I would like to ask him if he maintains a distinction between values and preferences, morality and (well formed) desire.
I think he’d say ‘yes’ to a distinction between morality and desire, at least in the way I’m reading this sentence. My comment: Moral statements are part of epistemology and not dependent on humans or local stuff. However, as one learns more about morality and considers their own actions, their preferences progressively change to be increasingly compatible with their morality.
Being a fallibilist I think he’d add something like or roughly agree with: the desire to be moral doesn’t mean all our actions become moral, we’re fallible and make mistakes, so sometimes we think we’re doing something moral that turns out not to be (at which point we have some criticism for our behaviour and ways to improve it).
(I’m hedging my statements here b/c I don’t want to put words in DD’s mouth; these are my guesses)
I prefer schools that don’t.
Wouldn’t that just be like hedonism or something like that? I’m not sure what would be better about a school that doesn’t.
But I’ve never asked those who do whether they have a precise account of what moral values are, as a distinct entity from desires, maybe they have a good and useful account of values, where they somehow reliably serve the aggregate of our desires, that they just never explain because they think everyone knows it intuitively, or something. I don’t. They seem too messy to prove correctness of.
Why is the definition of values and the addition of “moral” not enough?
Definitions (from google):
[moral] values: [moral] principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.
principle: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.
I’d argue for a slightly softer definition of principle, particularly it should account for: moral values and principles can be conclusions, they don’t have to be taken as axiomatic, however, they are *general* and apply universally (or near-universally).
They seem too messy to prove correctness of.
Sure, but we can still learn things about them, and we can still reason about whether they’re wrong or right.
Here’s a relevant extract from BoI (about 20% through the book, in ch5 - there’s a fair amount of presumed reading at this point)
In the case of moral philosophy, the empiricist and justificationist misconceptions are often expressed in the maxim that ‘you can’t derive an ought from an is’ (a paraphrase of a remark by the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume). It means that moral theories cannot be deduced from factual knowledge. This has become conventional wisdom, and has resulted in a kind of dogmatic despair about morality: ‘you can’t derive an ought from an is, therefore morality cannot be justified by reason’. That leaves only two options: either to embrace unreason or to try living without ever making a moral judgement. Both are liable to lead to morally wrong choices, just as embracing unreason or never attempting to explain the physical world leads to factually false theories (and not just ignorance).
Certainly you can’t derive an ought from an is, but you can’t derive a factual theory from an is either. That is not what science does. The growth of knowledge does not consist of finding ways to justify one’s beliefs. It consists of finding good explanations. And, although factual evidence and moral maxims are logically independent, factual and moral explanations are not. Thus factual knowledge can be useful in criticizing moral explanations.
For example, in the nineteenth century, if an American slave had written a bestselling book, that event would not logically have ruled out the proposition ‘Negroes are intended by Providence to be slaves.’ No experience could, because that is a philosophical theory. But it might have ruined the explanation through which many people understood that proposition. And if, as a result, such people had found themselves unable to explain to their own satisfaction why it would be Providential if that author were to be forced back into slavery, then they might have questioned the account that they had formerly accepted of what a black person really is, and what a person in general is – and then a good person, a good society, and so on.
I think he’d say ‘yes’ to a distinction between morality and desire, at least in the way I’m reading this sentence. My comment: Moral statements are part of epistemology and not dependent on humans or local stuff. However, as one learns more about morality and considers their own actions, their preferences progressively change to be increasingly compatible with their morality.
Being a fallibilist I think he’d add something like or roughly agree with: the desire to be moral doesn’t mean all our actions become moral, we’re fallible and make mistakes, so sometimes we think we’re doing something moral that turns out not to be (at which point we have some criticism for our behaviour and ways to improve it).
(I’m hedging my statements here b/c I don’t want to put words in DD’s mouth; these are my guesses)
Wouldn’t that just be like hedonism or something like that? I’m not sure what would be better about a school that doesn’t.
Why is the definition of values and the addition of “moral” not enough?
Definitions (from google):
[moral] values: [moral] principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.
principle: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.
I’d argue for a slightly softer definition of principle, particularly it should account for: moral values and principles can be conclusions, they don’t have to be taken as axiomatic, however, they are *general* and apply universally (or near-universally).
Sure, but we can still learn things about them, and we can still reason about whether they’re wrong or right.
Here’s a relevant extract from BoI (about 20% through the book, in ch5 - there’s a fair amount of presumed reading at this point)