"Take any action allow'd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object."
"If for instance in our world-book we read the description of a murder with all its details physical and psychological, the mere description of these facts will contain nothing which we could call an ethical proposition."
More about these scenes here. And, if you're wondering, these are just pictures from an exhibition I visited recently accompanied by passages of philosophy that they reminded me of. I'm not trying to make a deep point.
Yet it is a deep point, no? If there are no facts that underlie our ethical judgments then what are we to make of those judgments? This is the whole problem with expressivist accounts in the end. They point towards moral relativism and that undermines Ethics as a project we should each pursue.
ReplyDeleteCan a naturalistic account do better? Isn't it still relativist to say that what's ethically good or right just reflects what we are made of, what we are built to prefer? What if some of us aren't? How do we hold anyone accountable then and, if we can't, how can the whole moral thing work?
If a Kantian approach cannot give us some sort of objectivity in our moral claims, and arguably it can't, can anything? A Bradleyan claim that it's just to do with our capacity to unify ourselves with the all the Absolute might offer a way, but what if we reject that kind of metaphysic as a bridge too far, if we cannot bring ourselves to buy into an Absolute that unites us all in any but a purely physical way (that we are all physical creatures in a pluralistic physical universe)?
Is there any hope for Ethics at all?
I don't mean to deny that Hume or Wittgenstein might get at something deep.
ReplyDeleteThere might not be much hope for ethics as a project or science.
Hmm, not as a science for sure. But as a project? Can we have ethics without that, without an interest in why?
ReplyDeleteOf course, we can simply be ethical in a rote way or by embracing some set of reasons by default or force of will alone. But what then can we say to those who don't? Can ethics matter if there's nothing we can say to others about why they should do one thing rather than another?
Is Ethics just to announce what our own feelings on the matter are? And to insist on them or otherwise lapse into a c'est la vie moment?
I don't think we can have any idea of what is right or wrong to do without some underlying explanation of why that is the case. I don't think it's enough to say to others well those are my rules or what most of us believe or what my culture teaches. If ethics is nothing more than any of these it isn't very much.
I'm afraid I don't have anything new to say on this, but here are some things that I'm sure I've said before.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we can simply be ethical in a rote way or by embracing some set of reasons by default or force of will alone. But what then can we say to those who don't?
I'm not sure that we can be, say, kind or generous or sympathetic in a merely rote way. And I'm not sure that there is anyone who is completely without ethics. Of course some are much more ethical than others, but can anyone get through life without a sense of good and bad, without some degree of some virtue? I don't know.
Can ethics matter if there's nothing we can say to others about why they should do one thing rather than another?
I don't know what to make of this question. I cannot take seriously the possibility, or the idea of the possibility, that it might not matter whether I murder someone or not, for instance.
Is Ethics just to announce what our own feelings on the matter are?
Certainly not
And to insist on them or otherwise lapse into a c'est la vie moment?
No. Why would these be the only options? (Although in the case of the wrongness of murder I might well just insist on it. This is not the case with all ethical matters though.)
I don't think we can have any idea of what is right or wrong to do without some underlying explanation of why that is the case.
I think we can and we do. Murder is wrong. I can't really explain why.
I don't think it's enough to say to others well those are my rules or what most of us believe or what my culture teaches. If ethics is nothing more than any of these it isn't very much.
Agreed. But "murder is wrong" (or Thou shalt not kill) is not the same as "the cocktail hour begins at five." That is one of my rules and what my culture teaches. I wouldn't dream of putting the prohibition on murder in the same category.
I'm not sure that we can be, say, kind or generous or sympathetic in a merely rote way. . . . . some are much more ethical than others, but can anyone get through life without a sense of good and bad, without some degree of some virtue? . . .
ReplyDeletePerhaps we make a mistake in thinking ethics is one thing? After all there is a range of behaviors and justifications we practice, from etiquette to taboo behavior to prudential judgments to acting on feelings of sympathy driven by affinities or sentiment (sentimentality?).
