I agree with most of the distinctions and analogies that you have been pointing out, but I still doubt that I agree with your overall position. No-one here can know whether they agree with your position because it is very much underdetermined by your posts. I can have a go at formulating what I see as the strongest objections to your position if you clearly annunciate it in one place. Oddly enough, the philosophy articles that I read tend to be much more technically precise than your posts. I don’t mean that your couldn’t write more technically precise posts on metaethics, just that I would like you to.
In the same way as scientific theories need to be clear enough to allow concrete prediction and potential falsification, so philosophical theories need to be clear enough that others can use them without any knowledge of their author to make new claims about their subject matter. Many people here may feel that you have made many telling points (which you have), but I doubt that they understand your theory in the sense that they could apply it in wide range of situations where it is applicable. I would love a short post consisting of at most a paragraph of introduction, then a bi-conditional linking a person’s judgement about what another person should do in a given situation to some naturalistic facts and then a paragraph or two helping resolve any ambiguities. Then others can actually argue against it and absence of argument could start to provide some evidence in its favour (though of course, surviving the criticisms of a few grad-student philosophers would still not be all that much evidence).
Eliezer,
I agree with most of the distinctions and analogies that you have been pointing out, but I still doubt that I agree with your overall position. No-one here can know whether they agree with your position because it is very much underdetermined by your posts. I can have a go at formulating what I see as the strongest objections to your position if you clearly annunciate it in one place. Oddly enough, the philosophy articles that I read tend to be much more technically precise than your posts. I don’t mean that your couldn’t write more technically precise posts on metaethics, just that I would like you to.
In the same way as scientific theories need to be clear enough to allow concrete prediction and potential falsification, so philosophical theories need to be clear enough that others can use them without any knowledge of their author to make new claims about their subject matter. Many people here may feel that you have made many telling points (which you have), but I doubt that they understand your theory in the sense that they could apply it in wide range of situations where it is applicable. I would love a short post consisting of at most a paragraph of introduction, then a bi-conditional linking a person’s judgement about what another person should do in a given situation to some naturalistic facts and then a paragraph or two helping resolve any ambiguities. Then others can actually argue against it and absence of argument could start to provide some evidence in its favour (though of course, surviving the criticisms of a few grad-student philosophers would still not be all that much evidence).