That’s a common utilitarian assumption/axiom, but I’m not sure it’s true. I think for most people, analysis stops at “this action is not wrong,” and potential actions are not ranked much beyond that. [...] Thus, it is simply wrong to say that we have ordered preferences over all of those possible actions—in fact, it would be impossible to have a unique brain state correspond to all possibilities. And remember—we are dealing here not with all possible brain states, but with all possible states of the portion of the brain which involves itself in ethical judgments.
I don’t think so. Even if only a few (or even just one) option is actually entertained, a complete ranking of all of them is implicit in your brain. If I asked you if table salt was green, you’d surely answer it wasn’t. Where in your brain did you store the information that table salt is not green?
I could make your brain’s implicit ordering of moral options explicit with a simple algorithm:
1. Ask for the most moral option.
2. Exclude it from the set of options.
3. While options left, goto 1.
Intersting, but I think also incomplete. To see why: ask yourself whether it makes sense for someone to ask you, following G.E. Moore, the following question:
“Yes, I understand that X is a action that I am disposed to prefer/regard favorably/etc for reasons having to do with evolutionary imperatives. Nevertheless, is it right/proper/moral to do X?”
In other words, there may well be evolutionary imperatives that drive us to engage in infidelity, murder, and even rape. Does that make those actions necessarily moral? If not, your account fails to capture a significant amount of the meaning of moral language.
That’s a confusion. I was explicitly talking of “moral” circuits. Not making a distinction between moral and amoral circuits makes moral a non-concept. (Maybe it is one, but that’s also beside the point.) The question “is it moral to do X” just makes no sense without this distinction. (Btw. “right/proper” might just be different beasts than “moral”.)
Eisegetes (please excuse the delay):
That’s a common utilitarian assumption/axiom, but I’m not sure it’s true. I think for most people, analysis stops at “this action is not wrong,” and potential actions are not ranked much beyond that. [...] Thus, it is simply wrong to say that we have ordered preferences over all of those possible actions—in fact, it would be impossible to have a unique brain state correspond to all possibilities. And remember—we are dealing here not with all possible brain states, but with all possible states of the portion of the brain which involves itself in ethical judgments.
I don’t think so. Even if only a few (or even just one) option is actually entertained, a complete ranking of all of them is implicit in your brain. If I asked you if table salt was green, you’d surely answer it wasn’t. Where in your brain did you store the information that table salt is not green?
I could make your brain’s implicit ordering of moral options explicit with a simple algorithm:
1. Ask for the most moral option.
2. Exclude it from the set of options.
3. While options left, goto 1.
Intersting, but I think also incomplete. To see why: ask yourself whether it makes sense for someone to ask you, following G.E. Moore, the following question:
“Yes, I understand that X is a action that I am disposed to prefer/regard favorably/etc for reasons having to do with evolutionary imperatives. Nevertheless, is it right/proper/moral to do X?”
In other words, there may well be evolutionary imperatives that drive us to engage in infidelity, murder, and even rape. Does that make those actions necessarily moral? If not, your account fails to capture a significant amount of the meaning of moral language.
That’s a confusion. I was explicitly talking of “moral” circuits. Not making a distinction between moral and amoral circuits makes moral a non-concept. (Maybe it is one, but that’s also beside the point.) The question “is it moral to do X” just makes no sense without this distinction. (Btw. “right/proper” might just be different beasts than “moral”.)