RE: “Normative” ethical theories
September 21, 2025 at 10:06 am
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2025 at 10:15 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Why don't the ends justify the means? A purer distillation of instrumental value could not be conceived of.
Many religious and vaguely religious thinkers have fancied themselves moral realists. Have said that they believe in an objective morality. What you'd find on closer inspection is that they tend to be subjectivists and relativists. "Objective" being a cultural item they wish to possess, not a moral system they wish to employ. The thing which, they hope, grants their particular views with social authority.
There are non natural realists, but it doesn't mean what people would expect. GE Moore is where people usually start with that. It's a minority view in contemporary moral philosophy, though. Variants of natural realism dominate. The idea that moral facts are facts exactly like any other kind of fact. Not some special category of knowledge alien to everything else and of a nature we can't access. To wit, the idea that there really is something decent about wealth equality and human well-being regardless of how schemes to increase them might make a person feel, regardless of a given subjects opinion on them, and regardless of a society's amenability to them. This is often expressed in the language of human well-being. IE, x y and z really do increase human well-being regardless of how some people feel or some societies reject them and even if they are not intuitively satisfying - and here are the stats and studies to back that up. So when we say that x y and z are good we are not talking about our feelings about those things, or our opinions of those things, or the dictates of our societies on those things, we are talking about something x y and z - the object- actually do, and demonstrably so.
So, for example, when you think about why a person should want those things, and thus may be compellable to those aims....do you begin to think of natural facts? Where they selected as aims because of those benefits born out by natural facts?
Many religious and vaguely religious thinkers have fancied themselves moral realists. Have said that they believe in an objective morality. What you'd find on closer inspection is that they tend to be subjectivists and relativists. "Objective" being a cultural item they wish to possess, not a moral system they wish to employ. The thing which, they hope, grants their particular views with social authority.
There are non natural realists, but it doesn't mean what people would expect. GE Moore is where people usually start with that. It's a minority view in contemporary moral philosophy, though. Variants of natural realism dominate. The idea that moral facts are facts exactly like any other kind of fact. Not some special category of knowledge alien to everything else and of a nature we can't access. To wit, the idea that there really is something decent about wealth equality and human well-being regardless of how schemes to increase them might make a person feel, regardless of a given subjects opinion on them, and regardless of a society's amenability to them. This is often expressed in the language of human well-being. IE, x y and z really do increase human well-being regardless of how some people feel or some societies reject them and even if they are not intuitively satisfying - and here are the stats and studies to back that up. So when we say that x y and z are good we are not talking about our feelings about those things, or our opinions of those things, or the dictates of our societies on those things, we are talking about something x y and z - the object- actually do, and demonstrably so.
So, for example, when you think about why a person should want those things, and thus may be compellable to those aims....do you begin to think of natural facts? Where they selected as aims because of those benefits born out by natural facts?
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