Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

Realist moral statements often take the form of a transitive argument.  If a is equal to b, and b is equal to c, then a is equal to c.  I already covered this, but again and breifly -

if mountaintop removal mining is harmful
and what is harmful is what is bad
then mountaintop removal mining is bad

Thus, the hypothetical realist moral statement is coherent - though, as I also already discussed, that's a pretty low bar.  For a moral statement to be true, as envisioned by moral realism - the statement or argument cannot simply be coherent, it must be coherent and accurate with respect to the facts it purports to report.  The set of all conceivable coherent statements is far larger than the set of all true statements.

Well, I suppose we're dealing with a particular formal definition of "coherence" as well, as this certainly doesn't meet the criteria for literary coherence.  Any child capable of understanding that syllogism would immediately start asking questions about what it means to harm a mountain, or how somebody can know that's "bad."

I can tell you what I think will happen in practice with this kind of argument.  It won't come in little sets like this that are clear bullshit.  It will come in complex chapters of big fat hardcover text books with "Harvard phD" written on the cover, mentioning perhaps a couple dozen other like works in the first chapter and implying "Read all these, or you won't really be qualified to comment on what follows."  It then will present all kinds of "facts," like charts about American strip mining correlated with budgie deaths in the Netherlands or something. But in the end, if it takes 500 pages to answer a simple question, you're probably not answering the question at all.

The biggest fear of bullshit-mongers is that some simple moron like me will step into the room and say: "Yea, but. . . why is it bad?" And then the author will have nothing left to do but hysterically gesture toward his 500 pg. book, which if you read closely enough might as well be titled, "Why the Emperor's New Clothes are Not Only Real but Also Super-Important." All the face-plant memes in the world won't obscvure the fact that the question is unanswerable in any way that doesn't beg the question.