From the CTAA reading, I was mostly intrigued by the differences between Cognitivists and Non-Cognitivists. To me, I am more inclined to agree with Non-Congittivists more than Cognitivists in terms of a philosophical way of thinking. Simply put, the culture that we are immersed with inflicts certain values on us. Depending on where we are from, we have different attitudes towards different topics that affect our way of thinking about morality. Meaning that morality is completely subjective. Therefore, there is no way we can dignify whether something is good or bad if it is subjective. Because of the subjectivity of morality, I am more inclined to believe Non-Cognitivists more than Congnitivists. Now, the argument against my claim is that there are principles that all people value therefore there must be morality. Basic principles that can be argued would stem from a list similar to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, I would argue that even subjects that would seem universally agreed upon, like the killing of innocence during times of war, can have opposition. It would only take one opposing opinion to make the idea subjective.
Additionally, the above idea is also important when considering universalism. I think it would be easy to assume that by the Non-Cognitivist way of thinking you cant have universalism because morality is neither good nor bad. Meaning that if nothing is considered right or wrong, how can there be a consensus on what is morality? I would say that Universalism is more intended to protect the ability that you can consider something good or bad; in other words, universalism protects the ability to consider morality. By giving all things equal importance, you are giving equal weight to what is considered good morality or bad morality. We are not considering one is correct over the other, we are instead allowing all possible options as viable. Therefore morality can be neither good nor bad but still be universal.
Overall, the theories of thinking that are mentioned in the reading were all interesting. In one way or another, they all overlap each other and can explain how people make decisions. Critical thinking, to me, is simply the method of reasoning behind actions. And by understanding the way people think, you can make reasonable predictions on how people will behave.
Cognitivists and Non-Cognitivists also stuck out to me as most interesting, although I think I would place myself into a middle ground between the two. Upon my initial reading of the text, I didn’t really see why someone would side as a Non-Cognitivist, but the part you mentioned about subjectivity now makes it seem like a rather sensible position. Some things like murder should surely seem to be immoral, yet there are still some people that would disagree, although likely a very small minority. I think looking from an overall perspective is usually more rational, but it is definitely important to consider outliers.
I think it’s really interesting that you bring up that morality itself is not good or bad. To an extent, I even think that idea can become subjective, because we often refer to good things as moral and bad things as immoral, which suggests that we see morality as good, and immorality as bad. However, as it is mechanism through which we attempt to name some things good and some things bad, then how can this concept itself be good or bad?