MTG Salvation

Quote from Ain_Soph_Aur

It goes beyond the practical considerations. There are a number of things, beyond intent even, that contribute to why people commit certain actions and we don't necessarily have cause to suggest that these things are the basis of what Morality is. For example, you could be predisposed to committing certain actions because of your emotional state at the time, or because of things that have happened to you, and so forth. None of these things, intention included, actually change the impact that the action has on people.

Saying that there are other things that influence why you do things does not affect whether it is the case that intention should be the basis of morality. Also, I would say that your emotional state and such affect your intentions, not merely your action.

If you don't intend to hit someone and you're angry, the angriness doesn't just override your intention. It causes you to change your mind and intend to hit the person. Maybe the person regrets it right afterward, but they did not swing their arm simply because they were angry.

It's unclear to me what you are supposing is subjective.

Your statement that we ought to favor your definition because measured values are better than intuitive ones. That is a subjective statement.

If what you mean is that how I choose to define Morality according to a certain objective system over potentially another... ok, yes when we define our terms we make subjective value judgments.

Given:
___ is defined as the quality of actions have when they impact others.

I'm choosing to use the word "morality" to fill in the blank "___" because arguably, Morality has connotations that are appropriate for that definition. Whatever word we decide to fill in ___, we can see that ___ describes things that are objective. It may be that I'm subjectively choosing the word Morality for this phenomenon, as opposed to using the word morality for whatever quality intent may impart upon actions, but the choice of word itself matters not insomuch as the definition itself. ___ is objective, and if you wish to argue the semantics of whether "morality" is the right word for ___, that's one thing, but you aren't successfully making the point that ___ is subjective.

Well, first of all, that depends on what you consider to be the qualities of actions. You also must assign weights to various different outcomes, which is not objective. And the act itself of assigning "moral" or "immoral" to the outcomes is subjective. You might be able to say objectively what the outcomes are, but when you make judgments about them, you're back in subjective territory.

Also, you can't simply assign "Morality" (meaning "objective morality") that definition and then when I try to say that objective morality could be different, respond that that's not the definition of Morality. You need a reason to define it that way because morality has a more basic definition than the one you're trying to put on it. And because you supposedly can objectively evaluate the impact of actions on people does not mean that you can just say "Morality" is objective.

That's not an argument. That's like arguing with a Christian who says that everything in the Bible is true, and when you bring up a counterexample (such as evidence that the Flood did not occur), they say "That's not the definition of truth".

So you are arguing semantics.

Look here - if you have not even heard of the is-ought problem, or merely think it is semantics, I don't see how you even think you have any business arguing about moral philosophy. It is a fundamental problem of modern ethics.

It is semantics, in that, "is" has a meaning, and "ought" has a meaning, and they are different meanings. And so when you say "X is Y", you can't logically conclude that "X ought to be Y". Because they aren't equivalent statements, and you need another normative statement before you can have "X ought to be Y" as a conclusion.

You seem to be saying that you have solved the problem - that you can get objective morality from objective statements about the world. I would be interested to hear your solution, because as far as I know, there is no solution for the problem.

In which case you've just reduced the intent to an action, and therefore a consequence.

Mmmmm... but the basis of the morality is still based on the intentions. Saying I've reduced it to your system is just silly, unless you expect me to argue that thinking is not an action.

No, I'm using psychological terms to describe how an action (stimuli) has an impact (reaction) on individuals which can be observed objectively. Using the definition of morality (or __), we can conclude from our observations that an action has a moral or immoral characteristic based off their impact, discernible from the reaction.

Mmmmm... just saying "or ___" does not get around the fact that it's subjective. We only care about "___" because you are trying to equate it with morality. If it were something else, we wouldn't necessarily care. Morality does not simply mean what you have defined it as, which is why it is problematic to act as if it's a free word that you can just define any way you want.

And the problem is that assigning those impacts "moral" or "immoral" is still subjective.

