Well, I like to hope my work and theirs will have some effect. It's just that one has to be realistic about how much effect this sort of work can have. I think it's probably a reasonable empirical hypothesis that people do not much change their moral views by argument. When I was a teacher I can recall this happening exactly once that I knew about in 15 years at the lectern. In that case I think the view (about abortion) must not have been deeply held to start with.
I myself can't recall ever having my views changed in response to a particular argument. My views have changed, but more in response to experience and general background knowledge, including reading and arguing of course. I gave up on a sort of communitarianism I used to hold in large part in response to the ethnic cleansings of the 90s--Bosnia, Rwanda--and in part because communitarianism got taken over, politically, by right wingers and Clintonoids, if there is a difference. It's not that I was persuaded that communitarian arguments were bad. I still think they have a good critique of liberalism. It's that I didn't want to be associated with those people any more, and I thought that Bosnia, Rwanada, etc. were powerful practical arguments that the claims of community can be lethal.
Anyway, if you want to change people's views, you'd probably be better off setting a powerful moral example. Dr. King did more to change American morality on race and equality than any moral philosopher or even any engaged scholar, such as Gunnar Myrdal. And that's a fact.
I had disputed Jim F's claims that the great moral philosophers were particularly concerned with changing behavior. I said, for example, that Kant attacked certain popular maxims by way of showing us that we already rejected them.
> And what would the purpose of such critical reflections be but to
> prevent us from acting wrongly under the guidance of false ideas?
Uh, understanding that we don't really believe these false ideas? I mean, do you think that anyone was ever persuaded NOT to lie for the general good because she read Kant?
> It might be the case that we will perceive such ideas to be false
> upon reflection but the crucial thing here is to get people to reflect
> upon them.
Yes, but you overestimate (a) the degree to which reflection will actually affect people's views, and (b) the real roots of moral change in practical experience. See here Barrington Moore's great book, Injustice, a case study based on the German working class.
Moore gives moral creativity, the ability to articulate a new conception of what's right, an important role in resistance to oppression, along with "iron in the soul,: or moral courage, and a number of other factors. I agree, although I doubt that such moral creativity is often associated with moral philosophy. More often it comes in more accessible forms--Lessing's plays, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels, Marx's polemics, DuBois' essays, King's speeches.
I would suggest that Kant was well aware that people
> often act without reflection and that this often leads them to act
> wrongly under the influence of false ideas.
Actually, Kant thought that the virtuous simple soul was one who acted rightly without reflection, and in his philosophy, acting rightly is acting rationally is acting freely, but you never know whether you are so acting. Reflection doesn't help. Doesn't hurt either, but the academy is full of really reflective really smart really sleazy moral philosophers. As you know.
> Are you really trying to tell me that Mill was not attempting to exert
> some influence on existing practices when he wrote his famous
> essay "On Liberty" or his *Utilitarianism*.
Course not. Said otherwise. but he didn't think he was doing "moral philosophy" in the sense that it's done by Rawls or Scanlon or Posner or me. He was writing popular essays for the educated public. Today, he educated public does not read the Journal of Philosophy if it can help it. I don't blame them. I don't either.
> In Marxian terms you seem to be arguing for a radical
> separation between theory and practice.
I'm just being realistic. I am not saying what ought to be, but what is. Moral philosophy has little influence on people's behavior.
I had said that practically we cannot do without notions of retribution and desert.
>
> Apparently the Soviets did at one time attempt to dispense
> with such notions from their jurisprudence. Thus at one time
> they referred to "socially dangerous acts" rather than to crimes
> in their penal codes and spoke of "measures of social defense"
> rather than punishments.
As I was saying.
> It seems to me just as it does for Charles that all th[e good things that retributivism gives us]
> can be more than adequately defended on consequentialist
> grounds. A penal system that regularly punishes innocent
> people is likely to lose whatever powers for deterrence that
> it might have once people become aware of what is going on.
Well, consequentialism is a respectable position. Wrong, in my view, but respectable.
--jks