Since you asked for the ideas of philosophers who don’t completely fall into one end of the dichotomy or the other..





While they are controversial within the philosophical world, I find Sam Harris’s view of morality quite compelling (not to say that his arguments are new, utilitarianism and consequentialism are both old ideas, but he puts a slightly new spin on them)

Since I know most people won’t bother watching the video, these quotes of his sum up his argument in a rather simplified manner

“It is a fact that this universe admits of an extraordinary range of pleasant and unpleasant experiences for conscious creatures. It is also a fact that movement in this space is constrained by the laws of nature (whatever they turn out to be). Forget, for a moment, that you ever heard the word “morality.” Just admit that we have a navigation problem on our hands: If we go too far in one direction, things reliably get very unpleasant (and not the kind of unpleasant that has a silver lining); go in another, and everyone gets really happy, creative, fulfilled, etc. These differences exist and movement is possible. Now let’s recall this word “morality”: if you don’t think that it would be immoral to move everyone downward into hell, or moral to move them upward in collective flourishing, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

and

"There is also much confusion about what it means to speak with scientific “objectivity.” As the philosopher John Searle once pointed out, there are two very different senses of the terms “objective” and “subjective.” The first relates to how we know (i.e. epistemology), the second to what there is to know (i.e. ontology). When we say that we are reasoning or speaking “objectively,” we mean that we are free of obvious bias, open to counter-arguments, cognizant of the relevant facts, etc. There is no impediment to our doing this with regard to subjective (i.e. first-person) facts. It is, for instance, true to say that I am experiencing tinnitus (ringing in my ears) at this moment. This is a subjective fact about me. I am not lying about it. I have been to an otologist and had the associated hearing loss in the upper frequencies in my right ear confirmed. There is simply no question that I can speak about my tinnitus in the spirit of scientific objectivity. And, no doubt, this experience must have some objective (third-person) correlates, like damage to my cochlea. Many people seem to think that because moral facts relate entirely to our experience (and are, therefore, ontologically “subjective”), all talk of morality must be “subjective” in the epistemological sense (i.e. biased, merely personal, etc.). This is simply untrue."


This system doesn’t fit into either slave or master morality perfectly, as it takes both consequences and intentions into account, but I think that it is slightly less consistent with master morality than it is with slave morality. Master morality seems to me (from just a superficial glancing over of this thread) to be a long the lines of some sort of honor/ might is right type system.


I very much agree with what you said in the OP about political correctness becoming a problem in some situations, though perhaps for different reasons than you do. Two examples of this, the first being the crucial point many of the so called new atheists make, which is that religions are currently being held off the table of rational criticism, it’s taboo to criticize someones religious opinions in the same way that you might criticize their artistic or political opinions, the hurt feelings card often being played in this case. And that this has hindered our ability to keep religion out of public policy.

The second example, though this one is kind of convoluted, would be the backlash I often see against the political correctness of not using the word ‘gay’ as a synonym for stupid. In this case I think that the political correctness has it right, though not because of the fear of hurting anyones feelings but rather because of what we’ve learned both psychologically and neurologically about the associative nature of our minds, suggesting that even when someone who consciously has nothing against homosexual people, uses the word to mean stupid, their mind forms a negative, implicit association that could become harmful both to them and to homosexual men.

So, assuming that Sam Harris is correct, (which I think I do, though I’m open to argument) I think we can objectively say in moral terms, that it would be a better world if religion was placed on the table of rational criticism, and if people stopped using the word gay in lieu of stupid, absurd, frivolous, etc.