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Originally Posted by AR_Six
It has always seemed to me that anyone who accepts that any moral proposition is correct, i.e. torturing this innocent baby is wrong, must also accept that there is some underlying objective standard out there by which that assessment can be made.*
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It does suggest that an underlying objective standard exists, but we haven't eliminated the possibility that the person who accepts the moral proposition is simply wrong. Perhaps they have determined that torturing babies is wrong and everybody or most of the people they know agree with them, they may just be mistaking inter-subjective agreement for objective truth (which is easy to do since moral truths don't seem to have any recognizable properties).
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Once we have that, it should follow that a universal standard exists. Whether we know what the standard is or not or how it applies to a particular scenario which may be more shades of gray than torturing an innocent baby, it must at the very least be taken to exist. In other words, there is always an objective right or wrong, whether or not we know what it is. That may not be useful because it cannot direct action, but it does strike me as inevitable.
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But what if a person does not believe that there is an objective moral standard? If we replace your person with another person who says, "I can't state that torturing babies is wrong because I don't think that anything can be objectively right or wrong." Now he or she may find the torturing of babies to be distasteful and not want anybody to do it, but it doesn't follow from that perspective that an objective moral standard inevitably exists.
It certainly seems as though there are some actions (such as torturing babies) that are condemned with near unanimity, that imply objective moral values, but the fact that these values are neither innate (granted, that might be argued) nor directing human behavior is problematic for me.
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*Relativism fudges this question but I would say that relativist moral standards equivocate the meaning of "right" and "wrong". And there are enough nails in the coffin of ethical relativism that it's hardly worth hashing them out.
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Agreed.