Back to Metaethics

Constance

I am inquiring about metaethics again after having left all matters alone for several months. I felt no one really understood it. Reading Derrida's Of Grammatology now, and Saussure, and I am looking for resistance to the current thinking that holds my attention: Derrida is right, yet I am reminded by Wittgenstein that ethics, that is, metaethics, the notorious and slippery ethical/aesthetic Good and Bad, possesses an exception to the failure to discover a true signified, that is, a feature of our intuitive constitution that, if you will, "speaks" to the understanding. This would be the pure phenomenon of ethical matters with all extra-phenomenological explanations and interpretations suspended. My position is that the world does indeed speak; it speaks an injunction at the level of basic analysis that "tells" us to do or not to do X.
Of course, that is all embedded in thought, the conceiving of what to do, the implied propositional forms that the understanding acknowledges, and this places deconstruction's critical position front and center. But, I would argue that here there is the ghost of Kant lurking in the shadows that insists that intuitions without concepts are blind. For this propositional form that attends the ethical affair is taken as the only means to inform the understanding. It is here I make my objection: Push a spear through my kidney and give the matter exhaustive phenomenological analysis and you find after the thought, the eidetic parts, the analyses, are dismissed (not unlike how Kant himself dismisses the valuative parts of experience to arrive at a reason's purity), there is a residual existential "command" to act or not to act that issues from the irrational dimension of the ethical, which is the pain as such, the pleasure as such.
This makes me a qualified moral realist. Qualified because when an ethical case is spelled out, the focus seems to be on the failure to conceive of how attitudes and interpretations can agree, and I don't think such an agreement is at all to the point; in fact. it misses the point altogether. Individual and cultural deviations on ethical matters rise out of things that are ethically arbitrary, like the chance happening that you possess the ax borrowed from P when P wants it returned to use in a crime. Should the ax be returned to its rightful owner at this time? Tough call. But what makes it tough are the ethically arbitrary facts that are MADE relevant due to their entanglement with something that is phenomenologically ethical, valuative; what makes ethical cases indeterminant is the arbitrariness of of entangled circumstances.
I think I am right on this qualified ethical realism thesis. The consequences are staggering, for if this is true, then there IS something absolute about ethics, and this means ethics carries the gravitas of a God.

tim wood

Perhaps the intersection of concrete and abstract. You are attuning yourself to hear the concrete. Which is impossible because neither concrete nor abstract exist purely in themselves but must be somehow a mixture.

We both see the same tree - or so we're persuaded. But never ever do we perceive the same tree. Only in the abstract and by agreement can we come to that conclusion. Even pain, it would seem, requires an I to say, "I hurt."

But there seems no reasonable argument against the proposition that it's the same tree we're both admiring, on which we agree. And so it seems there are equally well-founded ethical imperatives. But they would seem to require at least that same level agreement. Thus never anything quite pure in itself, and subject to those who will not or cannot agree. The argument can go on from here.

baker

↪Constance

It's not possible to justify moral realism while being a consequent moral realist.

TheMadFool

Metaethics is the study of morality in terms of not specific theories like utilitarianism or deontology but instead delves into the very nature of morality - What's common to all moral theories? Can we/how do we know anything at all about morality? What are the underlying presuppositions in ethics? Etc.

All I have to say about metaethics, something that's close to my heart, is the feeling, ,something's wrong! - nature, life, people are like this but they should be like that! You get the idea.

Constance

Perhaps the intersection of concrete and abstract. You are attuning yourself to hear the concrete. Which is impossible because neither concrete nor abstract exist purely in themselves but must be somehow a mixture.

We both see the same tree - or so we're persuaded. But never ever do we perceive the same tree. Only in the abstract and by agreement can we come to that conclusion. Even pain, it would seem, requires an I to say, "I hurt."

But there seems no reasonable argument against the proposition that it's the same tree we're both admiring, on which we agree. And so it seems there are equally well-founded ethical imperatives. But they would seem to require at least that same level agreement. Thus never anything quite pure in itself, and subject to those who will not or cannot agree. The argument can go on from here. — tim wood

I would not defend the idea according to the way you frame it. It is not a matter of concreteness versus abstractness. In every ethical affair there is in the balance some object of care. An emotional state, a deprivation or gratification of some kind, something measured on the hedonic scales such that "hedonic" simply refers to some valuation of something. Getting caught up in the object characterization of what feeling good or bad is not the point.
Then, as to agreement, there is no issue made of it here, that is, the power to infer that others experience what we do. The assumption is in place that we do sufficiently well enough that we can talk about an affair with the confidence that we are talking about roughly the same thing; a spear in the kidney, for example. Painful. Of course, it is clear that we have altogether private experiences, I argue, given that there is simply no way at all that one can be privy to another's world as one is aware of one's own. Not possible (unless you think we are "connected" spiritually??) Our agreement rests with the way language works so well in our correspondences given the assumption that things are roughly the same, with obvious differences (e.g., Einstein and I may agree on our arthritis symptoms, but I cannot "know" his world of mathematical and intuitive genius).
No, here the issue lies with whether language's independence from its objects makes it so the no matter what we say about trees and clouds and anything else, we can never leave the "play" of vocabulary. The big crisis of deconstruction is about this inability of language to make any essential connection with what is NOT language. My position is that in ethics, there is an injunction to do or not to do that precedes language: that spear in my kidney tells me, "this hurts. Don't bring this into the world." You see, the suffering itself makes this injunction, though language gets carried away interpretatively. I "say" it hurts, I put this into propositional form and my words carry no import beyond the signifiers, the words, spoken or written. And if this were something value-neutral (if there is such a thing) like the color red, then I would be in Derrida's world that never apprehends the "present". Ethical matters ARE immediate in their value-at-stake as the value is immediately and absolutely intuited.

