I don’t agree with that. For one thing, that’s already a branch of psychology. For another, it’s purely descriptive , and so gives up on improving ethics.
I agree with this. I don’t really mind if moral philosophy ends up merging into moral psychology, but I do think there’s a potentially valuable things philosophers can add here, that might not naturally occur to descriptive psychology as important: we can try to tease apart meta-values of varying strengths, and ask what we might value if we knew more, had more ability to self-modify, were wiser and more disciplined, etc.
Ethics is partly a scientific problem of figuring out what we currently value; but it’s also an engineering problem of figuring out and implementing what we should value, which will plausibly end up cashing out as something like ‘the equilibrium of our values under sufficient reflection and (reflectively endorsed!) self-modification’.
If you think ethics should be less narrow, why focus only on values? If you think that the only function of ethics is to maximise value, you will be led to the narrow conclusion that consequentialism is the only metaethics. But if you recognise that ethics also has he functions of shaping individual behaviour, enabling coordination, and avoiding conflict , then you can take a broad, multifaceted view of metaethics.
I agree with this. I don’t really mind if moral philosophy ends up merging into moral psychology, but I do think there’s a potentially valuable things philosophers can add here, that might not naturally occur to descriptive psychology as important: we can try to tease apart meta-values of varying strengths, and ask what we might value if we knew more, had more ability to self-modify, were wiser and more disciplined, etc.
Ethics is partly a scientific problem of figuring out what we currently value; but it’s also an engineering problem of figuring out and implementing what we should value, which will plausibly end up cashing out as something like ‘the equilibrium of our values under sufficient reflection and (reflectively endorsed!) self-modification’.
Again, it has not been proven that ethics is just about value.
If you think ethics should be less narrow, why focus only on values? If you think that the only function of ethics is to maximise value, you will be led to the narrow conclusion that consequentialism is the only metaethics. But if you recognise that ethics also has he functions of shaping individual behaviour, enabling coordination, and avoiding conflict , then you can take a broad, multifaceted view of metaethics.