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.
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.