Just adopt a pragmatic account of truth like Rorty proposed decades ago. The truth is simply what works, it is the end point of democratic discussion and consensus.

> You can't get a "should" conclusion from "is" premises.

Not according to Mackie, Kitcher, and Joyce. The naturalistic fallacy is an extremely controversial position that has gone out of favor in recent decades due to critiques from people like Rawls, Rorty, and Mackie.

> There are no "should" statements when examining morality through a pure evolutionary lens

If you really think that, I'd suggest picking up either Mackie's Ethics, Kitcher's The Ethical Project, or Joyce's The Evolution of Morality.

> Thanks for the review. The biological adaption relates to descriptive morality, whereas I focus on normative morality.

That's far too quick and dismissive. I too am talking about the normative notion, there's just nothing more to that notion than the biological fact of it, nothing beyond that contingency that gives it anymore normative oomph (but nor should we care). But such an account is of course still normative because it describes morality as being action guiding. This is the standard sort of move that Darwinian philosophers like Mackie, Rorty, Ruse, Street, or Joyce will make. It's about naturalizing morality, not about presenting a "merely descriptive" account as opposed to a normative one. Even idealist philosophers like Rawls and Kant are simply giving a "descriptive account" of our intuitions about morality and justice in the same way I am, but this doesn't make their account any less normative than my own or that of other evolutionary ethicists.

> If the problem is with discovering non-reasonably rejectable reasons, then it's only a problem of administrability.

It's not, it's about defining what it means to be "reasonable". Like, sure, there is the further problem of actually figuring out what reasonable people would agree to, but that's largely derivative of your definition of what constitutes a reasonable person.

> However, what else would morality be, the code of conduct of our treatment of others, if it could not be reasonably accepted by others?

It could be a fact of the matter. It could be a collective delusion. It could be an optimal solution to a particular set of game theory problems. There are many things it could be beyond the Kantian notion you're endorsing.

This strikes me as too Kantian and idealized. Morality is a biological adaptation of our species meant to foster cooperation. Moral claims take the form of "should statements" simply because they are claims that you endorse and recommend others endorse as well. But the notion about reasonable rejection being used to distinguish what are the "true" moral principles seems problematic, as we don't know what it means to mount a "reasonable" objection. My assumption would be to take a Rawlsian line and say that reasonableness characterizes the attitudes of we modern day liberal democrats, but then we're starting to move away from the sort of objectivist account I think you're aiming for.

I love Kuhn, but he is not the originator of the word "paradigm". He certainly gave it a specific meaning in terms of the history and philosophy of science, but it's a pretty old word. The people using it as a buzz word are probably not using it in the Kuhnian sense.

Taking the idea seriously doesn't mean adopting it exclusively and in its entirety. I'm talking about a reevaluation of the merits of the position and the work done in support of it.

The issue is how specifically you want to talk about logical positivism in the modern context. When I talk about it in the modern context, I don't mean a group of philosophers who hew to the precise line sketched out by the Vienna Circle and their supporters. I refer instead to a strain of thought that views logical positivism sympathetically. The idea isn't that they think the verification criterion of meaning is the end of the story and bulletproof, but rather that the critiques of it and the systems offered in place of them are not as convincing as was once thought. So the idea isn't so much that they're logical positivists through and through, but rather that they have sympathies towards the logical positivists and their project and have doubts about the critiques of their opponents. It's about a sort of reevaluation of the work of the logical positivists rather than a wholesale adoption of their ideas.

This is why I say "discredited" is a bit harsh, because while the view was once seen as entirely discredited, people have been reevaluating just how discredited it was. I'd also point out that this is a trend among younger philosophers (where younger means younger than 50, which, wow, weird to say).

I can speak from experience that there very much are prominent philosophers who take the idea seriously. Ideas come in and out of fashion. Positivism has been very out of fashion, now it’s less so.

“Discredited” is a bit harsh. It’s certainly not the dominant position anymore, but I personally know of professional philosophers in my department who still more or less accept it.

Philosophers always like to talk about how they’ve disproven this or that idea. Generally speaking, it’s all a load of bull and the ideas will come back given enough time. Like, right now, I would say we’re going through a period where the sort of analytic philosophy of language that replaced positivism is itself being “discredited”, which is leading some to question whether we were too hasty with ditching the logical positivism thing.

Why do you think moral persuasion is impossible?

I love Kitcher’s Ethical Project! Easily one of the best accounts of evolutionary ethics out there along with Joyce’s The Evolution of Morality.