Infinite Regress disproves Moral Realism

Round Theme: Prokofiev, "Dance of the Knights" http://www.youtube.com...On to the arguments. I'll respond to Con in a line-by-line format.Summary of the Infinite Regress ObjectionI want to clarify Con's second premise--it is not merely that justifications "must be based on an axiom". My thesis is that ethics, commonly-understood, is derivational. The concept of "normative contingency" denotes the dependence of prescriptive statements on conclusions or meta-ethical assertions which are logically prior. "Murder is immoral", for instance, might be contingent on the meta-ethical statement that "human life has intrinsic value". So, my argument is not, as the vague second premise might suggest, that an axiomatic statement is required to legitimate moral derivations; rather, I argue that the structure of normative ethics is derivational, so, ipso facto, normative contingency is applicable precisely because, to found the derivational structure peculiar to a given ethical framework, one necessarily has to posit as axiomatic some claim to meta-ethical objectivity. Infinite regress is problematic in epistemology for making certainty claims, and it's just as problematic in ethics for making moral claims. In short, to do normative ethics, you have to arbitrarily assert meta-ethical propositions. This, on my view, is philosophically irresponsible. Rather than admitting that there is a void where moral objectivity should be, we choose instead to pretend, through claims to meta-ethical self-evidence, that we can make objective moral claims.Irreducibility and the Math Analogy1. The naked assertion that questioning mathematical operations "makes no sense" is not an argument. I'm no mathematician, but there are plenty of people--philosophers of math, number theorists, etc.--who do dedicate or have dedicated their time and resources to exposing the logic underpinning whole numbers, addition, etc. If anyone has ever read Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, then you probably have some idea of how much work goes into what we take for granted as simple operations.2. Bad analogy. The parallel to math implies, but does not explain, the (ostensible) irreducibility of moral statements. Since we're talking about value systems, Con's claim has to amount to "there is some fundamental, objective value/set of values", since that's the only condition that would stand up to regression; yet, it isn't clear to me that Con has made a case for that. At best, Con is wiggling his eyebrows in a manner that suggests there might be some self-evident (meta-)ethical propositions. Until he can explain their nature or provide examples, however, I think the normative contingency thesis demonstrates precisely why justificationalist ethics fails. Systems of derivation must, in Godelian fashion, appeal to something outside themselves for validation when they rely on axioms for their outputs. With ethics, this contingency goes all the way back to first principles; yet, if you push the thesis just a bit further, then the first principles themselves, the irreducibility of which Con merely tries to hint at by intuition, are exposed in their contingency on the agreement of whoever is party to the discourse.To Con, I would pose the following questions: which moral statements are axiomatic? How can you be sure? What differentiates irreducible moral statements from reducible ones?Moral Ontology and the Color Analogy (and Possibly Constructivism?)1. I don't think that colors are objective conditions of the world. The fact that three individuals--one male, one female, and one colorblind person--can have different experiences of color (depth, qualia inversion, etc.) gives credence to the representationalist view that qualities like color, smell, taste, etc. aren't properties of objects, but rather, the subject's mental interpretation and internal representation of sense data.2. On my view, the analogy works better for me. I think it's a false analogy, because the disparity between factual statements and normative/meta-ethical propositions, i.e., the fact/value gap, means you're comparing apples to oranges. Moral statements can't ever be reduced to pure facts, so interpreting color isn't much like moral valuation, but, if you're going to buy the analogy, I'll turn it on Con.If you agree that color is one of many impositions of the mind on the external world, then you might see the analogy to moral evaluations. Similar to the way in which statements like "This is a beautiful piece of art" mistakenly attribute the property of beauty to an object (as opposed to recognizing that the concept of beauty is grounded in the reaction of a subject), statements like "human life is valuable" can be more reliably interpreted as "I value human life". Projecting our own evaluative frameworks on the world, we achieve the illusion of moral objectivity. This lines up perfectly with the NCT's claim that first principles, upon which subsequent derivations are contingent for validation, are themselves contingent on the fiat/agreement of whoever is party to the moral discourse.3. I have no idea what Con's bit about "evaluation according to psychological context" means. Honestly, it sounds like "if everyone agrees that they want to live, it becomes meaningful to say that life is valuable". But, if that is true, then you still end up with collective subjectivity, which I already refuted in my discussion of the contingency of first principles on the agreement of parties to discourse. Con has to defend realism against infinite regress, and saying "there are psychological factors that make ethical discourse useful" isn't realism--it's constructivism, which is the view that, while objective ethics is a wash, morality still has useful social/regulatory functions, so we should just act as if it were objective.Remember the definition of moral realism (Con's R1):1. Ethical sentences express propositions. 2. Some such propositions are true. 3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion.Given this condition, if "psychological context" is required to impart meaning and evaluability to moral statements, one might be inclined to believe that Con's argument, irrespective of the debate about regression, isn't advancing realism. And, if he's not doing that, the debate is mine.You're up, MW.