My statement is actually that "causing harm to others through actions, observable by their reaction, is ___." My conclusion is that we should avoid ___, which is what leaves me to believe ___ is best articulated as "immoral."[emphasis mine]

And there (the bolded section) is where the is-ought problem comes into play. You have no objective basis for that.

Do you deny that when an action has an impact upon a person, the state of that action because of that impact is objectively discernible?

Your phrasing is a bit off here, but yes, I do deny that you can conclude that that action is "moral" or "immoral" objectively.

This scenario could potentially be moral (or immoral). You did not define whether the person was willing, and infringing upon consent is another impact that an action has on person which would tip the balance.

He was not willing. Also, I do not see how infringing on consent is an impact. The consequence is the same regardless of whether he consented - he's dead.

Now it might affect his family and friend's reaction to things. But even if that were so, it would not affect the scenario I proposed, in which their reaction would still be outweighed even if they knew he didn't consent. Also, he could lie about whether he consented, and thus ameliorate their negative reaction.

Also, we don't know the full extent of other possibilities that were available to your patients. Was it possible to obtain other donated organs? Was it possible to treat that person successfully without a transplant? Until these possibilities are exhausted, we can't consider an action

Yes, you can. There are plenty of people who would have no qualms, in fact, I would say most people, would have no qualms with saying that it is immoral to kill someone for their organs (without their consent, but I think that's implied by the statement "kill him for his organs"). I don't see on what basis you could say that you're being objective and they're not, but you seem to think you are.

Well, I would tend to say that the impact that one's actions have upon oneself is always treated as neutral, so stealing a dollar would still be considered immoral.

That's not what you said earlier, when you said that improving yourself is moral (or was it a moral imperative?).

Kantian ethics potentially has an objective basis, but what it describes is different than what I have been describing. Since I've already adopted the word "Morality" for what I am describing, and these two things are incompatible, I would probably have to select a different word to describe Kantian ethics.

The whole point is that you shouldn't adopt the word "Morality" for what you're describing, because it isn't objective morality in the first place!

Really, the whole "I have defined Morality as this, therefore it is this" defense is just lame.

Quote from Mamelon

Would you say that if you steal something and you don't know you're strealing, it can't be wrong by any deontological standard?

Well, it depends on the deontological standard. In Kantian ethics, it can't be in itself.

Good intentions often don't mean anything if you're doing something that ends up terribly.

I understand. I'm not arguing that Kantian ethics is true! In fact, my whole point is that there is no objective basis for deciding between Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism and other such systems. So it would be strange if it were the case that I was arguing that Kantian ethics was true.

Well, they don't rely on consequences. But how do you think deontological definitions are made? How do you think certain intentions are judged as good or bad? All moral systems must originate from observations of relationships between actions/beliefs/whatever and what their effects are - even if that eventually stops being the chief criteria for judging goodness or badness.

I do not believe that ethics based on commandments from God have anything to do with intention or consequences. They may try to say that God's commandments are intended to make the world better in some way that isn't obvious to us, but someone promulgating that form of morality doesn't need to make that move.

Ain_Soph and you are very clearly using different definitions about what morality is. I am merely trying to point this out. I'm not defending consequentialist ethics.

Ain Soph has explained that he has simply defined "Morality" as being what he thinks it is, but I don't think morality is one of those words you can just define like that, since it has a more basic definition, and I'm denying that what he has defined as morality can be said to objectively conform to that more basic definition.

I disagree with the definition you're using for deontology. You seem to be saying that deontology, by definition, is an ethos that is predicated on intent, and that's it.

Kantian ethics is pretty much. Deontological ethics are not necessarily based on intent, I agree. I was only saying that it is only necessary for my point that Kantian ethics only rely on intent.

This is just an example, but take part of the categorical imperative: do not treat humans as means rather than ends (value humanity). Actions can be judged as serving that standard, or conflicting with it. That actions do or do not serve that standard, that norm, is not subjective.

It can be the case that given a particular moral system, you can evaluate an action objectively using that system. That is very different from saying that the system objectively is the same as "Morality". You can't say that Kantian ethics is objective, even if within Kantian ethics you can objectively determine whether an action is in accordance with the categorical imperative.

