Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron W.
I would push back on this in exactly the same way that I push back on people who reject our general experiences of the universe as being a meaningful starting point for drawing conclusions about the universe. This usually comes from the scientism perspective (that the scientific method is the only acceptable means of gaining knowledge).
My objections are that scientism isn't functional or a realistic reflection of how we actually understand things. We make many, many decisions about all sorts of things that aren't built on the basis of repeatable, controlled experiments. And we seem to navigate our way around the universe in at least some basic kind of way. So even if we're wrong (and even if we're often wrong), there's enough truth there to allow us to interact with the world in a way that seems to suggest that we have a meaningful grasp of the universe around us.
In the same way, I believe our moral intuitions are sufficiently grounded in a moral reality. Despite the variety of cultures that exist, there does seem to be a general sense of right and wrong, and even though there may be difference in those details, we do all seem to have some type of respect for life (at least within in-groups) and other types of moral principles (reciprocity).
I draw an analogy in mathematics using Pascal's Triangle, which was a pattern that was independently discovered in multiple cultures and different moments in history and somehow points to a mathematical universe of objects that seems to have an existence of its own. If multiple cultures are arriving at some moral principles that seem similar in their general expression, I don't find it unreasonable to think that there is some moral reality that's out there, and that various groups are catching glimpses of the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_triangle
I agree with a lot of this, I tend to realism with regard to morals and numbers but in some respects I'm not sure how much importance I give to meta-ethical questions. This may just be a reflection on my lack of understanding but there are a number of plausible positions and none of them, that I am aware of, defeat all the challenges to them. It's also a year till I have that module in college so I have some time.
It's also notable that some ethicists have defended a normative ethical position while denying moral realism. RM Hare defends prescriptivism a type of non cognitivism in meta ethics, while simultaneously presenting a type of preference utilitarianism. In fact the non cognitivist that wants to make a normative claim needs to distinguish normative and metaethics domains.
Like you I think there are intuitive reasons to support the existence of moral facts but I do understand our intuitions can be wrong and these facts seem pretty hard to identify, I disagree in that I want moral claims to represent truth, I'd prefer for them to be useful because if their truth aptness is ever resolved in the negative or the error theorist is correct, that our moral claims are all systematically false given the lack of existence of the property to which they refer, then utility is what we have left.
I do think that
Dewey's moral pragmatism is worthy of consideration as well given it replaces the goal of identifying this elusive property with the goal of improving the method we use for value judgments. #
I will say that the existence of widespread moral intuitions is an argument against the basic depravity of man in my estimation and despite what atrocities do exist I hold out hope for continued moral progress.
I do enjoy seeing what numbers can do so thanks for that. I remember a poorly written piece of code taking down a server, and all the attached terminals, when someone failed to provide an exit to a loop tracking fibonacci.