What could make morality objective?

[Peter Holmes]

Here are two assertions.

1 A moral assertion does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion.

2 Slavery is morally wrong.

Now, if #1 is true, then #2 does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion. And an opinion held by everyone is still an opinion.

The moral objectivist argument - that a moral assertion must make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion - merely begs the question, by using the conclusion to support the premise.

[Skepdick]

Here are two assertions.

1 A moral assertion does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion.

2 Slavery is morally wrong.

Now, if #1 is true, then #2 does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion. And an opinion held by everyone is still an opinion.

The usual philosophical horseshit. Why am I not surprised?

From a deflationist perspective these two sentences have identical meaning/content despite the diference in wording:

1. Snow is white
2. It's true that snow is white

and in the negative form:

1. Snow is not green.
2. It's false that snow is green.

The filler words "it's true that..." and "it's false that..." add nothing to the contents of the expressions and can be trivially discarded. So let me help you make the mental leap.

"Slavery is morally wrong" expresses the exact same content/meaning as "It's true that slavery is morally wrong".

and...

"Slavery is not morally wrong" expresses the exact same content/meaning as "It's false that slavery is moraly wrong".

Now explain to the audience if you don't mind why "Snow is white" is a fact, but "Slavery is morally wrong" isn't.
Explain why the judgment/assertion of "whiteness" with respect to snow is a "fact idependent of opinion"; but the judgment/assertion of "moral wrongness" with respect to slavery isn't.

Queue apologetics and more dodging.

The moral objectivist argument - that a moral assertion must make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion - merely begs the question, by using the conclusion to support the premise.

If "Slavery is wrong" merely begs the question, by using the conclusion to support the premise then "Snow is white" commits exactly the same transgression.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here are two assertions.

1 A moral assertion does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion.

2 Slavery is morally wrong.

Now, if #1 is true, then #2 does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion. And an opinion held by everyone is still an opinion.

The moral objectivist argument - that a moral assertion must make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion - merely begs the question, by using the conclusion to support the premise.

I agree with Skepdick your views above is pure horseshit because you failed to take context into consideration but merely stuck with your narrow and shallow dogmatic views re superficial moral wrongness and rightness.

My consideration [may not be agreed by Skepdick] is as follows;

If,
1. A insist 'Water is H20' is a fact, because my father said so without any reference to the scientific consensus, that would his opinion [not a fact] based on his faith on his father.

2. B insist 'Slavery is wrong' is a fact, because my father said so or my government said so without any support of empirical justifications that would his opinion, thus not objective.

BUT IF,
1. 1. A insist 'Water is H20' is a fact because Science based on the scientific FSK said [justify] so, then those who agree with the scientific FSK will acknowledge 'Water is H20' is a fact and is objective.

2. B insist 'there is an ought-not-ness to slavery' is fact, because a credible Moral FSK relying upon the scientific FSK said [justify] so, then that would be an acceptable objective moral fact for those who rationally acknowledge that moral FSK is credible.

In both claims of objective fact above, they must basically be supported by verified and justified empirical evidences within their respective FSK.

In your case, you are merely playing God and insist your views is absolute without any serious justifications but merely based on your narrow, shallow and dogmatic ideology.

[Peter Holmes]

The chemical composition of water is a feature of reality that exists - and can be shown to exist - regardless of how we name and describe it. It's a physical thing that would exist if no one described it. And that's what a fact is - and what the factual truth-value of a description amounts to.

The moral rightness or wrongness of capital punishment is no such physical thing, which is why it can never be a fact that capital punishment is or isn't morally right or wrong. We can explain why we think it's morally right or wrong, by appealing to other moral assertions. But there's no factual assertion - even if it's true - that can entail moral conclusions.

Saying something is so doesn't make it so, because there's a fundamental difference and separation between the way things are and what we say about them. That's why the prefaces 'it's true that...' and 'it's a fact that...' are irrelevant. The nature and function of the assertion itself is all that matters: does it claim something about reality that is the case, regardless of opinion?

The factual assertion 'this piece is by Bach' has a truth-value independent from opinion. But the aesthetic assertion 'this piece is beautiful' has no factual truth-value. It can only express my/our value-judgement, with which others can always rationally disagree. And it's the same for moral assertions.

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

[FlashDangerpants]

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

I think it's more to do with the quality of the moral realists you have available right now, which seems itself to be a function of what they are actually trying to do.

