[lit-ideas] Re: When Did You Last See Your Father?


--- On Tue, 18/5/10, palma <palma@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >> Outcome is the only thing that makes something
> morally wrong.
> >
> > This looks like a categorical (absolute) claim to me.
> It claims truth and/or
> > rightness regardless of any outcomes, consequences,
> caused states of affairs in
> > the world that may result from its truth and/or
> rightness. The statement is thus
> > a performative contradiction and, as such, is
> irrational. Is there a way of
> > saving it epistemically?

At least two:-

(1) claim that it is a meta-claim about what makes "something morally wrong", 
and as such it does not assert that it is a morally right or wrong claim; thus 
it is exempt from its own strictures on moral claims being right or wrong 
solely because of their consequences; and thus it involves no "performative" or 
self- contradiction;

(2) claim the consequences of such a claim make it a good or morally right 
claim [because the consequentialist view is the most moral view] and thus it 
does not stand in self-contradiction [unlike, say, the verificationist 
criterion of sense] but rather is itself a example of the principle it 
postulates.

Of course, neither riposte stops the claim from being wrong, since while 
"consequences" may play a very significant role in morality they are not the 
"only" consideration. 

The real problem with the consequentialist POV as expressed by Mike is not so 
much self-contradiction as its violation of what P calls "the dualism of facts 
and standards" [discussed in an Addendum to _TOSE_] - v. similar, if not 
identical, to the idea that 'ought' and 'is' are logically separate categories 
because an 'ought' cannot be deduced or derived from an 'is'. 

From the consequentialist POV, it sounds as if we can decide what is ethical by 
looking at a set of facts - namely a set of consequences; but, leaving aside 
important doubts as to whether we can know consequences quite as easily as this 
view might suppose etc., whatever consequences we view as morally desirable or 
repugnant are viewed as such from the perpective of a value judgment not a 
non-value 'factual' judgment. In other words, consequentialism always rests on 
some value judgment, since from a purely factual POV all consequences are 
ethically undifferentiated: only in the light of values can we differentiate 
those factual consequences that are worthwhile from others we judge not - and 
this judgment, as per Hume's Fork etc., cannot be deduced or derived from any 
value-free 'factual' considerations. 

The reason this falls short of a contradiction is that it is not logically 
self-contradictory to assert there are no genuine values that are not reducible 
to facts [e.g. that our so-called 'value-judgments' are entirely explicable by 
the facts of our psychology, upbringing, society etc.]. Nevertheless an ethical 
theory that denies the genuineness of ethics, even if not contradictory, is 
self-defeating; and will struggle to explain why we _ought to_ accept it, given 
that the reduction of values to facts cannot ever be demonstrated.

Donal 





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