I didn’t mean that most philosophy papers I read have lots of mathematical symbols (they typically don’t), and I agree with you that over-formalization can occur sometimes (though it is probably less common in philosophy than under-formalization). What I meant is the practice of clear and concise statements of the main points and attendant qualifications in the kind of structured English that good philosophers use. For example, I gave the following as a guess at what you might be meaning:
When X judges that Y should Z, X is judging that were she fully informed, she would want Y to Z
This allows X to be incorrect in her judgments (if she wouldn’t want Y to Z when given full information). It allows for others to try to persuade X that her judgment is incorrect (it preserves a role for moral argument). It reduces ‘should’ to mere want (which is arguably simpler). It is, however, a conception of should that is judger-dependent: it could be the case that X correctly judges that Y should Z, while W correctly judges that Y should not Z.
The first line was a fairly clear and concise statement of a meta-ethical position (which you said you don’t share, and nor do I for that matter). The next few sentences describe some of its nice features as well as a downside. There is very little technical language—just ‘judge’, ‘fully informed’ and ‘want’. In the previous comment I gave a sentence or two saying what was meant by ‘fully informed’ and if challenged I could have described the other terms. Given that you think it is incorrect, could you perhaps fix it, providing a similar short piece of text that describes your view with a couple of terms that can bear the brunt of further questioning and elaboration.
Eliezer,
I didn’t mean that most philosophy papers I read have lots of mathematical symbols (they typically don’t), and I agree with you that over-formalization can occur sometimes (though it is probably less common in philosophy than under-formalization). What I meant is the practice of clear and concise statements of the main points and attendant qualifications in the kind of structured English that good philosophers use. For example, I gave the following as a guess at what you might be meaning:
When X judges that Y should Z, X is judging that were she fully informed, she would want Y to Z
This allows X to be incorrect in her judgments (if she wouldn’t want Y to Z when given full information). It allows for others to try to persuade X that her judgment is incorrect (it preserves a role for moral argument). It reduces ‘should’ to mere want (which is arguably simpler). It is, however, a conception of should that is judger-dependent: it could be the case that X correctly judges that Y should Z, while W correctly judges that Y should not Z.
The first line was a fairly clear and concise statement of a meta-ethical position (which you said you don’t share, and nor do I for that matter). The next few sentences describe some of its nice features as well as a downside. There is very little technical language—just ‘judge’, ‘fully informed’ and ‘want’. In the previous comment I gave a sentence or two saying what was meant by ‘fully informed’ and if challenged I could have described the other terms. Given that you think it is incorrect, could you perhaps fix it, providing a similar short piece of text that describes your view with a couple of terms that can bear the brunt of further questioning and elaboration.