(July 5, 2013 at 11:09 pm)Inigo Wrote: You're just confusing normative ethics with metaethics. This is in essence the mistake that G.E.Moore was keen to point out and labelled 'the naturalistic fallacy'. Basically, it involves confusing what morality tells us to do and be (normative ethics) with what morality is, in itself.
This is also what I've been trying to do throughout this thread.
But, anyway, rather than pointing out your fallacious inferences I'll just point out that a concept can't issue an instruction, much less an instruction that has inescapable rational authority. So your view is, er, silly.
Morality has to be something that issues instructions, because that's what it does. And it has to be something capable of lending those instructions inescapable rational authority, because that's what moral instructions have.
You can keep repeating the same statement ad nauseum - doesn't make it true. You are the one who fails to understand that everyone here - including Simplexity - is addressing the metaphysical nature of morality. And not only that, they are justifying its metaphysical nature by giving suitable reasons - all of which you have failed to address.
Morality is a system of ideas. It is a concept formed of a collection of concepts. That is - at the core - the nature of its existence. It does not issue instructions - it contains them. It does not act and is not an agent in any form or manner. And there is no reason for it to be issued from an inescapable rational authority.
Your mistake - a most abysmally foolish mistake - is to regard a form of speech literally. The idea that morality instructs is just a fancier way of saying "as per the instructions contained within a particular morality". It does not confer any sort of agency unto the concept itself and your continued insistence on how "morality has to be something that instructs" simply demonstrates your failure to understand this simple semantic concept.
