I think the point is to suggest that there may be a precise concept hiding in there somewhere.
Compare with "niceness". We say "Jim is nicer than Joe, but not as nice as James", and yet there's currently no prospect of a canonical unit of niceness. There are then two things we can say:
So we can either say: the science of niceness is coming; or the science of niceness is impossible, but we can pretend we're approximating to it for all intents and purposes.
I think something along these lines might be able to help out utilitarianism.
- maybe if we really focus in on what people mean by "nice", and do lots of studies into what makes them think that people are nice, and think really hard, then we can come up with a precise concept of niceness that we can stick a unit on.
Jasay addresses this very counterargument a few paragraphs later:
...On the other hand, if they are to be understood as verifiable, refutable matters of fact, interpersonal comparability must mean that any difficulties we may have with adding up are technical and not conceptual; they are due to the inaccessibi
I figure morality as a topic is popular enough and important enough and related-to-rationality enough to deserve its own thread.
Questions, comments, rants, links, whatever are all welcome. If you're like me you've probably been aching to share your ten paragraph take on meta-ethics or whatever for about three uncountable eons now. Here's your chance.
I recommend reading Wikipedia's article on meta-ethics before jumping into the fray, if only to get familiar with the standard terminology. The standard terminology is often abused. This makes some people sad. Please don't make those people sad.