VA is only a moral realist in support of a wholly seperate agenda focussed on his his autistic obsession with Islam, and that is how and why he has cobbled together a self defeating brew of general antirealism and moral realism. Immanuel Can is only a sort of a bit of a moral objectivist, to an extent that is solely in furtherance of his own terminal religious drudgery, thus his argument tends to entail that if God's opinion doesn't count as objectivity then all moral language is erroneous - in short he's an error theorist with religion as a get-out. Henry is only interested in having his own God buddy called Crom that says he's right about stuff, the stuff in question being just whatever he has an opinion on right at that moment. Skepdick doesn't agree with himself and thinks that is to his benefit, so nothing he writes is worth any consideration... And Belinda is an incoherent mess to such an extent that I still have no idea if she's actually a moral realist or not, and as far as I have tested, it appears neither does she.

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism, so why should yet another VA bullshit thread get spawned every day while his work languishes 400 pages deep in this thread?

Otherwise, I'm not sure why it's worked out that way, but the people who can actually work with philosophical arguments on this site seem to all veer towards antirealism. I can't explain that as there are perfectly intelligent people on both sides of the debate everywhere you can find more than five competent people.

[Peter Holmes]

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

I think it's more to do with the quality of the moral realists you have available right now, which seems itself to be a function of what they are actually trying to do.

VA is only a moral realist in support of a wholly seperate agenda focussed on his his autistic obsession with Islam, and that is how and why he has cobbled together a self defeating brew of general antirealism and moral realism. Immanuel Can is only a sort of a bit of a moral objectivist, to an extent that is solely in furtherance of his own terminal religious drudgery, thus his argument tends to entail that if God's opinion doesn't count as objectivity then all moral language is erroneous - in short he's an error theorist with religion as a get-out. Henry is only interested in having his own God buddy called Crom that says he's right about stuff, the stuff in question being just whatever he has an opinion on right at that moment. Skepdick doesn't agree with himself and thinks that is to his benefit, so nothing he writes is worth any consideration... And Belinda is an incoherent mess to such an extent that I still have no idea if she's actually a moral realist or not, and as far as I have tested, it appears neither does she.

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism, so why should yet another VA bullshit thread get spawned every day while his work languishes 400 pages deep in this thread?

Otherwise, I'm not sure why it's worked out that way, but the people who can actually work with philosophical arguments on this site seem to all veer towards antirealism. I can't explain that as there are perfectly intelligent people on both sides of the debate everywhere you can find more than five competent people.

Yep. Muchly agreed. CIN has been more interesting than most.

Trouble is, I've not come across a decent moral realist / objectivist argument anywhere else either. Have you?

If so, I'd be pleased to know about it: Flash's top pick of the arguments for moral objectivism.

[Skepdick]

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

I think it's more to do with the quality of the moral realists you have available right now, which seems itself to be a function of what they are actually trying to do.

VA is only a moral realist in support of a wholly seperate agenda focussed on his his autistic obsession with Islam, and that is how and why he has cobbled together a self defeating brew of general antirealism and moral realism. Immanuel Can is only a sort of a bit of a moral objectivist, to an extent that is solely in furtherance of his own terminal religious drudgery, thus his argument tends to entail that if God's opinion doesn't count as objectivity then all moral language is erroneous - in short he's an error theorist with religion as a get-out. Henry is only interested in having his own God buddy called Crom that says he's right about stuff, the stuff in question being just whatever he has an opinion on right at that moment. Skepdick doesn't agree with himself and thinks that is to his benefit, so nothing he writes is worth any consideration... And Belinda is an incoherent mess to such an extent that I still have no idea if she's actually a moral realist or not, and as far as I have tested, it appears neither does she.

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism, so why should yet another VA bullshit thread get spawned every day while his work languishes 400 pages deep in this thread?

Otherwise, I'm not sure why it's worked out that way, but the people who can actually work with philosophical arguments on this site seem to all veer towards antirealism. I can't explain that as there are perfectly intelligent people on both sides of the debate everywhere you can find more than five competent people.

In that one post I can find at least 3 instances in where you are disagreeing with yourself.

But we should take you seriously because ... I don't know. Philosophers.

Or because it's ... "interesting".Just another mysterious adjective. Like "moral".

Can we get some decent arguments from the interesting realists; and some counter-arguments from the interesting anti-realists please!
Whose side should we be taking? What's the true source of "interestingness"?

Nobody still has any clue what debating abstract philosophical positions is good for in practice.

[CIN]

... it's getting tedious.

You made a similar complaint recently, referring to this discussion as 'interminable'.

I'm happy to call it a day if you are. I don't see any likelihood of either of us changing the other's mind.

