On 5/27/07, Stathis Papaioannou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Every society has sociopaths, and generally recognises them as such and deals with them. The problem is that through most of history, "normal" people have thought it was OK to treat slaves, women, Jews, homosexuals etc. in ways considered terrible by people in different eras. For all I know, I may be committing a barbaric crime in the mildly challenging tone of this post, when looked at by the standards of future or alien cultures. And even within a relatively homogeneous culture there are basic disagreements, such as between those who think it's OK to eat animals and those who don't. I don't dispute that it is worthwhile trying to arrive at a rational ethical system given certain moral premises, but how do we agree on the premises?
The short answer is: By doing philosophy! The longer, more accurate answer is that we already have something like agreement on premises. I think there's a temptation in ethics discussions to assume that the premises we use to arrive at conclusions and adjudicate disputes are going to have to be substantive moral principles. But then the question would just be pushed back to how you justify that principle, which seems to require an even more general principle. But then you have an even more abstract principle that needs to be justified, and the problem only looks harder or perhaps even impossible. But consider how scientific disputes are settled or just ordinary empirical beliefs. These beliefs are not usually justified by appeal to a more fundamental theory. Rather a fundamental theory is something you reach at the end of inquiry. What you start out with are general principles that guide our reasoning like "If a view entails a contradiction, reject it." Or "if a theory makes successful predictions confirmed by the data," increase your credence in it. These are not substantive theories about the world, but norms that pretty much any honest person would agree to. More complicated, subtle versions of something like these and other principles are I think going to be fundamental norms governing reasoning that are encoded in the cognitive architecture of all people. These are not things that people need to consciously agree to in order for them to guide their thinking; they can often influence one's belief forming processes in relatively automatic, subconscious ways as well as through more conscious, slow deliberation. Similarly, I think there will be principles encoded into people's cognitive architecture that governs how they deliberate about moral principles. I think they will actually be pretty similar in structure to the norms governing beliefs but with moral intuitions taking the place of data points. Obviously a moral principle that entails a contradiction should be rejected. In the case of beliefs, few theories actually ever entail a contradiction. Generally, you can save nearly any theory so long as you are willing to revise enough other beliefs about the world. But we are guided by norms to also reject theories that require abandonment of many ordinary beliefs and data points without good reason. I think similar points would hold for moral principles. Norms for reasoning will guide us to reject moral views that can be shown to conflict with many of our concrete moral intuitions, at least it will do so unless we can tell a good debunking story for why we have those intuitions (same with empirical beliefs). Just as scientists try to come up with simple theories that explain many data points, in moral reasoning, (good) philosophers try to come up with intuitive principles that capture and explain a large set of moral intuitions. If a theory has enough explanatory power, then we might be willing to entertain the possibility that some of our initial data points that conflicted with it are mistaken rather than the theory. Again, the same sort of thing can happen with compelling moral principles overturning some of our initial moral intuitions. Philosophers call this methodology reflective equilibrium as you are going back and forth between revising both intuitions and principles to fit each other. In an issue like how to treat animals, I think careful and honest consideration of the arguments will lead any nonsociopaths to reject much of our current treatment as unjustifiable. I think the method of reflective equilibrium can be seen in my first email on this topic. The principles and intuitions I appeal to are things I think everyone would agree to. Things like "like cases ought to be treated alike," that it is impermissible to torture and kill 3 year olds for meat, that space aliens with humanlike psychology would have similar moral rights, etc. In both empirical (e.g. creationists) and moral issues, I think the problem is not so much that we lack shared starting points for deliberation about these issues but that people are either ignorant of the progress that has been made or simply unwilling to engage in honest inquiry about many topics. The fact that much disagreement persists because of thse sorts of reasons shouldn't make us despair or doubt that we have good methods for getting at the truth. John Ku ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
