Worked more on the morality post and it’s now already 5 meta levels deep and keeps on growing. Writing it as resolved a number of problems for me, and so as a bullshit crackpot teaser, I’ll argue that:
- Terminal values are neither “terminal” nor “fundamental”.
- In fact, “values” are bullshit.
- Finding the correct meta-ethical theory is easy, but everyone is Doing It Wrong (except for me, and maybe Kant, but mostly me).
- Almost all confusions in moral philosophy stem from a) not going sufficiently meta and b) not keeping the meta levels correctly apart.
(Yes folks, that’s what “going down the meta ladder” looks like - writing posts about how going sufficiently meta solves all your problems. I think I might be doing this wrong…)
What confuses me is why going meta isn’t much more popular. It yields results so ridiculously fast, I’d expect philosophy to be full of it. But besides Kant, some theologians and internet crackpots, I can’t think of anyone doing much with it. Which makes me skeptical that it actually works out. I have this nagging doubt I’m writing “guys look, I’ve found a really clever way to build tons of paperclips!” and then act surprised the humans don’t listen to me.
On the other hand, screw humans.