This, by the way, explains my intuitive dislike for some types of moral realism. If there are true objective moral facts that humans can access, then whatever process counts as “accessing them” becomes… a local stopping condition for defining value.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at here. Yes, they are both local stopping conditions, but there seems to be a clear dis-analogy. The other local stopping conditions seem to be bad not because they are stopping conditions, but because most contemporary people don’t want to end up as Lotus-Eaters, or as mindless outsourcers. We would oppose such a development even if it wasn’t stable! For example, a future where we oscillate between lotus-eaters and mindless outsourcers seems about as bad as either individual scenario. So it’s not really the stability we object to.
But in that case, it’s not clear why we should be opposed to the moral realism. After all, many people would like to go there, even if we are presently a long way away.
My general position: if the destination is good, we should be able to tell, now, that it is at least an acceptable destination, maybe with some oddities. And by saying that, I’m saying that the destination needs to be tied to our current values, at least to some extent.
If you claim that the destination of moral realism is good, then a) demonstrate this, or b) let me add something tying it our current values anyway (this shouldn’t change much, if you already assume the destination is good, and would help if it isn’t).
(note: moral realism is complex and varied and I only sorta-understand a small portion of it; this answer is about that small portion)
We don’t know anything about the features of the moral realism destination, just that it is, in some sense, the true morality. Some moral realists seem to explicitly ok with the destination being something that horrifies us today; in fact, this is even expected.
So this is advocating that we push off for an unknown moral destination, with the expectation that we will find it awful, and only local properties defined in it. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm ^_^
I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at here. Yes, they are both local stopping conditions, but there seems to be a clear dis-analogy. The other local stopping conditions seem to be bad not because they are stopping conditions, but because most contemporary people don’t want to end up as Lotus-Eaters, or as mindless outsourcers. We would oppose such a development even if it wasn’t stable! For example, a future where we oscillate between lotus-eaters and mindless outsourcers seems about as bad as either individual scenario. So it’s not really the stability we object to.
But in that case, it’s not clear why we should be opposed to the moral realism. After all, many people would like to go there, even if we are presently a long way away.
Answer 2:
My general position: if the destination is good, we should be able to tell, now, that it is at least an acceptable destination, maybe with some oddities. And by saying that, I’m saying that the destination needs to be tied to our current values, at least to some extent.
If you claim that the destination of moral realism is good, then a) demonstrate this, or b) let me add something tying it our current values anyway (this shouldn’t change much, if you already assume the destination is good, and would help if it isn’t).
(note: moral realism is complex and varied and I only sorta-understand a small portion of it; this answer is about that small portion)
We don’t know anything about the features of the moral realism destination, just that it is, in some sense, the true morality. Some moral realists seem to explicitly ok with the destination being something that horrifies us today; in fact, this is even expected.
So this is advocating that we push off for an unknown moral destination, with the expectation that we will find it awful, and only local properties defined in it. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm ^_^