Perhaps a workable restatement would be something like:
“Any attempt to formalize and extract our moral intuitions and judgements of how we should act in various situations will just produce a hopelessly complicated and inconsistent mess, whose judgements are very different from those of prescribed by any form of utilitarianism, deontology, or any other ethical theory that strives to be consistent. In most cases, any attempt of using a reflective equilibrium / extrapolated volition -type approach to clarify matters will leave things essentially unchanged, except for a small fraction of individuals whose moral intuitions are highly atypical (and who tend to be vastly overrepresented on this site).”
(I don’t actually know how well this describes the actual theories for particularism.)
I agree that your restatement is internally consistent.
I don’t see how such a theory would really be “sensible,” in terms of being helpful during moral dilemmas. If it turns out that moral intuitions are totally inconsistent, doesn’t “think it over and then trust your gut” give the same recommendations, fit the profile of being deontological, and have the advantage of being easy to remember?
I guess if you were interested in a purely descriptive theory of morality I could conceive of this being the best way to handle things for a long time, but it still flies in the face of the idea that morality was shaped by economic pressures and should therefore have an economic shape, which I find lots of support for, so my upvote remains with my credence being maybe .5%-1%, I think about 2 decibels lower than yours.
What do you mean by the “most sensible moral theory”?
And what the hell does Dancy mean if he says that there are rules of thumb that aren’t principles?
I would weight this lower than .01% just because of my credence that it’s incoherent.
Perhaps a workable restatement would be something like:
“Any attempt to formalize and extract our moral intuitions and judgements of how we should act in various situations will just produce a hopelessly complicated and inconsistent mess, whose judgements are very different from those of prescribed by any form of utilitarianism, deontology, or any other ethical theory that strives to be consistent. In most cases, any attempt of using a reflective equilibrium / extrapolated volition -type approach to clarify matters will leave things essentially unchanged, except for a small fraction of individuals whose moral intuitions are highly atypical (and who tend to be vastly overrepresented on this site).”
(I don’t actually know how well this describes the actual theories for particularism.)
I agree that your restatement is internally consistent.
I don’t see how such a theory would really be “sensible,” in terms of being helpful during moral dilemmas. If it turns out that moral intuitions are totally inconsistent, doesn’t “think it over and then trust your gut” give the same recommendations, fit the profile of being deontological, and have the advantage of being easy to remember?
I guess if you were interested in a purely descriptive theory of morality I could conceive of this being the best way to handle things for a long time, but it still flies in the face of the idea that morality was shaped by economic pressures and should therefore have an economic shape, which I find lots of support for, so my upvote remains with my credence being maybe .5%-1%, I think about 2 decibels lower than yours.