Ain Soph Aur seems to be saying something along those lines - because in what he has described as "Morality", you can objectively evaluate actions (although, I take issue with that as well, given the definition he gave), he can therefore say that what he calls "Morality" is objective. Those are different statements.

As many others have said, it's more utilitarian (that is, practical) to be deontological than to be utilitarian.

Anyone who says that, it would seem, would be a rule Utilitarian.

Just uut of curiosity, Erimir - why do you believe in deontology?

Oy. I've said this before: I'm not primarily deontological in outlook. I don't think I would say that I am purely utilitarian or deontological - but I lean somewhat strongly towards the utilitarian side.

I don't think that my morality is objective, tho. That's the difference between me and Ain Soph Aur.

Quote from erimir

Saying that there are other things that influence why you do things does not affect whether it is the case that intention should be the basis of morality. Also, I would say that your emotional state and such affect your intentions, not merely your action.

If you don't intend to hit someone and you're angry, the angriness doesn't just override your intention. It causes you to change your mind and intend to hit the person. Maybe the person regrets it right afterward, but they did not swing their arm simply because they were angry.

The point is that more contributes to why people commit actions than intent, even if those things may feed into intent. Choosing intent over emotions or past experiences is an arbitrary qualifier that, interestingly, doesn't change the action itself. For example, a person who murders someone happily and a person who murders someone angrily seem to have different intents - one is seeking enjoyment, and the other vengeance or something. You can take these intents, apply them to a different situation and outcome, and while they do not change, the consequence does. For example, instead of murdering a person, the person seeking enjoyment could abuse a doll, and the person seeking vengeance could simply wish ill things to happen to the person. Why wouldn't the intents be immoral in that situation if they are in the first? And, for that matter, what is it that differentiates the mental realm of enjoying murdering others and enjoying, say, saving lives? The people commit their action in these situations with intents fully concerned with their own personal outcome - enjoyment. In that sense, the intent is the same between the two, and certainly a lot of people are self-absorbed enough to act with intentions only regarding the self. What makes the intent of pursuing one kind of enjoyment worse than that of another? The consequences.

Further, if intents precede actions, in many cases emotions precede intents. So that angry face-punching individual would never have the intent to punch someone's face unless they were angry. The intent here seems to depend strongly on the preceding emotional state or other mental condition, whereas the emotional state is independent of the intent. Additionally, while it's possible to reduce consequences to two categories (harm and benefit), intentions run the gamut - how do we decide which intentions are to be labeled moral and which immoral in a way that is not arbitrary?

And some people have a genetic predisposition towards being angry or displaying sociopathic behavior. All of their intentions will be colored by an intrinsic part of who they are. How can we describe them as immoral for their intentions if a "normal" person doesn't possess the same predispositions that will influence how they intend to act?

Your statement that we ought to favor your definition because measured values are better than intuitive ones. That is a subjective statement.

Then it's also a subjective statement to say that science better describes reality than superstition - after all, measured values versus intuition. Why should we even define the word "science" to be "a systematic methodology for the collection of knowledge by use of empirical observation" for example? How do we know that the things we observe in scientific experiments ought to be knowledge? What is knowledge, and how do we know that we have it? We trust our senses because they are consistent and give us functionality. We have to assume that the things we are able to observe and repeat using the same methodologies are, ultimately, accurate. And yet this is not a major criticism of science. You could define science as simply "the understanding of the universe" or something, and while this is true of science to an extent, it's too broad. Lot's of things like religion, superstition and other non-empirical methods attempt to understand the universe, but do so in a different way than science. Science must be specified as the philosophical notion that the universe can be understood through empiricism.

