Here is an argument in support of the claim that there are certain types of action which are absolutely prohibited to all responsible agents. It succeeds by considering types of action not in the abstract, but as proposed within the context of real discourse by one speaker to another. (1) A moral appeal is an appeal to the integrity of a responsible agent.. (2) My integrity is not compromised unless I contravene a rule to which I have consented. (3) Whoever proposes a rule to me thereby implicitly asks me to consent to it. (4) Therefore, if the rule he proposes is one to which my consenting would entail a contradiction, then the proposal entails a contradiction also and must be withdrawn. (5) To justify a rule is to give reasons for consenting to it, but a rule which cannot without absurdity be proposed cannot without absurdity be justified: such a rule would be absolutely unjustifiable for all responsible agents. (6) I cannot without absurdity consent to be compelled; that is to say, I cannot without absurdity consent to be subjected to types of action that could occur, by definition, only without my consent; I cannot therefore consent to the rule "that, if certain conditions were met, I should be insulted, enslaved, raped, tortured or murdered". (7) These types of action are therefore absolutely impossible to justify and therefore prohibited to all responsible agents by the requirements of their integrity. This argument resists the efforts of consequentialists to reduce ethics to arithmetic.

"Whatever is unconditionally prohibited ...looks...like a moral absolute", points out Christopher Eddy, putting the crown on some tidy and taut reasoning. I myself incline to the view that anything temporary, such as e.g. a human being, cannot lay claim to any objectivity--other than the objective fact one will eventually turn into mulch.

(1) A moral appeal is an appeal to a person's integrity. (2) My integrity is not compromised unless I contravene a rule to which I have consented. (3) To justify a proposed rule to me it is necessary to (a) ask me to consent to it and (b)give me reasons why I should consent to it: a rule which cannot thus be justified to me cannot be binding on me, i.e., cannot impinge on my integrity. (4)I cannot without absurdity consent to the rule "that, if certain conditions were met, I should be insulted, enslaved, raped, tortured or murdered" since these are types of act which could occur, by definition, only without my consent; to put it simply, I cannot meaningfully be asked to consent to being compelled. (5) These types of action are therefore absolutely (i.e., for any reason or purpose) impossible to justify and therefore prohibited to all responsible agents by the requirements of integrity. (6)Whatever is unconditionally prohibited to all responsible agents looks very much like a moral absolute. Moral absolutes emerge only when we situate them in the real context of relations between interlocutors in which one proposes a course of action for others' consent.

Each species has its own "code" of survival, the result of evolution, and "power" may be an essential ingredient of all "codes". In humans, because of their very great intellectual capacity, the code is most sophisticated and has been abstracted, i.e. put into rules such as Kant's categorical imperative. But such rules are not "truths", they are simply instructions on how to survive and guarantee survival of our species. Nevertheless, ethics can be founded on deep philosophical insights, achieved in hinduism, buddhism and, most clearly for the modern mind, expressed by Arthur Schopenhauer. The insight is that we (i.e., all animals and humans) are basically one, perceived as individuals only because of our intellectual apparatus. "Tat twam asi": if an animal suffers, I suffer, if I suffer, all others suffer. Hence, Schopenhauer concludes that the only foundation of genuine morality is compassion, compassion not only with fellow humans, but with all animals as well. For details see here: http://krohde.wordpress.com/article/arthur-schopenhauer-ethics-and-theor...

I am suspicious of any denial of pragmatism. Unfortunately I am not familiar with William's works but it seems to me that ethical behavior does have foundations in the study the biological advantages of interpersonal mutual regard in herd animals and even some substantiation in the growth and survival of colonies of single celled organisms. To generalize merely from the violent antisocial interactions of the human species seems to me to ignoring more generalized behavior of other forms of life. Current human behavior makes it rather evident that humans seem to have social agendas which guarantee species suicide. Considering that current humanity has existed for only a brief flicker of time, a mere couple of million years or so, to generalize from this ephemeral event seems unwise.

I'd say Williams did his fair share in making philosophy "unhelpful, boring, and sterile."

