quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Trying to adduce a metaethics from "clear cases" of right ethical judgments presupposes that there are clear cases. I don't know that this is the case.
posted
Oh. It's a gut feeling. There's a reason I find all this so confusing. The feeling is, in my mind, effectively worthless. There might be good reasons for why it is the case that metaethics has priority, but there are also good ones for the other way around. Those that destineer noted, for example.
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: "Dude, you are SUCH an ohmigosh-this-is-so-COOL! college student. Save these posts. In 5 or 10 years, you'll find them amusing." Based on the fact that I'll be applying to phd programs soon, thus making a major life commitment, based on the fact that I think that the work is all that matters, I do not think I will suddenly up and switch a few years down the line. But it's possible.
WHOOSH!
Way to miss my point.
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(First of all, good luck with your grad school plans. It can be a super-cool experience.)
quote:I just know that I don't like many, possibly all, forms of consequentialism due to some possibly distasteful results, and thus am suspicious of making a judgment based on the consequences.
What do you have in mind? Over-demandingness? Trolley problems? Williams's Jim and the Indians example? I suspect that the distasteful results you're talking about are judgements about clear cases! In effect, Rakeesh and I are saying the same thing about Kantian retributivism, the view you endorsed before. It leads to a distasteful-looking result.
quote:The only thing I really do have strong feelings about is that metaethics takes priority over ethics. What the conclusion will be... I don't know. Trying to adduce a metaethics from "clear cases" of right ethical judgments presupposes that there are clear cases. I don't know that this is the case.
I sympathise, in that a large number of applied ethicists want to disregard metaethics entirely, which seems misguided to me. But the idea that there might be no clear cases also seems odd. The Holocaust is a clear case.
I think that in the end both metaethics and applied/normative ethics matter to each other's domains, and neither is "prior" to the other in any important sense. Knowledge of what's right in a particular case can be evidence for metaethics, and knowledge of metaethical truths can be evidence about what's right.
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posted
I am certainly sympathetic to the view that there are clear cases, but I am still suspicious of them as anything more than emotivism or some like thing. I definitely think that the holocaust was wrong, but clearly many of the Nazis didn't. If it was so obviously wrong and manifestly so, then why wouldn't they have done something? Once again, I don't know. I am just more and more suspicious of ethical claims as definite. Something may seem like a clear case, but is it really? I am not denying clear cases. I just don't know. To clarify, I do not mean that a metaethical system should disregard normative ethics completely. It can certainly be informed by normative ethics, but if the metaethical system is sound but leads to some results that are against a supposedly clear normative instance, perhaps the normative intuition is just wrong and we should not take this as a defect in the theory. Looking back, I realize that when I said that metaethics has priority, this is different from what I am saying now, but what I am saying now is more in line with my view.
The horrible part about all this is that I am sympathetic to particularism.
And thanks for the link.
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posted
without personal ethics, meta-ethics are worthless. Depending on your personal beliefs the answer to "what is good", one of the fundamental questions of meta-ethics, can vary.
Personal ethics can be culturally based, experienced based, or theoretically based, just to name a few.
If you let that guy go, I'd probably shoot you both in order to stop him, and live with the consequences.
Outside of books and college, very few things are absolutes.
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quote:I am certainly sympathetic to the view that there are clear cases, but I am still suspicious of them as anything more than emotivism or some like thing. I definitely think that the holocaust was wrong, but clearly many of the Nazis didn't. If it was so obviously wrong and manifestly so, then why wouldn't they have done something?
Maybe, as you suggest, it's not so obvious. Or maybe they knew it was wrong and just didn't care.
Or, maybe the premise that there exists a flawless/objective moral framework is wrong.
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