In the same way, morality through the consequences of actions operates objectively. If fuzzy part of science is whether we can know from the things we observe then the fuzzy part of morality entails conduct, that is, if we ought not to do something because of the observations of that something resulting in a certain manner. There's always a little bit of subjectivity present in science from the formation of a hypothesis. If I try this, and the result is that, then the relationship of this to that is something. The problem is that how we define something is necessarily linguistic, it's an explanation of the causality between this and that. For example, you could conduct a study of whether earthworms are more prevalent in deciduous or coniferous forests. From the results of the study, if you find more earthworms prevalent in deciduous forests, the reason why is probably because the environment is better for them. But whether an environment is to be considered better is subjective. What, after all, makes an environment better? We can objectively see how there are more earthworms present in one environment, but how do we know that this makes it better? You can try to specify what you mean by "better" by saying it has more nutrients that the earthworms need to support their larger population, and more nutrients are present because deciduous trees shed their leaves seasonally. This isn't devoid of subjectivity. But, overall, the experiment is objective. You observed two different habitats, measured the populations, got empirical results. Your conclusion attempts to explain your results. Any conclusion we make about things will not be objective because the process of coming to a conclusion involves using reason instead of using observation. And how you use the conclusion might be entirely subjective as well. For example, if you subjectively want to create a earthworm rich habitat, you'll choose the habitat that the study shows will support a larger population. How you decide to put the earthworms in one habitat is subjective. Another person might hate earthworms and put them in a coniferous environment so that they don't do as well. But how we use the results of our scientific experiments practically is not related to the objectivity of the scientific experiment. Science only refers to the collection of knowledge, not how the knowledge is used outside of the process of constantly testing things and refining results. Morality, in the same way, refers to what quality actions possess. They possess moral or immoral qualities based on their impacts on others. What ought a person do who wishes explicitly to hurt another? Well, obviously, doing something violent is likely to hurt another person and have a result that the person wished for. The result is immoral, because it hurt someone. I can't, and have not, said that my conclusion that we ought not to harm people is objective, merely that it is based on objective observations. After all, I don't like being hurt, would like for others to avoid hurting me, and feel that my actions should benefit people instead of hurting them. One thing consistent with all people being hurt is that they do not like to be hurt, whatever it is which they would consider harmful to them. Something is either harmful or it is not. It is either true or false that it's bad to harm people. Whether or not we should be good or bad is subjective, just as anything people should do will be based subjectively. You're insisting that morality tells us what we should do, and that's not necessarily the case any more than science is whatever one does to attempt to understand the universe. Morality tells us what things are good and bad, and it's a flawed assumption to say that we should be good or bad, because we don't necessarily know one way or the other. I do think that we should be good, and I've stated such, but I don't think this belief is, in itself, objective. Morality is something that we can use, an objective system by which to decide our actions, if you want to be good. If you want to be bad, it wouldn't make sense to be moral. Your actions, regardless, take on those objective moral qualities independently of what you think you should do.

Well, first of all, that depends on what you consider to be the qualities of actions. You also must assign weights to various different outcomes, which is not objective. And the act itself of assigning "moral" or "immoral" to the outcomes is subjective. You might be able to say objectively what the outcomes are, but when you make judgments about them, you're back in subjective territory.

No where have I suggested making judgments about actions, merely a description of their qualities. In this sense, describing beneficial actions as moral and harmful action as immoral isn't really subjective, although it could be.

Also, assigning weights to actions can be subjective or objective based on what system or standard you use for weighing them. For example, if they're weighed by generation, this weighing system is objective because we can observe how time passes between generations and the impact of one action may be less and less causally related to the results compared to more recent actions, and often between generations the impact of one action is expressed through an action committed by a person impacted in the prior generation, in which case the new action is what is being measured.

Also, you can't simply assign "Morality" (meaning "objective morality") that definition and then when I try to say that objective morality could be different, respond that that's not the definition of Morality. You need a reason to define it that way because morality has a more basic definition than the one you're trying to put on it.

People have, in the past, used the word morality intuitively to describe a number of things. For example, noting that killing people is immoral. I think linguistically when people use the word "immoral" in this instance, they use it because they don't like the outcome of that person's death. The connotation of the word refers to actions and outcomes. In other words, the word and how people understand the word was subjective. Based on, what seems to me, is the most likely intent of the word (to refer to the consequences of actions), I've concluded that the objective definition of morality would most likely refer to an objective system of observing the impact of actions on others. It could be that most people really just meant the intention of killing others was mean or something, but I find this highly unlikely.

