mikailk

If an observation about a moral system creates implications for how people act, you may have inspired a new moral assertion, but you haven't 'collapsed' the category.

Knowing that 'the floor is made of wood' has implications for how I'll clean it, but the statement 'this is wood' is still a description or observation, not an instruction or imperative.

Object-level rule: “Stealing is illegal.” Meta rule: “Laws vary by jurisdiction.”

If the meta claim is itself a law, what jurisdiction has the law containg the meta law? Who enforces it?

Object: "This sentence is grammatically correct." Meta: "English grammar can change over time."

What grammar textbook has the rule of the meta claim above? Where can you apply that rule in a sentence?

Object: "X is morally wrong." Meta: "There are no objective moral truths."

The meta claim is a statement about moral systems. It is not a moral prescription like "thou shalt not kill".

If you say "this stop sign is made of metal", you are making a meta claim. If you say "stop" you are giving a directive. It does not follow that if you can obey a directive, you can obey the composition of the directive.

All to say that a meta-claim of morals is not itself a moral claim.

I do realize now I accidentally shifted the language from "universal" morals to "objective" morals. If a moral principle is claimed to be universal, it must, by definition, be applicable to all possible scenarios.

An objective moral isn't invalidated by an immoral choice still being the most correct choice in a set, but a universal moral is invalidated by only a single exception.

I suppose it's up to you if you were agreeing with the OP on the choice of "universal".

It is exactly that: a hypothetical. The point is not whether anyone has ever faced this scenario, but whether OP’s assertion is conditional or absolute. Hypotheticals are tools for testing claims, not predictions about what will occur. People routinely make gray-area decisions, choosing between bad and worse outcomes. Discomfort, regret, or moral revulsion toward a choice is beside the point. Those reactions describe how humans feel about tragic decisions; they do not answer whether a moral rule admits exceptions. If the question is whether objective moral prohibitions exist, emotional responses are not how we measure that. Logical consistency is.

If the hypothetical is “sterile,” it should be trivial to engage with. But to avoid shock value, take something ordinary like lying. Suppose lying is objectively morally impermissible. Now imagine a case where telling the truth would foreseeably cause serious, disproportionate harm, and allowing that harm is also morally impermissible. There is no third option.

Under an objective moral framework, how is this evaluated? Is one choice less wrong, or are both simply immoral? If the answer is the latter, then the framework does not guide action in hard cases. Moral objectivity is silent where it matters the most. This is where it is helpful, if not convenient, to stress test claims with even the most absurd situations.

You have two choices:

1) Do what you asked above about a one-year-old child 2) Kill a million people

Does this universal moral standard continue to say “don’t choose (1)”? One would still say “never” to number 1?

The Hearing Aid feature boosts sound from the outside in Transparency mode. Media Assist corrects for all audio sent to the headphones.

Two separate features that complement each other very well.

I think all Macs come with 16 GB at minimum now, so that should be easy! [1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/30/24270669/apple-macbook-p...