Hilarious debate I discovered combing through the journal of absolute truth, which I use to segue to make a profound point about different philosophical starting points
Interesting! I'm actually in a similar boat as yours, but I actually don't do much normative ethics because of appeal to shaky intuitions ("how big a bullet are you willing to bite?").
I find that metaethics can proceed much further without appeal to ethical intuitions than normative ethics can. This is because many metaethical questions have to do with moral metaphysics, moral epistemology, philosophy of mind, etc.
For example:
-Are moral properties metaphysically queer/strange? Does moral realism require a particular faculty for moral perception? (Mackie)
-Can moral properties be reduced to natural properties? Or what is the relationship between them? (Moral naturalism vs. non-naturalism debate)
-Are moral truths contingent or necessary?
I even find that the two examples that you raise about irrational desires (Future Tuesday indifference) and things that are mind independently bad (infant torture) are less about intuitions and more about arguments (they're conclusions, not starting points), so they can be illuminated by other areas of philosophy in ways that discussions from normative ethics often can't.
If you are not staying your preferences/values/desires with respect to saying "infant torture is bad" what do you mean by "bad"? I have an intuition that I don't want infant torture to occur, but I suspect you are saying you have a different intuition, and I was hoping you could expand.
Interesting! I'm actually in a similar boat as yours, but I actually don't do much normative ethics because of appeal to shaky intuitions ("how big a bullet are you willing to bite?").
I find that metaethics can proceed much further without appeal to ethical intuitions than normative ethics can. This is because many metaethical questions have to do with moral metaphysics, moral epistemology, philosophy of mind, etc.
For example:
-Are moral properties metaphysically queer/strange? Does moral realism require a particular faculty for moral perception? (Mackie)
-Can moral properties be reduced to natural properties? Or what is the relationship between them? (Moral naturalism vs. non-naturalism debate)
-Are moral truths contingent or necessary?
I even find that the two examples that you raise about irrational desires (Future Tuesday indifference) and things that are mind independently bad (infant torture) are less about intuitions and more about arguments (they're conclusions, not starting points), so they can be illuminated by other areas of philosophy in ways that discussions from normative ethics often can't.
If you are not staying your preferences/values/desires with respect to saying "infant torture is bad" what do you mean by "bad"? I have an intuition that I don't want infant torture to occur, but I suspect you are saying you have a different intuition, and I was hoping you could expand.