RE: Moral Oughts
August 8, 2019 at 6:26 am
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2019 at 7:15 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Thats not a description of moral relativism.
It’s simply an indication that his statement “stealing is wrong” does not mean exactly what it says. More a problem of his having offered a childish absolutist deontology in place of a realists appraisal than anything else.
In a realists appraisal, stealing may not be wrong in a range of specific circumstances which lack the relevant fact that identifies them as wrong, when it is wrong. The appeal to the starving thief with kids exploits our emotional biases( and a strong tendency towards relational moral value systems) but an even better example posits a real asshole getting his things stolen by the good guys.
We generally don’t think that seizing a drug lords shit is wrong, but it’s stealing all the same.
OTOH, deontology like that expressed by the statement is useful because most of our moral decisions don’t come with time attached to sit down and contemplate the moral nature of a given situation. The time constraints of in-the-moment decisions strongly favor the use of heuristic expressions.
They’re the moral equivalent of rounding up or down for approximate values. This, not any moral relativism, reduces his comments to absurdity as statements on either intrinsic -or-objective value. There’s nothing about stealing that’s intrinsically wrong, and no objective assessment could ever conclude as much. There is, at best, something about stealing most of the time....that isn’t present all of the time, that’s wrong. That thing, rather than stealing, would be a candidate for intrinsic or objective moral value in theft regardless of whether a person uses a natural or non natural realists framework.
TLDR version, realism is neither simple, nor a shortcut. It’s hard, long form morality. Morality by reference to facts, which are not always the same in a given instance of x (in the above case, stealing). A more specific criticism of the non realist morality Acro is employing is that he’s managed to contradict his fundamental theory of moral value and obligation by telling a person to go ahead and steal. If “bad” is necessarily the list of things you shouldn’t do, and stealing is necessarily “bad”.......then the moral choice, with no exceptions, is to starve yourself and your children to death. To let the drug lord keep his shit. No suggestion to the contrary is consistent.....and yet...
It’s simply an indication that his statement “stealing is wrong” does not mean exactly what it says. More a problem of his having offered a childish absolutist deontology in place of a realists appraisal than anything else.
In a realists appraisal, stealing may not be wrong in a range of specific circumstances which lack the relevant fact that identifies them as wrong, when it is wrong. The appeal to the starving thief with kids exploits our emotional biases( and a strong tendency towards relational moral value systems) but an even better example posits a real asshole getting his things stolen by the good guys.
We generally don’t think that seizing a drug lords shit is wrong, but it’s stealing all the same.
OTOH, deontology like that expressed by the statement is useful because most of our moral decisions don’t come with time attached to sit down and contemplate the moral nature of a given situation. The time constraints of in-the-moment decisions strongly favor the use of heuristic expressions.
They’re the moral equivalent of rounding up or down for approximate values. This, not any moral relativism, reduces his comments to absurdity as statements on either intrinsic -or-objective value. There’s nothing about stealing that’s intrinsically wrong, and no objective assessment could ever conclude as much. There is, at best, something about stealing most of the time....that isn’t present all of the time, that’s wrong. That thing, rather than stealing, would be a candidate for intrinsic or objective moral value in theft regardless of whether a person uses a natural or non natural realists framework.
TLDR version, realism is neither simple, nor a shortcut. It’s hard, long form morality. Morality by reference to facts, which are not always the same in a given instance of x (in the above case, stealing). A more specific criticism of the non realist morality Acro is employing is that he’s managed to contradict his fundamental theory of moral value and obligation by telling a person to go ahead and steal. If “bad” is necessarily the list of things you shouldn’t do, and stealing is necessarily “bad”.......then the moral choice, with no exceptions, is to starve yourself and your children to death. To let the drug lord keep his shit. No suggestion to the contrary is consistent.....and yet...
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