I think determining some underlying rule can help me make (subjectively of course) better judgements, which have a much better chance of being consistent (as TheOtherDave mentions).
It’s much too easy for the emotional machinery in our brains to be hijacked by images of baby-seals, terrorists, etc., and I feel my judgements are better if I can use some underlying rules rather than my intuitions.
If all you have to base your moral system on is your intuitions, then the best you can hope for in a “consistent” systematization is to do no worse than flipping a coin when you have conflicting intuitions.
I suppose what I am really reacting to is that it strikes me that carefully systematizing morality makes as much sense as carefully systematizing astrology. The details and the calculations and the cogitation serve to give the illusion of there being something there while in actuality… all you have is Rationality Theater.
True, at some point intuitions come into play (unless you are some kind of Spock), to determine your personal moral bedrock. But at least for me, these intuitions are not all born equal, and not all intuitions are part of this bedrock.
A typical example would be: ‘Cute animals are more important’, which may conflict with some deeper rule in some situation. Instead of just following my intuition with that first rule, I think my moral judgements are better when I take a step back and try to use the deeper rule.
If all you have to base your moral system on is your intuitions, then the best you can hope for in a “consistent” systematization is to do no worse than flipping a coin when you have conflicting intuitions.
You are on to something, science in some sense is taken on faith and morality in a similar sense is taken on faith.
But the faiths are different. The faith of science is a testable faith. Either you build stuff that works or you don’t. if your musings about thermodynamics lead to a steam engine and later to an air conditioner, and your musings about electrons in a semiconductor lead to a transistor and later to a smartphone, well, that is what your high priests of science can bring you.
What is the test of a faith in moral realism? I don’t wish to answer with a strawman that I will knock down, I really want to know, how do you evaluate if your moral system is doing a good job? Do you measure fewer inconsistencies in intuition? Do you get elected to the senate? Do people vote up your karma?
Science leads to jet aircraft and HD TVs and hip replacements. 2 out of 3 Abrahamic religions lead toenjoyable promises of an eternity of bliss.
What is the promise of a moral system? What is the thing it claims to give me that I don’t have just following my intuitions in a non-systematic way? I know what the high-priests of science are claiming for their mojo, and it sure seems to me they deliver. (And they don’t require me to believe in their mumbo jumbo “induction” stuff in order to use their jet aircraft and smartphones). What are the moral realists offering? And even more important, what are they delivering?
The best answer I can give you is that a moral realist today is currently in the same situation as a physical realist was before the development of the scientific method. There were lots of competing not-quite coherent theories of what it means for something to be real, but if you asked 100 people they would all agree on whether something was a rock or a glass of milk barring weirdness. Similarly, today there are lots of competing not-quite coherent theories of what it means for something to be moral, but if you asked 100 people they would all agree that killing an innocent person is wrong barring weirdness.
(The above is paraphrased from another comment that I can’t locate right now.)
So perhaps we still await the development of “the moral method.”
It does strike me, and I mean I have not thought of this really until right now, that law and government are the engineering branches of “the moral method” of “moral realism” as “the scientific method” corresponds to “physical realism.” Economics and Sociology may be the Physics and Chemistry of “moral realism.” The progress that law and government have enabled are an economic productivity contributed to by billions of people (or at least 100s of millions) which dwarfs that of our predecessors in the same way that our technology dwarfs that of our predecessors.
There are at least a few interesting things about this idea. One need not “believe” in science to use the fruits of it, whereas plausibliy a belief in science is necessary to contribute to developing its progress. One can be an anarchist or a communist or an ignoramus or a nihilist and benefit from the modern economy and unprecedented levels of personal security in society. Presumably any “realism” would have implications that did not depend on the state of belief in the thing which is real.
What my off-the-cuff thesis lacks is any neessity for the truth-or-falsehood of moral statements. “You ought to obey the law” or “killing in a way which is against the law is wrong” are NOT required to be meaningful statements with an objective truth value. Or are they? In some sense, the truth value of scientific statements require the assumptions of logic and induction. One could say that it is not necessary to have a truth value associated with “all electrons repel each other” in order for me to build a smartphone which will only work if its untested electrons act the same in the future as the very very few electrons I have actually tested in the past. So perhaps “de facto” as it were, the practitioners and advancers of the law and government have a belief in “the moral method” just as non-philosopher scientists and engineers seem to have a “de facto” belief in induction.
