Should and shouldn't are at least intended to be motivational utterances in any metaethical basis, I think.  Some version of externalism is descriptively true, if not metaethically.  We're individual and compromised agents operating in what often amounts to an exclusively suboptimal decision field with who knows how many moving parts.  All of that seems to effect us in ways additional to the mere knowledge of some fact, if there are facts.  Notice the s, value pluralism.  Harm reduction might not be the only thing we're talking about when we talk about morality like cholesterol may not be the only thing when we're talking about health - but it gets pretty far in a practical morality or for preventing a heart attack.  

Speaking of....I know that fact, and I (at least think I )know it would be bad for me to keel over and leave this family short a friend and parent and provider, and the thought of it makes me uncomfortable and sometimes even shameful - but I'm still eating burgers and fries.  Maybe one of those perfectly rational agents we imagine would do differently. Then again, maybe a perfectly rational agent, though it does not possess our emotional content, understanding what that content -is-, the mere and thoroughly natural fact of it's existence and attributes, would decide it was also value making, and so the enjoyment of a human life would have to be balanced against it's brevity or longevity for a full accounting of valid and true normative utterances.

Sure, they are motivational utterances, but that doesn’t get me to realism which is what I am rejecting. Do you think that there is any necessary motivational property inherent in an act being morally right or wrong, or our perception of an act as right or wrong? Or a weaker claim, that there is such for at least some moral claims or facts?
Sounds like you, me, and @Paraselene are all rejecting that for pretty much any moral or immoral act. If so, all good. We agree on something. The next question would be whether there is any kind of prescriptivist and how we ground that if we have come to an agreement on motivational properties

I didn't intend to get you to realism with that observation....or, really, any of it in thread - always worth remembering. My personal commitment to realism is internal and (I hope) not coercive - coercivity is a no go for me - like, even if you have some x right it's better™ that some other agent reach that (hypothetical) realization on their own. It will be more lasting..and importantly to the current focus of our convo..more compelling. Now, I've not done an exhaustive field trial designed for high quality scientific evidence..there..just anecdotal. I was pointing out that you can get to communicative normativity from any metaethical basis. We tell our kids, for example, that they should clean their rooms. Maybe, if asked, we explain that in terms of the consequences of uncleanliness in superspreader events and structure damage and parental stress and monetary loss. Maybe we say because I said so. Maybe we point out that if dcf saw this shit we'd both be in trouble....or maybe we just say because yuck. That's (purported) objectivity, subjectivity, relativity, and non cognitive....and they all contain in their mere utterance a motivational implication. So..to the statement, "moral naturalism holds that".....yeah, sure, and so does every other moral adjective.

Necessary in the logical or metaethical sense that any and every moral utterance contains it, yes. Necessary in the practical or descriptive sense that any and every moral agent will be compelled and equivalently compelled by knowledge of that hypothetical fact..whether that knowledge..that fact... is objective, subjective, relative, or in-fact not knowledge and non-cognitive? No. The truth of a statement from any basis and the actual state of a given agents motivational apparatus and circumstance are not interchangeable. Have you ever been confidently wrong? It's like that.

To the second question....any way we can...concewptually. I have a list of ways I won't personally entertain..basically carving out space for being or doing right the wrong way - but there's a dissenting viewpoint that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good (or good-enough-for....I suppose....still trying to communicate in a neutral way).

Ah we have been talking at cross purposes for a lot of this time then. I have been trying to understand how you define and defend moral realism so was looking to hear what you find convincing about it and what it entails. I wouldn’t find that coercive, just good to understand where people are coming from and to see if I could benefit from changing my stance or be at least made to go and look into it harder in various areas.

I largely agree with your points on the linguistic side, but not entirely. Can go into that if you want, but basically it would come down to what the speech act is and whether a moral statement will always have a motivational element in its intention. Eg “if murder is wrong, Jim ought to not murder” as a simple discussion of the implications of the if clause need not be tied to anything other than a hypothetical discussion.

Re confidently wrong - heck yeah! I heard an argument once that made sense to me. Went something along the lines of “how many of the current beliefs that you have now are different from what you confidently believed before? If so, how many of your current beliefs that have been stable over time or have changed are you confident are accurate”. The idea being to learn to be a bit more humble about positions we hold. Hopefully I have indicated throughout that I don’t consider myself any kind of expert on these things. I used to be far too arrogant and certain with my views and argue for them in a bit of a hostile way. Something I hope I have corrected these last few years out of the church.
We seem to largely agree on the motivational question

Re your final paragraph, I think I am in agreement that we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good / good enough. I quite like what some prototype theories of conceptual or linguistic meanings. There are core elements that we apply a concept to that are central to our view of it (like a sparrow being a bird), but there are more peripheral ones such as a penguin being a bird
I do feel though that unless there is some concept of prescriptivity that can be described and justified in some way then it is just a form of wishful thinking about it existing. Hopefully Copp will help me reason through that, I won’t press you now I know where you are coming from in this discussion re persuading.

