I have not yet had a conversation in which my interlocutor, while making moral claims, could provide convincing definitions of fundamental principies, including justice, duty, the good, vice, etc., though the speaker will have readily made use of these terms. It is not helpful that the population of individuals in society who have attempted to understand and establish such principles on their own, and done so carefully and analytically, is near zero.
Near zero? The number of people who have given careful and analytic thought to the foundational principles of ethics easily numbers in the thousands. Comparable to the number of people who have given equivalent foundational consideration to logic or thermodynamics or statistics. Given that there are seven billion people in the world, it is understandable that you have not yet had a conversation with one of these people. But it is easy enough to find the things they have written—online or in libraries. Give it a look. I can’t promise it will be convincing, or even that it will improve your opinion of the field. But you will find that a lot of serious thought has been given to the subject.
Forgive me for being sloppy with my language. Given what I wrote, your objection is entirely reasonable.
The idea that I meant to express is that, while it seems safe to assume that virtually everyone who has ever lived long enough to become a thinking person has encountered some kind of moral question in his life, we cannot say that an appreciable percentage of these people has sat and carefully analyzed these questions.
Even if we restrict ourselves only to people alive today and living in the United States—an enormous restriction considering the perhaps 100 billion people who have lived ever—the population of thousands you point to is pathetically small. Certainly I agree that Socrates, Mill, Kant, & their Merry Band have approached the subject seriously, but beyond these we’ve but a paucity, which I think is truly surprising given the apparent universality of moral experience.
The comparison to studying thermodynamics or logic (perhaps not quite so with logic), is that while we can say that everyone is of course affected by thermodynamics, almost no one attempts to think about it. The effect of thermodynamics on a person’s life is not impacted by that person’s ignorance of thermodynamic laws. However, a huge number of people do attempt to think and talk about morality, and I am not convinced that this latter group does so rigorously or well, which does have a real and critical effect on what morality is in actual practice.
However, I hope you will notice that this is a minor point, and was not a premise to the larger objection I was putting forward.
Near zero? The number of people who have given careful and analytic thought to the foundational principles of ethics easily numbers in the thousands. Comparable to the number of people who have given equivalent foundational consideration to logic or thermodynamics or statistics. Given that there are seven billion people in the world, it is understandable that you have not yet had a conversation with one of these people. But it is easy enough to find the things they have written—online or in libraries. Give it a look. I can’t promise it will be convincing, or even that it will improve your opinion of the field. But you will find that a lot of serious thought has been given to the subject.
Forgive me for being sloppy with my language. Given what I wrote, your objection is entirely reasonable.
The idea that I meant to express is that, while it seems safe to assume that virtually everyone who has ever lived long enough to become a thinking person has encountered some kind of moral question in his life, we cannot say that an appreciable percentage of these people has sat and carefully analyzed these questions.
Even if we restrict ourselves only to people alive today and living in the United States—an enormous restriction considering the perhaps 100 billion people who have lived ever—the population of thousands you point to is pathetically small. Certainly I agree that Socrates, Mill, Kant, & their Merry Band have approached the subject seriously, but beyond these we’ve but a paucity, which I think is truly surprising given the apparent universality of moral experience.
The comparison to studying thermodynamics or logic (perhaps not quite so with logic), is that while we can say that everyone is of course affected by thermodynamics, almost no one attempts to think about it. The effect of thermodynamics on a person’s life is not impacted by that person’s ignorance of thermodynamic laws. However, a huge number of people do attempt to think and talk about morality, and I am not convinced that this latter group does so rigorously or well, which does have a real and critical effect on what morality is in actual practice.
However, I hope you will notice that this is a minor point, and was not a premise to the larger objection I was putting forward.