On the question of morality, objective morality is not a coherent idea. When people say “X is morally good,” it can mean a few things:
Doing X will lead to human happiness
I want you to do X
Most people want you to do X
Creatures evolving under similar conditions as us will typically develop a preference for X
If you don’t do X, you’ll be made to regret it
etc...
But believers in objective morality will say that goodness means more than all of these. It quickly becomes clear that they want their own preferences to be some kind of cosmic law, but they can’t explain why that’s the case, or what it would even mean if it were.
On the question of consciousness, our subjective experiences are fully explained by physics.
The best argument for this is that our speech is fully explained by physics. Therefore physics explains why people say all of the things they say about consciousness. For example, it can explain why someone looks at a sunset and says, “This experience of color seems to be occurring on some non-physical movie screen.” If physics can give us a satisfying explanation for statements like that, it’s safe to say that it can dissolve any mysteries about consciousness.
Same here. Yet what I’ve found is that philosophers often make claims about other people’s experiences, but don’t bother to ask anyone or gather data on what other people report about their experiences. Hence why experimental philosophy is important.
You’ll get no disagreement from me. I’m a proponent of the view that standard accounts of moral realism are typically either unintelligible (non-naturalist accounts usually, or any accounts that maintain that there are irreducibly normative facts, or categorical reasons, or external reasons, etc.), or trivial (naturalist realist accounts that reduce moral facts to descriptive claims that have normative authority).
Surprisingly, the claim that moral realism isn’t coherent is not popular in contemporary metaethics and I almost never see anyone arguing for it, aside from myself, so it’s nice to see someone make a similar claim.
On the question of morality, objective morality is not a coherent idea. When people say “X is morally good,” it can mean a few things:
Doing X will lead to human happiness
I want you to do X
Most people want you to do X
Creatures evolving under similar conditions as us will typically develop a preference for X
If you don’t do X, you’ll be made to regret it
etc...
But believers in objective morality will say that goodness means more than all of these. It quickly becomes clear that they want their own preferences to be some kind of cosmic law, but they can’t explain why that’s the case, or what it would even mean if it were.
On the question of consciousness, our subjective experiences are fully explained by physics.
The best argument for this is that our speech is fully explained by physics. Therefore physics explains why people say all of the things they say about consciousness. For example, it can explain why someone looks at a sunset and says, “This experience of color seems to be occurring on some non-physical movie screen.” If physics can give us a satisfying explanation for statements like that, it’s safe to say that it can dissolve any mysteries about consciousness.
I’m not trying to explain other peoples reports, I’m trying to explain my own experience.
Same here. Yet what I’ve found is that philosophers often make claims about other people’s experiences, but don’t bother to ask anyone or gather data on what other people report about their experiences. Hence why experimental philosophy is important.
Thanks for clarifying.
You’ll get no disagreement from me. I’m a proponent of the view that standard accounts of moral realism are typically either unintelligible (non-naturalist accounts usually, or any accounts that maintain that there are irreducibly normative facts, or categorical reasons, or external reasons, etc.), or trivial (naturalist realist accounts that reduce moral facts to descriptive claims that have normative authority).
Surprisingly, the claim that moral realism isn’t coherent is not popular in contemporary metaethics and I almost never see anyone arguing for it, aside from myself, so it’s nice to see someone make a similar claim.