[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: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 16:07:49 -0330
Just a couple of short remarks -------------------------->
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> 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.
----------> Whether Eric's assertion is universally valid is a different
question from the question of whether his claim is a T claim. To think
otherwise is to believe that any T claim is necessarily true simply in virtue
of being asserted. (Only pure intellectual beings possess the capacity for
intellectual intuition: I think of a bottle of Oban and there is a bottle of
Oban. Alas, our form of intuition is only sensible, and sometimes not all that
sensible, to be sure.) Some T claims are incorrect; thus, they fail to
identify
universality and necessity. In order to ascertain whether Eric's T claim is
correct, we do indeed need to know what the words in the claim mean. But it is
not my job to legislate the meanings of words for others. Eric's claim that
there is a necessary relationship, not simply a contingent and adventitious
relationship, between the possibility of understanding a moral judgement and
that judgement's reference to real interactions constitutes a T claim. If Eric
would articulate the meanings of the words in his claim, we may all examine
whether the claim is correct.
snip (Sentences deleted for later examination.)
>
> 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.
--------------> Eric's true report regarding historical and cultural
disagreements on what concepts mean is irrelevant to the question of what HE
means in making the claim that he made. Let us hear what Eric himself
understands the words to mean and then we may be in a position to assess the
validity of HIS claim. (If I were interested in what Sarah Pail believed "moral
judgement" to mean, I'd ask her.)
Sorry, but these are the principles of scholarship I am governed by. If you
don't like them, I have others.
>
> 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.
--------> I see. We're back to the "possible/real" matter. Inquiry into
conditions of possibility do not require or entail the existence of the
discourse or competence being examined. T inquiry asks: How is P possible?
Whether P exists or not is not a relevant question. Nor is whether a condition
identified as necessary for the possibility of a competence or discourse itself
is real. (Whether we really are free beings is not a question asked by a human
being making a decision on a course of action. The facticity of human being
requires that I choose, right here and now, between the Oban and the
Cragganmore. Yes, life is hard; but think of the alternative.)
> 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.
---------------> Again, moral judgements are not themselves transcendental. A
moral judgement is a prescriptive claim about the obligations we have to
ourselves and others strictly in virtue of our shared humanity as rationally
autonomous beings. THAT moral judgements make claims to universality and
validity is a T claim. (And here we shouldn't make mention of the fact that
Sarah Pailin may have a different understanding of
"morality." That's peechy-keen and honkey-dorey (sp?). She should do her own T
analysis on what she understands morality to involve, if only to conclude with
the T claim that no moral judgement is universally valid and applicable,
because moral judgements just ain't like that.)
Walter O
MUN
>
> Regards to one and all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington, DC
>
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