[lit-ideas] Re: The universal applicability of moral judgments -- what is ethics about?
- From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 23:01:42 +0000
Returning to Walter's comments about moral judgments, and taking his last
remark first, he asks whether my assertion, which he correctly paraphrases,
that "in order to understand the meaning of a moral judgment one must
understand how the words...refer to real interactions" is a "transcendental
claim regarding necessary conditions for the possibility of justification in
the moral domain".
The short answer to Walter's question is no, I do not think my assertion is a
transcendental claim, though I think I understand why Walter might wonder.
As I understand it, a transcendental claim would be one which gives conditions
for the possibility of something. My assertion, as paraphrased, does give a
condition for the possibility of understanding moral judgments, viz that one
must understand how the words refer to real interactions.
But further, as I understand it, a transcendental claim would also be one which
gives conditions for the possibility of something independently of the
circumstances, i.e. it is a claim that, if true, must apply universally. It is
this part of the notion of transcendental that I am disavowing for my assertion.
The reason I disavow it is that I do not think the basic prerequisites for
universality can be met.
For example, one prerequisite for my assertion being universal would be clarity
about exactly what a moral judgment is, what words are, what understanding is
and what real human situations are. Absent such clarity, my assertion might or
might not be universal. (This is a variant on the point I made in a prior post
about how universality in the requisite sense cannot be a formal property,
because an idiosyncratic definition of teacher (in that example) produced the
opposite of what is intended by 'universal'.)
But I would submit that the ambition of being clear about these is forlorn.
People have been arguing for a long time about the nature of these things, and
we're unlikely to get a firm resolution on them any time soon.
Another prerequisite would be that the things to which the terms referred
retain for all time the properties which make the terms relevant. For example,
for my assertion to be universal it would have to be true that what we think of
as 'understanding a word' would continue to be the same sort of thing for all
rational beings for all time.
Some may find that simply obvious; I'm not so sure.
In any case, I am deeply skeptical that any assertion like mine, that is any
assertion about such human matters as rendering moral judgments, for example,
can be made universal in the sense needed to underwrite them being
'transcendental' in Walter's sense.
Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington, DC
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