I’m not trying to argue for a “highest good” or “natural law,” so bear with me for a moment here.
Let’s say I’m about to do M, and you make a statement S. I could reply by:
- Accepting S.
- Denying the factual truth of S.
- Falsifying S by an act of will.
Suppose S were the statement “Eating candy leads to tooth decay, and you want to avoid tooth decay, so you want to avoid eating candy.” Then these replies would be:
- Acceptance: “Yes, that’s true.”
- Denial: “Eating candy doesn’t lead to tooth decay.”
- Falsification: “I actually don’t want to avoid tooth decay, thank you very much.”
Now suppose I go ahead and eat the candy anyway. Reply #1 fails, because S is inconsistent with this action. Reply #2 fails, because eating candy does lead to tooth decay. However, Reply #3 succeeds, because it is in fact true - as you said in your blog post, there can be no critique of values.
If S were instead “The sky is blue,” then #1 would succeed, because this has nothing to do with my eating candy; #2 would fail, because the sky is blue; and #3 would fail, because I cannot simply will the sky to not be blue.
Are you with me so far?