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Nope, I just use the last posted page to browse and saw one comment then the other. No sinister Discord groups to stalk random people. Just reading. Promise.
And even if you want your discussion at the level of individuals then you may feel it doesn't harm anyone and another individual may feel it does. If that individual can persuade other individuals to intervene through social pressure or laws then you end up in the same place. Sets of people can coordinate actions from families on up.
You exist in a world with other people. Those other people may have different views to you. That you don't think it harms anyone matters not a jot. Only what you can persuade others to accept. To that extent society is real.
Stop with the amoralism. this is a philosophical forum where we discuss what is just. this is not a business, political party, or parliament. It is just for natives to prevent a 9 9 6 race to the death in their own country. it is unjust for jealous busybodies to meddle with romantic relationships that of those of strangers. It is not a logical rebuttal to merely describe the amoral process by which injustice happens. I am sure if I browse your profile you will have ideals and wants and shoulds in there. I already demonstrated to another person commiting this fallacy that I could reply just as easily with fallacious amoralism to any of your oughts.
We do discuss philosophy but we aren't a philosophy forum. The Culture War is very little to do with what is just and more to do with the overarching clash of culture within societies. So it shouldn't really surprise you if your ideas are critiqued within that framework.
Having said that pragmatism is a philosophy, so pointing out that your ideas do need to account for others is a valid point.
Or to put it another way, you can say people shouldn't care when a 25yo man dates a 16yo girl. And a valid response is shouldn't is irrelevant only what actually is.
This is a discussion forum, so you don't get to control who responds or the frame of their arguments. You can simply choose not to respond if it goes in a direction you don't wish to pursue however.
You did it again. You turned a criticisim of your logic into an attempt to control what you write, and then remarked the obvious fact that I can't control your fingers or delete your comments from the forum. That is fallacious and pointless to say; it adds nothing to the conversation. You are responding to something I didn't say, with descriptive facts everyone knowns, instead of actually engaging with my position, which is normative.
Pragmatism is a valid response to a normative claim. Thats what you are not understanding.
If you don't like it, ignore me. But you said "Stop with the amoralism"
I am telling you no, I will not because it is a valid rebuttal to your ideas.
You have asserted it is not, but you have not even made an attempt to argue why it isn't.
I don't have to ignore you. I can just keep responding to stop with amoralism every time you post it in response to a normative argument. I don't have to make an argument that you find convincing. I can in fact just keep pointing out that I want to have an ethics argument, and you are responding with descriptive trivialities after misinterpreting what I said.
You can indeed, of course. But as you are just making a statement and not backing it up, I think anyone reading will correctly take my point which is that descriptivism is not a triviality in an ethics argument.
Do you have an actual argument for why it is just a triviality? An assertion does not an argument make.
And I can claim anybody reading that has progressed beyond Kohlberg's conventional stage of moral development will understand that responding to normative claims by wrongly interpreting them as different descriptive claims is fallacious. Do you have an actual argument otherwise? Your descriptive assertions do not make a normative argument.
Maybe an analogy will help:
It's like saying God tells us not to murder, and then when someone answers that God doesn't exist, complaining that you wanted to talk about God's commandments, not God's existence. One flows from the other. If God doesn't exist, whatever people claim he says about murder is worthless. So someone disputing the existence of God isn't misunderstanding anything. They're attacking your argument one level up, which is entirely valid.
You're assuming normative claims are some kind of freestanding thing in their own right which is moral realism and it's a disputed position. My point is a second order claim, your whole framing of normative claims rests on an assumption you haven't actually argued for.
If you want to have a discussion with the assumption moral realism is correct, then you need to state that upfront. Otherwise you are leaving that surface area of your argument up for debate.
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