From: Kharin (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 02:17:44 MDT
"Perhaps "gay rights" rather than "establishing equality" should be seen as establishing "that which is good", where "good" as usual, covers a multitude of sins (happiness, equity, rationality, etc)? "
Quite possibly, though I'm not sure that was the frame Dennett used, given the use of terms like tolerance. However, the question still doesn't particularly apply; for example, religious toleration of any kind raises precisely the same question (Attempts by any religion to claim to be as worthy of respect to rival religions rarely prevents them regarding conversion of people committed to rival religions as being desirable). Quite why this is fine for religions and not atheist groups, I couldn't possibly comment.
" I say, "superficially", because I never really liked Moore's arguments on the 'naturalist fallacy'. "
It might help the question to invert it, and establishing how the inference barrier functions in religious ethics where the extra-natural source posits an ought irrespective of an is. Which is why Bertrand Russell said that; "moral rules are broadly of two kinds; there are those which have no basis except in a religious creed, and there are those which have an obvious basis in social utility." Utilitarianism, of various stripes, is as you indicate a fairly clear example of the possibility of a naturalistic ethic.
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