“He’s an unmarried man, but is he a bachelor?” This is a ‘closed’ question. The answer is obviously “Yes.”
This is a false claim, unfortunately. Bachelor is not merely an “unmarried man”, it is an “unmarried man who could’ve been married in his society” (as all the long-discussed things like “#My 5-year-old son is a bachelor” and “#The Pope is a bachelor” show). ETA: the part beginning with “who” is probably a presupposition rather than assertion (“The Pope is not a bachelor” is only felicitous if used as metalinguistic “The Pope cannot be described by the word ‘bachelor’”, not if used in the literal sense “The Pope is married although it is not allowed”).
Austere Metaethicist: Your definition doesn’t connect to reality. It’s like talking about atom-for-atom ‘indexical identity’ even though the world is made of configurations and amplitudes instead of Newtonian billiard balls. Gods don’t exist.
This one is also not obviously true. We can ask what Sherlock Holmes would approve of despite the fact that he never existed (and I can imagine a morality that says “good is what Sherlock approves of”—a strange morality though it would be). Why can’t we take “an essentially just and loving God” as a similar literature character?
This is a false claim, unfortunately. Bachelor is not merely an “unmarried man”, it is an “unmarried man who could’ve been married in his society” (as all the long-discussed things like “#My 5-year-old son is a bachelor” and “#The Pope is a bachelor” show). ETA: the part beginning with “who” is probably a presupposition rather than assertion (“The Pope is not a bachelor” is only felicitous if used as metalinguistic “The Pope cannot be described by the word ‘bachelor’”, not if used in the literal sense “The Pope is married although it is not allowed”).
This one is also not obviously true. We can ask what Sherlock Holmes would approve of despite the fact that he never existed (and I can imagine a morality that says “good is what Sherlock approves of”—a strange morality though it would be). Why can’t we take “an essentially just and loving God” as a similar literature character?