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Viliam_Bur comments on By Which It May Be Judged - Less Wrong
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I think the real temptation is in reusing the old words for new concepts, either in confusion, or trying to shift the associations from the old concept to the new concept.
Once you know that natural numbers are in a sense mad-made, it could become tempting to start using the phrase "natural numbers" to include fractions. Why not? If there is no God telling us what the "natural numbers" are, why should your definition that excludes fractions be better than my definition that includes them?
Your only objection in this case would be -- Man, you are obviously talking about something different, so it would be less confusing and more polite, if you picked some new label (such as "rational numbers") for you new concept.
How does that relate to morality?
I would translate this:
as: "...it becomes tempting to use some other M instead of morality."
It expresses the same idea, without the confusion about whether morality can be redefined arbitrarily. (Yes, anything can be redefined arbitrarily. It just stops being the original thing.)
"some other M" will still count as morality for many purposes, because self-serving ideas ("be loyal to the Geniralissimo", "obey your husband") are transmitted thorugh the same memetic channels are genuine morality. Morality is already blurred with disgust reactions and tribal shibboleths.
What is the difference between "self-serving ideas" as you describe, "tribal shibboleths" and "true morality" ?
What if "Peterdjones-true-morality" is "PeterisP-tribal-shibboleth", and "Peterdjones-tribal-shibboleth" is "PeterisP-true-morality" ?
universalizability
That's not sufficient - there can be wildly different, incompatible universalizable morality systems based on different premises and axioms; and each could reasonably claim to be that they are a true morality and the other is a tribal shibboleth.
As an example (but there are others), many of the major religious traditions would definitely claim to be universalizable systems of morality; and they are contradicting each other on some points.
Maybe. But in context it is onlhy necessary, since in context the point is to separate out the non-etchial cclams which have been piggybacked onto ethics.
That's not obvious.
The points they most obviouslty contradict each other on tend to be the most symbolic ones, about diet and dress, etc.
OK, for a slightly clearer example, in the USA abortion debate, the pro-life "camp" definitely considers pro-life to be moral and wants to apply to everyone; and pro-choice "camp" definitely considers pro-choice to be moral and to apply to everyone.
This is not a symbolic point, it is a moral question that defines literally life-and-death decisions.
I would dispute this. Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative is pretty clearly contradictory to some of the universalisable commandments given by versions of theistic morality.
Examples?
Why? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you know that this is the case?
Very true, but I'm not sure why you posted this as a reply to that comment.
Theres motivation to redefine morality, and reason to think it stil is in some sense morality once it has been redefined. Neither is true of maths.
Oh, I see. So your comment basically said "True, but it's easy to inadvertently treat this "other M" as morality."