[lit-ideas] Re: The universal applicability of moral judgments -- what is ethics about?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 17:32:47 -0330
Once again Eric D serves up a veritable smorgasbord of fascinating questions
and observations on moral reason. For now, just a few dips, tastes and nibbles
on a couple of matters.
Neither I nor the Master would claim that moral judgements are "transcendental
and necessary." (Btw, a transcendental condition is already both universal and
necessary.)One form of analysis of our capacities for moral reason and
judgement takes transcendental form. When Aristotle claims that we cannot
deliberate about certain matters, when Kant claims that morality is derivative
upon rational autonomy, when Habermas claims that any moral judgement makes a
claim to universal validity and applicability, he/they are claiming that such
competences or discourses are only possible under certain conditions that are
necessary for their possibility. Limits of competences and discourses are also
identified within transcendental (T) analysis.
For example, the claim that "The marginalization and oppression of women is
morally wrong" - a claim often made within arguments for multiculturalism as a
political ideal and research agenda - can be the subject of a T analysis
concluding that such a claim necessarily presupposes universal validity. If the
T analysis is correct, and all T analyses are fallible of course, we can
conclude that regardless of whether anybody actually makes or believes that
moral claim, the claim itself is conditioned for its possibility
(intelligibility and justifiability) by the presupposition of universality.
Similarly, Kant nowhere claims that we can know whether an action has been
performed from duty, and hence possesses intrinsic moral worth. Nor can we know
whether humans actually possess the freedom that is a necessary condition for
the possibility of moral judgement and action. Both are necessary
presuppositions of the very intelligibility and cogency of respectively, moral
worth and moral judgement. (And there are no convincing reaosn to believe
otherwise.)
The question of "whether one should abide by the results of T inquiry" confuses
hypothetical imperatives - imperatives tied to instrumental or technical maxims
- with the categorical imperatives characteristic of moral judgements. If a T
analysis is cogent, then one cannot but presuppose the relevant conditions of
possibility when engaged in the discourse or when expressing the identified
competence. If I'm trying to convince you of the truth or rightness of a claim
I make, I do not ask myself whether I should abstain from any form of seduction
or deception in persuading you, however instrumentally effficacious such
strategic action may be. If I am competent in the discourse of "convincing,"
then I can only present you with reasons for the truth or rightness of my claim
- reasons for you to assess as a rationally autonomous agent. If I believe
otherwise, that very belief is sufficient to demonstrate the absence of
competence.
Note that it is not a cogent objection to T analyses to say that that's not how
Sarah Pailin goes about convincing people, or that in Pakistan, "morality" is
theocentrically defined. Such empirical claims provide no cogent objection to T
claims. Well, that's enough for now. Let's see what they're saying about Milton
Berle today.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> Thanks to Walter for the continuing discussion and for the suggestion that we
> take the questions about moral judgment one at a time.
>
> Walter asserts that: "...moral justification must be applicable to real
> interactions [though we should] recognize that 'real interactions' bears no
> epistemic import in the case of moral judgment. That is to say, what people
> actually do is of no necessary relevance to what they ought to do."
>
> I think the second sentence means that actual human behavior does not count
> as evidence with respect to moral judgments, and I agree with that.
>
> The first sentence, though, is a little more problematic. While real
> interactions do not serve as evidence with respect to moral judgments, the
> words used in moral judgments certainly refer to real interactions. In that
> sense, real interactions must have *some* sort of 'epistemic import' here --
> i.e. if one did not understand how the words in a moral judgment referred to
> real interactions one could not be said to understand the judgment, and I
> take understanding to be the minimum first epistemic step -- you can't really
> be said to know something if you don't understand it.
>
> Walter goes on to say: "...'applicability to real interactions' should not
> blind us from recognizing that part of the contemporary discipline of ethics
> is of a transcendental nature concerned with identifying universal and
> necessary features of moral judgment and the assessment of the objectivity
> and impartiality of moral deliberation."
>
> It may be that a number of people, calling themselves contemporary
> philosophers concerned with ethics, may think of what they are doing as
> exploring "universal and necessary features' and assessing 'objectivity and
> impartiality', but just as actual behavior is not evidence with respect to
> moral judgments, so the behavior of actual people is not evidence of the
> intellectual merits of a position. This just by way of blocking the argument
> that there must be a transcendental and necessary aspect to moral judgments
> otherwise so many people wouldn't be studying those aspects of moral
> judgments. I don't think Walter would make such a dubious move, but he seems
> to be veering perilously close here.
>
> Now to the substance: if moral judgments are 'transcendental and necessary'
> and can be applied to real human interactions, then it would seem to me that
> either (a) the real human interactions must somehow contain, manifest,
> participate in or otherwise themselves have some relationship to the
> transcendental and necessary properties of the judgment which relationship
> has an important role in making the judgment applicable to the real
> interactions or (b) the 'transcendental and necessary' aspects of moral
> judgments are not relevant to their applicability to real interactions.
>
> My questions to Walter are:
>
> (1) Is there a third alternative I am leaving out of account?
> (2) If not, then if (a) is correct, can you explain what that relationship
> is, i.e. explain how it is that real human interactions exhibit the
> transcendental and necessary properties of the relevant moral judgments?
> (3) Alternatively, if (b) is correct, then can you give an example to
> illustrate how a moral judgment can be transcendental and necessary and be
> applicable to real interactions without the applicability depending on the
> transcendental and necessary features of the judgment?
>
> Finally, Walter also writes: "The concern here is with philosophical truth,
> not with convincing people that they ought to abide by the results of
> transcendental inquiry."
>
> In general, I am in sympathy with this point. I do, however, want to point
> out that there is a difference between convincing *others* of something and
> being convinced *oneself*. It is precisely because I do not find the
> transcendental inquiries about moral judgments convincing for myself that I
> think they are misguided. I then work to explain to my own satisfaction why
> that lack of conviction is warranted and it is the results of those efforts
> thus far that I am expressing here.
>
> Moreover, I believe that to be convinced about those transcendental inquiries
> simply is to be convinced that one should abide by the results. In other
> words, while again I agree that the work here is not to be judged by its
> reception in the court of public opinion, I do think that the point to the
> discussion is to explore whether one should abide by the results of
> transcendental inquiry.
>
> The challenge, it seems to me, is precisely that we are all, each of us,
> individual people whose convictions may be swayed, one way or another, by
> considerations not relevant to the merits of the transcendental inquiry. We
> are, in a way, most vulnerable to such suasion precisely when considering
> these things by ourselves, because it is when alone that we are all most
> vulnerable to the blandishments of our preferred illusions. On the other
> hand, when we are discussing these in a group we are vulnerable to the sorts
> of forces that notoriously skew the judgments of the court of public
> opinion.
>
> The point is that while it's appropriate to deny jurisdiction here to the
> court of public opinion, we should not think that we can thereby avoid some
> of the pricklier questions about what it means to be persuaded.
>
> Regards to one and all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
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