Constance

It's not possible to justify moral realism while being a consequent moral realist. — baker

Enigmatic thing to say. Actions have consequences and the argument here goes to an analysis of that which is at stake in the consequence. Therein, in the anticipated gratification or affliction, lies the real.

Constance

All I have to say about metaethics, something that's close to my heart, is the feeling, ,something's wrong! - nature, life, people are like this but they should be like that! You get the idea. — TheMadFool

The issue, then, goes to what it is that runs the argument, "it shouldn't be like that." Why not? The answer then goes to an experience that is perceived in some way to be uncomfortable, distasteful, horrible, and the rest. Here, we have arrived: no need to argue about whether this can be universalized. It already is, for we should not ask if the matter is relativized to one, single agency of suffering, just wht the matter IS upon analysis. We are not here concerned with how one should behave as a matter of rule and principle, for such things are entangled with morally arbitrary conditions, facts.

We are only concerned with a phenomenological analysis of the pain there, at hand, occurrent. What IS that? is the question. It is not constructed, like a concept that fits ONTO the world; it IS the world doing, if you will, this to me: this thirst, hunger, this misery, joy, thrill, adn so on.

tim wood

My position is that in ethics, there is an injunction to do or not to do that precedes language: that spear in my kidney tells me, "this hurts. Don't bring this into the world." — Constance

I don't mind agreeing that folks don't want to be stabbed in the kidney with a spear. How does that then arise to anything ethical?

TheMadFool

All I have to say about metaethics, something that's close to my heart, is the feeling, ,something's wrong! - nature, life, people are like this but they should be like that! You get the idea.
— TheMadFool
The issue, then, goes to what it is that runs the argument, "it shouldn't be like that." Why not? The answer then goes to an experience that is perceived in some way to be uncomfortable, distasteful, horrible, and the rest. Here, we have arrived: no need to argue about whether this can be universalized. It already is, for we should not ask if the matter is relativized to one, single agency of suffering, just wht the matter IS upon analysis. We are not here concerned with how one should behave as a matter of rule and principle, for such things are entangled with morally arbitrary conditions, facts.

We are only concerned with a phenomenological analysis of the pain there, at hand, occurrent. What IS that? is the question. It is not constructed, like a concept that fits ONTO the world; it IS the world doing, if you will, this to me: this thirst, hunger, this misery, joy, thrill, adn so on. — Constance

Pain & suffering, their antipodes, joy & happiness, are the core elements of some moral theories. They constitute the grounds, I now realize, for the feeling/thought that something's wrong! (with the world) - either the mere fact that there's suffering or the disproportionate amount of suffering prompts us to feel/think that way. It ought to be different - this single sentence encapsulates the moral universe!

Constance

I don't mind agreeing that folks don't want to be stabbed in the kidney with a spear. How does that then arise to anything ethical? — tim wood

Well, what makes something ethical at all? It is the possibility of hedonic consequences (hedonic here making no distinction between, say, music and macaroni, the former being perhaps ethereal, sublime, while the latter appetitive. Good is good). Look, no hedonic effect, no ethics. It doesn't have to as dramatic as a spear in the kidney; it can be anything, really, an interest, a vague sensitivity, whatever. This is the engine that drives ethics: that which is at stake, at risk, in the balance which someone (some animal?) cares about.
So all attention goes to this PRIOR to any analysis of, say, competing obligations, puzzling conditions, etc. Prior because this is a METAethical analysis, an attempt to determine what the infamous good is, and well as the bad.

Constance

Pain & suffering, their antipodes, joy & happiness, are the core elements of some moral theories. They constitute the grounds, I now realize, for the feeling/thought that something's wrong! (with the world) - either the mere fact that there's suffering or the disproportionate amount of suffering prompts us to feel/think that way. It ought to be different - this single sentence encapsulates the moral universe! — TheMadFool

Not that these are merely core elements of some theories. These are essential elements to any possible ethical theory. No such elements, then no ethics. The moral realism here arises out of the nature of the ethical condition itself; it is self realizing, and not a derivative of some other purpose or point. It is presupposed by all purposes one can imagine. Good at this level of analysis is Good simpliciter. A bad is bad simpliciter. The pain from the spear issues as a generative foundation for ethical possibility.

tim wood

Good at this level of analysis is Good simpliciter. A bad is bad simpliciter. — Constance

I don't really disagree. Rather I think yours is incomplete. Lacking is an account of judgment. The nervous system may itself recoil, but it recoils from the experience itself. And even if judgment judges an experience, that alone doesn't qualify future action.
It's as if you had discovered reaction. But ethics is about choices of action. How do you bridge the two?

