Comments Elsewhere

Constant:

If “you should not do this” means only, “this is wrong”, then I don’t deny that certain things are wrong, but I’ve given an explanation of what a wrong is which is the very conditional statement which you are uncomfortable with.

This is a very odd maneuver. Scheule’s point was to contest your explanation of what a wrong is, so of course if he means to say “this is wrong,” there is no reason for him to accept the conditionalized explanation of wrongs that you offered.

Scheule:

I don’t think I need a God to back up that command, anymore than I need a God to back up the law of gravity.

Constant:

A command logically entails a commander: a command is something commanded, and “to command” is a transitive verb with a subject (the commander) and an object (the recipient of the command).

Yes, but there’s no requirement that the commander and the recipient of the command be different people (let alone beings on different planes of existence). Some people, in fact, have thought it quite important to the nature of morality that the imperatives which issue from it are, first and foremost, self-regarding. I’m not a fan of centering the notion of “command” within ethics, for various reasons, but the theory hardly entails theism, let alone Divine Command theory, in the way you suggest.

Constant:

One rule of thumb I use is that law (and morality) is (normally) about prohibition. … If you find yourself talking about what we should do, there’s a chance you’re not talking about law or morality any more and are talking about recommendation.

I think that the point about law depends on little more than linguistic gerrymandering. (Should you say “You shouldn’t steal,” or “You should make an honest living?” Well, who cares?) And I think the point about morality is plainly absurd. While there is a sense in which all legitimate legal obligations are negative (since all libertarian rights are in some sense negative, and the only legitimate legal obligations consist in respect for libertarian rights), morality includes plenty of positive obligations. Charity is a duty, and so is gratitude; as are courage, kindness, faithfulness, honesty, etc. All of these virtues involve positive obligations, and some could not even be expressed non-trivially in negative terms. (You could give someone the rule, “Don’t be ungrateful.” But that’s at most a rebuke; the only way to actually spell out what not-being-ungrateful entails is to give some positive notion of what sorts of acts you should do in order to express gratitude.) Libertarians of all people should be careful not to conflate law and morality: justice is the only virtue which is legitimately enforceable, but it is very far from being the only virtue.