So do you believe that ethics are just an invented rule system that could have a different form and still be as ethical?
Invented isn’t the right word, though that is partly my fault since baseball isn’t an ideal metaphor. Natural language is a better one. Parts of ethics are culturally inherited (presumably at some time in the past they were invented) other parts are innate. The word ethics has a type-token ambiguity. It can refer to our ethical system (call it ‘ethics prime’) or it can refer to the type of thing that ethics prime is (an ethics). There can be societies without ethics prime, these societies are not ethical in the token sense but may be in the type sense (if they have a different ethical system). Imagine if the word for English and the word for language were the same word ‘language’. Do the French speak language?
My own ethical system demands that I try to enforce it on a large class of beings similar to myself so I am not a relativist in that I think other people should do many of the things my ethics require me to do. This seems to me to have little to do with what those other people believe is ethical.
Imagine if the word for English and the word for language were the same word ‘language’. Do the French speak language?
This is a good way of putting it!
In fact, it just convinced me that there is an objective ethics! Sort of. Asking whether there is an objective meta-ethics is a lot like asking, “Is there such a thing as language?” Language is a concept that can be usefully applied to interactions between organisms of a particular level of intelligence given particular environmental conditions. So is ethics. Is it universal? What the hell does that mean?
But when people say there is no objective ethics, that isn’t what they mean. They aren’t denying that ethics makes sense as a concept. They’re claiming the right to set their own arbitrary goals and values.
It’s hard for me to imagine why someone who was convinced that there were no objective ethics would waste time on this, unless they were a Continental philosopher. Claiming there is no objective ethics sounds to me more like the actions of someone who believes in objective ethics, and has come to their own values that are unique enough that they must reject existing values.
Invented isn’t the right word, though that is partly my fault since baseball isn’t an ideal metaphor. Natural language is a better one. Parts of ethics are culturally inherited (presumably at some time in the past they were invented) other parts are innate. The word ethics has a type-token ambiguity. It can refer to our ethical system (call it ‘ethics prime’) or it can refer to the type of thing that ethics prime is (an ethics). There can be societies without ethics prime, these societies are not ethical in the token sense but may be in the type sense (if they have a different ethical system). Imagine if the word for English and the word for language were the same word ‘language’. Do the French speak language?
My own ethical system demands that I try to enforce it on a large class of beings similar to myself so I am not a relativist in that I think other people should do many of the things my ethics require me to do. This seems to me to have little to do with what those other people believe is ethical.
This is a good way of putting it!
In fact, it just convinced me that there is an objective ethics! Sort of. Asking whether there is an objective meta-ethics is a lot like asking, “Is there such a thing as language?” Language is a concept that can be usefully applied to interactions between organisms of a particular level of intelligence given particular environmental conditions. So is ethics. Is it universal? What the hell does that mean?
But when people say there is no objective ethics, that isn’t what they mean. They aren’t denying that ethics makes sense as a concept. They’re claiming the right to set their own arbitrary goals and values.
It’s hard for me to imagine why someone who was convinced that there were no objective ethics would waste time on this, unless they were a Continental philosopher. Claiming there is no objective ethics sounds to me more like the actions of someone who believes in objective ethics, and has come to their own values that are unique enough that they must reject existing values.