“Normative” ethical theories

[The Grand Nudger]

Couple of things there. I’ll try to keep this shorter than the last reply because, at least at this level, it really is pretty simple. I note that you are not similarly unconvinced that we have not just labeled catness and blackness as such. We seem content at least to accept that a cat is a thing that exists, and that being black is a thing a cat can be. That the statement means exactly what it says. Natural realism concerns itself with or assesses moral statements in the same way.

I don’t know that it’s particularly anomalous for us to recognize content -of any kind- and be unmotivated to action by that recognition in and of itself. Are you not indifferent to the blackness or catness of black cats? I suppose there might be some question about your or our moral agency lurking there…but again…our level of concern or indifference to a moral proposition and the accuracy of a moral proposition are not interchanfeabke questions. Off the cuff…I would expect people to be more or less indifferent to true or false moral statements for reasons not at all limited to and probably not even majority comprised of their accuracy. Stealing is bad…for example…but we tend to be far less concerned by that so long as we aren’t the ones being stolen from. Even if stealing isn’t bad…that moral proposition is false…we’re still likely to be more concerned when we are the ones being stolen from.

Ultimately, none of us are perfectly rational or perfectly competent agents. However, this is clearly a statement about us, and not about whether or not murder (or any other thing) possesses specific properties.