On Moral Authorities

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, they are painfully simple terms. I know you don't mean anything subtle or tricky about them. However, as communicated, you are asking your reader to fill in some blanks about what you mean by them. In everyday conversation, that is fine, especially among people you know. In the world of philosophical discussion on the internet with perfect strangers, those locunae of meaning can be filled in any number of ways by your reader.

I -invite- the reader to do so.  I mean exactly what I say...and as I've said, if my list of help and harm differs from someone else's list then I'm okay with that.  We agree on help and harm, and that's enough to find common ground and make a sort of moral compromise between us if there is ever a conflict.

For example, if I wrote to you merely saying, "Please help me", and you were willing to do so, how would you help? Wouldn't you need to know some more information about the sort of help I need?

Not to know whether or not help was a moral good.  That, and, having mentioned it before..I could be enticed to drop help entirely.  If that;s all you wrote...it's an amoral situation regardless of what I might include in my help category.  Neither good nor bad, to ignore it. There isn;t enough info included for me to make any decision..and that has nothing to do with what -I- mean by the term...it;s your own vague request that;s the issue.


If we're not having an "everyday conversation" here...if morality isn't an everyday subject...then it's pretty much useless. If you have to start from the bottom and define every use of the term "a" at every instant..if oe has to turn themselves into a walking dictionary and refer to multiple scholalry concepts of this that and the other thing..peppered with latin, while they walk counterclockwise around a demonic alter to appease the spirits of truth..... then morality is useless to our lives.

Meanwhile, I'll say help and harm, and you'll know -exactly- what I mean by them..even if we might disagree in any specific instance as to whether or not a particular example trends more or less towards one side or the other of that simple two point scale....and if you don't...all the discussion in the world won't help, because you do not possess moral agency. There will be no point at which any exploration of any subject beneath or above that simple proclamation will ever lead to anything other than wide eyed "what do you mean by that" wonder. So, surely, we don;t have to go through the bits above, and you do understand what I mean, and we can move forward...yes?