Even if being a subjectivist means you don’t need to account for uncertainty as to which normative view is correct, shouldn’t you still account for meta-ethical uncertainty i.e. that you could be wrong about subjectivism? Which would then suggest you should in turn account for moral uncertainty over normative views.
I think you’re kind of trying to address this in what you wrote about moral realism, but it doesn’t seem clear or convincing to me. There are a lot of premises here (there’s no reason to prefer one moral realism over another, we can just cancel each possible moral realism out by an equally likely opposite realism) that seem far from obvious to me, and you don’t give any justification for.
In general, it seems overconfident to me to write off moral uncertainty in a few relatively short paragraphs, given how much time others have spent thinking about this in a lot of depth. Will wrote his entire thesis on this, and there are also whole books in moral philosophy on the topic. Maybe you’re just trying to give a brief explanation of your view and not go into a tonne of depth here, though, which is obviously reasonable. But I think it’s worth you saying more about how your view fits with and responds to these conflicting views, because otherwise it sounds a bit like you are dismissing them quite offhand.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with this post.
We definitely want to make sure everyone feels comfortable and welcome contributing.
So for reference (and for anyone reading) if you notice a down vote and realise you could’ve justified your post better, or framed it more sensitively, you can easily put it into your drafts to work it over and submit it (or a similar new post) again later.
As a guy who has written a lot of stuff people hated in his life, I sympathise!
But I don’t think this should discourage you from continuing to post. I disagreed with this post, but the only way to be right every time is to say nothing. And as people said it’s an important and difficult topic to take on.
If you found the counterarguments convincing, just say so and adjust your views. People admire that kind of thing here. If you didn’t, let us know why! :)
Yeah, I think it was a really good thing to prompt discussion of, the post just could have been framed a little better to make it clear you just wanted to prompt discussion. Please don’t take this as a reason to stop posting though! I’d just take it as a reason to think a little more about your tone and whether it might appear overconfident, and try and hedge or explain your claims a bit more. It’s a difficult thing to get exactly right though and I think something all of us can work on.
Even if being a subjectivist means you don’t need to account for uncertainty as to which normative view is correct, shouldn’t you still account for meta-ethical uncertainty i.e. that you could be wrong about subjectivism? Which would then suggest you should in turn account for moral uncertainty over normative views.
I think you’re kind of trying to address this in what you wrote about moral realism, but it doesn’t seem clear or convincing to me. There are a lot of premises here (there’s no reason to prefer one moral realism over another, we can just cancel each possible moral realism out by an equally likely opposite realism) that seem far from obvious to me, and you don’t give any justification for.
In general, it seems overconfident to me to write off moral uncertainty in a few relatively short paragraphs, given how much time others have spent thinking about this in a lot of depth. Will wrote his entire thesis on this, and there are also whole books in moral philosophy on the topic. Maybe you’re just trying to give a brief explanation of your view and not go into a tonne of depth here, though, which is obviously reasonable. But I think it’s worth you saying more about how your view fits with and responds to these conflicting views, because otherwise it sounds a bit like you are dismissing them quite offhand.
Ah, I definitely could have went into more detail. This was just meant to prompt discussion on an important topic.
I’ll avoid posting (things like this) in the future. I’m sorry :(
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with this post.
We definitely want to make sure everyone feels comfortable and welcome contributing.
So for reference (and for anyone reading) if you notice a down vote and realise you could’ve justified your post better, or framed it more sensitively, you can easily put it into your drafts to work it over and submit it (or a similar new post) again later.
As a guy who has written a lot of stuff people hated in his life, I sympathise!
But I don’t think this should discourage you from continuing to post. I disagreed with this post, but the only way to be right every time is to say nothing. And as people said it’s an important and difficult topic to take on.
If you found the counterarguments convincing, just say so and adjust your views. People admire that kind of thing here. If you didn’t, let us know why! :)
Yeah, I think it was a really good thing to prompt discussion of, the post just could have been framed a little better to make it clear you just wanted to prompt discussion. Please don’t take this as a reason to stop posting though! I’d just take it as a reason to think a little more about your tone and whether it might appear overconfident, and try and hedge or explain your claims a bit more. It’s a difficult thing to get exactly right though and I think something all of us can work on.
You shouldn’t feel sorry about this. Why did you delete your account?? There is absolutely no reason to feel bad.