(July 19, 2022 at 6:01 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: What we might not do and what could not be done are not the same things. So, for example..I can imagine some act that you could commit on alien species nothing like human beings at all. It's not a real thing, that's really happening..just a thought experiment about whether or not doing x to this alien would be bad. Similarly, even if nothing ever did die, I could still evaluate the consequences of death, and establish what principles or rights to life there may be in that scenario - just as I can consider what effect nothing ever dying would have on the same..despite it also not being a present reality.
We do..btw...have words for all of these things........?
This is a particularly egregious mistake in the case of realism, though..as we may actually not know every bad thing we're up to and may not have words to describe those things - but that doesn't change whether or not they're bad in realism. How committed are you to insisting that the only possible moral view that could match reality was one with no consideration, and no words to express it...juxtaposed against the contention that the only moral view that could match reality would be one that was very well considered and communicable.
If nothing ever did die, the idea of death would never come up. You don't spend any time lamenting the fact that tables only have 2 legs, or that the sun is blue, or that fizzleworts so rarely beget booble-de-boobs these days.
We'll probably have to shut down this line, because what I've already said is as concise and clear as I can make it:
In order to have an OUGHT, you need to have an imagined world that is better in some regard than this one. In order to have a BAD, you have to have a model of GOOD.
Without motivated sentience, you can't have good. If nothing were living on Earth, it wouldn't be bad if bodies of water were highly acidic-- anymore than we consider Jupiter's atmosphere, whatever it is, "bad."
