RE: Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?
October 17, 2018 at 11:08 am
(This post was last modified: October 17, 2018 at 11:56 am by vulcanlogician.)
As far as things in the parallel thread about mathematics goes, Polymath's clarifications have done little to dispute my position that:
A) Ethics is an objective venture. Despite the broadly held perception that it does, ethics has nothing to do with subjectivity, cultural or otherwise. Polymath attributes the success of mathematics to the fact that the underlying axioms of a given system are "accurate." I too, would postulate the same of ethics. There is still no room for the view that ethics is subjective in all of this.
B) Ethics is not based upon personal tastes or emotional misgivings of any kind. It is based on axiomatic truths which (even if you don't want to use the terms true or false) are either accurate or inaccurate. No room for emotion when discussing the precision of an axiom.
So far, I think I have shown that ethics is NOT subjective (as moral relativists would claim). And nor is it based on emotions. If you agree with me thus far, there goes three brands of moral skepticism: cultural relativism, individual relativism, and expressivistic nihilism.
The only claim from the direction of moral skeptics that still stands is error theory, a kind of moral nihilism. Error theory says that there are no such thing as morals; we just made them up. I think that error theorists present the most significant challenge to ethical objectivism, and it's the only brand of moral skepticism that I take seriously.
@DLJ and Rob
If you want to say that all moral theory is wrong because it is founded on "made up" axioms, fine. But (if I have accomplished anything in this thread) I'd like it to be that I convinced you that ethics has nothing to do with subjectivity. You don't have to be moral objectivists. But at least you can say that you aren't because you think all moral theory is WRONG (rather than the mistaken notion that it is subjective).
edit: Also, I might have mischaracterized Polymath who I thought said axioms were accurate at one point. But, rereading over what he wrote, he said "useful"... at least at one point. It is a distinction that could be elaborated upon, but I figured I'd edit this in to my post for due diligence.
A) Ethics is an objective venture. Despite the broadly held perception that it does, ethics has nothing to do with subjectivity, cultural or otherwise. Polymath attributes the success of mathematics to the fact that the underlying axioms of a given system are "accurate." I too, would postulate the same of ethics. There is still no room for the view that ethics is subjective in all of this.
B) Ethics is not based upon personal tastes or emotional misgivings of any kind. It is based on axiomatic truths which (even if you don't want to use the terms true or false) are either accurate or inaccurate. No room for emotion when discussing the precision of an axiom.
So far, I think I have shown that ethics is NOT subjective (as moral relativists would claim). And nor is it based on emotions. If you agree with me thus far, there goes three brands of moral skepticism: cultural relativism, individual relativism, and expressivistic nihilism.
The only claim from the direction of moral skeptics that still stands is error theory, a kind of moral nihilism. Error theory says that there are no such thing as morals; we just made them up. I think that error theorists present the most significant challenge to ethical objectivism, and it's the only brand of moral skepticism that I take seriously.
@DLJ and Rob
If you want to say that all moral theory is wrong because it is founded on "made up" axioms, fine. But (if I have accomplished anything in this thread) I'd like it to be that I convinced you that ethics has nothing to do with subjectivity. You don't have to be moral objectivists. But at least you can say that you aren't because you think all moral theory is WRONG (rather than the mistaken notion that it is subjective).
edit: Also, I might have mischaracterized Polymath who I thought said axioms were accurate at one point. But, rereading over what he wrote, he said "useful"... at least at one point. It is a distinction that could be elaborated upon, but I figured I'd edit this in to my post for due diligence.