And because you supposedly can objectively evaluate the impact of actions on people does not mean that you can just say "Morality" is objective.

I suppose if a definition is unspecified, clarity is needed, yes.

I am speaking of what morality is, that is, how it is manifested and what it means for things to be moral or immoral. You are speaking of the overarching ethical question of whether we should be moral. I do think that we should be moral, obviously, but while my statements may have strongly implied to you that I thought this belief to be objective, I have not said this nor do I think that it is.

That's not an argument. That's like arguing with a Christian who says that everything in the Bible is true, and when you bring up a counterexample (such as evidence that the Flood did not occur), they say "That's not the definition of truth".

I fail to see how you're connecting these two situations.

In that situation, you're showing how the Bible is not true, that is, it makes a claim that, if taken literally, is contrary to evidence. If the evidence is correct, and the Bible is indeed supposed to be taken literally, then we conclude that the Bible is wrong or, at least, that the Bible shouldn't be taken literally. If such is the case, then this disproves their statement either that everything in the Bible is true, or that everything in the Bible is literally true. That Christian has made a claim, and your argument made a connection to that claim.

In this situation, I've claimed that the impact of actions can be observed, and that actions either have one kind of impact or the other, and are thus objective. You're arguing in turn that what we should do is subjective. These two points of contention are going in different directions, not making a connection. Neither statement is being disproven or even addressed. "Morality" etymologically refers to conduct, manner or behavior, or the character that one has for displaying such. Conduct, manner and behavior in morality are, at their fundamental basis, determined through the consequences of certain actions. Even in strange moral systems where you have to sacrifice people to your gods - the gods need the sacrifice and, presumably, without the sacrifice greater harm will result. In Christianity, you have to act in a certain way to avoid the consequence of eternal damnation, a sort of "ultimate harm." These systems are convoluted and have lots of assumptions to them that are demonstratably incorrect or, at least, questionable, but what they all have in common is that they care about the consequences of actions (and in the case of Christianity, the consequences of intents, or an "action on your soul"). In the same way, Alchemy was concerned with a lot of things that we now define as Chemistry even though Alchemy made use of a lot of arbitrary methods whereas Chemistry uses an empirical system.

I have not made statements that what we ought to do is objective any more than I would say that natural selection in evolutionary theory is objective. Natural selection seems to be quite intuitively obvious, of course, but it is an explanation for why populations change in size over time. It explains what we can observe objectively. Note that I, and most people knowledgeable in science, do not choose to reject the explanation of evolution because it can't be proven.

Look here - if you have not even heard of the is-ought problem, or merely think it is semantics, I don't see how you even think you have any business arguing about moral philosophy. It is a fundamental problem of modern ethics.

Well, obviously. I'm a little bit amused at this.

The fatal flaw in your argument is that you have assumed that what I meant in saying that morality is objective is that what we ought to do is objective. I have not said this.

I am quite aware of the "is-ought" problem with respect to the modern ethical question of whether we should be moral. This isn't the same thing as what morality, itself, is.

Any objective system gives us raw data: measurements, observations, counting stuff. What we make of these things, the explanations we make of them, and the consideration of what we should do with regard to them, are all subjective or at least, not objective. Insofar as the ethical question of what we ought to do is concerned, we're in that realm. And it's definitely an important question to ask. But morality doesn't necessarily tell us what we ought to do; ethics does. Morality is simply a description of the things that we do.

It is semantics, in that, "is" has a meaning, and "ought" has a meaning, and they are different meanings. And so when you say "X is Y", you can't logically conclude that "X ought to be Y". Because they aren't equivalent statements, and you need another normative statement before you can have "X ought to be Y" as a conclusion.

You seem to be saying that you have solved the problem - that you can get objective morality from objective statements about the world. I would be interested to hear your solution, because as far as I know, there is no solution for the problem.

I believe I've made it quite clear that when speaking of the objectivity of morality, I am speaking of it at the descriptive level, not the prescriptive one.