This identification of law and government with the stuff of moral realism even has the feature that it can be wrong, or wrong-ish, just like science and engineering. ALL engineering design is done using approximations of physics. That is, we KNOW the principles behind our designs our “wrong” in that they are inexact approximations for what is really happening. We then use trial and error to develop an art of design which “usually” works, which usually keeps the thing we are designing away from where the inaccuracies of our design assumptions matter. Heck we even have the idea that there can be better and worse law and government just as there are better and worse science.
To stretch the analogy past all reason, can I say something interesting about the moral discussions that to me seem typical and which make me want to be a nihilist? These are the discussions of “my morality comes from moral intuitions but one of my intuitions is my morality should be consistent so I build these elaborate personal strutures instead of just doing what feels right.” Their analogy in science might be someone who assiduously records all sorts of personal data to advance his health without a clue that his better option would be to plug in to the progress made in medical research. Someone who attempts to build his own smartphone through introspection instead of getting the professional product.
I don’t know. Now I’ll have to read about philosophy of law and government to discover that everything I’ve just said has been said before, its flaws categorized into labeled branches of belief. But for now I’m pretty happy with the concept and feel as though I’ve just invented something even though I’ve probably just dredged it up from things I’ve heard and read over the last half a century and, at least consciously, forgotten.
It does strike me, and I mean I have not thought of this really until right now, that law and government are the engineering branches of “the moral method” of “moral realism” as “the scientific method” corresponds to “physical realism.” Economics and Sociology may be the Physics and Chemistry of “moral realism.”
Given the current state of economics and sociology I’d replace chemistry with alchemy in that metaphor. Also, foundational systems like utilitarianism and deontology are the equivalent of astronomy/astrology before they got separated.
To stretch the analogy past all reason, can I say something interesting about the moral discussions that to me seem typical and which make me want to be a nihilist? These are the discussions of “my morality comes from moral intuitions but one of my intuitions is my morality should be consistent so I build these elaborate personal strutures instead of just doing what feels right.” Their analogy in science might be someone who assiduously records all sorts of personal data to advance his health without a clue that his better option would be to plug in to the progress made in medical research. Someone who attempts to build his own smartphone through introspection instead of getting the professional product.
A better analogy might be someone who believes that he can develop a physical theory simply by introspection without looking at the world. (It was a popular philosophical position before the scientific method was developed, after all that’s how mathematics works and it had been successful.)
That is a good question.
I think determining some underlying rule can help me make (subjectively of course) better judgements, which have a much better chance of being consistent (as TheOtherDave mentions).
It’s much too easy for the emotional machinery in our brains to be hijacked by images of baby-seals, terrorists, etc., and I feel my judgements are better if I can use some underlying rules rather than my intuitions.
If all you have to base your moral system on is your intuitions, then the best you can hope for in a “consistent” systematization is to do no worse than flipping a coin when you have conflicting intuitions.
I suppose what I am really reacting to is that it strikes me that carefully systematizing morality makes as much sense as carefully systematizing astrology. The details and the calculations and the cogitation serve to give the illusion of there being something there while in actuality… all you have is Rationality Theater.
True, at some point intuitions come into play (unless you are some kind of Spock), to determine your personal moral bedrock. But at least for me, these intuitions are not all born equal, and not all intuitions are part of this bedrock.
A typical example would be: ‘Cute animals are more important’, which may conflict with some deeper rule in some situation. Instead of just following my intuition with that first rule, I think my moral judgements are better when I take a step back and try to use the deeper rule.
Well, the same problem exists in science but that hasn’t stopped us from making progress.
You are on to something, science in some sense is taken on faith and morality in a similar sense is taken on faith.
But the faiths are different. The faith of science is a testable faith. Either you build stuff that works or you don’t. if your musings about thermodynamics lead to a steam engine and later to an air conditioner, and your musings about electrons in a semiconductor lead to a transistor and later to a smartphone, well, that is what your high priests of science can bring you.
What is the test of a faith in moral realism? I don’t wish to answer with a strawman that I will knock down, I really want to know, how do you evaluate if your moral system is doing a good job? Do you measure fewer inconsistencies in intuition? Do you get elected to the senate? Do people vote up your karma?
