We assume that our picture of how the world should be reflects not only our attitudes and desires, but also some transcendent morality. Thus, we feel it is not enough to say that we are upset by how a friend has behaved – we must say that the friend has behaved badly, in some objective sense. In this piece, Joel Marks proposes that this impulse, though natural, is mistaken. There is no objective morality, Marks argues, and we would avoid considerable strife and conflict if we did not mistake our desires and preferences for a value-laden reality.

There is an attitude one finds everywhere, in oneself as well as in others, that I would like to see vanish from the face of the Earth. It is best captured in what I call the moral moment, a kind of snapshot view of the attitude I am talking about. Suppose, for example, that you wanted something very much. It does not matter what. It could be something purely selfish. It could be something quite selfless. Somewhere in between is an instance from my own life, when I was introducing a friend to a large concert hall I had been to many times for classical music. I knew for an incontrovertible fact that the best listening is from the very top row of the top balcony. The sound rises from the stage far below and is directed by the curve of the vast ceiling right back and down to that very spot. There is simply no comparison in quality and volume to the sound anywhere else in the auditorium. Whenever I go to this venue I find a handful of other cognoscenti seated in that row, eager in our anticipation and taking a certain satisfaction mixed with pity for those who follow conventional wisdom and pay top price for a seat in the orchestra or first balcony.

SUGGESTED READING Why attention matters for morality By Elisa Magrì Well, my friend has her own thoughts about things. On this occasion she was highly sceptical of my claims for the superiority of seats so far from the stage. So when we entered the balcony, having trudged up several flights of stairs, she refused to sit in the top row. Instead she descended a great distance to the very front row of this sparsely filled peanut gallery so that at least she could get a slightly closer view of the symphony orchestra. I myself accept the tradeoff of a diminished view of the musicians (albeit a magnificent view of the whole hall) for a sublimely enhanced experience of the sound. Thus to my mind my friend had chosen the worst of both worlds, since she would still have a poor view of the musicians but now as well an inadequate auditory experience.