Okay. When an argument I've been wedded to is refuted, I change my mind, cos it's rational, if painful, to do so.

But moral realism and objectivism are matters of faith, so the uselessness of apologetic arguments supporting them is irrelevant - as it is for religious apologetics.

Thanks. And I think my discussion with you has been far from tedious or interminable. I was referring to the OP discussion as a whole.

I was offering you an escape route if you wanted it, but as you've exculpated me from blame, I'll carry on talking to you — not because I expect to change your mind, but because I enjoy the debate. Expect a reply to your latest posts in the next few days.

If you were just being polite, then let this be a lesson to you. You had your chance.......

[CIN]

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism...

Many thanks for the compliment, which is probably more than I deserve. I have a problem with starting a thread of my own, because I am too busy to come to this forum reliably and often, and I don't think I would have time to answer everyone who would be likely to reply to me. Also I'm a bit of a shrinking violet (as I'm sure you can tell). But maybe some day......

BTW, strictly I'm not a utilitarian, I'm an act consequentialist, because I hold that fairness is a fundamental good as well as pleasure and absence of pain.

[Veritas Aequitas]

The chemical composition of water is a feature of reality that exists - and can be shown to exist - regardless of how we name and describe it. It's a physical thing that would exist if no one described it. And that's what a fact is - and what the factual truth-value of a description amounts to.

You missed my point due to the biasness to your ideology.
My point is, if a claim is asserted without any reference to a specific FSK, then, it is merely an opinion or belief.
Example, a person ignorant of science may have read the statement 'Water is H2O' from somewhere or heard it from someone; he then made that statement or merely a claim of it based on faith or whatever; in that case, it is merely an opinion or a belief but not a statement of fact.

Generally, when 'water is H20' is taken as a fact, it is implied the person who made the claim is taking it as a scientific fact grounded upon the scientific FSK.

The moral rightness or wrongness of capital punishment is no such physical thing, which is why it can never be a fact that capital punishment is or isn't morally right or wrong. We can explain why we think it's morally right or wrong, by appealing to other moral assertions. But there's no factual assertion - even if it's true - that can entail moral conclusions.

Capital Punishment is a political issue, i.e. related to criminal laws.
The terms 'moral rightness or wrongness' is too loose and can be confusing.

Obviously the decisions taken by lawmakers to allow killing of humans are mostly subjective and without proper objective basis.

The moral issue related to capital punishment is whether 'humans ought to kill human' or not.
As I had argued, the objective moral fact is the "'ought-not-ness' to kill other humans" is inherent in ALL humans with its range of activeness within humanity; it is represented by physical neural correlates as a potential and moral competence which can be verified and justified empirically as objective.
Why is this not a moral fact?

Saying something is so doesn't make it so, because there's a fundamental difference and separation between the way things are and what we say about them. That's why the prefaces 'it's true that...' and 'it's a fact that...' are irrelevant. The nature and function of the assertion itself is all that matters: does it claim something about reality that is the case, regardless of opinion?

The "'ought-not-ness' to kill another humans" exists physically in all human beings, it is a biological fact upon the biological FSK and thereupon a moral fact upon a moral FSK, regardless of opinions nor beliefs.

The factual assertion 'this piece is by Bach' has a truth-value independent from opinion. But the aesthetic assertion 'this piece is beautiful' has no factual truth-value. It can only express my/our value-judgement, with which others can always rationally disagree. And it's the same for moral assertions.

As expression of 'beautiful' is generally an opinion and very subjective BUT on a level of deeper reflection [you are not capable of] a statement of beauty can be an objective fact inherent in things in complementary with the brain which is supported by its neural correlates adapted from evolution since billions of years ago.

In principle, things [especially living things] with proportion and symmetry has survival and species preservation factors.
ALL humans are programmed [via evolution] with inherent algorithms to detect proportion and symmetry and interpret such things as beautiful accompanied by a sense of beauty.
This is a principle of human nature thus not necessary absolutely 100% true in practice.

As such, 'this is beautiful' can have factual truth-value when ONLY verified and justified within a credible FSK.

It is the same with objective moral facts which are factual & objective when ONLY verified and justified [empirically] within a credible FSK.

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

Your views are too narrow, shallow and dogmatic, thus merely one-track.

When moral elements are recognized to have an objective basis, humanity will be able to expedite moral reforms toward a better world for humanity.

When you are so dogmatic you are merely building more and more stagnancy in moral competence within humanity.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Why is this so hard to understand? Could it be that moral realists and objectivists are just thick-as-two-short-planks? We need to know.

