How many “systems of morality” can possibly exist without nullifying the entire idea of “morality” in the first place?
As many as you like. Now, if the question you really wanted to ask was "how many objectively true systems of morality can exist?", then the answer is, at most, one - although "zero" is still a distinct possibility, of course, if there is no objective morality beyond what we construct.
Which gets us straight to the issue: You clearly make the basis of morality a matter subject to human “preference.” You clearly say as much when you say we humans are completely free to choose the “axioms” that seem best to us. But doesn’t that gut the entire idea of moral order – by making it something that is established by means of personal, private judgment?
Everybody lays claim to objective truth except poor old me and J.S. Mill. Let's just say that I can't help but notice what little consensus there is about what exactly the "objective truth" is, and therefore I look for pragmatic ways to...well, to duck the question, really ;)
Which again begs a question: By what criteria can such judgments legitimately be made?
If we accept the premise that we can and should begin building a moral edifice from the ground up, then the criteria are probably going to have to be ends-based. IOW, we decide what the preferred outcomes are, and judge the system according to how well it advances those ends. The advantage of this, of course, is that it will be immediately obvious if our system is "objectively" correct in advancing our goals. As to whether it's "objectively" correct in some larger sense...who cares?
Show me where I have asserted “objective truth” on these threads, general_re. Mostly I devote myself to questioning the assertions of others WRT this thorny problem. Indeed, one wonders whether the formulation “objective truth” can mean anything at all. Perhaps it is an oxymoron.
I’m really glad to learn that John Stewart Mill is an intellectual companion of yours. To put him on the philosophical map, J.S. Mill is usually classified as a British empiricist of 19th century vintage. He’s one of my favorite thinkers. I love him for his insights into liberty, for his reliance on experience and observation as tests of knowledge, for his insistence that logic is “the science which treats of the operations of the human mind in the pursuit of truth.” I also love him for all the awkward situations he gets him self into, as a self-described devotee of Bentham’s Utilitarian School, and faithful adherent of empiricist methodology.
For instance, as much as he considered himself squarely in the Benthamite school, it turns out that Mill thought the utilitarians had not developed anything even near to an adequate theory of human nature. The utilitarians tended to regard human beings as mere “atoms” or units in a more or less malleable mass (given proper education). Human behavior was assumed to be motivated by the search for pleasure (happiness), and the avoidance of pain. Given this, statistics tells us pretty much what sorts of things can happen with human beings. And thus, armed with such utilitarian tools, institutions and even entire cultures can be made amenable to progressive change initiatives.
While still insisting that he was himself a utilitarian, Mill said that this conception of human nature was drastically inadequate. He noted that happiness as a goal could rarely be achieved directly, but usually only as the by-product of striving for and achieving some larger goal, a goal set by a unique private person. Thus human existence by its nature is particular; so to consign it wholesale to the reductive notion of the mass could hardly serve as a premise for serious thought. (This is Mill the empiricist speaking.)
Mill the great British empiricist lays down his credentials in this statement: “The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these time the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions…. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.”
And yet Mill himself went far beyond empiricist methods when he adverted to “intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience” in two extraordinarily telling ways. First, he assumed that Nature possesses a stable structure; that is, it is lawful. And second, Nature is lawful because it has been designed. (He invoked a kind of “back-hand proof” in stating that science itself would be impossible, if Nature were not lawful, ordered.)
Would you would agree with me, general_re, that neither of these statements can be the result of direct observation?
Thus we have the case of an empiricist who, while not satisfied by a “proof of the existence of God” of the “First Cause” or “Prime Mover” type, is effectively persuaded by the proof of the existence of God by Design. He thought he could establish that on empirical grounds, if only inferentially.
Mill’s conceptions of Nature and God are fascinating topics in their own right, but beyond the scope of this writing.
Maybe by now you’re wondering what is the purpose of this rant on J. S. Mill? You might say you “resonate” to his ideas or whatever. But my suspicion is he would never say “Who cares?” – as you have rather cavalierly done in your last. He knew full well that there are limits to human knowledge and understanding; he just wasn’t prepared to say where they actually were in fact. (Indeed, how could he -- or you or me?)
He kept probing. He isolated and clarified problems; and where he couldn’t do that, he put up a flag for future thinkers. IMHO, he is an absolutely first-rate modern philosopher, and a man of rare intellectual acumen, insight, and integrity. It is ironic that, as much as Mill derided the idea of a priori knowledge of any kind, he seemed to have had recourse to it on occasion.
There is a spirit of adventure about John Stewart Mill that I love and cherish. He helps us see the limit of experience, to acknowledge that there are real things that direct observation cannot account for. And that science can only do what science can do. Which may or may not exhaust all the possibilities….
Mill kept an open mind. We’d do well to take a page from his book.
Meanwhile, general_re -- what was our disagreement about? Please refresh me.
p.s.: I really don't see how Objectivism fits into this picture at all -- though I gather Objectivists tend to look kindly on J. S. Mill....