But logic works! For example, establishing a non-contradictory axiom system, then observing how no contradictions seem to occur as we make deductions within the system.
You may establish a formal system of morality, make up some requirements (say, no theorem which starts with “you ought to prefer” is produced within the system), and if you were lucky with the inference rules and axioms, then you would see that your morality works (e.g. no matter how hard you try, you can’t derive “you ought to prefer killing kittens”). Clearly, that doesn’t mean that the selected system of morality has the same status as logic.
The important question is, why non-occurence of contradictions is believed to be important for logic to work? Why even have a negation sign in our symbolic alphabet of logic? Without that, a contradiction couldn’t be even defined. The only answer I can think of is that logic is extremely strongly and universally supported by intuitions, or, if you want, by the brain architecture. Moral intuitions are more complex and variable.
The point was that we have reason why we don’t want contradictions: we want our inferences to be correct. So logic is instrumental there. Morality on the other hand seems to be something we wish to be a certain way, for its own sake.
Modus ponens works better than appeal to inappropriate authority wrt. making correct inferences. In the case of morality, what works better than what wrt. doing what?
You could ask why we would want correct inferences. But I don’t see a point in reducing further.
The analogy to morality would make sense if say we already made up our minds to ‘maximize happiness for the greatest number’, for then we can check that utilitarianism would do this, and hence is correct. But morality seems to be more complex than that.
I’m agreeing with Marius in thinking that ethics is about achieving some sort of reflective equilibrium. I’m just rejecting the analogy with logic there.
To summarize, with logic, we already know what we want. With morality, we don’t.
You may establish a formal system of morality, make up some requirements (say, no theorem which starts with “you ought to prefer” is produced within the system), and if you were lucky with the inference rules and axioms, then you would see that your morality works (e.g. no matter how hard you try, you can’t derive “you ought to prefer killing kittens”). Clearly, that doesn’t mean that the selected system of morality has the same status as logic.
The important question is, why non-occurence of contradictions is believed to be important for logic to work? Why even have a negation sign in our symbolic alphabet of logic? Without that, a contradiction couldn’t be even defined. The only answer I can think of is that logic is extremely strongly and universally supported by intuitions, or, if you want, by the brain architecture. Moral intuitions are more complex and variable.
The point was that we have reason why we don’t want contradictions: we want our inferences to be correct. So logic is instrumental there. Morality on the other hand seems to be something we wish to be a certain way, for its own sake.
Modus ponens works better than appeal to inappropriate authority wrt. making correct inferences. In the case of morality, what works better than what wrt. doing what?
You could ask why we would want correct inferences. But I don’t see a point in reducing further.
The analogy to morality would make sense if say we already made up our minds to ‘maximize happiness for the greatest number’, for then we can check that utilitarianism would do this, and hence is correct. But morality seems to be more complex than that.
I’m agreeing with Marius in thinking that ethics is about achieving some sort of reflective equilibrium. I’m just rejecting the analogy with logic there.
To summarize, with logic, we already know what we want. With morality, we don’t.