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>J. Huh? I don't oppose abortion or think it morally wrong, all I said was
>that the issue is hard.
>What makes the question X "hard" and the question Y "easy"? The nature of
X & Y independent of social relations? Or the ensembles of social
relations that we live?
Neither. It's the logic of the arguments. What makes abortion hard is that if we want to say it is OK to kill fetuses, it is difficult to avoid commiting ourselves to principles that would appear to make it OK to kill newborn infants. As our recent discussion of Singer illustrated, that is a position that few of us will swallow. I know of no plausible answer to this problem. So people like Marta and I who support abortion rights and oppose infanticide are stuck in an awkward bind.
> To be more specific, what makes abortion a "hard"
moral question, while leaving the majority of the world impoverished &
dying due to lack of clean water, sanitation, etc. is seldom perceived to
be a "moral" question even, much less a "hard" moral question?
You are now talking perceptions. Of course it is a moral question,a nd it is an easy one. A major task of ideology in bourgeois society is to make it seem like a natural fact and nor a moral question. If it is perceived as a moral question,a nd one about which we can do something, then it becomes apparent that there is no plausible justification that can be given for it. A task of the left is therefore to denaturalize and moralize the issue.
Moral theory is supposed to systematize
>and maybe force revisions in our judgments about these things. So,
>utilitarians say, good habits and right actions are those that promote the
>geberal happiness. Kantians saym they are those that pass the categorical
>imperative. Etc.
> Isn't there, though, a problem in systematizing? Why should our moral
judgments be justified by appealing to one principle (in Kant, autonomy of
practical reason + universality of maxims; in Bentham, the sum of total
happiness)?
Who said systematization meant reduction to a single principle? I mean, it would be nice if one could do it, but I doubt that there is a single principle that would succeed. However, the choice is not a single principle or none.
> As an advocate of free thought, do you not see systems of
morality as an affront to supple dialectical reason?
No. "Free thought" protects disagreement, but I think that views are to be defended because we think they are true, which means that it would be an error to adopt a contrary view, hwoever supple and dialectical. Of course we don't know the true views for sure, which is part of the raeson that we never get rid of disagreement.
And even if we did knwo the true views for sure, as we do in some cases, e.g., that slavery is wrong, that race is not a legitimate basis onw hich to oppress people, etc., that does not not maen what it would be right to send the cops after those who hold contrary beliefs. taht is because the correct moral view supports freedom of speech for views we know for sure are false, contarry to what Charles erronenously thinks. (However, that means we cannot morally send the cops to shut him up.)
>J: And for an moral realist like me, that just shows that some people have
>been wrong in their moral beliefs. People used to think that slavery was OK,
>but they were wrong then, Slavery is never OK.
> Well, "people" didn't think that slavery was OK; pro-slavery whites did.
Oh, go back far enough and you will probably get near universal consensus. Euripedes thought that slavery was wrong, but I bet most ancient Greeks, including slaves, thought that while slavery was an unfortunate fate, it was an OK institution. Anyway, suppose only the slaveowners thought taht slavery was wrong. They were wrong. I can say that. Relativist can't. You are stuck saying that slavery was OK--for salveowners, if not for slaves.
> Is this what you mean by
"moral realism," though? A kind of standpoint epistemology which argues
that the truth of an oppressive society is better seen through the
viewpoint of the oppressed? Or a historical materialist approach that
argues that oppressive social relations give birth to their own
gravediggers, since the oppressed class's happiness and their standards of
justice cannot be brought into practice without abolishing the social
relations that brought them into being? I'm afraid that you mean something
other than the above when you argue for standards of justice independent of
"social conventions."
No, it''s pretty much exactly what I mean. In fact. I am the only person I know of who has ever got the argument just right. (I'm so modest.) Did I ever send you my paper on "Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice"? If you want it, send me your snail mail again..
> Moral indignation does have its place in politics --
for instance, agitation -- but Engels is saying that the notion of
transhistorical standards of justice doesn't help us in, in fact prevents
us from, understanding how capitalism arose, how it works, and how it may
be abolished.
I don't think so. Can you imagine that Marx woiuld ever have investigated where capitalsim came from, how it works, and how it might be abolished if not for his burning, Old-Testament prophetic moral indignation that leaps from every line he ever wrote?
--jks