Just a guess here, but I think they take the orthogonality thesis to mean ‘The morals we humans have are just a small subset of many possibilities, thus there is no preferred moral system, thus morals are abitrary’. The error, of course, is in step 2. Just because our moral systems are a tiny subset of the space of moral systems doesn’t mean no preferred moral system exists. What Elezier is saying, I think, is that in the context of humanity, preferred moral systems do exist, and they’re the ones we have.
EDIT: I’d appreciate to know why this is being downvoted.
I didn’t downvote, but I’m guessing that “the error, of course, is in step 2” might be taken as arrogant (implies that the error is obvious, which implies that anyone making the error can’t see what is obvious).
Perhaps the word ‘Error’ is inappropriate and should be replaced with ‘misunderstanding’. I don’t mean to say that one or the other viewpoint is obviously correct, I’m just trying to point out a possible source of confusion. I did mention that it was just a guess.
That said, it’s possible that the root misunderstanding here is simple and obvious. No need to assume it must be complicated.
Just a guess here, but I think they take the orthogonality thesis to mean ‘The morals we humans have are just a small subset of many possibilities, thus there is no preferred moral system, thus morals are abitrary’. The error, of course, is in step 2. Just because our moral systems are a tiny subset of the space of moral systems doesn’t mean no preferred moral system exists. What Elezier is saying, I think, is that in the context of humanity, preferred moral systems do exist, and they’re the ones we have.
EDIT: I’d appreciate to know why this is being downvoted.
I didn’t downvote, but I’m guessing that “the error, of course, is in step 2” might be taken as arrogant (implies that the error is obvious, which implies that anyone making the error can’t see what is obvious).
Perhaps the word ‘Error’ is inappropriate and should be replaced with ‘misunderstanding’. I don’t mean to say that one or the other viewpoint is obviously correct, I’m just trying to point out a possible source of confusion. I did mention that it was just a guess.
That said, it’s possible that the root misunderstanding here is simple and obvious. No need to assume it must be complicated.