I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)
I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)