The problem I see is when you face questions like what to think about or say to people engaged in certain types of behaviors (murder, theft when there is no justification for it -- because sometimes there might be -- lying under certain conditions) or who have adopted a policy that effectively sanctions one or more of these kinds of behaviors (ISIS fighters, Nazis, mass murderers). Here it seems to me just falling back on the notion that cultural norms are the standard or asserting opposition because of personal sentiments, can't work. If it's all about culture or the feelings any of us have, it can't be generalized and then ethical claims seem to fail because, as some have noted, there's a certain universal quality which we think moral claims have. At least that's the intuition I have about them. Perhaps others don't share that though?
By "rote" I meant how we justify adherence to certain standards. Do we cite our cultural inheritance or preferred cultural affiliation without a sense of why we should enroll in this or that cultural worldview? Isn't that just to act in a rote way? If that's all, then why can't the Nazi or the ISIS fighter say 'well I follow different norms'?
I cannot take seriously the possibility . . . that it might not matter whether I murder someone or not . . .
What counts as murder varies by society though. Consider the Norse society of old Iceland in which "murder" was only that if it amounted to surreptitious killing of another (whether you had good reason or not). If you did it in public or announced a private killing publicly, after the fact, it was no longer "murder" (subject to the redress allotted for murders) but resulted instead in different kinds of redress (civil prosecution for a pre-established cash or other payment to offset the offense, based on the quality of the person snuffed out, or, if such payment was not made, exposure of the non-payer to the in-kind vengeance of those whose relation to the deceased empowered them to claim such redress).
Here the idea of murder as we have it in our society seems to break down. What is it about our concept of murder that might be universal enough to justify a broad belief that murder per se is always and everywhere wrong (as you seem to express it)? I would hazard the guess that it is harming another, but then that requires its own justificatory background doesn't it (unless we are prepared to discard the notion that value claims need justification at all)?
The Hebrew for our English "Thou shalt not kill," by the way, is actually "Don't murder". It uses a different Hebrew word than "kill." Obviously, given biblical history, lots of forms of killing were perfectly alright.
I think ethics cannot be fully understood unless it is explained in the broader context of valuing per se, why some kinds of value judgments are involved with things like the condemnation of what we call "murder" today while others apply to other arenas. Hypothetical or prudential considerations, aesthetics and truth claims all seem different than moral valuation claims don't they?
The problem I see is when you face questions like what to think about or say to people engaged in certain types of behaviors (murder, theft when there is no justification for it -- because sometimes there might be -- lying under certain conditions) or who have adopted a policy that effectively sanctions one or more of these kinds of behaviors (ISIS fighters, Nazis, mass murderers).
ReplyDeleteBut are we trying to convince the murderers that they are wrong or to prove to a third party that they are wrong? The former juts seems very unlikely to work, and the latter seems unnecessary. Any argument must start with some premises, and what could be more certain than that mass murder is wrong?
why can't the Nazi or the ISIS fighter say 'well I follow different norms'?
This is what they say. (Although I doubt that the rules they follow are really coherent.)
Hypothetical or prudential considerations, aesthetics and truth claims all seem different than moral valuation claims don't they?
I'm not sure about this. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I think.
I think the ultimate moral question is "what should I do?" not "what should you do?". Thus the issue isn't to prove to them or to other observers who is right but to know why what they are doing isn't and so to know why we should act differently. I think that's the real reason moral questions have interest to us and why answering them matters. The rest is ancillary I think although to the extent we see ourselves as speaking for or guiding others (our group or society, our compatriots, our kin) the "what should I do?" question seems infinitely extendable.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that "mass murder is wrong" in every conceivable case, just as I don't think murder is always wrong. Killing Hitler, an elected head of government and without any kind of trial, simply bu assassination, hardly looks wrong though it would still have been murder under any reasonable legal definition. This would be clearer if it were done in the early days before he went to war and did the things he did but then it would certainly have been harder to justify to outsiders who didn't know what he would do as, perhaps, a time-traveling assassin might.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, say an alien species invaded earth and threatened human life. Would mass killing of the species if it could be done, even down to the young ones, still be wrong? Yet in their light wouldn't it count as murder against them and their kind?
I don't think an argument can be made that murder or even killing is always wrong even if most of the time that is how many of us feel about it. But feelings aren't reasons.
Valuing I would say is about having and recognizing reasons to act. Thus moral valuation requires a reason or reasons suitable to the moral type. But I suspect there are more than one moral type even if respecting the interests of others, even at risk to our own, is one major (perhaps the core) moral type.