/lit/ - Literature

At long last, the uncertainty is at an end.

>>16666391
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. OP asked how anti-realists can still advocate for people to be moral even if there are no objective moral facts, which i answered.
Now we have two new, distinct claims. One is that
>any morality that is not grounded as objective is ultimately arbitrary
which is a premise, so it will require you to first argue why it is so, and why it matters even if it is so. The second is
>practically everybody treats commonly held mores as objective
which is a different question about the truth value of moral statements, a question of moral semantics. The division here—whether our moral semantics are truth-apt—is termed moral cognitivism or non-cognitivism. Most philosophers in the field agree that moral statements have the appearance of being truth-apt, with the cognitivists saying they really are, and the non-cognitivists saying that it is only appearance. If we pair the position on moral semantics with the metaphysical position of moral anti-realism, we get the two positions i've already referred to:
>anti-realism + cognitivism = error-theory
>anti-realism + non-cognitivism = emotivism
So your original point that practically everyone treats moral propositions as tracking objective moral values is what puts the 'error' in error-theory. The error theorist doesn't suggest that our moral propositions are tracking nothing, but that they aren't tracking the objective facts that moral realists believe they are. That is the error. Rather, as i've already mentioned, they are tracking they subsidiary norms, which are the real truth-makers. We are simply dropping the 'if' part of the hypothetical imperative so it appears categorical. The emotivist would explain it as surface-level semantics which are hiding that what are merely preferences. We disguise our preferences as imperatives to lend them more legitimacy. The fact that so many agree on similar values is that they are sentiments universal to humans. It is more sophisticated than that, of course, but you don't really have to go into tortured formalism unless a certain objection is raised. In any case, whether the majority of people treat it as so has no bearing on whether it is so. And that they do, all the better—this is a good example of 'government-house utilitarianism' at work.
If the question is whether moral anti-realists can provide categorical moral values, then you've missed the point of the program entirely. The anti-realist is rather saying that there are convincing enough contingent reasons to follow them (which i outlined in my first post). For the anti-realist, morality is reduced (in lay-terms, not the technical philosophical term) to: subsidiary pro-social norms, or some universal human sentiments. Take your pick. Now both of these can be 'universal', in that they apply to either all societies or all humans, but they aren't the kinds of things we typically consider objective moral facts. Are these arbitrary? i'm not sure.