"When will we abandon our frantic search for The Truth? Ignorance is no bad thing." So is this claim true or false? "Ignorance produces fear, which is also no bad thing." Are you cognizant of this 'truth,' or ignorant of it? "Fear is a natural function of survival." Perhaps some fear is, but it does not follow logically that either ignorance itself or the type of fear to which ignorance is prone to giving rise are beneficial to survival. "Grief is no bad thing either. Grief reminds us that we have imagination." Putting your hand on a hot stove will remind you that burns are painful, so I guess putting your hand on a hot stove isn't a bad thing. "Without imagination we could not make sense of our marvelously adequate yet pathetically imperfect sensory perception." Whatever this claim is trying to mean, it doesn't follow that imagination's benefits can confer retroactive 'goodness' on everything that reminds us we have one. "We are each one become as though infatuated with the sound of our own voice." (?) "Due to ignorance and fear, we have turned to religion, the belief that Faith itself can lead us to The Truth." (?) "Believing that “The Truth will set you free”, we are become obsessed with The Truth, a useful but temporal illusion." (?) "When will we, an embarrassing evolutionary anomaly, finally achieve the humility to admit that The Absolute Truth is inaccessible to us?" Can anything be true without being absolutely true? Even partially true narratives are absolutely true in their truthful parts. "What we now call ‘scientific knowledge’ will always be defined and therefore limited by what we do not yet know and, more importantly, what we may never fully understand about what we can and do, for now, claim to know." If you're trying to say that science doesn't have all the answers, any scientist would be happy to agree with you. How does this relativize the concept of truth? "If only we could abandon this pernicious notion that scientific research has nothing to do with creativity. If only we had not so irrevocably divorced work and play. If only we could but see that scientific research achieves little without a thorough appreciation of art, artifice and imagination.... [etc., etc., etc., to] ...Which will always differ, every time I pay attention to what looks like the same thing." You touch a lot of bases in this ramble, but none of them appear connected with your starting-point or even to belong on the same field . Whatever your grievance against 'limits' you seem not to appreciate that all concepts, including those of truth and falsity, depend for their intelligibility on delimitation. "My point of view will almost certainly change over time." Perhaps there's some hope for you after all. “Experience is the best teacher.” Experience is the school of fools. Fortunately for the survival of the human race, most of us don't have to be eaten by a tiger to realize we wouldn't like it. What ever happened to the imagination, the evolutionary advantages of which you were extolling, above? "Where we have been and what we have learned, or at least what we remember, from what we have done will determine to a large extent how you and I perceive things today. But, for sure, next year all that will be different... [etc., etc., etc., to] ...The one sustaining the other." A confused and confusing tour of personal convictions elevated into generalizations about humanity in general, unsullied by the least trace of imaginative insight into the possibility that the limits of one's own experience might not correspond with those of others. "If you find these words ‘speak to your condition’, that’s not because I have spoken The Truth." Truer words were never spoken. "It’s because you have recognized something ‘between the lines’, something that is not intrinsically there, something I, without benefit of your experience, simply cannot know anything about. That is how we make sense, for now, of what we see and hear, which tomorrow will likely make little sense at all." Whatever the limits of experience, yours apparently do not prevent you from knowing what others think and what the limits of their knowledge are. That's quite a trick... not one I've ever managed to master. What's evident, though, is that there's a certain incoherence in denying humanity's ability to distinguish between true and false while expressing categorical opinions with the finality of doom itself. May I suggest acquainting yourself with an elementary text on logic? While it is indeed important to grasp just what the concept of limits entails for epistemology, it's equally important to develop some sense of logical relevance. Without it, one is apt to commit such a jumble of category mistakes that any guides to the truth experience might otherwise be capable of providing are fatally undermined.

Re. the harderwijkian harangue: the English language has a name for this kind of mélange of clichés and would-be wisdom: philosophastry.

