The Wayward Axolotl

In this essay, I will debunk the concept of market capitalization. But first, let’s consider something else: the mass of a pile of bricks. Suppose that I have a pile of identical bricks. I want to know the total mass of the bricks for some reason. So, I measure the mass of one brick on a scale. The mass of one brick is M. I then count the bricks. The number of bricks is N. I then caculate the total mass of the bricks as M × N. M × N is meaningful. There are N units of size M, so N × M represents the total size of the units together.. The meaning of M × N is “the total mass of the bricks”. It is not just “M × N”. Note that I could use another method to get the same quantity. I could put each brick on a scale, measure its mass, and add up all of those numbers. If I had a really big scale, I could put all the bricks on the scale together, and measure the total mass directly. The meaning is not the method. The meaning is what the number represents. Now, let’s consider...

In comments on the essay The Case Against Moral Realism , I challenged someone (Stephen Lindsay) to define good and evil, or in other words, to define moral value. In response, he wrote a defense of belief in objective morality: Three Perspectives on Objective Morality . In the essay, he gives a definition of moral rightness and wrongness: • Right (in the moral sense) - behaviors, ideas, philosophies, etc., that are thought to overall positively impact individuals and society. Wrong is the opposite. There can exist behaviors, ideas, and philosophies that are neither right nor wrong. However, this definition does not actually define moral value. It does not explain what moral goodness and badness (or rightness and wrongness) are. It presupposes moral value. To call something “good” or “bad”, in a moral sense, is not a description. Moral value is normative. To call something “good” (in a moral sense) means that it ought to be, and that we should try to create...