The Ancient Chimera of Universal, Absolute, and Objective Value

[zefreak]

@J. Grayson Lilburne

@zefreak

Ok, just checking to see if there was any real disagreement between moral anti-realism and your own position. It seems there isn’t, and yet you have in the past rejected such a label. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding.

The labels I was rejected were “amoralist” and “moral nihilist”, because, to me, those terms seem to indicate people, not entirely unlike Bloom, who profess to reject personal conscience-based morality, who profess to look only to further their own material well-being, and who say that it is only external threats of retaliation that keep them from rape, plunder and pillage. That in no way describes me. I consider my conscience to be a hugely important guide to my action and my judgment of the actions of others. So, I bridle at the labels “amoralist” and “moral nihilist” as completely misleading.

That seems like the common equivocation of egoist with egotistical. As we know, psychological egoism is not incompatible with non-material values and goals. It is a very naive egoism indeed that produces an egotist.

Likewise, moral nihilism is a meta-ethical position that has no relevance to the actual values the person holds. There are the occasional Jacob Blooms that take a position based on a very superficial understanding of their philosophy, or who ‘overcompensate’ by rejecting the concept of value altogether (an altogether untenable position).

Jacob Bloom’s material pragmatism is not inconsistent with moral nihilism, but is not necessitated by it, just as psychological egoism allows but does not necessitate egotism.