You can’t justify it via some external argument, because no such external argument exists: the question of “what values should we have?” is itself a fundamentally value-laden question, and value-laden questions can only be addressed by appealing to other values.
Presumably, that means no such argument is valid. There are plenty of arguments for the objectivity of value, and for specific values. And they are not circular so long as the reason you should accept them is different from the norm they are advising. Typically, rational normativity is assumed by any argument.
I have no idea why you think what you wrote is at all in contradiction to what I said. To wit, here is what I wrote:
You can’t justify it via some external argument, because no such external argument exists: the question of “what values should we have?” is itself a fundamentally value-laden question, and value-laden questions can only be addressed by appealing to other values.
And here is what you wrote:
And they are not circular so long as the reason you should accept them is different from the norm they are advising.
These are quite literally the same sentiment, except that you use the word “norm” instead of “value”. The point remains the same, however: assertions about should-ness must appeal to some preexisting notion of should-ness.
And this is not a problem, if you happen to accept whatever notion of should-ness is being appealed to. In the case of this article, however, I am specifically rejecting the notion being appealed to (that being the idea that if your values were arrived at via some process that could counterfactually have gone differently, they are not values worth preserving)—since, as I stated, this would result in the set of values “worth preserving” being reduced to the empty set.
This, too, is a normative claim; and I’m fine with that. Or, to taboo “normative”: I’m fine with claiming that values like not killing people and not causing unnecessary suffering are intrinsically motivating to creatures like humans, and endorsedly so. And if Gordon wants to argue:
You only believe that because of an evolutionary coincidence; plenty of species do not have the exact same emotions you do, including such emotions as empathy or sympathy!
then my response to that is to nod sagely and reply:
Thank you very much for telling me that; however, my present self does not care. I value what I value, and although it may perhaps be a fortunate coincidence from a third-person perspective that the universe’s initial conditions were such that organisms encoding these specific values happened to evolve, rather than organisms encoding some other set of values, my values’ response to this is not to agonize over all the other possible values that could have found themselves in their place—any more than the winner of a race agonizes over the counterfactual worlds in which someone else won instead of them.
Instead, my values say, “What a lucky opportunity, to have been instantiated here, in this universe, out of all the possible competitor values that could have been here instead; I will now proceed to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to do things that are good according to me, and not do things that are not good—again according to me.”
And to this, neither Gordon nor you can offer a valid counterargument, since that counterargument would, indeed, have to appeal to some other norm—one which, presumably, I would find just as uncompelling.
Presumably, that means no such argument is valid. There are plenty of arguments for the objectivity of value, and for specific values. And they are not circular so long as the reason you should accept them is different from the norm they are advising. Typically, rational normativity is assumed by any argument.
I have no idea why you think what you wrote is at all in contradiction to what I said. To wit, here is what I wrote:
And here is what you wrote:
These are quite literally the same sentiment, except that you use the word “norm” instead of “value”. The point remains the same, however: assertions about should-ness must appeal to some preexisting notion of should-ness.
And this is not a problem, if you happen to accept whatever notion of should-ness is being appealed to. In the case of this article, however, I am specifically rejecting the notion being appealed to (that being the idea that if your values were arrived at via some process that could counterfactually have gone differently, they are not values worth preserving)—since, as I stated, this would result in the set of values “worth preserving” being reduced to the empty set.
This, too, is a normative claim; and I’m fine with that. Or, to taboo “normative”: I’m fine with claiming that values like not killing people and not causing unnecessary suffering are intrinsically motivating to creatures like humans, and endorsedly so. And if Gordon wants to argue:
then my response to that is to nod sagely and reply:
And to this, neither Gordon nor you can offer a valid counterargument, since that counterargument would, indeed, have to appeal to some other norm—one which, presumably, I would find just as uncompelling.