But I cannot seriosuly entertain the prospect of a “from first principles” argument producing the human moral mess. No way. It was this observation that finally convinced me to abandon my various attempts at objective ethics.
I agreed but came to the opposite conclusion. Because I think that an ethics of naive moral intuition leads to worse outcomes than a fairly robust consequentialism/virtue ethics, I use the latter to trump the former.
Not that I disagree with your decision, but if you’re talking about “worse outcomes”, then aren’t you already assuming consequentialism during your evaluation of moral systems?
I agreed but came to the opposite conclusion. Because I think that an ethics of naive moral intuition leads to worse outcomes than a fairly robust consequentialism/virtue ethics, I use the latter to trump the former.
Not that I disagree with your decision, but if you’re talking about “worse outcomes”, then aren’t you already assuming consequentialism during your evaluation of moral systems?
Yes. :) I really can’t imagine any other way of evaluating moral theories than “what would/could the world look like if we applied them.”