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Perplexed comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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Those aren't definitions of 'morally good'. They are theories of the morally good. I seriously doubt that there are any real philosophers that are confused about the distinction.
exactly what I wanted to say!
Right, but part of each of these theories is that using one set of definitions for moral terms is better than using another set of definitions, often for reasons similar to the network-style conceptual analysis proposed by Jackson.
If you are saying that meta-ethical definitions can never be perfectly neutral wrt a choice between ethical theories, then I have to agree. Every ethical theory comes dressed in a flattering meta-ethical evening gown that reveals the nice stuff but craftily hides the ugly bits.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't at least strive for neutrality. Personally, I would prefer to have the definition of "morally good" include consequential goods, deontological goods, and virtue goods. If the correct moral theory can explain this trinity in terms of one fundamental kind of good, plus two derived goods, well that is great. But that work is part of normative ethics, not meta-ethics. And it certainly is not accomplished by imposing a definition.
I'm doing a better job of explaining myself over here.
All of those already include the pre-theoretic notion of "good".
Correct. Which is why I think it is a mistake if they are not accounted for in the post-theoretic notion.
But then confusion about definitions is actually confusion about theories.
The idea that people by default have no idea at all what moral language is hard to credit, whether claimed of people in general, or claimed by individuals of themselves. Everyone, after all, is brought up from an early age with a great deal of moral exhortation, to do Good things and refrain from Naughty things. Perhaps not everybody gets very far along the Kohlberg scale, but no one is starting from scratch. People may not be able to articulate a clear definition, or not the kind of definition one would expect from a theory, but that does not mean one needs a theory of metaethics to give a meaning to "moral".
No. One only needs a theory of metaethics to prevent philosophers from giving it a disastrously wrong meaning.