the possibility of “a ‘moral’ course of action” without reference to God.
You have argued in this thread and others that objective morality does not exist (
morality is only an opinion,) yet above you argue that “ends” (consequences or outcomes) are required in order for a proper consideration of the “good” to be consistently worked out. Yet, again with seeming inconsistency, you dismiss anything “inherently ordered” to a good to be “a meaningless buzzword.”
No wonder your POV appears so obtuse. You want “outcomes” to count, but insist they don’t beyond mere subjective desire, therefore “no objective moral order.” Yet, you argue for “right” actions as if THAT is supposed to actually mean something to anyone but yourself.
Feser, for one,
has argued that objectively “good for” is a consistent idea. If a squirrel was a rational being, it would be abundantly clear, (i.e., it wouldn’t just be a subjective opinion,) to any objective rational observer that gathering nuts and avoiding predators are “good” behaviours for squirrels while eating toothpaste, lying down on roads and offering itself, spread-eagled, to predators, are not. The first conduce to well-being, and are, therefore, objectively moral behaviours, while the latter are not.
Merely because human beings are rational does not mean objectively “good” behaviours - those which foster well-being - do not exist. It is quite “objectively” clear that drinking a case of beer before getting on your Kawasaki Ninja is not “good” for you. One need not be a moral “rocket scientist” to figure that out.
That is the problem with your “evidence” requirement regarding establishing morality. Evidence, in the sense you mean, is essentially backward looking - what has transpired - but morality is, by nature, teleological - what will come about. That is the reason why rationality - and not merely a restricted scientific method - is required for morality. A judgement and decision must be made in order to act. As such, moral beings are active agents in the sense that “evidence” alone, although necessary, can never be SUFFICIENT for enabling moral agency.
At some point, a decision must be made regarding what is to be done where the body of collected evidence will always be insufficient. Yet, as moral agents we are required to take action - there is no “opt out clause” - because that, too, is taking a determinably moral position.
I suspect your problem with morality is that you consider “freedom” to be an end, when, in reality, it is merely a condition for morality to exist. We don’t act morally in order to be free, we are free as a condition of being moral agents. It is freedom that makes us responsible and accountable qua moral agency.
Take Feser’s rational squirrel, for example. If the consciously aware squirrel decided one day to make “liberty” its principal moral aim and, consequently, threw abandon to the wind, gorged on toothpaste and reclined in the middle of a busy highway in the name of “freedom,” the other squirrels would rightly observe that this one had “lost its nut.” (Some of us make that same observation about progressive libertarians - but that is another thread, I suppose.) If that same squirrel left behind a litter of pups and a struggling mate, we would rightly observe (again, given the presumption that the squirrel is a rational and, therefore, morally responsible one) that it has acted immorally by giving into ridiculously and
INHERENTLY DISORDERED “desires” that clearly do not align, in the least, with its well-being, nor the well-being of its family. That can be objectively determined regarding any rational squirrel which has not completely gone off its nut, so to speak.
The problem with human beings who have lost their capacity to observe, reason and judge well, is that the faculty of imagination takes over and creates a delusive world where reality has all but lost its hold - in the name of “freedom” and liberty.
