byrnema comments on Strong moral realism, meta-ethics and pseudo-questions. - Less Wrong

18 [deleted] 31 January 2010 08:20PM

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Comment author: byrnema 01 February 2010 12:01:29AM *  4 points [-]

I agree that it seems as though I just don't understand. Sometimes, I feel perched on the edge of understanding, feel a little dizzy, and decide I don't understand.

I don't claim to be representative in any way, but my stumbling block seems to be this idea about how saving babies is right. Since I don't feel strongly that saving babies is "right", whenever you write, "saving babies is the right thing to do", I translate this as, "X is the right thing to do" where X is something that is right, whatever that might mean. I leave that as a variable to see if it gets answered later.

Then you write, "What makes saving the baby the right thing to do is a logical fact about the subject matter of rightness - in this case, a pretty fast and primitive implication from the premises that are baked into that subject matter and which distinguish it from the subject matter of wrongness."

How is wrongness or rightness baked into a subject matter?