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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7671209" data-attributes="member: 42582">In real-world social and moral discussion, the sorts of reasons that someone might put forward for thinking that generosity is not really selfless, and hence not so good as all its advocates make out, would themselves be primarily evaluative. Even debunkers generally have values - they are just diagnosing hypocrisy among the complacent majority.It would be relatively unusual for someone - except, say, an anthropologist undertaking an analysis of gift-giving practices and other manifestations of reciprocal resepct - to discuss whether or not generosity was truly selfless or not purely as a taxonomic exercise.But it seems in PS that the taxonomic reasoning is the only reasoning available, because the "consensus reality" removes the possibility of denying that generosity has the evaluative character that the consensus bestows upon it.To put it in terms of an imagined dialogue, someone (call her X) denies that generosity is good. The interlocutor, Y, replies by saying that it most certainly is good, because the consensus says so. X then objects that the consensus is mistaken, and needs to change. Y asks "Why so?". At which point, it seems that X can only point to the taxonomical/analytical point - that so-called generosity is not selfless - but cannot add what I think nearly every version of X in the real world would want to add: and because it's not selfless, it's not really good.I've tried to illustrate why I think there does need to be a distinction. In the real world, the fact that generosity is not selfless - were that a fact - would be a reason to think that it is not good. But that reason depends upon there being some connection between selfness and goodness that exists independently of any consensus.(Contrast: there is no reason of the same sort why trees should be called "trees" rather than "les arbres". That really is just about consensus usage.)</blockquote>

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