Constance

I don't really disagree. Rather I think yours is incomplete. Lacking is an account of judgment. The nervous system may itself recoil, but it recoils from the experience itself. And even if judgment judges an experience, that alone doesn't qualify future action.
It's as if you had discovered reaction. But ethics is about choices of action. How do you bridge the two? — tim wood

It is not a theory of judgment, though there would be no ethical judgment without ethics, and there is no ethics without value experiences. Moral realism simply says that there is in the heart of ethics something that is not constructed out of language, something that is not exhaustively accounted for the in meanings that history has brought forth which we find ourselves always already IN when we raise a question at all. IF it can be established that there is in the essence of ethics that which is not conceptually produced, as ideas being concepts are, but is first there, prior to the logicality, and to the taking up the world AS an eidetic phenomenon, something that is done by the world rather than constructed INTO the world, then we have a single basis for the claim of moral realism. Of course again, if moral realism, in the qualified way I defend it, is true, then our moral judgments, all of them, are qualifiedly "real", or absolute. This does not at all mean that judgments are no longer relative; it simply means that when a relative judgment, like seeing an elongated neck in certain tribal conditions in Thailand as Good, is made, it is foundationally part and parcel of the real itself, an absolute, if you will (though this is a sticky wicket, for when we actually SAY this, we are certainly bound to language's contingency as the saying is a construct. The Real is assumed to be Other than this; assumed to be an Other than what language can say.).

Cheshire

I think I am right on this qualified ethical realism thesis. The consequences are staggering, for if this is true, then there IS something absolute about ethics, and this means ethics carries the gravitas of a God. — Constance

I agree with the implications. There would technically never be a case of doing the right thing when no one is watching and instant karma might have some basis.

baker

It's not possible to justify moral realism while being a consequent moral realist.
— baker

Enigmatic thing to say. — Constance

No. Moral realism, for it to be consequent moral realism, needs to be held a priori, in an axiomatic manner. The moment one ventures into finding justifications, one has left the zone of certainty.

Constance

No. Moral realism, for it to be consequent moral realism, needs to be held a priori, in an axiomatic manner. The moment one ventures into finding justifications, one has left the zone of certainty. — baker

Justification here in intrinsic to the value affair. It is non contingently determined and apriori, but the apriority is not logical, but is apodictic all the same. It is, to use Hegel's vocabulary, borrowed by Sartre, where essence and existence are the same, beyond inquiry, meaning to ask where the foundational prima facie authority comes from in the injunction not to make a turn on the rack or apply a flame to living flesh is to make an appeal to the nature of the pain itself. Of course, it CAN be spoken, conceptualized, contextualized to no end, but this brings conditions of contingency that are ethically arbitrary, as justifying the rack in the deterrence of criminal behavior.

Constance

I agree with the implications. There would technically never be a case of doing the right thing when no one is watching and instant karma might have some basis. — Cheshire

Instant karma? Someone watching? These are metaphysical I cannot support because I don't understand where they get their basis for belief. I try to deal only with what appear there, before me, in my midst, and what this means. Pain and suffering, pleasure and joy: these are very real, more real, I would argue, than any ontological theory that attempts to reduce what is real to something familiar, like a physicist's theory. In fact, this latter has no basis at all at the level of basic questions, while aesthetic/ethical value events taken phenomenologically are absolutes (though calling them absolutes places them squarely in language and then we have to deal with Derrida).
If, as I claim, all ethical matters are grounded in the Real, issuing from the fabric of the universe (as Moses' tablets issued from God's hand), then our ethical acts are absolutely coercive. Alas, given the embeddedness of ethics in ethically arbitrary conditions, our acts will never be perfectly right, whatever that means. But we are bound, as Mill put it, to do no harm and to pursue the good of others, notwithstanding the difficulty in conceiving what this is.

Cheshire

Instant karma? Someone watching? These are metaphysical I cannot support because I don't understand where they get their basis for belief. — Constance

I completely support that notion. Without any rational basis we are dealing with myths or poetry. It is derived from the modern concept of integrated information theory. What Russell would have called panpsychism. But, I agree it is speculation that nears irrationalism.

Alas, given the embeddedness of ethics in ethically arbitrary conditions, our acts will never be perfectly right, whatever that means. But we are bound, as Mill put it, to do no harm and to pursue the good of others, notwithstanding the difficulty in conceiving what this is. — Constance

Another poster came to a similar conclusion. We have a moral system that attempts to correctly identify morality accurately, but is subject to influence. If it's a consensus of sorts then a new thread separating what is impermissible from what is imaginary may be in order.

Back to Metaethics

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions