Thanks, enjoyed this a lot! Had one thought though:
It seems to me that the question of a definition being good or bad seems downstream of what a definition is. This, in turn, is downstream of prior philosophical commitments. Classically a definition gives genus and differentia, which assumes a kind of essentialism. If instead a category is just a set, i.e. if someone has nominalist commitments, any collection counts and ‘arbitrariness’ ceases to mean much (at least in extreme cases). Was wondering where you land on this issue...
This came to mind:
I agree that there can be no alignment without a continuity of values. But it seems to me that your case for continuity rests substantially on the assumption that there is a continuity of values within humanity. But what if this is untrue? Please bear with me for a moment:
I agree with you in effectively saying that, insofar as moral concerns emerge out of our human consciousness and are deeply embodied, there is a kind of ineffability to them. But I wonder whether you would also call these moral concerns a kind of embodied knowledge. If so, you may be willing to consider that knowledge, taken more generally, has an embodied aspect which is also, much like moral concerns, ineffable.
If that is so, I wonder what becomes of modernity as an enterprise. Ever since Descartes there has been a steady objectification and externalisation of knowledge, which older traditions would not have recognised as knowledge at all, or at least not as the whole of it. The deepest aspect of knowledge in various wisdom traditions was given from teachers to students in practices which embodied it. It became part of the student’s very habitus.
If there is some truth to these things, I wonder whether the humanity of today has severed its ties with its past almost completely. And if it has, I am not sure how much is left of the contrast between a chain of generations and a single leap...