[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered

Walter quotes Eric Yost quoting Walter
WO: Intuitions regarding the moral probity of actions or maxims are being privileged without justification. Many men in Iran, for example, aver that rape within marriage is not possible [and marriage of 45 year old men to 12 year old girls is fine -EY] and any metaethical theory that authorizes otherwise is consequently defective. How is that view any different from RP's view? If you go with intuitions, independent of a metaethic or moral epistemology, how do you go about showing that your intuitions are any better (epistemically) than mine?
Walter has yet to understand my views although at times he comes close. Nowhere do I say that that torturing innocent people is wrong is an 'intuition' of mine. I simply say it's wrong,'intuitions' be damned. So, whatever we are doing, the person who says that torturing the innocent is praiseworthy and I are not trading intuitions.
My claim is as simple. To the extent that a moral theory would allow, i.e., would be consistent with, the torturing of the innocent, it is defective. This has nothing to do with 'moral epistemology,' or the higher orders of meta-ethical theory. Walter has, I think, got the order wrong. We do not start with a meta-ethical theory and deduce from it that torturing the innocent is wrong: we test the theory against transparent cases of right and wrong.
Theories are theories of, or about, something. The subject matter of ethics is human actions and their assessment. We already have an understanding of clear and transparent cases of right and wrong: without such an understanding there would be nothing for moral theories to be theories _of_. So it is a never-ending source of wonder to me that moral theories purport to show us why what we already know to be right or wrong is right or wrong.
If someone seriously believes whether torturing the innocent is wrong is an open question until the judgment that it is has been vetted first by an ethical theory (and ultimately by a meta-ethical theory) I cannot see how one could have any further discussion with him.
'I'm sorry, Mrs. Hicks. We're still consulting with our in-house philosophers as to whether what Mr. Dahmer did to your son was wrong.' 

Robert Paul
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