What are the experiences that we are trying to explain with our ethical theories?
Why do you assume that ethical theories must be in the business of explaining experiences? On the face of it, moral theories do not aim to explain how things are (not even “how things are in our heads”—that’s psychology, not philosophical ethics), but instead address the more practical question: “what should I do?” We develop moral theories to help us to answer this practical question, or to guide our decisions, not to answer some scientific question of the form “why do I have such-and-such experiences?” (Note that an answer to the latter need not have any action-guiding significance at all.)
Yeah, phrasing the question the way I did right there was confusing. This helps me clarify my position. Normative ethics isn’t trying to explain explain our intuitions. It is trying to explain what we should do. But we don’t get information about what we should do any other way except from our intuitions about what we should do. So what normative ethics needs to do is formalize and generalize those intuitions (also, it is definitely worth clarifying what constitutes as an ethical intuition!). What it isn’t trying to do is justify them, though.
One classic problem in ethics is “why should I be moral?”. But when we experience strong ethical intuitions that question doesn’t come up, it only comes up when the only attempted justification of for an actions is an abstract theoretical one.
I’m still not entirely clear on your position here. Are you just affirming the standard methodology of reflective equilibrium? Or are you suggesting something more specific: e.g., that we should weight intuitions about particular cases more heavily than intuitions about general principles?
The reflective equilibrium method is the right kind of approach (and I should have mentioned it). In addition, I think that without independent justification you can only take a general principle as far as your intuitions about it take you. So we might have a general intuition that consequentialism is right—but we can’t just assume that contrary intuitions about particular cases are wrong. All else being equal we should prefer theories that get intuitions about general principles and intuitions about particular cases, right.
Why do you assume that ethical theories must be in the business of explaining experiences? On the face of it, moral theories do not aim to explain how things are (not even “how things are in our heads”—that’s psychology, not philosophical ethics), but instead address the more practical question: “what should I do?” We develop moral theories to help us to answer this practical question, or to guide our decisions, not to answer some scientific question of the form “why do I have such-and-such experiences?” (Note that an answer to the latter need not have any action-guiding significance at all.)
Yeah, phrasing the question the way I did right there was confusing. This helps me clarify my position. Normative ethics isn’t trying to explain explain our intuitions. It is trying to explain what we should do. But we don’t get information about what we should do any other way except from our intuitions about what we should do. So what normative ethics needs to do is formalize and generalize those intuitions (also, it is definitely worth clarifying what constitutes as an ethical intuition!). What it isn’t trying to do is justify them, though.
One classic problem in ethics is “why should I be moral?”. But when we experience strong ethical intuitions that question doesn’t come up, it only comes up when the only attempted justification of for an actions is an abstract theoretical one.
I’m still not entirely clear on your position here. Are you just affirming the standard methodology of reflective equilibrium? Or are you suggesting something more specific: e.g., that we should weight intuitions about particular cases more heavily than intuitions about general principles?
The reflective equilibrium method is the right kind of approach (and I should have mentioned it). In addition, I think that without independent justification you can only take a general principle as far as your intuitions about it take you. So we might have a general intuition that consequentialism is right—but we can’t just assume that contrary intuitions about particular cases are wrong. All else being equal we should prefer theories that get intuitions about general principles and intuitions about particular cases, right.