> once we settle on a general ethical theory that seems “principled” or inherently plausible, I’m not inclined to expect any further explanation of why that moral theory is the true one. How about you?
My quick take: (some) higher-order moral theories "are climbing the same mountain on different sides." Of course we should do the best thing and follow the ideal-contractualist thing and follow the end-of-ideal-inquiry thing; at a high level all of these must be valid paths. No one of them is the true one.
It's plausible that, at a suitably high level of abstraction, the different "paths" can be understood in such a way as will result in convergence. (This is especially so if we reinterpret the various procedural methods as building in that *independently true* moral beliefs are more ideal! That's not usually how they are intended, though.)
But there's a real question which (if any) higher-order property does genuine explanatory work. I'd be surprised if they *all* do. It would be interesting to read a sustained defense of that idea though. (Parfit's convergence-seeking project always seemed misguided to me for this reason. He didn't attend enough to the explanatory question to even bother defending the view that each side of the moral mountain was *equally* responsible for holding up the peak.)
>"I'm curious how you would categorize, or what you think of, a kind of defense of consequentialism that I associate at least with Mill and Railton. It appeals to the idea that morality by definition is concerned with what is best from an impartial point of view. That seems essentially like a combination of your first 2 above. But it doesn't focus first on why we should ultimately *care* about this. For Mill, that is a separate question (for Chpt. 3). Instead it is just an elucidation of the concept of morality and "moral point of view." This establishes objective facts about what is morally good; and then we later worry about whether anyone has reason to care about what is morally good."
My reply:
I'm skeptical that stipulative "definitions" can do fruitful philosophical work for us. One can certainly talk about objective constructions formed by aggregating everyone's preferences or happiness; there are any number of objective constructions we could choose to talk about (corresponding to slightly different theories of well-being and/or aggregation). But the interesting philosophical question is which such constructions have significant normative properties, and we can't answer that by stipulation.
OT: Hey Richard, how about a post on the new Utilitas symposium on Norcross' book? Admittedly, I haven't read any of the book, your review, or the Utilitas issue.
“The glowing halo of non-natural goodness could, as it happens, brutely follow the process of attaching to whatever we’d judge to be good at the end of ideal inquiry.”
The moral motivation for contractualism is not brute, but is derivative from fundamental values of reason and freedom. Because we value freedom, and reason even more so, we would accept reasonable restrictions on our freedom under the hypothetical agreement.
And the value we place on welfare is derivative of the value welfare is given in the original agreement. We only care about welfare to the extent we would agree to give it weight under deliberation, which isn’t to take precedence over our freedom.
Morality are those sets of principles that those who value reason and freedom would agree to. There is no morality without those values.
> once we settle on a general ethical theory that seems “principled” or inherently plausible, I’m not inclined to expect any further explanation of why that moral theory is the true one. How about you?
My quick take: (some) higher-order moral theories "are climbing the same mountain on different sides." Of course we should do the best thing and follow the ideal-contractualist thing and follow the end-of-ideal-inquiry thing; at a high level all of these must be valid paths. No one of them is the true one.
It's plausible that, at a suitably high level of abstraction, the different "paths" can be understood in such a way as will result in convergence. (This is especially so if we reinterpret the various procedural methods as building in that *independently true* moral beliefs are more ideal! That's not usually how they are intended, though.)
But there's a real question which (if any) higher-order property does genuine explanatory work. I'd be surprised if they *all* do. It would be interesting to read a sustained defense of that idea though. (Parfit's convergence-seeking project always seemed misguided to me for this reason. He didn't attend enough to the explanatory question to even bother defending the view that each side of the moral mountain was *equally* responsible for holding up the peak.)
Jim Skidmore writes:
>"I'm curious how you would categorize, or what you think of, a kind of defense of consequentialism that I associate at least with Mill and Railton. It appeals to the idea that morality by definition is concerned with what is best from an impartial point of view. That seems essentially like a combination of your first 2 above. But it doesn't focus first on why we should ultimately *care* about this. For Mill, that is a separate question (for Chpt. 3). Instead it is just an elucidation of the concept of morality and "moral point of view." This establishes objective facts about what is morally good; and then we later worry about whether anyone has reason to care about what is morally good."
My reply:
I'm skeptical that stipulative "definitions" can do fruitful philosophical work for us. One can certainly talk about objective constructions formed by aggregating everyone's preferences or happiness; there are any number of objective constructions we could choose to talk about (corresponding to slightly different theories of well-being and/or aggregation). But the interesting philosophical question is which such constructions have significant normative properties, and we can't answer that by stipulation.
OT: Hey Richard, how about a post on the new Utilitas symposium on Norcross' book? Admittedly, I haven't read any of the book, your review, or the Utilitas issue.
Yeah, I'm hoping to write on it soon!
“The glowing halo of non-natural goodness could, as it happens, brutely follow the process of attaching to whatever we’d judge to be good at the end of ideal inquiry.”
The moral motivation for contractualism is not brute, but is derivative from fundamental values of reason and freedom. Because we value freedom, and reason even more so, we would accept reasonable restrictions on our freedom under the hypothetical agreement.
And the value we place on welfare is derivative of the value welfare is given in the original agreement. We only care about welfare to the extent we would agree to give it weight under deliberation, which isn’t to take precedence over our freedom.
Morality are those sets of principles that those who value reason and freedom would agree to. There is no morality without those values.
This is discussed more here https://neonomos.substack.com/p/what-is-morality