No, reductionism doesn’t lead to denial of morality. Reductionism only denies high-level entities the magical ability to directly influence the reality, independently of the underlying quarks. It will only insist that morality be implemented in quarks, not that it doesn’t exist.
I agree that if morality exists, it is implemented through quarks. This is what I meant by morality not being transcendent. Used in this sense, as the assertion of a single magisterium for the physical universe (i.e., no magic), I think reductionism is another justified tenet of rationality—part of the consistent ideology.
However, what would you call the belief I was criticizing? The one that denies the existence of non-material things? (Of course the “existence” of non-material things is something different than the existence of material things, and it would be useful to have a qualified word for this kind of existence.)
Yes, that is quite close. And now that I have a better handle I can clarify: Eliminative materialism is not itself “false”—it is just an interesting purist perspective that happens to be impracticable. The fallacy is when it is inconsistently applied.
Moral skeptics aren’t objecting to the existence of morality because it is an abstract idea, they are objecting to it because the intersection of morality with our current logical/scientific understanding of morality reduces to something trivial compared to what we mean when we talk about morality. I think their argument is along the lines of if we can’t scientifically extend morality to include what we do mean (for example, at least label in some rigorous way what it is we want to include), then we can’t rationally mean anything more.
No, reductionism doesn’t lead to denial of morality. Reductionism only denies high-level entities the magical ability to directly influence the reality, independently of the underlying quarks. It will only insist that morality be implemented in quarks, not that it doesn’t exist.
I agree that if morality exists, it is implemented through quarks. This is what I meant by morality not being transcendent. Used in this sense, as the assertion of a single magisterium for the physical universe (i.e., no magic), I think reductionism is another justified tenet of rationality—part of the consistent ideology.
However, what would you call the belief I was criticizing? The one that denies the existence of non-material things? (Of course the “existence” of non-material things is something different than the existence of material things, and it would be useful to have a qualified word for this kind of existence.)
Eliminative materialism?
Yes, that is quite close. And now that I have a better handle I can clarify: Eliminative materialism is not itself “false”—it is just an interesting purist perspective that happens to be impracticable. The fallacy is when it is inconsistently applied.
Moral skeptics aren’t objecting to the existence of morality because it is an abstract idea, they are objecting to it because the intersection of morality with our current logical/scientific understanding of morality reduces to something trivial compared to what we mean when we talk about morality. I think their argument is along the lines of if we can’t scientifically extend morality to include what we do mean (for example, at least label in some rigorous way what it is we want to include), then we can’t rationally mean anything more.