By pragmatic, I meant pragmatic in the ordinary sense of the word. Since the meaning of a word is not set in stone, it should be made to effectively serve a purpose-hence why I appeal to that sort of pragmatism.
As for my epistemic argument, see The Moral Void. Any rational argument to demonstrate something is the “right” thing to do is comparable to Eliezer’s argument for killing babies if it feels like a moral wrong to do the ” right” thing emotive lot. This is a new clarification of what I was trying to say earlier.
For the Einstein/Newton case you can substitute any case where there is a scientific test which could, in principle, determine a result one way or the other. This is not true in ethics- although Moore’s Open Question argument is flawed, it does demonstrate that determining a proper philosophical criterion of what “should” is is necessary to discuss it. Any means of doing so must be philosophical by nature.
Just as the absence of evidence means that we assume unicorns don’t exist by default, so the absence of evidence means we assume a way to establish ought from is does not exist by default.
By pragmatic, I meant pragmatic in the ordinary sense of the word. Since the meaning of a word is not set in stone, it should be made to effectively serve a purpose-hence why I appeal to that sort of pragmatism.
As for my epistemic argument, see The Moral Void. Any rational argument to demonstrate something is the “right” thing to do is comparable to Eliezer’s argument for killing babies if it feels like a moral wrong to do the ” right” thing emotive lot. This is a new clarification of what I was trying to say earlier.
For the Einstein/Newton case you can substitute any case where there is a scientific test which could, in principle, determine a result one way or the other. This is not true in ethics- although Moore’s Open Question argument is flawed, it does demonstrate that determining a proper philosophical criterion of what “should” is is necessary to discuss it. Any means of doing so must be philosophical by nature.
Just as the absence of evidence means that we assume unicorns don’t exist by default, so the absence of evidence means we assume a way to establish ought from is does not exist by default.