Well said, except one “little” thing. **If different people find different things to be beautiful, then there is no “objective way” to find out if a specific “thing” is beautiful or not **- contrary to what you said below.
This is a fallacy masquerading as an argument. Your claim is that the inability of human beings to come to consensus – because humans do fail to distinguish, in a completely uniform way, between “beautiful” and “ugly,” “humourous” and “not,” “moral” and “immoral” – counts againt the objectvity of humour, aesthetics and morality.
The problem is that we could put up a science quiz or poll that asks individuals to distinguish between what is “true,” scientifically speaking, and what is “false.” There will be a similar failure of individuals to agree on the “facts.”
Human beings have all kinds of strange notions about morality. So what? People, likewise, have all kinds of odd notions about the workings and claims of science.
Merely because there is no currently operative “objective way” in areas of morality or aesthetics is not an argument against such a way being uncovered nor a proof that it hasn’t been already. The scientific method has only been an accepted “way” for the past 150 years.
Does the mere failure of humans to agree in polls or quizzes falsify science or show that there is “no objective way” to tell if science is correct? That would appear to be the sum of your argument against claims about humour, aesthetics and morality being determinably true and objectively grounded.
You conclude “there is no objective way” to determine moral truths merely because different people have different views. That is insufficient, just as it is insufficient to use the disagreement of people regarding claims of science as “proof” against science.
What you need to show is that morality, aesthetics and humour, IN PRINCIPLE, have no epistemologically sound way of ratifying claims in those areas. That you haven’t done. You have postured against the claim by challenging others to produce the method, but haven’t shown your claim even likely to be true.
In addition, you keep sidestepping my argument that as active agents and decision makers it is more critical for human beings to have certainty regarding moral decisions than certainty regarding the observable physical world.
Knowing ABOUT that world is fine, as far as that goes, but knowledge about the world based upon methodological materialism tells us precisley nothing about what we SHOULD do moment by moment, day by day, which is THE pressing issue for human beings as moral agents in the world.
You have arbitrarily relegated ethics to a non-starter role by the mere fact that science has come up with a tried and true method, but merely because claims of science are easier to confirm does not, ipso facto, make those claims more meaningful, significant or important.
Objective “knowledge” ABOUT the external world doesn’t even tell us which areas of science we ought to pursue because the method tells us nothing about the relative significance of ends in those areas. Determining that significance in, for example, physics, biology or chemistry is not a matter of exact science, rather it is more a “shot in the dark” matter of economy, utility or political power, not based upon epistemological certainty regarding the moral good nor determinably with regard to morally “good” ends.
Of course, you have no reason to WANT morality to be found objectively grounded since your preference is to pontificate on what is “moral” for you, but from where I stand, that was the same position held by astrologers and alchemists in the middle ages who had much to lose if their “pet” theories about the heavenly realms were found to be untenable by new scientific methodology, which is why THEY resisted implementation of the formal methods of science.
The question might be asked: What is the motive that makes seeking sound epistemological methods in the areas of ethics and aesthetics such a dangerous or unwanted thing for YOU?
