This is my view also (except that I would probably drop even the “non-naturalistic” qualifier; I’m unsure of this, because I haven’t seen this term used consistently in the literature… what is your preferred reference for what is meant by “naturalistic” vs. “non-naturalistic” moral realism?).
As a general point, I have a half-formed thought along the lines of “Metaethics—and to some extent morality—is like a horrible stupid quagmire of wrong questions, at least if we take non-naturalistic moral realism seriously, but unfortunately it seems like the one case in which we may have to just wade through that as best we can rather than dissolving it.” (I believe Eliezer has written against the second half of that view, but I currently don’t find his points there convincing. But I’m quite unsure about all this.)
The relevance here being that I’d agree that the terms are used far from consistently, and perhaps that’s because we’re just totally confused about what we’re even trying to say.
But that being said, I think a good discussion of naturalistic vs non-naturalistic realism, and indication of why I added the qualifier in the above sentences, can be found in footnote 15 of this post. E.g. (but the whole footnote is worth reading):
In general, I agree with the view that the key division in metaethics is between self-identified non-naturalist realists on the one hand and self-identified anti-realists and naturalist realists on the other hand, since “naturalist realists” are in fact anti-realists with regard to the distinctively normative properties of decisions that non-naturalist realists are talking about. If we rule out non-naturalist realism as a position then it seems the main remaining question is a somewhat boring one about semantics: When someone makes a statement of form “A should do X,” are they most commonly expressing some sort of attitude (non-cognitivism), making a claim about the natural world (naturalist realism), or making a claim about some made-up property that no actions actually possess (error theory)?
As a general point, I have a half-formed thought along the lines of “Metaethics—and to some extent morality—is like a horrible stupid quagmire of wrong questions, at least if we take non-naturalistic moral realism seriously, but unfortunately it seems like the one case in which we may have to just wade through that as best we can rather than dissolving it.” (I believe Eliezer has written against the second half of that view, but I currently don’t find his points there convincing. But I’m quite unsure about all this.)
The relevance here being that I’d agree that the terms are used far from consistently, and perhaps that’s because we’re just totally confused about what we’re even trying to say.
But that being said, I think a good discussion of naturalistic vs non-naturalistic realism, and indication of why I added the qualifier in the above sentences, can be found in footnote 15 of this post. E.g. (but the whole footnote is worth reading):