Could the author, or someone, explain what this essay is about? It’s a debate with “non-naturalist normative realists”—but who are they? why do they matter? and what is the author’s alternative to their philosophy?
I think I get the point of the first thought experiment now. It’s meant to demonstrate that, even if there’s no objective morality, there are still things you care about, so don’t think and plan and act as if the only possible worlds that matter, are those where there’s an objective morality. So it’s related to the agnostic/atheist line of argument that the end of dogmatic religious morality does not mean a bad world, because a good world can be built on natural human feelings like sympathy and self-interest.
Could the author, or someone, explain what this essay is about? It’s a debate with “non-naturalist normative realists”—but who are they? why do they matter? and what is the author’s alternative to their philosophy?
A fairly large group of people who think some things just “are” good or bad (and also accept Hume’s Fork).
“Why things matter” is itself an ethical question.
I think I get the point of the first thought experiment now. It’s meant to demonstrate that, even if there’s no objective morality, there are still things you care about, so don’t think and plan and act as if the only possible worlds that matter, are those where there’s an objective morality. So it’s related to the agnostic/atheist line of argument that the end of dogmatic religious morality does not mean a bad world, because a good world can be built on natural human feelings like sympathy and self-interest.