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I place no reliance on a transcendental guarantor and yet I find myself able to make moral choices, evaluate my actions, and the actions of others, with respect to their moral value, and seem to be able to distinguish, sometimes, between those actions which have a moral value - either positive of negative - from those that do not.
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I'm sure you do: most of us, most of the time, do not enquire as to the philosophical roots of whatever we do or whatever we think. Just as I earlier argued that scientists do not - and do not need to - obsess about the philosophical underpinnings of their day-to-day activities, so moral actors do not - and do not need to - spend much time in ethical quandary. I certainly do not - and, indeed, despite my amateur attempts at philosophical discussion in this place, have little faith in my ability to form a technically sound basis without professional help.
As Moore argued against a naturalistic ethics, I take it you are not calling him as a witness for the defence on that point, but rather invoking his 'this is a hand' argument against scepticism - an English gentlemanly common-sensical response to the wily deviousness of continental skepticism. Well, I think the skeptics riposte still holds: you cannot refute my point by waving your hands in the air. You simply put the argument to one side, consigning it to a convenient pocket while you get on with the business of life.
Your ethical common sense is, I fear, rather like the cartoon dog who, having overshot the lip of the cliff, keeps running. Post-Christian ethics, in so far as it sidesteps the objections of Sade and Dostoevsky, is running on empty. Thus it is that many of the 'new atheist' theorists are unable to see quite how difficult their position is: AC Grayling is a case in point. They seem to believe that they can have the Christian ethic without the Christianity. I'm not convinced that you can.
Let me take up another thread: I will deny that animals can have anything like a morality. This is because I conceive of morality - or ethics - as conversational, and dogs do not have conversations. (They may exchange information, but they do not converse).
At this point, we are at something of a lull in the conversation. One of the major partners - those whose ethical arguments are informed by their belief in god - has, over a short period of some one or two hundred years, been forced to concede huge stretches of terrain. He's not yet out of it; he makes rallies of some vigour from time to time. But he's no longer what he was.
But he has left many of his pieces on the table. We still use them, from time to time - perhaps most of the time - but they can no longer have the weight and power that they used to have. Sometimes one of the newer players chips in a piece which s/he feels to have fashioned from her or his own material. And other players stamp their boots.