Although, I suppose, if we contend that there is a G-d which is good, then our purpose in existing entails acting morally, in which case we should be moral. Such a statement would be objective with respect to the given purpose. This is only a theistic assumption, however.

Mmmmm... but the basis of the morality is still based on the intentions. Saying I've reduced it to your system is just silly, unless you expect me to argue that thinking is not an action.

Let's look at what you said (emphasis mine):

"Kantian ethics might say that ignorance, bias and false rationalizations are the result of immoral actions. Your ignorance may be the result of allowing yourself to remain in ignorance, rather than furthering yourself as a rational, autonomous being. Likewise false rationalizations arise from you having a base desire that is the true intention of your action, which you have deceived yourself about. You would not need a false rationalization if your action was of a good intention from the start. As such, your actions can still be immoral even if at first glance you seem to have proper intentions, because those intentions may be at root improper."

You've reduced the "bad intentions" here to previous actions whose consequence was the ignorant or falsely rationalized intention. So, ultimately, an action committed in ignorance is wrong because you did not act prior to lessen your ignorance. It no longer becomes about the intent of the bad action but rather the lack of a good consequence from a prior action.

Mmmmm... just saying "or ___" does not get around the fact that it's subjective. We only care about "___" because you are trying to equate it with morality. If it were something else, we wouldn't necessarily care. Morality does not simply mean what you have defined it as, which is why it is problematic to act as if it's a free word that you can just define any way you want.

Given linguistic connotations, "morality" seems to be the best fit.

And the problem is that assigning those impacts "moral" or "immoral" is still subjective.

Is assigning those impacts as "beneficial" or "harmful" subjective? No.

And there (the bolded section) is where the is-ought problem comes into play. You have no objective basis for that.

Nor have I said I did.

Your phrasing is a bit off here, but yes, I do deny that you can conclude that that action is "moral" or "immoral" objectively.

No, the phrasing is not off, which is what you seem to not get.

He was not willing. Also, I do not see how infringing on consent is an impact. The consequence is the same regardless of whether he consented - he's dead.

The ultimate consequence of his death consisted of a series of actions and interactions which would have had to occur in order to lead to his death. The first was infringing upon his consent - doing this in any manner will be immoral, and the immorality will increase with the manner in which the consent is breached. Further, if he was harmed during the struggle before his death, this would contribute to the immorality. And if the people told him that he didn't matter as you specified, the harm caused by this would also be immoral. You see, while the ultimate consequence was his death, there were a series of minor consequences prior to that event which contributed to the overall morality.

This is where we get out idea of being "humane" from. You could knock him on the back of the head and dissect him while he was still unconscious, and this might reduce the immorality, although I suspect it would remain immoral.

Further, if the other six patients were complicit with the action, this would increase the immorality.

Finally, I do think that you've actually combined two actions into one: the killing of one person, and the saving of the lives of six other people. The actions are related, obviously, but since there's a number of steps that have to be taken to connect "one person dies" to "six people live" I think that the morality of the two situations must be discerned separately.

Now it might affect his family and friend's reaction to things. But even if that were so, it would not affect the scenario I proposed, in which their reaction would still be outweighed even if they knew he didn't consent. Also, he could lie about whether he consented, and thus ameliorate their negative reaction.

Well, most people do not truly wish to die, so in some sense it's pretty impossible to truthfully consent to sacrificing your life. You might do it anyway, which this person does in lying. In fact, if he does lie as such, how does the person who killed him know he did not consent?

Yes, you can. There are plenty of people who would have no qualms, in fact, I would say most people, would have no qualms with saying that it is immoral to kill someone for their organs (without their consent, but I think that's implied by the statement "kill him for his organs"). I don't see on what basis you could say that you're being objective and they're not, but you seem to think you are.

I'd agree that without consent, it would be immoral to do so unless it saved enough lives to render the lack of consent insignificant.

