> Not so? "Meta-ethical relativism: that there is no single true or most justified morality".

I guess your link doesn't describe universal morals, but universal constraints on those morals. This is to me definitely a distinction without difference. If care of children is a universal constraint on morals, then it is a universal moral.

"Moderate relativists ... deny that there is any single true morality but also hold that some moralities are truer or more justified than others. On Wong's view ... universal constraints on what an adequate morality must be like."

> You might say this is where I'm squinting, but I would say we just have different tests for what constitutes a "universal" moral truth.

I'm actually confused here. Am I correct in reading that you do not hold that these morals are "universal"? You agree that there are common (meaning held by essentially all humans who didn't die out) morals, but don't call them universal (meaning absolute)? I agree the terminology gets fuzzy.

> You're interested in finding meaning, though. Meaning is relative to an observer, it can't be "found" in the sense that it's waiting out there somewhere for you. Meaning must ultimately come from within. Take any sandbox game for instance, it's like you're saying "Minecraft is meaningless because there's no point". Notch created the world, but gave no direction. All the gameplay is emergent. Real life is like that.

This is an interesting point of discussion. I agree that any "meaning" we find comes from within by definition, since there seems to be no external/universal meaning. However, this sort of "meaning" doesn't mesh with my intuitive definition of "meaning". If I imagine someone spending their life painting masterpieces and throwing them into fires, never telling anyone, I would have trouble seeing this as meaningful. All the effort for nothing lasting. Someone who finds meaning from within would presumably disagree, though.

I find myself holding two different and incompatible ideas of "meaning" simultaneously. Briefly, drawing a wonderful drawing is meaningful to me (personal meaning?). But I don't think it's "really" meaningful (universal/external meaning). These are not reconcilable, which bothers me. My intuition about "meaning" is that nothing I find personally meaningful "really matters". The only solution seems to be to embrace the fact that there is no universal meaning and the only meaning is personal, but this does give me a chicken-and-egg situation since I see personal meaning as not being the sort that "really matters". Hence I can "embrace nihilism or lie to myself".

Minecraft is an interesting example because for me it is stands in opposition to your viewpoint. The "emergent" meaning is external. We give it meaning by participating. A Minecraft server with no external inputs would, to me, be utterly meaningless. A Minecraft server with only bots participating and no humans watching or engaging would also be meaningless. A self-contained universe with no one watching seems to be without meaning. But different definitions of meaning will yield different conclusions here.

> As an aside, thanks for engaging. This has been a really interesting discussion and has lead me to plumb the depths of moral philosophy way deeper than I had ever before gone.

Same to you. :) Always happy when I have actual deep conversations online and discuss interesting topics with someone who actually puts real thought into their responses. Unfortunately quite rare.