I think most people who have taken a single ethics class come to agree (if they arent stupidly stubborn) that you are unlikely to find a satisfying system of ethics using pure Kantian or Consequentialist systems.
By “satisfying” do you mean capturing moral intuitions well in most/all situations? If so, I very much agree that you won’t find such a thing. One reason is that people use a mix of consequentialist and deontological approaches.I think another reason is that people’s moral intuitions are outright self-contradictory. They’re not systematic, so no system can reproduce them.
I don’t think this means much other than that the study of ethics can’t be just about finding a system that reproduces our moral intuitions.
Part of thinking about ethics is changing ones’ moral intuitions by identifying where they’re self-contradictory.
Yes, precisely! That is exactly why I used the word “Satisfying” rather than another word like “good”, “accurate,” or even “self-consistent.” I remember in my bioethics class, the professor steadily challenging everyone on their initial impression of Kantian or consequentialist ethics until they found some consequence of that sort of reasoning they found unbearable.
I agree on all counts, though I’m not actually certain that having a self-contradictory set of values is necessarily a bad thing? It usually is, but many human aesthetic values are self-contradictory, yet I think I prefer to keep them around. I may change my mind on this later.
When you say
By “satisfying” do you mean capturing moral intuitions well in most/all situations? If so, I very much agree that you won’t find such a thing. One reason is that people use a mix of consequentialist and deontological approaches.I think another reason is that people’s moral intuitions are outright self-contradictory. They’re not systematic, so no system can reproduce them.
I don’t think this means much other than that the study of ethics can’t be just about finding a system that reproduces our moral intuitions.
Part of thinking about ethics is changing ones’ moral intuitions by identifying where they’re self-contradictory.
Yes, precisely! That is exactly why I used the word “Satisfying” rather than another word like “good”, “accurate,” or even “self-consistent.” I remember in my bioethics class, the professor steadily challenging everyone on their initial impression of Kantian or consequentialist ethics until they found some consequence of that sort of reasoning they found unbearable.
I agree on all counts, though I’m not actually certain that having a self-contradictory set of values is necessarily a bad thing? It usually is, but many human aesthetic values are self-contradictory, yet I think I prefer to keep them around. I may change my mind on this later.