You, the human, might say we really should pursue beauty and laughter and love (which is clearly very important), and that we p-should sort pebbles (but that doesn’t really matter). And that our way of life is really better than the Pebblesorters, although their way of life has the utterly irrelevant property of being p-better.
But the Pebblesorters would say we h-should pursue beauty and laughter and love (boring!), and that we really should sort pebbles (which is the self-evident meaning of life). Further, they will say their way of life is really better than ours, even though ours has some stupid old h-betterness.
I side with you the human, of course, but perhaps it would be better (h-better and p-better) to say we are only h-right, not right without qualification. Of course, from the inside of our minds it feels like we are simply right. But the Pebblesorters feel the same way, and if they’re as metaethically astute as us then it seems they are not more likely to be wrong than us.
For what it’s worth, my ethic is “You should act on that set of motives which leads to the most overall value.” (Very similar to Alonzo Fyfe’s desirism, although I define value a bit differently.) On this view, we should pursue beauty and laughter and love, while the Pebblesorters should sort pebbles, on the same definition of “should.”
EDIT: Upon reading “No License To Be Human” I am embarrassed to realize my attempted-coining of the term “h-should” in response to this is woefully unoriginal. Every time I think I have an original thought, someone else turns out to have thought of it years earlier!
You, the human, might say we really should pursue beauty and laughter and love (which is clearly very important), and that we p-should sort pebbles (but that doesn’t really matter). And that our way of life is really better than the Pebblesorters, although their way of life has the utterly irrelevant property of being p-better.
But the Pebblesorters would say we h-should pursue beauty and laughter and love (boring!), and that we really should sort pebbles (which is the self-evident meaning of life). Further, they will say their way of life is really better than ours, even though ours has some stupid old h-betterness.
I side with you the human, of course, but perhaps it would be better (h-better and p-better) to say we are only h-right, not right without qualification. Of course, from the inside of our minds it feels like we are simply right. But the Pebblesorters feel the same way, and if they’re as metaethically astute as us then it seems they are not more likely to be wrong than us.
For what it’s worth, my ethic is “You should act on that set of motives which leads to the most overall value.” (Very similar to Alonzo Fyfe’s desirism, although I define value a bit differently.) On this view, we should pursue beauty and laughter and love, while the Pebblesorters should sort pebbles, on the same definition of “should.”
EDIT: Upon reading “No License To Be Human” I am embarrassed to realize my attempted-coining of the term “h-should” in response to this is woefully unoriginal. Every time I think I have an original thought, someone else turns out to have thought of it years earlier!