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Sewing-Machine comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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After thinking about it a little I think I can phrase it this way.
I want to answer the question: "What should I do?"
It's kind of a pressing question since I need to do something (doing nothing counts as a choice and usually not a very good one).
If the people arguing that morality is just preference answer: "Do what you prefer", my next question is "What should I prefer?"
This might have clarified for me what this dispute is about. At least I have a hypothesis, tell me if I'm on the wrong track.
Antirealists aren't arguing that you should go on a hedonic rampage -- we are allowed to keep on consulting our consciences to determined the answer to "what should I prefer." In a community of decent and mentally healthy people we should flourish. But the main upshot of the antirealist position is that you cannot convince people with radically different backgrounds that their preferences are immoral and should be changed, even in principle.
At least, antirealism gives some support to this cynical point of view, and it's this point of view that you are most interested in attacking. Am I right?
That's a large part of it.
The other problem is that anti-realists don't actually answer the question "what should I do?", they merely pass the buck to the part of my brain responsible for my preferences but don't give it any guidance on how to answer that question.