Subjective Morality
Subjective Morality, also known as Moral Subjectivism, is the Philosophical belief that moral truths are not universal or absolute, but are instead dependent upon the attitudes, feelings, opinions, or conventions of individuals or groups.
Subjective does not necessarily mean related to feeling; it simply means that it varies from person to person (subiectum is Latin for the agent in a sentence or situation).
To say that a morality is subjective is to say that what is good varies from person to person. Good is by this reasoning nothing more than the opinion of an individual or a tribe. This elevates a preference to be the very definition of what is absolutely good, at the same time eliminating the possibility that a preference might be wrong.
Bob feeds the orphans. We (the observers) can say that this is a good act if we feel that helping vulnerable children is a good thing to do and makes us feel good. Sam does not feed the orphans. We can say that Sam's action is bad, because it feels bad to leave children vulnerable to starvation.
Meaning Of Subjective
The best example of a subjective claim is that of your favorite flavor of ice cream. When faced with choosing a flavor, however you pick that is based on your own memory of experiences in the past, and your own estimation of what you would like to experience today. If you decide that "Cherry Garcia" is your favorite flavor, then that is what your favorite flavor is.
Nobody can say you are wrong. I can not say that your favorite is not that, or that in fact your favorite flavor is "Dutch Chocolate". I can suggest arguments that it should not be such, but I can not truthfully say that you are wrong about your favorite. I have no access to your memories or your desires. A subjective claim is true if you say it is true, and nobody can argue otherwise.
If a moral claim was subjective, then whatever you claim would by definition be true. If you claim that drinking alcohol is a actually a good moral behavior, then nobody can ever say you are wrong. Alcohol drinking would be good (for you) because you say it is good.
Actions Have Objective Consequences
An individual can not simply decide what is good and bad based on their personal preferences, because actions have consequences which affect the world. The result of the action is not just a preference.
You can pass a law requiring a behavior, but you can't simply decide that the law is good. For example: if you made a law that every person has to chop off their right hand. You can pass that law, but the law is inherently bad because the entire society will be harmed and will do worse when nobody has two hands, more people will die, more people will starve, more people will suffer. These make the law bad no matter what you decide.
400 years ago the practice of bloodletting was considered a right and moral action. The theory was that too much blood was the cause of some illness. A majority of doctors agreed that letting out the excess blood was the right things to to. Bloodletting was good and in fact it would have been immoral to prevent a doctor from performing bloodletting in those situations. Later we learned that actually the problem is not that there is too much blood, and in fact removal of blood would actually weaken the sick person. It was the discovery of the adverse consequence of bloodletting that we were able to determine that bloodletting itself is immoral. Even though people mistakenly thought it was moral, no amount of thinking it was moral can actually make it moral.
An action that causes harm is bad, even if you subjectively think it is good.
The Claim And The Reality
Much of the source of disagreement comes from the semantics of the word morality. In the first chapter on definition, I point out four concepts of morality. There is a layer (3) where people claim what they believe to be moral, and then there is a different layer (1) for what is actually universally moral.
Some culture may decide that capital punishment is a good and moral thing and to make a law instituting the practice. Still, we can discuss whether the law is actually moral or not, and this discussion implies and depends upon there being some kind of higher moral ground upon which to base the comparison.
When someone says that morality is subjective they simply do not believe that there is any higher objective basis upon which to compare actions. Whatever you believe to be moral actually is moral.
For example, I believe it is moral to eat ice cream on Sunday. That is just a claim that I make, but it might or might not actually be moral. I might be wrong. There might be some reason that eating ice cream on Sunday is bad for everyone, and decreases the survivability of the community. (I doubt it, but the point is that I can be wrong about this claim.)
Claiming that eating ice cream on Sunday is moral, does not make it moral. There exists a deeper objective moral assessment that can be used (if we know it) to state that my claim is right or wrong. That is what the universal morals do, and I will establish that there are reasons that opinions on morality can be shown to be objectively right or wrong.
What Is The Problem?
By arguing that morals are just subjective, we lose the higher moral ground from which to persuade the right action in situations. A subjective opinion where the statement of the opinion makes it so. You favorite ice cream is your favorite and nobody can say you are wrong. But your claim about morality can be right or wrong, and that is what tells us that morality is not subjective.