Source: PXFuel; License: Public Domain
1. The Problem
Based on literally hundreds of conversations with people about topics related to religion and morality, I'm leaning in favor of the idea that semantics is a huge obstacle to successful conversation. Allow me to explain. Notice that conversations about religion and morality tend to use some subset of the following words.
- morality
- ethics
- normative
- prescriptive
- values
- obligations
- duties
- ought
- objective
- intersubjective
- subjective
- intrinsic
- extrinsic
- theism
- atheism
- naturalism
- materialism
- God
- Christianity
- material
- Platonism
- basis
- foundation
- realism
- anti-realism
Even among professional philosophers, there is no universally accepted definitions for any of the above words. To make matters even worse, discussions about religion and morality often use various combinations of the above words. Here are some examples.
- ethical nonnaturalism and ethical naturalism
- moral realism and moral anti-realism
- moral objectivism, intersubjectivism, and subjectivism
- ontological objectivity and epistemological objectivity
- objective morality and objective moral values
- intrinsic value vs. extrinsic value
If even professional philosophers do not agree on the definitions of the key terms in discussions about religion and morality, this would lead one to predict that nonphilosophers do not, either. This is exactly what one finds. Try discussing whether "morality needs God" on social media and you will quickly encounter people using different definitions for the same words.
It is impossible to have meaningful communication, as opposed to the illusion of communication, if no one can agree on what they key terms in the discussion mean. So, how to address this?
In the past, I have tried stipulating definitions in conversations, but in my experience that hasn't worked very well. Inevitably, people forget or ignore the stipulated definitions, causing the discussion to revert back to the "illusion of communication" problem. For this reason, I'm starting to think we need to adopt a new set of words, ones without any baggage, in order to achieve real communication. What follows is my modest proposal to improve the possibility of real communication.
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