Yes, but I believe that in those past conversations I would ask you to say precisely what you mean by “morally right,” and you were never able to do so. So “morally right” becomes a non-existent goal post. The person I am talking to will tell me that I must get the ball through that goal post, and they will continually fail to tell me what that goal post is even supposed to be. I see this as the core problem with contemporary moral antirealism. That’s why I focused on this problem in my old thread. (Note that your response was something like, “Yeah, it’s an incoherent goal post. That’s why moral talk is stupid in the first place!”)
In any case, yes: if I see nothing as right or wrong then I cannot engage in persuasion, and “persuading someone towards the best outcome” presupposes that the best outcome is the right goal. Further, as I said, if the emotivist chooses to proselytize he will apparently be shaping the emotions of others to be like his own emotions. I wouldn’t call that persuasion. It is more like sculpting a block of marble into my own image.
At this point I should point out the way D. C. Schindler and others have noted that truth is what frees us from infinite self-referentiality. The caricature says that the one appealing to truth (or “right”) is really just trying to impose his view on everyone else. But in fact this is exactly backwards, as it is the emotivist who has no alternative but to try to impose his emotional ideal on others. Once we remove truth then it inevitably becomes an arbitrary contest of wills and manipulation.
Okay, that’s a fair argument. This looks to be a different form of emotivism. I think you are proposing a theory where most moral utterances are instrumental (hypothetical imperatives), and they are ultimately grounded in a desire for a positive emotional state. I almost want to give this a different name to keep the concepts clear, but nevertheless…
It seems to me that although you say there will be no appeal to “the world,” in fact you are appealing to it throughout. “People being hurt” is a reality, as is “the cost.”
So, taking one example, we have two options:
- I am emotionally averse to car crashes because the financial cost they incur is bad.
-or- - I am emotionally averse to car crashes because I am emotionally averse to financial costs.
In the first case the emotion is justified (and parasitic upon) the avoidance of something which is bad. In the second case the emotion is justified by appeal to yet another emotion, and it is “emotion all the way down.” In the first case the person is emotionally averse to financial cost because financial cost is bad. In the second case the person knows that financial cost will elicit an undesirable emotion, and therefore they try to avoid it. They have no explanation for their behavior beyond the tug of their emotions.
Now you will probably say, “Ah, but ‘bad’ just means ‘a thing I am emotionally averse to’.” But this post is long enough, so I will leave it there. 