[lit-ideas] Re: On being called a Lyre [dilemmas]



--- On Sun, 21/9/08, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> These dilemmas always seem to presuppose facts not in 
> evidence for persons living outside of thought 
> experiments. (This is one. The Baby or the Botticelli 
> is another.)

Might it be fair to say that far-fetched thought experiments may be useful and 
interesting in many fields (e.g. quantum physics) but they are rarely this in 
the field of ethics? They seem almost non-ethical in that they remove ethics 
from its roots in practical problems and dilemmas and try to transport it, 
unconvincingly to some, into the soil of supposed logical analysis of different 
dreamt-up situations and our 'intuitions' about them. As iff. 

Ethics is not a field for idle speculation but for understanding the 
complexities of practical moral problems, which a little thought often shows 
raise complex dilemmas - what 'ethics' can teach is to be better attuned to 
these difficulties and not ride on our moral high horse roughshod over them.

As to issues about the role of 'emotion' of 'reason' in having moral 
intuitions, is it not that both are necessary but neither are sufficient 
conditions of having moral sense? And is it not that they are inextricably 
linked in most human thinking, particularly moral thinking? And that talking as 
if the answer to these questions is 'no' is unreal?

Donal
High-balling on crack
Govan





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