When will we abandon our frantic search for The Truth? Ignorance is no bad thing. Ignorance produces fear, which is also no bad thing. Fear is a natural function of survival. Grief is no bad thing either. Grief reminds us that we have imagination. Without imagination we could not make sense of our marvelously adequate yet pathetically imperfect sensory perception. We are each one become as though infatuated with the sound of our own voice. Due to ignorance and fear, we have turned to religion, the belief that Faith itself can lead us to The Truth. Believing that “The Truth will set you free”, we are become obsessed with The Truth, a useful but temporal illusion. When will we, an embarrassing evolutionary anomaly, finally achieve the humility to admit that The Absolute Truth is inaccessible to us? What we now call ‘scientific knowledge’ will always be defined and therefore limited by what we do not yet know and, more importantly, what we may never fully understand about what we can and do, for now, claim to know. If only we could abandon this pernicious notion that scientific research has nothing to do with creativity. If only we had not so irrevocably divorced work and play. If only we could but see that scientific research achieves little without a thorough appreciation of art, artifice and imagination. If only we had not so eagerly abandoned our natural playfulness, to venture outside the laboratory, to just go for a walk, think outside the square. Bereft of a healthy sense of humour, life becomes meaninglessness made flesh. Not only do we too easily forget that we don’t know nearly enough to believe we know it all. Not only can we not see things as we ought to presume, but cannot discern, they really are. But the writer will always depend on the competence of the reader. No two people ever see any one thing in exactly the same way. The English language imposes on those who were raised and are comfortable in it a certain mindset, a worldview that is peculiar to native English speakers. That’s not to say English speakers are perverse. All those who are obliged to speak and think in English are obliged to see their world within the context of English vocabulary, grammar and syntax. To say nothing of English history, geography. And the climate. Every language, by definition, be it verbal, gestural or scientific, imposes a severe limitation on the way a thing or idea may be observed, contemplated, written about and discussed. Not only is there no scientific formula for love or freedom, for the meaning of life. The French will never love the Germans, nor they the Russians. The English will never embrace the Japanese. Nor the Scots the Irish. But the English will never understand the English either. What we see is certainly what we get, but we cannot see everything. To make sense of the world, as we know it, we all depend on the pretext (my own foreknowledge) and the context of each situation as only I find it and the subtext, the meaning I append to my observation. Which will always differ, every time I pay attention to what looks like the same thing. My point of view will almost certainly change over time. “Experience is the best teacher.” Where we have been and what we have learned, or at least what we remember, from what we have done will determine to a large extent how you and I perceive things today. But, for sure, next year all that will be different. Everything we see and hear is coloured by what went before, which includes our entire life experience. If you have just finished enjoying the performance of a stand-up comedian, laughing uproariously at pure silliness, you will have difficulty appreciating the seriousness of a sermon at a funeral. If you switch from a lighthearted piece of entertainment to a political debate, you are more likely to find the earnest expressions of national importance patently ridiculous and laughable than would otherwise be the case. Furthermore, it matters absolutely whether you were raised in a traditionally Christian environment, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever ethical belief system your parents and significant others espoused during your formative years. Even the most indefatigable atheists have their sad mythology. Admission to the Christian community is predicated on an admission of personal guilt: “If you confess your sin He is faithful and just to forgive you your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.” Admission to the Jewish community is wholly predicated on the circumstance of birth. (The Bar Mitzva is not an initiation but a confirmation of membership, a natural progression that has nothing to do with a moral choice or admission of personal guilt, requiring redemption by the symbolism of sacrificial blood.) To be a Jew is to be informed by communal responsibility, not personal guilt. To be a Christian is to be informed by self-denial, abandonment of all self-respect and abject submission to a personal epiphany. While Christian perception is deeply affected by a sense of personal guilt, Jewish perception is defined by unequivocal support of the community. “No Jew ever died of poverty, but of pride.” The community will always provide, no matter what sort of scoundrel you are. Christians are traditionally raised to always be mindful of correct behaviour, lest you will be surely condemned, by the whole community before God. The historical predominance of Jewish intellectuals, philosophers and inventors may be due in large part to the intellectually liberating absence of personal guilt (original sin) in a traditional Jewish upbringing. Jewish exceptionalism may therefore be defined by, meaning due to, Christian exceptionalism. And vice versa. A symbiotic relationship – not unlike Zionism and Islamic Jihad. The one sustaining the other. If you find these words ‘speak to your condition’, that’s not because I have spoken The Truth. It’s because you have recognized something ‘between the lines’, something that is not intrinsically there, something I, without benefit of your experience, simply cannot know anything about. That is how we make sense, for now, of what we see and hear, which tomorrow will likely make little sense at all.