His ethics were guided by an objective value, the objective value of love. But the point is that Fletcher s is an objectivist ethic, not a conventionalist ethic. Love is an absolute moral principle for him. Moreover, Fletcher was a theist, as far as I know. He was a clergyman, so that this is not a naturalistic ethic.
Love is denuded of any sort of moral or ethical significance on a naturalistic worldview.
Well, yes, they are out of context in the sense that I expected Professor Taylor to first present his view in his opening speech, so that my criticisms would apply to it. My criticisms are entirely just and entirely correct philosophically, but they appear somewhat out of context because he didn t give his view first for me to attack. Also, with regard to stirring people to think, I think as philosophers we have to be responsible in what we say and write because we will affect what students say and do. Nietzsche also wrote a book called Beyond Good and Evil , and that book was read by people like Hitler and Stalin and caused some of the gross atrocities of the twentieth century because Nietzsche affirmed that there is no good and evil. The echoes of Nietzsche ran through that book and troubled me deeply.