If you have already settled on a moral system, then it’s totally understandable why you might not be terribly interested in meta-ethics (in the sense of “the nature of morality”) at this point, but more into applied ethics, which I now see is what your post is really about.
Wow! Massive confusion. First let me clarify that I am interested in meta-ethics. I’ve read Hume, G.E.Moore, Nozick, Rawls, Gauthier, and tried to read (since I learned of him here) Parfit. Second, I don’t see why you would expect someone who has settled on a moral system to lose interest in meta-ethics. Third, I am totally puzzled how you could have reached the conclusion that my post was about applied ethics. Is there any internal evidence you can point to?
I would certainly agree that our recent conversation has veered into applied ethics. But that is because you keep asking applied ethics questions (apparently for purposes of illustration) and I keep answering. Sorry, my fault. I shouldn’t answer rhetorical questions.
I wish you mentioned that fact several comments upstream, when I said that I’m interested in meta-ethics because I’m not sure what I want. If you had mentioned it, I probably wouldn’t have tried to convince you that meta-ethics ought to be of interest to you too.
I wish I had realized that convincing me of that was what you were trying to do. I was under the impression that you were arguing that clarifying and justifying ones own ethical viewpoint is the urgent task, while I was arguing that comprehending and accommodating the diversity in ethical viewpoints among mankind is more important.
Wow! Massive confusion. First let me clarify that I am interested in meta-ethics. I’ve read Hume, G.E.Moore, Nozick, Rawls, Gauthier, and tried to read (since I learned of him here) Parfit. Second, I don’t see why you would expect someone who has settled on a moral system to lose interest in meta-ethics. Third, I am totally puzzled how you could have reached the conclusion that my post was about applied ethics. Is there any internal evidence you can point to?
I would certainly agree that our recent conversation has veered into applied ethics. But that is because you keep asking applied ethics questions (apparently for purposes of illustration) and I keep answering. Sorry, my fault. I shouldn’t answer rhetorical questions.
I wish I had realized that convincing me of that was what you were trying to do. I was under the impression that you were arguing that clarifying and justifying ones own ethical viewpoint is the urgent task, while I was arguing that comprehending and accommodating the diversity in ethical viewpoints among mankind is more important.