What if objective morality is minimalist? Or that we should assume that in case? What if it gives a mere right or wrong in the case of, say, murder. It may not make it seriously wrong.
The privation theory, which holds that evil is merely the absence or lack of good, can identify that something is evil, but it cannot measure the degree or intensity of that evil. By defining evil as a simple deficiency, the theory only allows us to recognize its presence, not to quantify how much evil exists in a particular situation or action. In that light, we could not expect morality to be any different.
We considering a minimalist form of objective morality. That may only deliver very thin, basic moral verdicts. Something like murder is wrong, but it does not tell us how wrong, why wrong, or whether it’s seriously wrong.
This line of thought shows up in a few philosophical areas. Here’s how it can be unpacked.
Minimalist objective morality would mean and provide:
• Binary classifications: right/wrong, permitted/forbidden
• No gradients: no “grave wrong,” “mild wrong,” “supererogatory,” etc.
• No thick normative structure: no account of duties, virtues, consequences, or rights beyond bare labels.
It's like the moral equivalent of a traffic light that only ever shows red or green—never yellow and never tells you the speed limit. So murder is “wrong,” but not “deeply wrong”.
If morality were genuinely thin, a claim like “Murder is wrong” might not include emotional weight. It would be wrong but not horrifying. It would not imply strong reasons for action. It would be like something is wrong but maybe easily overridden. It would not entail severe condemnation. This would make wrong more like incorrect comparable to the way a math problem can be incorrect. Morality would be more about classification than a demand. It would be even less about a command! This view exists in some quasi-real or minimal realist metaethics: objective moral claims exist, but they are extremely limited in content.
But could morality really be that thin? Critics argue that moral language itself seems richer than that. They say claiming that murder is wrong typically implies strong reason not to do it. Thus it carries emotional, social, and normative force. It often motivates action, condemnation, or guilt. A minimalist morality would need some explanation for why ordinary moral discourse feels thicker than the metaphysics underlying it. There is nothing - only our psychology. How we want and need things to be does not help make them true.
So?
A. Objective does not automatically mean strong. If objective morality is minimal, then objectively wrong might not be a trump card. It might not ground punishment or blame. It might not settle moral disagreements. Objective but thin morality could look surprisingly toothless.
B. You could have objective facts that don’t map well onto moral experience. For example, take “It is objectively wrong to lie”. That might might express something such as that lying fails a minimal rational consistency test. That doesn’t necessarily imply that lying is seriously morally bad. This would be a mismatch between moral metaphysics and moral phenomenology.
Such a view can be appealing if someone wants some objective truth in morality, but sees
most moral content (severity, emotional force, duties, etc.) as culturally
constructed.
This is a middle-ground between full-fledged moral realism, and moral
anti-realism or relativism. It’s like saying that there are moral facts
but they just don’t do as much work as people usually think.
But if causing a lot of harm and death becomes trivial, it may be seen as a bare violation of rules. Saying those things are horrific and warrant severe prohibition would then be itself immoral.
Coherence
A minimalist, low-force, objective morality is logically coherent and metaethically defensible. It may be counterintuitive, unappealing, or unsatisfying—but those are aesthetic judgment, not proofs of incoherence. If that is all logic gives us, we have to learn to live with that.