[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 17:56:52 -0230
WARNING
This message contains profanity, nudity, adult situations and some
transcendental argument that may be offensive to some. Lector discretion is
advised.
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> 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?
RP
> 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.
WO: I don't think the saying of this makes it so. For what is the difference
between an intuition and "simply saying it's wrong [or right]"? In both cases,
no justification is being provided and thus from an epistemic perspective there
is no difference in status between the two. (This is akin to Kant's view that
the individual who does the right thing from a heteronomous motive is no more
worthy of moral esteem than she who does the wrong thing from a heteronomous
motive.)
RP:
> 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.
WO: From an epistemic point of view, any moral judgement "starts" with a
meta-ethic/moral epistemology in the sense that judgement presupposes some set
of general criteria of rightness
and wrongness functioning to establish the objectivity or impartiality of the
judgement. In everyday, non-philosophical contexts, we may not be interested in
thematizing and critically examining the criteria. My position is a
philosophical one dealing with the context of justification, not discovery.
Discourse Ethics makes the following meta-ethical claim: What makes a maxim,
norm or judgement morally wrong is that it could not attain mutual agreement
amongst interlocutors engaged in discourse under idealized epistemic
conditions. (I have provided those conditions in earlier posts.) So the
justification of the claim against torture is grounded in this meta-ethic, one
that is also a moral epistemology since conditions of moral justifiability are
delineated.
There are many meta-ethical theories and they compete in the game
of establishing the most cogent grounds of moral rightness and justifiability.
One particular meta-ethic claims that there are available to us indubitably
correct maxims, judgements and actions that can legitimately function as
grounds of moral authority. As such, any theory that contradicts these
privileged "intuitions," is by that very fact faulty.
The difficulty with that
meta-ethic is that it assumes that actions possess their own intrinsic natures
such that their rightness or wrongness can be read off their nature independent
of any theory of rightness and wrongness. Nobody has justifiably believed in
that kind of mystical realism for quite some time now. (Note that on Kantian
grounds, the rightness or wrongness of an action cannot be read off its own
intrinsic nature, since it ain't got one. The action must be formulated within
a maxim in order for its moral status to be established and the maxim is
assessed on independent grounds of form (universalization.) Robert's position
appears to presume the possibility of establishing the moral status of an
action independent of a criterion of universalizability (Kant) or
generalizability (Habermas) or unreasonable rejection by others similarly
attuned (Scanlon). And since he rejects recourse to intuitions, not even the the
Political Liberalism of Rawls is available to him.
RP:
> 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.
WO: "What we already know to be right and wrong" refers to first-order
judgements that always require justification for their rightness and
often-times are contradicted by other judgements held by other people in the
world.
It just struck me that perhaps the basic source of disagreement between Robert
and me is his view that a judgement can be morally right independent of
justification. Moral judgements may be viewed by him as comprising
"justification-transcendent" judgements. Whereas I and Habermas maintain that
such judgements are "justificatio-immanent" - ideal warranted assertibility is
all we've got. This may be another dimension of Robert's realism here. I,
Habermas and Scanlon deny the cogency of such realism. With specific reference
to the fundamental T'l principle of Habermas's Discourse Ethics "(D)":
[paraphrased] Only those norms that could meet with agreement under discursive
conditions of mutual agreement can be valid or right. (This counter-factual
requirement clearly is not equivalent with the relativist idea that moral
justifiability and rightness is reducible to what has actually been agreed upon
within discourse.
RP:
> 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.
WO: Assuming Robert is still here:), let me emphasize that our question is not
whether such torture is believed to be wrong (or right). As philosophers, we
pursue the grounds of that which appears to us obvious and beyond question. (Ca
voulait dire, the question is a T'l one, not one regarding whether I wonder
whether Robert would torture innocents or Robert wonders if Walter would
unjustifiably torture Sandra Bullock (again).)
Walter O,
obviously no longer bored and having found something more interesting to do
than
teasing John McC.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> '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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