A great post. It captured a lot of intriguing questions I currently have about ethics. One question I have, which I am curious to see addressed in further posts in this sequence, is: Once we dissolve the question of “fairness” (or “morality” or any other such term) and taboo the term, is there a common referent that all parties are really discussing, or do the parties have fundamentally different and irreconcilable ideas of what fairness (or morality, etc.) is? Is Xannon’s “fairness” merely a homonym for Yancy’s “fairness” rather than something they could figure out and agree on?
If the different views of “fairness” are irreconcilable, then I am inclined to wonder if moral notions really do generally function (without this intention, oftentimes) as a means for each party to bamboozle the other into given the speaker what she wants, by appealing to a multifaceted “moral” concept that creates the mere illusion of common ground (similar to how “sound” functions in the question of the tree falling). Perhaps Xannon wants agreement, Yancy wants equal division, and there is no common ground between them except for a shared delusion that there is common ground. (I certainly hope this isn’t true.)
More generally, what about different ethical systems? Although we can easily rule out non-naturalist systems, if two different moral reductionist systems clash (yet neither contradicts known facts) which one is “best?” How can we answer this question without defining the word “best,” and what if the two systems disagree on the definition? It would seem to result in an infinite recursion of criteria disagreements—even between two systems that agree on all the facts. (As I understand it, Luke’s discussion on pluralistic moral reductionism is relevant to this, but I have not yet read it and am very distressed that he is apparently never going to finish it.)
I tentatively stand by my own theory of moral reductionism (similar to Fyfe’s desirism, with traces of hedonistic utilitarianism and Carrier’s goal theory) but it concerns me that different people might be using moral concepts in irreconcilably different ways, and some of those that contradict mine might be equally “legitimate” to mine… After reading the Human’s Guide to Words sequence, I am more hesitant to use any kind of appeal to common usage, which is what I’d previously done. My views and arguments may continue to change as I read further, and I try always to be grateful to read things that do this to me.
Anyhow, I expect to enjoy reading the rest of the meta-ethics sequence. (I’ll read Luke’s perpetually-unfinished meta-ethics sequence afterwards.)
A great post. It captured a lot of intriguing questions I currently have about ethics. One question I have, which I am curious to see addressed in further posts in this sequence, is: Once we dissolve the question of “fairness” (or “morality” or any other such term) and taboo the term, is there a common referent that all parties are really discussing, or do the parties have fundamentally different and irreconcilable ideas of what fairness (or morality, etc.) is? Is Xannon’s “fairness” merely a homonym for Yancy’s “fairness” rather than something they could figure out and agree on?
If the different views of “fairness” are irreconcilable, then I am inclined to wonder if moral notions really do generally function (without this intention, oftentimes) as a means for each party to bamboozle the other into given the speaker what she wants, by appealing to a multifaceted “moral” concept that creates the mere illusion of common ground (similar to how “sound” functions in the question of the tree falling). Perhaps Xannon wants agreement, Yancy wants equal division, and there is no common ground between them except for a shared delusion that there is common ground. (I certainly hope this isn’t true.)
More generally, what about different ethical systems? Although we can easily rule out non-naturalist systems, if two different moral reductionist systems clash (yet neither contradicts known facts) which one is “best?” How can we answer this question without defining the word “best,” and what if the two systems disagree on the definition? It would seem to result in an infinite recursion of criteria disagreements—even between two systems that agree on all the facts. (As I understand it, Luke’s discussion on pluralistic moral reductionism is relevant to this, but I have not yet read it and am very distressed that he is apparently never going to finish it.)
I tentatively stand by my own theory of moral reductionism (similar to Fyfe’s desirism, with traces of hedonistic utilitarianism and Carrier’s goal theory) but it concerns me that different people might be using moral concepts in irreconcilably different ways, and some of those that contradict mine might be equally “legitimate” to mine… After reading the Human’s Guide to Words sequence, I am more hesitant to use any kind of appeal to common usage, which is what I’d previously done. My views and arguments may continue to change as I read further, and I try always to be grateful to read things that do this to me.
Anyhow, I expect to enjoy reading the rest of the meta-ethics sequence. (I’ll read Luke’s perpetually-unfinished meta-ethics sequence afterwards.)