Okay, let’s bring these “assessments” down to earth. There is what John believes is true subjectively about gun control “in his head”; and there is everything that we can determine is true objectively about gun ownership out in the world of human interactions.
But some philosophers here seem more intent on first establishing what we can know – know – about human ethics up in the “general description” clouds of abstraction. We must first rigorously define the meaning of the words we use in our discussions/debates. And indeed we can encounter arguments that go on and on for pages and barely touch down on or in any particular context where actual behaviors do come into conflict over value judgments.
Instead, only after having being in sync technically, intellectually can we then go on to assess the moral parameters of gun control such that we can then go on to establish legislation that will go a long way toward minimizing – eliminating? – the sort of carnage we just witnessed in El Paso and Dayton.
Same with human sexuality. Only when we are entirely clear and in sync technically, intellectually, philosophically about those behaviors argued to be objectively good or objectively bad can we jettison such “external measures” as God and establish moral obligations in regard any and all sexual behaviors.
Then even the sexual sociopaths who, in a No God world, insist that morality here revolves around satiating their own wants and needs can at least know that philosophically they are behaving immorally.
