Good actions are ones we should think well of. It would seem crazily revisionary to deny that there are any such actions. Surely we should think well of some actions, and poorly of others.
Now, I take Norcross's arguments to show that we can't give a simple account of which actions are good by trying to pin down the baseline in non-normative terms (e.g. as fixed by the present moment, or by the counterfactual of what would've happened in the absence of the action). But IIRC, he doesn't have any argument against the possibility of a normative baseline. For example, there may be an independent fact of the matter, in any given situation, of what a *minimally decent* person would do -- such that any worse act counts as positively blameworthy. If that's so, then we can say that any *better* act is positively good.
So we can give an account of good actions. It just requires appeal to a normative baseline, i.e. of what's minimally adequate, rather than a non-normative baseline like "what would've happened otherwise".
Good actions are ones we should think well of. It would seem crazily revisionary to deny that there are any such actions. Surely we should think well of some actions, and poorly of others.
Now, I take Norcross's arguments to show that we can't give a simple account of which actions are good by trying to pin down the baseline in non-normative terms (e.g. as fixed by the present moment, or by the counterfactual of what would've happened in the absence of the action). But IIRC, he doesn't have any argument against the possibility of a normative baseline. For example, there may be an independent fact of the matter, in any given situation, of what a *minimally decent* person would do -- such that any worse act counts as positively blameworthy. If that's so, then we can say that any *better* act is positively good.
So we can give an account of good actions. It just requires appeal to a normative baseline, i.e. of what's minimally adequate, rather than a non-normative baseline like "what would've happened otherwise".
Only required response to someone who asserts that nothing matters is to ask why you shouldn't stab them 47 times in the chest.
If they come up with something, then they're argumentatively done for.
If they don't, then they're also done for.