On hypotheticals not being categorical: for Kant, categoricals by nature hold at all places, at all times, for all subjects, completely independent of their subjective differences. By suggesting that hypotheticals are different, I’m drawing attention to the last bit in particular: the truth value of such a moral claim holds for subjects who have these sympathies, but can’t for those who don’t. Kant would be horrified by this idea—again, for him categorials hold completely independently of the difference between subjects, subject’s desires, subject’s interests, subject’s sympathies, etc.

I’m also not really sure how a hypothetical is any less absolute than a categorical. If you have a categorical where one ought to be truthful at all times, then it is obviously absolute. A hypothetical, where a person should only be truthful in certain circumstances (even if those circumstances happen to be the vast majority of conceivable situations), is still expected to be followed at all times that the conditions apply, meaning that it is, in fact, absolute. I’m not sure why the fact that it applies at one time and not another would cause people to think it is any less absolute (i.e., lying to protect a murderer would be wrong, but lying to protect someone from a murderer would not be wrong and what is required in each situation is 100% absolute even though the proper reaction to the situation depends on the facts of the situation).

Sometimes I think about church and I like the concept: get together a couple times a week with some folks, read some boring books, talk about them, maybe have a pot luck supper, etc. Now, if only church was where you read anything from the Bible to the Bhagavad-Gita to Hemingway and so on and didn’t have to deal with silly fundamentalism and closed-mindedness. I like to think that if Jesus were here today, he would throw the money-changers out of the university.

If there were absolutes, yes, they could exist without being motivating . That’s a good point. In addition, it is a point consistent with my claim that getting meta-ethics right won’t be a magic bullet to fix immorality.

However, I am NOT here defending the claim that there are no moral absolutes or categorical imperatives. I take that for granted for reasons that are beyond this conversation.

Although this is 100% unclear from my post, what I AM trying to get at here is the meta-ethical issue of whether or not there can be any sort of truth to a moral claim without there being moral absolutes.

This mangles their argument, but some quasi-relativists like Blackburn suggest that moral claims are true, but in a way that “it’s against the law to murder” is true—it can be true because it’s a claim about a social convention. I don’t need some sort of universal absolute to say that it is, in fact, absolutely true that we drive on the right side of the road in the US. (It’s actually much more complicated than that, but that I think is as close to an analogy I can get in this space.)

I’m suggesting that moral claims don’t even have the “truth” that Blackburn wants them to have. He wants to hang their truth on social convention (again, I’m mangling it), and I want to suggest that their truth (if they have any at all) hangs on the “if” in the “if you give a shit about so and so, you’ll do something about it.”

Can there be something else in the “if” part? Like “if you are reasonable”? I doubt that one, because I truly agree with Hume that reason devoid of interest, desire, or sympathy has no weight.

What about something like “if you want to maximize your own profit, you should skim money from your worker’s pay.” This would, in a sense, be true, but obviously in an extremely limited way (but the “if you care” is equally true in an extremely limited way). However, I wouldn’t classify this as an ethical truth because I’d set up a definition that says ethical claims are by definition ones that involve the interests of others, rather than just yourself.

Of course in doing so I would be saying “this is how I want to use the word ‘ethical’” rather than claiming to be discovering the essence of “ethics,” but that’s a good thing rather than a bad thing.

I hope to have gotten at the center of your query, but I may not have addressed some of the peripheral issues. Shoot again.