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what is the point of a realist approach to ethics?
that's the only viewpoint from which this whole tiresome matter of "knowing" about some fiction called "objective reality" so that a community can agree not to do certain things (institute an ethics) makes any sense.
an ethics follows from a way of talking about an agreement made by a community to not do certain things.
typically because people who like ethical discourse are nervous about the ability of people who are not themselves to adhere to limitations based on a mere agreement, they like to route what is agreed to through some other register. sometimes through the fiction of "objective reality"---other times through some god-fiction.
all these moves do is place intensifiers.
to wit:
you REALLY shouldn't do x.
unless of course you believe the story that routes what is agreed to through some second-order source or space or explanation, in which case it's terribly meaningful and only a churl would say otherwise.
and nobody likes a churl.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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