Lev—if you are still reading these posts.

I’m endeavouring to make sense of your metaethical theory. As I understand it, moral disagreement is about the proper application of universally agreed moral principles to the facts of particular case, (and groups of cases). And an agreement is a moral one if rational adults assent to it. Hence Martin Ibn Warriq’s objection about rescuing infants misses the point.

But the driving on the left example strikes more keenly, doesn’t it? How do you distinguish between those universal agreements which are moral principles and those which are not?

You’ll also have trouble finding many moral principles which secure universal agreement—as the principlists have. Maybe ‘causing pain without good cause is wrong’ would secure agreement; but there’d be disagreement as soon as you try and spell out what is an adequate justification. Can you give any examples?

Do you not need to qualify your position further to take account of ignorance and poor reasoning? Thus moral principles will be those which all rational people would agree upon, if they were in possession of all the relevant facts, took account of the fact that the principles will apply not only to themselves but to their children, their friends, and to every rational being (or some such Kant-like statement).

When people agree on some ought statement, but it is not yet a moral agreement because they have not yet secured universal assent, what are they agreeing to?

Finally, the philosophy of science is a bit more complex than any of the participants so far have recognised. Some pragmatists, for instance, argue that truth is what all people in the long run will accept as true. And Hume’s fork (the fact/value distinction) has been blunted by the proofs that empirical and even mathematical claims are value laden.