Supplemental

I'd like to write a few notes about my last journal post. I hope the strategy was obvious: Take the implicit definitions of basic logical terms (or, at least, that minimal group of which the anti-realist approves) and attempt to mirror those definitions with basic ethical terms, in the attempt to explore what an anti-realistic notion of morality might be like.

I don't think I've done anything profound, and even if this sketch is right in parts, it is still only a very rough, very preliminary sketch. The details will require a significant amount of ironing out.

So, here's the vocabulary:
argument/predicament
assertion/illustration
conclude/permit
conclusion/permission
false/bad
meaning/import
say/show
senseless/worthless
sentence/phenomenon
speakers of a language/witnesses of a world
that/how
true/good
use/see
word/event

The implicit definitions I've given of many of these words fit quite nicely with our ordinary understanding of their meanings, but others are a bit of a stretch or require a new understanding of the term (including, for example, predicament, permit, permission). I'd gladly take any suggestions of more felicitous terms.

I think a great many interesting things can be said about this parallel, if it is correct. In future posts to this blog, I hope to introduce some of these observations. My next post will reflect upon the qualities that are desirable in a logician, and consider whether our parallel makes visible qualities that are desireable in a practitioner (another unfelicitous implicit definition). In the post after that, I intend to reflect on the goals of logic as a universal enterprise, and, again, consider whether the parallel tells us anything about our goals of morality.