@Mutoh You seem to be confusing what's actually fundamentally and objectively real with pragmatic, approximate high-level abstractions that humans express using words in natural language. For example, we have coined the concept of "cat" in an attempt to capture a pattern of matter arranged in the way our brains interpret as cats, but that's just a convenient pragmatic abstraction.

It doesn't follow from that abstraction that therefore there objectively exists an "idealized proper cat" from which any deviation is an "improper cat", and that "improper cats" are evil and the idealized one is "good".

We might as well play the same game by defining an idealized "properly hungry cat" and every cat that doesn't fit our "properly hungry cat" definition is "evil" and every hungry cat that matches our definition is "good". These definitions are completely arbitrary, and with this trick you can pretty much arbitrarily define anything into being "good" or "evil" however you like, which is a pointless exercise that doesn't tell us anything about what's objectively good or evil.

@Mutoh Regarding materialist atomism, you have a fair point there that some atheists might admit consciousness as fundamental and non-reducible to matter, as in panpsychism, but even then that doesn't tell us much about what's objectively good or evil.

@Mutoh @PeterRankin Have a look at this question: philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/115606/…

Essentialism is hardly essential to making sense of the world, and there is a significant difference between generic "what is"-talk and the full-blown notion of essences (which is not a historically stable concept, so it comes in many versions, none of which is obvious, any of which might well seem false or trivial at best).

I should emphasize that any conclusion that can be reached via ordinary meanings and grammar, can be undermined by the same, because for example if we tried to appeal to something like, "The use of the phrase 'what is', is unavoidable," well, that's not true, since by free will, I could choose to never use the phrase "what is," etc.

The connection with theism is also dubious: there have been plenty of theistic nominalists (Occam, Berkeley) and even those who believe in universal forms of other things, think that God Itself has no such form, is not a particular, and so has no actual nature or essence as such beyond the generic use of "what is" phrases (and even w.r.t. those, the apophaticist is going to push us towards "what is not").

Anyway, the SEP mentions four characterizations of essentialism as well as multiple versions of it, so apparently there's nothing essential to essentialism itself.

@PeterRankin This is an interesting analogy. Fine China is, notoriously, sentimentalised. The actual value of a lot of dishware created using techniques that involve paints and glaze with lead is often actively negative - you do not want people eating off these plates. Charity shops nowadays often refuse to receive donations of china dishware because they cannot sell them, they take up storage space, and do not look particularly appealing or inviting.

Sitting down and evaluating something in terms of its true value might, potentially, suggest an active move away from the inherited presumptions of value. That china might mean something to you, and that's okay, but from a purely utilitarian perspective, it might be more value as raw material than as a constructed thing.

I think a lot of Christian morality in the present day sits in a similar space - to actually sit down and look at what it is that conventional models of gender and sexuality that is being discussed raises the possibility that the whole thing has been deeply oppressive and abusive from the start. Marriage, whatever beauty or history you might ascribe to it, may not be right for the world.

@PaulRoss -- That's interesting about fine china; I don't really know much about dishware, and maybe I should have picked a different example. While I agree that subjective value exists (e.g., I Peter 3:4), I don't believe this negates the idea of objective goodness or value. It's just that they're separate concepts.

It seems to me the argument could cut the other way, too: Just because someone subjectively values traditional marriage less (or not at all) doesn't mean it is any less objectively good.

My experience, though, is that people don't consistently live that way, but use a "much nicer car" to get around in everyday life than they do in these kinds of theoretical arguments. And if we accept the standards of reason that we use in daily practice, I think we'd have to agree that homosexuality, as an example, is contrary to the natural design.

@PeterRankin I guess I made my comment in reaction to the idea that the removal of objective good is one manifestation of objective evil. But clearly, one can intend to remove something that is understood as a harm. China is an interesting example because it exemplifies something that is subjectively believed as good but is actually harmful.

This would weigh in on your answer, because intention to remove something that is in fact objectively good need not be an objectively evil intention, because one can believe it to be harmful. And similarly, something may appear to be a removal of something good but in fact be removing something objectively harmful.

These two amount to the same actual intention - removing the thing. And so it seems strange for us then to say that the same intention might be objectively either good or evil, depending on the objective qualities of the thing.

The intention is about the subject, and the action is about the object, so we may call the action an objective good or evil, but this seems incidental to the evaluation of the intentionality.

@PaulRoss -- I think that's a good point, and in my original answer, I do include as a condition that the person is aware that their aim is objectively evil, though I mention that a little further down. And so for example, someone with alzheimer's who honestly thinks a person is an intruder does not have evil intent when treating that person as such; it's just mistaken intent.

If by "subjective" is meant only, "within the subject," then I suppose you're right that intent is subjective by definition. I had inserted a clause in my answer to clarify that intent can be objectively evil to the extent it can be objectively anything else.

But by "subjective" in this context, I think the popular meaning is that there is no universal and objective standard by which intent can be judged; and on this definition, I think intent can certainly be objective, since its aims can be. I think that's why courts can judge intent as part of criminal trials, because there's an objective standard which can be applied to intent. But I guess it depends on which definition is used.

@user77058 you rely on concepts such as "patterns", "matter", "brains", "abstraction", or even "concept" itself. If these are still just "high level abstractions etc.", one has to wonder what is it they're being abstracted from in order to be meaningful. But if they or their references are meant to be objectively true, not only that's a weird special pleading, you still end up needing to presuppose essentialism in order to make a point against it.

@user77058 do colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Symbols can be arbitrarily meshed together, but if that was all there was to their content then we wouldn't be able to tell nonsense. A "properly four-sided triangle" is nonsense. A "properly three-sided triangle" is meaningful. We can tell the difference by knowing what a triangle is. Is it that arbitrary to recognize that a 🔺 is not a ⬛? Let alone that a chiliagon is not a myriagon. If that much is arbitrary, then truth itself is arbitary.

@user77058 I don't know what exactly I should look at in this question. If good and evil are arbitrary, the utility of anything is just as arbitrary, since something is useful only insofar as it furthers some good beyond itself. And if there is anything inherently disordered, nothing can justify it, not even truly good ends. So either way utilitarianism can't replace moral realism.

@KristianBerry "so apparently there's nothing essential to essentialism itself" if that were true then you wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the alternatives, and therefore you wouldn't even be able to contest it or contrast it to, say, nominalism, which you can recognize as not essentialism. Maybe the use of the phrase "what is" is avoidable, but recognizing what something is still is not, as is evident from your arguments.

@KristianBerry since the connection I posited was that essentialism leads to theism rather than the other way around, the existence of theistic nominalists doesn't really cast doubt on it. I don't quite see the relevance.

@Mutoh " if that were true then you wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the alternatives, and therefore you wouldn't even be able to contest it or contrast it to, say, nominalism, which you can recognize as not essentialism." On the contrary, I can tell what the word is sometimes used for without needing to think that the word ought to be used in the same way, whenever it is used, forever. I am not controlled by, or a victim of, my language, like you are, but I can think beyond it.