Okay, I'm home from work now, and I think I hit most of the points I wanted to make. To make it clear, it's not necessarily that I believe in metaethical principles because of my ethical commitments. I mean, that's true, but it's more that, as a result of my rejection of positivism as self-contradicting, non-empirical principles must exist. Which metaethical principles I believe in is determined by my ethical commitments, a fact which is itself a metaethical principle, and thus determined by my ethical commitments. . . .
I would argue--even if I'm not sure how to demonstrate--that your position is necessarily inconsistent, in that insofar as we're having this conversation in language, it's always-already implicitly and intrinsically ideological; it's built into the landscape. From your perspective, what does it really mean to "understand" my position--we're just altering each other's brain chemistries by modifying the patterns of the photons hitting each other's retinae (retinas?), right? (Which, obviously, is going on, but that's not the point.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 09:00 pm (UTC)I would argue--even if I'm not sure how to demonstrate--that your position is necessarily inconsistent, in that insofar as we're having this conversation in language, it's always-already implicitly and intrinsically ideological; it's built into the landscape. From your perspective, what does it really mean to "understand" my position--we're just altering each other's brain chemistries by modifying the patterns of the photons hitting each other's retinae (retinas?), right? (Which, obviously, is going on, but that's not the point.)