I suspect there are many senses of a word like ‘ought’ that are important. As ‘pluralistic moral reductionism’ states, I’m happy to use and examine multiple important meanings of a word.
Let me expand my comment a bit, because it didn’t quite capture what I wanted to say.
I’m fine with Will using ‘ought’ in that sense if he wants.
If Will is anything like a typical human, then by “ought” he often means something other than, or more than, the sense referred to by “that sense”, and it doesn’t make sense to say that perhaps he wants to use “ought” in that sense.
When you say “I’m fine with …” are you playing the role of the Austere Metaethicist who says “Tell me what you mean by ‘right’, and I will tell you what is the right thing to do.”? But I think Austere Metaethics is not a tenable metaethical position, because when you ask a person to tell you what they mean by “right”, they will almost certainly fail to give you a correct answer, simply because nobody really understands (much less can articulate) what they mean by “right”. So what is the point of that?
Or perhaps what you meant to say instead was “I’m fine with Will studying ‘ought’ in that sense if he wants”? In that case see my grandparent comment (but consider it directed mostly towards Will instead of you).
I suspect there are many senses of a word like ‘ought’ that are important. As ‘pluralistic moral reductionism’ states, I’m happy to use and examine multiple important meanings of a word.
Let me expand my comment a bit, because it didn’t quite capture what I wanted to say.
If Will is anything like a typical human, then by “ought” he often means something other than, or more than, the sense referred to by “that sense”, and it doesn’t make sense to say that perhaps he wants to use “ought” in that sense.
When you say “I’m fine with …” are you playing the role of the Austere Metaethicist who says “Tell me what you mean by ‘right’, and I will tell you what is the right thing to do.”? But I think Austere Metaethics is not a tenable metaethical position, because when you ask a person to tell you what they mean by “right”, they will almost certainly fail to give you a correct answer, simply because nobody really understands (much less can articulate) what they mean by “right”. So what is the point of that?
Or perhaps what you meant to say instead was “I’m fine with Will studying ‘ought’ in that sense if he wants”? In that case see my grandparent comment (but consider it directed mostly towards Will instead of you).