a world in which we don't have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash — Michael
Such a world would at least have to be a world without humans — unenlightened
there is a possible world (with humans) in which we do not have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash. — Michael
You would have to make that believable to me. — unenlightened
If it's not true by definition then it's not necessarily true, and if it's not necessarily true then it's possibly false. — Michael
But you cannot make the possibility believable? — unenlightened
Given your comments, I have a more tailored question: what is the practical difference between a world in which we have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash and a world in which we don't have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash, assuming that in both worlds we believe that we have such a moral obligation and so act accordingly. — Michael
1. We have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction
2. We do not have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction
We believe that we have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction. What is the practical difference between us being in world 1 (where our belief is true) and us being in world 1 (where our belief is false).
In neither case do we know that our belief is either true or false — Michael
Value systems are not true or false. — Joshs
In this case, the basis itself might change; if cultural evolution was the basis for most of history, there comes a modern time when it is no longer wise to ignore the environmental consequences of 'cultural evolution'. Again, it is a practical matter, and something that has only recently become a dominant moral issue. Anyway, the correct morals are the ones that lead to flourishing, aka 'the good'. — unenlightened
if there's no practical difference between being morally obligated to harm and being morally obligated to not harm — Michael
I can't make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable. That's really what I'm trying to show here. — Michael
But I will just point out that you have undermined all of your thread which is based on various scenarios of "everyone believes..." — unenlightened
1. No morality but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
2. It is immoral to kill babies and everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
3. It is moral to kill babies but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
What is the practical difference between these worlds? — Michael
I can't make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable. T — Michael
I take it that since you cannot make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable, you do not believe it is immoral to kill babies. Therefore there are no possible worlds in which we can discuss these worlds you propose as your presence makes them impossible. — unenlightened
Did you really mean to write that? — Banno
By pushing further, you are effectively saying, "But what if there is no reason for your moral claim?" ... If there were no reason then the possible worlds could not differ, and the morality in question would be otiose. But there always is a reason. "X is moral/immoral for no reason at all," is not a coherent claim. — Leontiskos
Kant only secures the nobility and freedom associated with morality at the cost of shifting both into a sphere that lies completely beyond human grasp. The free acts of the will that constitute moral goodness and moral choice are beyond human explanation and comprehension. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble, p. 16
Beyond words, perhaps, but perhaps not beyond acts....completely beyond human grasp... — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble, p. 16
I can't actually cope with Nietzsche! I tried reading him a few times but found it too emotional. I'm vaguely aware it's the sort of thing he says though. — bert1
Since these and the like consequences follow from the fear theory, it is hardly surprising that people should look for some other way to ground the ideas of obligation and of wrong. Such another way is supposed to be provided by the appeal to duty. Here the idea is that one should obey the rules and respect others’ right because it is one’s duty so to do. This duty is not dependent on the presence of any fear or self-interest, nor does it oblige only those who are afraid. It obliges everyone without exception, including especially fearless tyrants. For this reason the duty in question is said to be categorical and to bind categorically. The most readily intelligible statement of it is still the Kantian one, that one should treat others as ends and never simply as means. To treat people as ends is to respect them as creators of their own world and not to reduce them to instruments for the creation of one’s own world.
Doubtless it is true that the obligation to treat people as ends in this sense is commonly regarded as categorical and binding on all. In particular, the obligation is not held to vary according to the varying presence of some motive or passion. The fearless, for instance, are not excused from the obligation by their fearlessness, nor are their violations thereby any the less violations or any the less wrong. The problem with the appeal to duty is not that it fails to capture the categorical character of obligation but that it fails altogether to explain and justify this character. All it does is assert that the obligation is categorical. It does not tell us why it is categorical, nor does it tell us why the obligation is an obligation. If we were to ask these questions, all we would be told is that we are bound because we are bound, that we should obey because we should obey, and that disobedience is wrong because it is wrong.
I am not exaggerating here. Kant himself speaks about the categorical imperative in almost these words.[9] At any rate, he says that the foundation of the categorical imperative, or what makes it into a command we are obligated to obey, is that it comes out of the wholly incomprehensible ground of our noumenal freedom. We cannot penetrate further into its obligatory character than that, which is to say we cannot penetrate into it at all. Of course, Kant would deny that just because we cannot say why disobedience to the categorical imperative is wrong, or what its wrongness consists in, therefore we do not know that it is wrong. On the contrary, he says, we know full well that it is wrong, and we know this because the phenomenon of its wrongness is given to us directly in our ordinary sense of duty. But this does not help. We may be able, by turning to the phenomena, to assure ourselves that there is such a thing as wrongness or doing wrong. What we want to know, however, is what this wrongness amounts to, and Kant tells us nothing on that score. The categorical imperative is not an answer. It is only a sophisticated way of refusing to answer. ‘You ought because you ought,’ is all it says. A tyrant or a devil could easily avail himself of this command. Besides, we are hereby brought back to the same problem as before. The idea of wrongness has not now been explained but explained away. It has been reduced to the idea of being forbidden. At all events, to say, on this theory, that something is forbidden because it is wrong is to say that it is forbidden because it is forbidden.[10]
The trouble with this categorical imperative of duty is that it is far too categorical. The ‘ought’ has been so absolutized that it has been severed from any foundation in the good and knowledge of the good. It can only be obeyed blindly, if at all.[11]
[...]
…The first alternative, the Hobbesian alternative, appeals to the good of self-interest and the second, the Kantian alternative, appeals to an imperative that commands independently of any good, self-interested or otherwise. Neither alternative has turned out to be acceptable. The defect of the second was its failure to appeal to any good. The defect of the first was its appeal to a self-interested good. The obvious solution is to appeal to a good, but to a good that is not self-interested. The good appealed to must be an other-interested and other-directed good. In short, the good of others must become a primary and direct object of our action, and not a secondary and indirect one. Such a good will, because it is a good, ground an obligation and, because it is an other-directed good, ground an obligation to be other-directed and not self-directed. Thus it will, at the same time and by the same fact, avoid both the Kantian and the Hobbesian defects.
[9] Groundwork, GS, vol. 4, p. 401; see also Essay 2 above.
[10] Cf. the problems Euthyphro gets into with Socrates over the definition of piety and impiety in the Platonic dialogue of that name. See also Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil, part 5, and Genealogy of Morals, where this morality of the ‘ought’ is presented, so to say, as the fear of the slave pitched at the level of an ideological scream.
[11] See Essay 2 above. This same criticism of Kant was classically made by Max Scheler in his Formalism in Ethics, pp. 190-94. It is repeated by John Crosby, in his The Selfhood of the Human Person, p. 209. — Peter L. P. Simpson, “On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style,” in Vices, Virtues, and Consequences, pp. 66-8
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