I wouldn't call it particularly wishful thinking. If moral statements can be true or false that very well might be bad for us, or bad for an individual, or just bad in general in a particularly shitty world. OTOH, if moral statements couldn't be true or false then we'd have little to no reason to worry about all our aberrant thoughts and abysmal outcomes.

As for prescriptivity - and I assume you mean logical prescriptivity here- you can only get that in a genuine sense from cognitivist meta-ethics. Morality based on yuck and yum doesn't logically entail any commitment. If you're thinking of prescriptivity as something like gravity, that makes you do a thing like it makes water flow downhill...no, I don't think any moral statement or understanding has that sort of juice. There's often space between what would be logical to do, and what we actually do. Such that, to use an earlier analogy, my doctor might say to me "these numbers are bad" and at least on the face of it that does seem like there would be a logical and prescriptive entailment there. Chiefly that I cut out the burgers and fries. The doctor is speaking from a realist and consequentialist perspective.

-but I don't. I'll probably choke on one of those things eventually. Traipsed all over the world doing plenty of fucked up shit and trying to avoid doing other fucked up shit and it's gonna be a french fry that ends me, not a fried circuit as I glitch out incapable of resolving my moral programming against my practical reality.

Reading through the postings in this thread my impression is that there is a lot of emphasis on language. For instance Simon Blackburn's quasi realism tries to give an explanation for everyday use of moral language. I do not see anything in quasi realism that robustly addresses the validity of moral statements (besides perhaps logical coherence of moral statements). That topic is looming in the background like an elephant in the room. The discussion can become divorced from the practical question of how we actually use moral frameworks to guide action and evaluate choices. Why splitting hairs over linguistic subtleties? I hope I am not offending anyone here, I'm just trying to understand what we're trying to get at here. 

@LoneWolf
No offense here. I do tend to get dragged off onto the Metaethics side of life and language is a big part of it. That said, I definitely agree that the question of what ethical system to adopt when you don’t believe in objective moral values isn’t one I felt got resolved and perhaps might not be resolvable in the sense that I could possibly adopt any and just drop the metaethical commitments. That would have to be treating them as a guide to life with a view to what I prefer as outcomes that those systems give

The book I was reading on the abolition of morality suggests adopting a view of promoting prosocial values as those tend to provide outcomes that reduce harm and can even be in the interest of the strict egoist if they understand it properly. That doesn’t give a system per-se, but it does give a foundation for considering which system might best use that principle and assess the outcomes likely from there

(January 14, 2026 at 12:42 pm)LoneWolf Wrote: Reading through the postings in this thread my impression is that there is a lot of emphasis on language. For instance Simon Blackburn's quasi realism tries to give an explanation for everyday use of moral language. I do not see anything in quasi realism that robustly addresses the validity of moral statements (besides perhaps logical coherence of moral statements). That topic is looming in the background like an elephant in the room. The discussion can become divorced from the practical question of how we actually use moral frameworks to guide action and evaluate choices. Why splitting hairs over linguistic subtleties? I hope I am not offending anyone here, I'm just trying to understand what we're trying to get at here. 

No offense offered, no offense taken.

Good first post, btw. Can I interest you in an introduction post?

Boru

Promoting prosocial values doesn't sound to me as the abolition of morality, more like a project of morality. But I haven't read the book, so I might totally be misrepresenting the contents. 

Imo, if we want to address the practical question the following observations seem relevant:

• There are multiple moral frameworks we have to deal with (e.g. the religious moral framework (in plenty of varieties), the secular moral framework (also in plenty of varieties).
  
• In a given society we probably want to compare different moral frameworks with each other. So there is not only a question about the inner coherence of a moral framework but also a question across such frameworks.
  
• Moral frameworks are ever evolving entities with time as culture shifts, new insights are gained and circumstances of the real world change 
  
• Also for my personal choices I would like to be able to compare different moral frameworks in order to make my own moral choices in the best possible way
  
• A moral framework can be very limited and personal (e.g. the moral framework of a particular serial killer might not be that all encompassing and nuanced as the moral framework of say the physicians in a hospital) or very broad in application (e.g. the laws of a complete nation)
  
• The abundance of moral frameworks from the examples above already show that it won't be an easy job
  

So it seems to me that at minimum 3 main ingredients (maybe more) are needed for a rigorous method of comparison and selection:

• Transparent statement of the principles underlying the moral framework
  
• Logical consistency of statements within the same moral framework
  
• Evidence-based verification of action response relations in the real world
  

I will give a proper read through and respond later, but to clarify the purpose of the book, it was aimed at moral thinking based on moral views that can be used to assign retribution or praise someone’s actions. The author doesn’t believe in libertarian free will but is more deterministic in his outlook.
He believes that believing that there are moral truths of the sort to justify retribution of blame have caused on average more documented harm than documented good in history. Prosiality is a means to achieve an end if you agree that the kind of world he wants to see / has a preference for is one that would be lead to healthier mental, physical, and economic outcomes for people. He doesn’t believe that that end in itself is a “morally good” one

Thanks for the responses though. I will definitely read later properly, just wanted to add some clarification there before ducking off to do something