I think it's more to do with the quality of the moral realists you have available right now, which seems itself to be a function of what they are actually trying to do.

VA is only a moral realist in support of a wholly seperate agenda focussed on his his autistic obsession with Islam, and that is how and why he has cobbled together a self defeating brew of general antirealism and moral realism. Immanuel Can is only a sort of a bit of a moral objectivist, to an extent that is solely in furtherance of his own terminal religious drudgery, thus his argument tends to entail that if God's opinion doesn't count as objectivity then all moral language is erroneous - in short he's an error theorist with religion as a get-out. Henry is only interested in having his own God buddy called Crom that says he's right about stuff, the stuff in question being just whatever he has an opinion on right at that moment. Skepdick doesn't agree with himself and thinks that is to his benefit, so nothing he writes is worth any consideration... And Belinda is an incoherent mess to such an extent that I still have no idea if she's actually a moral realist or not, and as far as I have tested, it appears neither does she.

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism, so why should yet another VA bullshit thread get spawned every day while his work languishes 400 pages deep in this thread?

Otherwise, I'm not sure why it's worked out that way, but the people who can actually work with philosophical arguments on this site seem to all veer towards antirealism. I can't explain that as there are perfectly intelligent people on both sides of the debate everywhere you can find more than five competent people.

Yep. Muchly agreed. CIN has been more interesting than most.
Trouble is, I've not come across a decent moral realist / objectivist argument anywhere else either. Have you?
If so, I'd be pleased to know about it: Flash's top pick of the arguments for moral objectivism.

You, FDP and moral fact deniers are ignorant of what is morality proper that is in full alignment with human nature. You and FDP [shallow, narrow and dogmatic] are merely ultracrepidarian and archaic empty vessels.

I asked, have you exhausted all the main and sub-categories of the subject Morality & Ethics within Western, Eastern and elsewhere?
I have done that! as evidence in my Morality & Ethics Folder having 1400 files in 86 Folders covering all known topics of Morality & Ethics. If I missed out any and if it is material, I will dig into it in detail.

What I gather from your posts is you, FDP and gang views of Morality & Ethics are merely confine to the view of Anglo-American philosophy of Morality & Ethics, i.e. Non-cognitivism which is a sub-sub-section in my Moral Folder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cognitivism#:
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world".[1] If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.

These moral facts deniers have inherited the bastardized version of philosophy [the essence] from their ancestors the Logical Positivist.

Ayer in his book Language, Truth and Logic, condemned Morality as nonsense, i.e. meaningless, not truth-apt, not factual, and the likes.

Some of the succes de scandale of the book, if not other success, was owed to the earlier usages in that sequence, as in the declaration that metaphysics, centrally understood as putative knowledge of a transcendent reality, and also religion and morality, are nonsense.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/AyerbyTH.html

1. Henry is on to moral intuitionism and he is intuitively on target with 'no enslavement of humans' as a moral fact.

2. Christianity's 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' period! 'love all even enemies'[mirror neurons] are also intuitively on target as a moral fact.

Both moral ought-not-ness as I had argued can be grounded to physical neural correlates inherent the brain [via evolution] as a moral potential and competence within a range of degrees.

[Skepdick]

The chemical composition of water is a feature of reality that exists - and can be shown to exist - regardless of how we name and describe it. It's a physical thing that would exist if no one described it. And that's what a fact is - and what the factual truth-value of a description amounts to.

What the hell do you mean by the "composition of water" without somebody; or something to decompose water?

Your entire philosophy is built upon representationalist assumptions.
GIven Planck's account of how scientific progress takes place - it's far more likely that you are going to die; than understand the alternative perspective.

By an antirepresentationalist account I mean one which does not view knowledge as a matter of
getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality.

The later Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, for example, would all be as dubious about the
notion of "truth-makers" — nonlinguistic items which "render" statements determinately true or
false — as they are about that of "representation." For representationalists, "making true" and
"representing" are reciprocal relations: the nonlinguistic item which makes S true is the one
represented by S. But antirepresentationalists see both notions as equally unfortunate and
dispensable — not just in regard to statement of some disputed class, but in regard to all
statements.

It is no truer that "atoms are what they are because we use 'atom' as we do" than that "we use
'atom' as we do because atoms are as they are." Both of these claims, the antirepresentationlist
says, are entirely empty. Both are pseudo-explanations. It is particularly important that the
antirepresentationalist insist that the latter claim is a pseudo-explanation.

