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 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.
