On the contrary, I do have an understanding of moral language, and I have explained it to you in previous posts. What I’m having trouble with, here, is determining how you understand the same moral language.
You have made numerous references to an “objectively binding law of conscience,” and a “moral law that resides in the human conscience.” If by these references you’re appealing to my personal feelings of empathy and social awareness, then sure, I acknowledge that I have such feelings, and occasionally use moral language to express them. But you steadfastly insist that you are not referring to those personal preferences and emotional reactions, but rather to some kind of separate moral reality. Unfortunately, I don’t know what you mean by that, and so I require an explanation—but you claim that is impossible. I do not see how we can resolve this difficulty.
It’s been a couple years since I’ve dealt with moral philosophy, so I am not fresh with answers. Ethics is not my focus anyway.
But the best way to approach what I am saying is to just notice the task of distilling conceptual meanings of words that have multiple instantiations in different contexts which philosophers regularly take upon themselves. Plato was the first genius to start this approach, and philosophers in general use these methods constantly. Arguably, it is all we do as philosophers.
“Love” was a good example I gave. We cannot appropriately define it. We can only give instances of it. But we all recognize it immediately when we see it in people’s behavior, and when we undergo the experience of loving and being loved ourselves.
Likewise with “right” and “wrong.” We see their instances in laws, cultural customs, human behavior, and family relations all the time. “Right” and “wrong” are evident in all these practices and spring from an implicit sense that someone should, or should not, have done something differently. Here is a rather simple illustration. Suppose a culture has the two following moral principles:
(1) One ought to treat people with respect.
(2) One ought to always pay one’s debts.
Are there two meanings of “ought” here just because there are two different moral principles within which it is expressed? Or is there only one meaning of the word “ought” that is the same in both moral principles? Sometimes the “ought” may be more or less encumbent on an individual in different moral principles. But the two different moral principles are not using two *entirely different *senses of “ought.” So wherever the two instances of the “ought” partially overlap in meaning in two moral principles,
that is the distilled meaning of the word, and that meaning is what makes understanding moral principles–and their applicability to a wide range of actions–possible in every culture. And I contend that this “ought” arises from some kind of universal human conscience. And though not “proven,” this regularly occurring human pattern in behavior is definitely strong evidence for it.
Besides, why would this word “ought” be in the English lexicon if it did not have some obvious meaning consisting of other word-associations with things like expectation, violation, lawlikeness, and duty?
What is interesting to me, is not how much cultures disagree on moral principles, but how much they actually agree. A moral principle concerning Just actions, for instance, may have slightly different twists depending on a culture’s values and mores, but if you try to distill a meaning, you find that each interpretation of it has something to do with
fairness and
giving someone his appropriate due. For example, one culture can be completely pacificist but materialistic, and another can be completely non-materialistic and very aggressive. So the one might define a Just Action solely as “that action which consists of proportional payment for goods and services rendered.” And the other might define a Just Action solely as “that action which issues punishment to a criminal that is proportional to his crime.” Though both definitions are entirely different, the commonly shared element has something to do with Justice being some kind of quality of
proportionality that is expected within the various relationships and transactions between persons. That very well could be one distilled meaning of the moral value of Justice, even though a myriad of different moral principles arise from it.
And I gave a list of 9 or 10 potential moral principles (several posts ago) that are certainly found in the vast majority of all cultures throughout the world.
You are slipping into **pyschological egoism **here.
You absolutely need an additional premise if you want it to be true for all cases of desiring. Your’e not exempt from being logical here. You said “therefore” which directly indicates you are trying to offer an argument.