Yea, I think this is right. I don't have the impression many people take the open question argument very seriously these days, and I recall encountering similar objections that struck me as fairly decisive. Personally, I think this is another instance of philosophers putting too much stock in how things seem.
Michael Smith gives basically this same response to the OQA in chapter 2 of his book The Moral Problem. In his view, the problem with the OQA is that is makes bad assumptions about the nature of conceptual analysis.
The OQA assumes, according to Smith, that if one concept is correctly analyzable in terms of another concept, then one of the concepts must be already "contained" in the other in some way, which implies that the analysis must be trivial and uninformative. However, he argues that an analysis of a given concept is correct if it articulates all and only the inferential and judgmental dispositions of those who do in fact have mastery of the concept. He believes that this is the correct account of conceptual analysis because of his account of what it is to acquire a concept. To acquire a concept is just to acquire a certain set of inferential and judgmental dispositions.
On Smith's account of conceptual analysis, a correct analysis can be non-trivial and informative. Even though someone who has mastery of a concept must *have* certain inferential and judgment dispositions, such dispositions may not be *transparent* to them. That is, whereas mastery of a concept requires knowledge*-how*, mastery of an analysis requires knowledge-*that*. In fact, basically all attempted analyses in philosophy seem to be non-trivial (e.g., knowledge, color, intentional action, etc.), with some calling this phenomenon the "Paradox of analysis".
I've seen different SEP articles mention this as well. E.g. this snippet is from the SEP article on Moral Naturalism:
> Most philosophers think that the OQA does succeed in refuting analytic descriptivism, yet analytic descriptivists have developed several responses to the OQA....Another traditional response appeals to the idea of the Paradox of Analysis: if all analytic claims are obvious, then it’s impossible for there to be an interesting, informative conceptual analysis. Since some conceptual analyses are interesting and informative (we philosophers tell ourselves, desperately), not all analytic claims are obvious. The OQA is a test of obvious analyticity, but the correct definitions of moral terms might just be non-obvious (Smith 1994, 37–39).
Still the question should be meaningless for a person who has taken naturalistic side. So If I'm a moral naturalist and I think "Is it wrong to do things that are not conducive to aggregate well-being?" isn't a meaningless question then there is a problem. Maybe its another natural property or maybe after all I'm not moral naturalist. Am I getting this right?
As an argument against Moore’s version of the OQA this post works (and he went on to reject it). But as an argument against analytic naturalism, it’s question-begging. By adding ‘in the limit of knowledge’ (about natural facts) to each premise, you can save it easily. Imagine an ultra-advanced civilization that has discovered everything there is to know in the non-moral realm; its beliefs about natural facts and their logical consequences are correct and complete. Does the OQA apply to them?
P1: If X is (analytically equivalent to) good, then the question "Is it true that X is good?" is meaningless in the limit of knowledge.
P2: The question "Is it true that X is good?" is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question) in the limit of knowledge.
C: X is not (analytically equivalent to) good.
P1 works because the civilization knows all natural equivalences. When they ask ‘Is it true that X is good’, this is equivalent to ‘Is it true that X is X’, which they can’t coherently question. P2 may or may not be true, but nothing in your post is an argument one way or the other. It’s still true if analytic naturalism is true, and false otherwise.
Yea, I think this is right. I don't have the impression many people take the open question argument very seriously these days, and I recall encountering similar objections that struck me as fairly decisive. Personally, I think this is another instance of philosophers putting too much stock in how things seem.
Michael Smith gives basically this same response to the OQA in chapter 2 of his book The Moral Problem. In his view, the problem with the OQA is that is makes bad assumptions about the nature of conceptual analysis.
The OQA assumes, according to Smith, that if one concept is correctly analyzable in terms of another concept, then one of the concepts must be already "contained" in the other in some way, which implies that the analysis must be trivial and uninformative. However, he argues that an analysis of a given concept is correct if it articulates all and only the inferential and judgmental dispositions of those who do in fact have mastery of the concept. He believes that this is the correct account of conceptual analysis because of his account of what it is to acquire a concept. To acquire a concept is just to acquire a certain set of inferential and judgmental dispositions.
On Smith's account of conceptual analysis, a correct analysis can be non-trivial and informative. Even though someone who has mastery of a concept must *have* certain inferential and judgment dispositions, such dispositions may not be *transparent* to them. That is, whereas mastery of a concept requires knowledge*-how*, mastery of an analysis requires knowledge-*that*. In fact, basically all attempted analyses in philosophy seem to be non-trivial (e.g., knowledge, color, intentional action, etc.), with some calling this phenomenon the "Paradox of analysis".
I've seen different SEP articles mention this as well. E.g. this snippet is from the SEP article on Moral Naturalism:
> Most philosophers think that the OQA does succeed in refuting analytic descriptivism, yet analytic descriptivists have developed several responses to the OQA....Another traditional response appeals to the idea of the Paradox of Analysis: if all analytic claims are obvious, then it’s impossible for there to be an interesting, informative conceptual analysis. Since some conceptual analyses are interesting and informative (we philosophers tell ourselves, desperately), not all analytic claims are obvious. The OQA is a test of obvious analyticity, but the correct definitions of moral terms might just be non-obvious (Smith 1994, 37–39).
Still the question should be meaningless for a person who has taken naturalistic side. So If I'm a moral naturalist and I think "Is it wrong to do things that are not conducive to aggregate well-being?" isn't a meaningless question then there is a problem. Maybe its another natural property or maybe after all I'm not moral naturalist. Am I getting this right?
As an argument against Moore’s version of the OQA this post works (and he went on to reject it). But as an argument against analytic naturalism, it’s question-begging. By adding ‘in the limit of knowledge’ (about natural facts) to each premise, you can save it easily. Imagine an ultra-advanced civilization that has discovered everything there is to know in the non-moral realm; its beliefs about natural facts and their logical consequences are correct and complete. Does the OQA apply to them?
P1: If X is (analytically equivalent to) good, then the question "Is it true that X is good?" is meaningless in the limit of knowledge.
P2: The question "Is it true that X is good?" is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question) in the limit of knowledge.
C: X is not (analytically equivalent to) good.
P1 works because the civilization knows all natural equivalences. When they ask ‘Is it true that X is good’, this is equivalent to ‘Is it true that X is X’, which they can’t coherently question. P2 may or may not be true, but nothing in your post is an argument one way or the other. It’s still true if analytic naturalism is true, and false otherwise.