[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:47:12 -0230
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 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?
>
> Doesn't this example show the necessity of
> "standing with one's culture"? Bernard-Henri Levy
> makes the point that Westerners have allowed
> Multiculturalism to trump Enlightenment Liberal
> Core Values. For example, Universal Equality is a
> cornerstone of Enlightenment values, yet
> multiculturalism would require us to turn a blind
> eye to the treatment of women in Islamic nations.
>
> How does that fit with the stated need for
> "undominated dialogue"?
There are a number of different matters involved here. I can focus on only one
of these at the present time.
Metaethical accounts, or moral epistemologies, are not appropriately assessed
for their cogency with reference to the intuitions informing and underwriting
the judgements, practices and values to which individuals and tribes actually
subscribe. That everybody on the planet insists that boiling babies is morally
wrong constitutes an empirical claim having no relevance to the justifiability
of the moral rightness of that claim. Conversely, an empirically universal
agreement on its moral rightness is equally bereft of any moral justifiability.
This is the difficulty involved in relying on our intuitions. We do not assess
the justifiability of moral principles on grounds of their correspondence to
our feelings and intutions; rather, we assess the moral probity of our
intuitions and socially acquired values and ideals with reference to principles
of universalization entailed by morality as a framework of rights and
obligations applicable to all persons regardless of gender, sexual orientation
(if any), religious affiliation, ses, and other aspects of our "situatedness"
that define our individual particularities as irreplaceable selves. (Apologies
for the Germanicness of the sentence.)
Eric asks what Walter (and Jurgen) mean by of an "open and undominated
dialogue." Habermas's identification of the necessary and universal epistemic
presuppositions/conditions of discourse seems right to me.
Walter Okshevsky
MUN
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