But I do think you're missing the point in not addressing other possible solutions to your problem. If the organs can be donated by some other manner or the people can be treated without a transplant, then unless these possibilities are exhausted, the possibility of simply having someone killed isn't one that wont be immoral. It's always better to choose an action that will lead to the greater mutual benefit of everyone. For example, if you were forced to fight two people, and if you choose one, the conditions of the fight would be satisfied if you punched him in the face, whereas the conditions of the other entailed killing your opponent, it's better to choose the former. Harm is still caused, of course, in the act of face punching, but much less harm that killing another person which is prevented.

That's not what you said earlier, when you said that improving yourself is moral (or was it a moral imperative?).

Is acquiring possessions a form of self improvement? I don't think so.

When I speak of self improvement, I speak of character, that is, cultivating a personality prone to committing moral acts. I do think this is a moral imperative.

The whole point is that you shouldn't adopt the word "Morality" for what you're describing, because it isn't objective morality in the first place!

Really, the whole "I have defined Morality as this, therefore it is this" defense is just lame.

Really? You haven't shown how it's not.

Quote from erimir »

Oy. I've said this before: I'm not primarily deontological in outlook. I don't think I would say that I am purely utilitarian or deontological - but I lean somewhat strongly towards the utilitarian side.

Oh, I'm aware of that. I didn't mean to say you were primarily deontological in outlook, I asked why you believed in its merits at all (I asked that because what you said earlier made it seem like you thought it had at least some merits). I did this to point out how a system can have a merit not dependent on its own internal definitions - and how a system can have observable pragmatic value even if the system itself isn't predicated on achieving observable pragmatic value.

I do not believe that ethics based on commandments from God have anything to do with intention or consequences. They may try to say that God's commandments are intended to make the world better in some way that isn't obvious to us, but someone promulgating that form of morality doesn't need to make that move.

That's a good point. Authoritarian morality, generally, doesn't really seem to be reasoned in that way. I suppose I was referring more to moral systems that try to be coherent and reasonable - and even with authoritarian morality, there's still a goal being served. Presumably, it's gaining favor with the authority (most of the time). Following such commandments may or may not yield good altogether, but they do yield "good" according to that paradigm in that obedience of the authority leads to being further approved by the authority.
But yes, that's somewhat different.

Ain Soph has explained that he has simply defined "Morality" as being what he thinks it is, but I don't think morality is one of those words you can just define like that, since it has a more basic definition, and I'm denying that what he has defined as morality can be said to objectively conform to that more basic definition.

Frankly, I agree more with you. I tend to feel, probably like you, that the existence of an objective morality doesn't exactly matter because we can't verify it anyway.
I just don't want to dismiss Ain Soph's point. I guess because I'm trying to understand it better from an intellectual point of view.

Kantian ethics is pretty much. Deontological ethics are not necessarily based on intent, I agree. I was only saying that it is only necessary for my point that Kantian ethics only rely on intent.

I understand. You were trying to show how a moral system defined by intent isn't affected by the existence of non-existence of positive results, etc.

It can be the case that given a particular moral system, you can evaluate an action objectively using that system. That is very different from saying that the system objectively is the same as "Morality". You can't say that Kantian ethics is objective, even if within Kantian ethics you can objectively determine whether an action is in accordance with the categorical imperative.

Right, exactly. That's what I sometimes call "the breakdown."

Anyone who says that, it would seem, would be a rule Utilitarian.

Well, not necessarily. I think it's mean to kind of poke fun at utilitarianism. If consequential ethics are supposed to be the closest to objective and are supposed to be more desireable to follow, the idea would be that consequentialist systems fail at this goal. I don't think one has to be a rule utilitarian to simply make that observation.
I don't think it's exactly the same, but one of the reasons I'm against pure utilitarianism is because only watching consequences can lead to the devaluation of actions and attitudes I think are immoral - that is, I think a system that is less focused on consequences is better to have (in other words, it'd be more functional to follow one less focused on consequences, in the way I described a moral system being function in my last post.)
I'm not purely deontological either, though I am necessarily at least a little bit deontological in outlook since I think things can be wrong even with their consequences notwithstanding. And I do care about consequences because I am concerned with the good of people.