On an antirepresentationalist view, it is one thing to say that a prehensile thumb, or an ability to
use the word "atom" as physicists do, is useful for coping with the environment. It is another
thing to attempt to explain this utility by reference to representationalist notions, such as the
notion that the reality referred to by "quark" was "determinate" before the word "quark" came
along (whereas that referred to by, for example, "foundation grant" only jelled once the relevant
social practices emerged).

[FlashDangerpants]

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism...

Many thanks for the compliment, which is probably more than I deserve. I have a problem with starting a thread of my own, because I am too busy to come to this forum reliably and often, and I don't think I would have time to answer everyone who would be likely to reply to me. Also I'm a bit of a shrinking violet (as I'm sure you can tell). But maybe some day......

BTW, strictly I'm not a utilitarian, I'm an act consequentialist, because I hold that fairness is a fundamental good as well as pleasure and absence of pain.

My bad. I'm not sure how the decsion about what constitutes a fundamental good there and how niceness and good manners escape, but I will be interested to read about it one day.

Perhaps you would be able to assist in the miseducation of Henry Quirk. He has a problem in that he has attempted a lossless reduction of the entirety of all moral thingumies into the property rights of the individual who "owns himself". But he has a need to incporporate reciprocity somewhere into that and it's a problem that he currently solves by adding people who notice it to his enemies list. If your method of sideloading fairness could be added to his theory, you would be doing him an enormous favour.

[CIN]

A quick glance at CIN's longer post before shows that he easily outclasses all those persons I have listed above simply on the basis that he has a grasp of the subject matter and appears to be arguing as he does because he has some interest in the actual debate rather than in furtherance of some weird kink. I would have thought it would be worth encouraging him to start a specific thread as he is presenting the most interesting realist case we've seen in recent years, even if it does appear to be just blunt utilitarianism...

Many thanks for the compliment, which is probably more than I deserve. I have a problem with starting a thread of my own, because I am too busy to come to this forum reliably and often, and I don't think I would have time to answer everyone who would be likely to reply to me. Also I'm a bit of a shrinking violet (as I'm sure you can tell). But maybe some day......

BTW, strictly I'm not a utilitarian, I'm an act consequentialist, because I hold that fairness is a fundamental good as well as pleasure and absence of pain.

My bad.

Not in the least. Why would you say that?

I'm not sure how the decsion about what constitutes a fundamental good there and how niceness and good manners escape, but I will be interested to read about it one day.

Perhaps you would be able to assist in the miseducation of Henry Quirk. He has a problem in that he has attempted a lossless reduction of the entirety of all moral thingumies into the property rights of the individual who "owns himself". But he has a need to incporporate reciprocity somewhere into that and it's a problem that he currently solves by adding people who notice it to his enemies list. If your method of sideloading fairness could be added to his theory, you would be doing him an enormous favour.

I don't understand any of this. I suspect it may be intended to be humour, but if it is, it goes right past me.

Did I say something to offend you?

[FlashDangerpants]

Many thanks for the compliment, which is probably more than I deserve. I have a problem with starting a thread of my own, because I am too busy to come to this forum reliably and often, and I don't think I would have time to answer everyone who would be likely to reply to me. Also I'm a bit of a shrinking violet (as I'm sure you can tell). But maybe some day......

BTW, strictly I'm not a utilitarian, I'm an act consequentialist, because I hold that fairness is a fundamental good as well as pleasure and absence of pain.

My bad.

Not in the least. Why would you say that?

I'm not sure how the decsion about what constitutes a fundamental good there and how niceness and good manners escape, but I will be interested to read about it one day.

Perhaps you would be able to assist in the miseducation of Henry Quirk. He has a problem in that he has attempted a lossless reduction of the entirety of all moral thingumies into the property rights of the individual who "owns himself". But he has a need to incporporate reciprocity somewhere into that and it's a problem that he currently solves by adding people who notice it to his enemies list. If your method of sideloading fairness could be added to his theory, you would be doing him an enormous favour.

I don't understand any of this. I suspect it may be intended to be humour, but if it is, it goes right past me.

Did I say something to offend you?

No. It's more or less as I wrote - I'm not sure by what argument fairness and pleasure maximisation come to be the two natural goods while all other candidates would be presumably subsidiary to them. But I guess you have an argument for that objection.

Any argument you do have for that objection might be useful to Henry because he has a whole thing on the go that is intended to condense without loss all moral stuff into a single principle, but it is bad because he cannot account for all sorts of stuff such as reciprocity upon which the whole thing depends. So perhaps whatever you use to select a second principle - the thing that makes you not a utilitarian - would help him out of his situation.