Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[vulcanlogician]

What I tried to do in my earlier post was isolate the question.

In philosophy, a working definition of a "moral action" is whatever action is maximally good. An immoral action, or "evil action" is whatever works contrary to (or is destructive toward) goodness. So ethics is the business of using logic to discern that which is good and moral from that which is immoral and evil. But then we are left with a question, aren't we?

What is good?


So this is the bread and butter of an ethicist's work. Some ethicists say that human happiness/pleasure is the greatest good (hedonists). Others say that goodness is rooted in the satisfaction of desires (desire satisfaction theory). Still others say that something is good if God says it's good (divine command theory). The list goes on. Much debate transpires in ethics over value theory... that is: what do we call good and what do we call evil?

To return to our beaker example, those arguing value theory all agree that there is a measurable quantity of water in the container. They disagree over what that quantity is.

But your problem is not a problem with value theory. Your problem is an issue in metaethics. You think that every value theorist who argues for a specific "objective theory of good" is WRONG.

YOU are a MORAL SKEPTIC, Rob.

You don't see moral arguments as a quantity of water in a beaker. Rather, you see all moral philosophy as more analogous to wine-tasting. Value theory does not describe anything objective. It is all subjective to you. Ethicists are sitting around quaffing wine and supplying flavor notes.

So we should not even bring up "well being" (not yet!) because, human well being is merely one metric by which we discern "what is good" from that which is "not good." As a moral skeptic, you don't care about "what is good"-- at least in an objective sense... you might care in your personal life etc. etc., but we are talking about objective reality here.

So, in order for me to make the case for moral realism, I have to convince you that there are moral facts in the first place. If I should succeed, then we can move on to "regular" ethics and have a discussion about well being, hedonism etc. The only way I can see to go about this is to show (logically) that your moral skepticism is misplaced.

So I'm going to list an argument for error theory here, and I'd like to hear your assessment of it. Then we can go from there.

ARGUMENT FROM THE SCIENTIFIC TEST OF REALITY (error theory)

1. If science cannot verify the existence of X, then the best evidence tells us that X does not exist.
2. Science cannot verify the existence of objective moral values.
3. Therefore, the best evidence tells us that objective moral values do not exist.