The descriptive task of determining what ordinary moral claims mean may be more relevant to questions about whether there are objective moral truths than is considered here. Are you familiar with Don Loeb’s metaethical incoherentism? Or the empirical literature on metaethical variability? I recommend Loeb’s article, “Moral incoherentism: How to pull a metaphysical rabbit out of a semantic hat.” The title itself indicates what Loeb is up to.
Inspired by another message of yours, there’s at least one important link here that I failed to mention: If moral discourse is about a, b, and c, and philosophers then say they want to make it about q and argue for realism about q, we can object that whatever they may have shown us regarding realism about q, it’s certainly not moral realism. And it looks like the Loeb paper also argues that if moral discourse is about mutually incompatible things, that looks quite bad for moral realism? Those are good points!
The descriptive task of determining what ordinary moral claims mean may be more relevant to questions about whether there are objective moral truths than is considered here. Are you familiar with Don Loeb’s metaethical incoherentism? Or the empirical literature on metaethical variability? I recommend Loeb’s article, “Moral incoherentism: How to pull a metaphysical rabbit out of a semantic hat.” The title itself indicates what Loeb is up to.
Inspired by another message of yours, there’s at least one important link here that I failed to mention: If moral discourse is about a, b, and c, and philosophers then say they want to make it about q and argue for realism about q, we can object that whatever they may have shown us regarding realism about q, it’s certainly not moral realism. And it looks like the Loeb paper also argues that if moral discourse is about mutually incompatible things, that looks quite bad for moral realism? Those are good points!