Science leads to jet aircraft and HD TVs and hip replacements. 2 out of 3 Abrahamic religions lead toenjoyable promises of an eternity of bliss.
What is the promise of a moral system? What is the thing it claims to give me that I don’t have just following my intuitions in a non-systematic way? I know what the high-priests of science are claiming for their mojo, and it sure seems to me they deliver. (And they don’t require me to believe in their mumbo jumbo “induction” stuff in order to use their jet aircraft and smartphones). What are the moral realists offering? And even more important, what are they delivering?
The best answer I can give you is that a moral realist today is currently in the same situation as a physical realist was before the development of the scientific method. There were lots of competing not-quite coherent theories of what it means for something to be real, but if you asked 100 people they would all agree on whether something was a rock or a glass of milk barring weirdness. Similarly, today there are lots of competing not-quite coherent theories of what it means for something to be moral, but if you asked 100 people they would all agree that killing an innocent person is wrong barring weirdness.
(The above is paraphrased from another comment that I can’t locate right now.)
I realize that the above may not be the most satisfying answer, especially if the history of philosophy isn’t available for you.
So perhaps we still await the development of “the moral method.”
It does strike me, and I mean I have not thought of this really until right now, that law and government are the engineering branches of “the moral method” of “moral realism” as “the scientific method” corresponds to “physical realism.” Economics and Sociology may be the Physics and Chemistry of “moral realism.” The progress that law and government have enabled are an economic productivity contributed to by billions of people (or at least 100s of millions) which dwarfs that of our predecessors in the same way that our technology dwarfs that of our predecessors.
There are at least a few interesting things about this idea. One need not “believe” in science to use the fruits of it, whereas plausibliy a belief in science is necessary to contribute to developing its progress. One can be an anarchist or a communist or an ignoramus or a nihilist and benefit from the modern economy and unprecedented levels of personal security in society. Presumably any “realism” would have implications that did not depend on the state of belief in the thing which is real.
What my off-the-cuff thesis lacks is any neessity for the truth-or-falsehood of moral statements. “You ought to obey the law” or “killing in a way which is against the law is wrong” are NOT required to be meaningful statements with an objective truth value. Or are they? In some sense, the truth value of scientific statements require the assumptions of logic and induction. One could say that it is not necessary to have a truth value associated with “all electrons repel each other” in order for me to build a smartphone which will only work if its untested electrons act the same in the future as the very very few electrons I have actually tested in the past. So perhaps “de facto” as it were, the practitioners and advancers of the law and government have a belief in “the moral method” just as non-philosopher scientists and engineers seem to have a “de facto” belief in induction.
This identification of law and government with the stuff of moral realism even has the feature that it can be wrong, or wrong-ish, just like science and engineering. ALL engineering design is done using approximations of physics. That is, we KNOW the principles behind our designs our “wrong” in that they are inexact approximations for what is really happening. We then use trial and error to develop an art of design which “usually” works, which usually keeps the thing we are designing away from where the inaccuracies of our design assumptions matter. Heck we even have the idea that there can be better and worse law and government just as there are better and worse science.
To stretch the analogy past all reason, can I say something interesting about the moral discussions that to me seem typical and which make me want to be a nihilist? These are the discussions of “my morality comes from moral intuitions but one of my intuitions is my morality should be consistent so I build these elaborate personal strutures instead of just doing what feels right.” Their analogy in science might be someone who assiduously records all sorts of personal data to advance his health without a clue that his better option would be to plug in to the progress made in medical research. Someone who attempts to build his own smartphone through introspection instead of getting the professional product.
I don’t know. Now I’ll have to read about philosophy of law and government to discover that everything I’ve just said has been said before, its flaws categorized into labeled branches of belief. But for now I’m pretty happy with the concept and feel as though I’ve just invented something even though I’ve probably just dredged it up from things I’ve heard and read over the last half a century and, at least consciously, forgotten.
Given the current state of economics and sociology I’d replace chemistry with alchemy in that metaphor. Also, foundational systems like utilitarianism and deontology are the equivalent of astronomy/astrology before they got separated.
A better analogy might be someone who believes that he can develop a physical theory simply by introspection without looking at the world. (It was a popular philosophical position before the scientific method was developed, after all that’s how mathematics works and it had been successful.)