I think you may have just located my point in your second paragraph :P
Things that are both "fairly straight forward" and "often hard to judge" aren't usually the same kinds of things at all. Or, even really things at all. And if you have an argument that starts from the premise that something is all quite simple, and leads to the conclusion that it's all very complex and is potentially impossible to identify in reality, then I think you have a problem, because I think that it means you must then accept that the thing you're looking for may not exist. It's a very powerful argument against the existence of racism/sexism/etc. to just say "oh, well, it's only a subjective claim about subjective wrongs." Or to say "well, you just think that because your beliefs are subjective and wrong." And I don't think you'd like that to come out of your arguments at all.
If I were to look for an analogy, I would say it would be akin to saying something like "it's very simple: there is a luminiferous ether" but "sometimes what we think is the ether isn't, and sometimes what we think isn't the ether is, and the things that fill the roles of realising the ether may change randomly and at any moment depending on what I decide." The most obvious conclusion to draw from someone who proposed this would be "there is no ether."
I think it's a lot neater to just identify types of beliefs that are wrong, for whatever reason. I like Garcia's "vicious disregard for the welfare of groups of people" for example, but that's at least partially because I'm a fan of virtue ethics, and it preserves a lot of the fuzziness I like to keep in ethics. And then sticking to them, until you find a better system. Because how else can you actually try and give yourself a foundation for action than taking something that provides you with values and motives to act from?
I have similar problems with a lot of fields, and quite often come down on completely the opposite side of the debate. I'm big on queer theory, for example, but realise that it's, in most cases, completely useless for any kind of dialogue about rights and justice. Because how do you go beyond something that effectively argues "there are structures"?
re: love. Depends on the theory of love you adopt. I like Rorty and Sartre, so I'd say stalking isn't love, because it has nothing of historicity of dynamic permeability about it, and abuse and stalking aren't love because it's an example of a situation where there's a massive objectification going on, which destroys the presence of any kind of connection between individual consciousnesses. Loving S&M is a bit different, but I'm willing to venture that it's possible for it to be love iff the participants are both sadists and masochists, and aware of the potential for the reversibility of roles. Admittedly, this would probably not be common.
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Things that are both "fairly straight forward" and "often hard to judge" aren't usually the same kinds of things at all. Or, even really things at all. And if you have an argument that starts from the premise that something is all quite simple, and leads to the conclusion that it's all very complex and is potentially impossible to identify in reality, then I think you have a problem, because I think that it means you must then accept that the thing you're looking for may not exist. It's a very powerful argument against the existence of racism/sexism/etc. to just say "oh, well, it's only a subjective claim about subjective wrongs." Or to say "well, you just think that because your beliefs are subjective and wrong." And I don't think you'd like that to come out of your arguments at all.
If I were to look for an analogy, I would say it would be akin to saying something like "it's very simple: there is a luminiferous ether" but "sometimes what we think is the ether isn't, and sometimes what we think isn't the ether is, and the things that fill the roles of realising the ether may change randomly and at any moment depending on what I decide." The most obvious conclusion to draw from someone who proposed this would be "there is no ether."
I think it's a lot neater to just identify types of beliefs that are wrong, for whatever reason. I like Garcia's "vicious disregard for the welfare of groups of people" for example, but that's at least partially because I'm a fan of virtue ethics, and it preserves a lot of the fuzziness I like to keep in ethics. And then sticking to them, until you find a better system. Because how else can you actually try and give yourself a foundation for action than taking something that provides you with values and motives to act from?
I have similar problems with a lot of fields, and quite often come down on completely the opposite side of the debate. I'm big on queer theory, for example, but realise that it's, in most cases, completely useless for any kind of dialogue about rights and justice. Because how do you go beyond something that effectively argues "there are structures"?
re: love. Depends on the theory of love you adopt. I like Rorty and Sartre, so I'd say stalking isn't love, because it has nothing of historicity of dynamic permeability about it, and abuse and stalking aren't love because it's an example of a situation where there's a massive objectification going on, which destroys the presence of any kind of connection between individual consciousnesses. Loving S&M is a bit different, but I'm willing to venture that it's possible for it to be love iff the participants are both sadists and masochists, and aware of the potential for the reversibility of roles. Admittedly, this would probably not be common.