I don’t think the claims are stance independent, either, so I don’t think there’s any loss. In other words, I don’t think typical moral claims imply stance-independence or stance-dependence. They don’t imply or hint at any particular metaethical position at all. Why suppose that they do?
We don’t take causal claims like “It’s going to rain tomorrow” to imply a position on how to interpret quantum mechanics. Likewise, it may be that everyday moral claims are simply indeterminate with respect to metaethical presuppositions.
My claim is that normative claims have subtypes. “subjectively wrong” doesn’t mean what “objectively wrong” means.
I agree. But I don’t think these categories and distinctions regularly figure into everyday normative and evaluative claims. They’re philosophical inventions, and have little to do with what ordinary moral and normative discourse is about. At any rate, to the extent that some form of these notions does manifest, I don’t think we can readily read it off of the superficial appearance of seemingly fact-stating claims just by examining the structure of toy moral sentences in the abstract. If we want to know what people are doing when they make moral claims, we should be doing empirical work that involves examining actual instances of usage, not hypothetical ones.
In a way that’s your position , too, since you think subjective wrongness exists and objective wrongness doesn’t.
Depending on precisely what is meant by subjective wrongness, I don’t even believe some forms of that exist, either.
You’re not making an noncommital statement because you think there is nothing to choose between objectivity and subjectivity.
Sorry, not sure what you mean. Can you clarify or restate? The way I use moral and normative language is idiosyncratic and certainly doesn’t reflect ordinary usage. I’m discussing how other people use these terms, not how I use them. If someone wants to know how I use normative language I can just tell them. No need to speculate.
Likewise, realistic metaethics has implications for normative ethics ,not so much in terms of what is wrong , but in terms of how wrong it is.
What do you mean when you say that metaethics has implications for how wrong something is?
Which gets us back to the issue of slightly misrepresenting relativist views...leaving out the stance dependence makes the problem slightly harder to spot.
I’m not sure if what you’re referring to is my criticism of Carroll’s remark, but my criticism is that he characterizes relativism in terms of agent rather than appraiser relativism.
We don’t take causal claims like “It’s going to rain tomorrow” to imply a position on how to interpret quantum mechanics.
If someone asks the awkward question “how do you know”, you need to drill down to something, if not all the way to QM, and not just repeat the claim.
But I don’t think these categories and distinctions regularly figure into everyday normative and evaluative claims. They’re philosophical inventions, and have little to do with what ordinary moral and normative discourse is about.
Yes, and they are useful inventions, because they provide a justification for doing things based on ethics, such as putting people in jail. If someone asks the awkward question “why should people go to jail for that”, you can’t answer it just by saying it’s against your preferences.
The realist case against relativism consists of a positive claim, that realism works, and a negative claim, that relativism doesn’t. If the positive claim fails, that doesn’t mean by itself that the negative claim fails. The relativist still needs to show that relativism can do the required real-world lifting.
I’ve referred to the need to justify real world ethical practices many times, without hearing any response from yourself.
If we want to know what people are doing when they make moral claims, we should be doing empirical work that involves examining actual instances of usage, not hypothetical ones.
That’s where I am starting from.
What I think they are doing is trying to form alliances and make changes in the real world. As I have said many times.
And I think they have good reasons to reject relativism as insufficiently committal. Even if realism isn’t the only alternative.
I don’t think the claims are stance independent, either, so I don’t think there’s any loss. In other words, I don’t think typical moral claims imply stance-independence or stance-dependence. They don’t imply or hint at any particular metaethical position at all. Why suppose that they do?
We don’t take causal claims like “It’s going to rain tomorrow” to imply a position on how to interpret quantum mechanics. Likewise, it may be that everyday moral claims are simply indeterminate with respect to metaethical presuppositions.
I agree. But I don’t think these categories and distinctions regularly figure into everyday normative and evaluative claims. They’re philosophical inventions, and have little to do with what ordinary moral and normative discourse is about. At any rate, to the extent that some form of these notions does manifest, I don’t think we can readily read it off of the superficial appearance of seemingly fact-stating claims just by examining the structure of toy moral sentences in the abstract. If we want to know what people are doing when they make moral claims, we should be doing empirical work that involves examining actual instances of usage, not hypothetical ones.
Depending on precisely what is meant by subjective wrongness, I don’t even believe some forms of that exist, either.
Sorry, not sure what you mean. Can you clarify or restate? The way I use moral and normative language is idiosyncratic and certainly doesn’t reflect ordinary usage. I’m discussing how other people use these terms, not how I use them. If someone wants to know how I use normative language I can just tell them. No need to speculate.
What do you mean when you say that metaethics has implications for how wrong something is?
I’m not sure if what you’re referring to is my criticism of Carroll’s remark, but my criticism is that he characterizes relativism in terms of agent rather than appraiser relativism.
If someone asks the awkward question “how do you know”, you need to drill down to something, if not all the way to QM, and not just repeat the claim.
Yes, and they are useful inventions, because they provide a justification for doing things based on ethics, such as putting people in jail. If someone asks the awkward question “why should people go to jail for that”, you can’t answer it just by saying it’s against your preferences.
The realist case against relativism consists of a positive claim, that realism works, and a negative claim, that relativism doesn’t. If the positive claim fails, that doesn’t mean by itself that the negative claim fails. The relativist still needs to show that relativism can do the required real-world lifting.
I’ve referred to the need to justify real world ethical practices many times, without hearing any response from yourself.
That’s where I am starting from.
What I think they are doing is trying to form alliances and make changes in the real world. As I have said many times. And I think they have good reasons to reject relativism as insufficiently committal. Even if realism isn’t the only alternative.