Ethical foundations of the left

[Luke Benjamin Weiger]

> Well, I have been saying that. It's been my point, that Kenneth and Luke
> have been resisting, that philosophical argument doesn't persuade people.
> I'm not a relativist, so I don't think that just because people disagree
> means everyone's right, or a skeptic, so I don't think that disagreement
> means everyone's wrong. I think there may be right answers about many
> philosophical questions. I even think that argument can tell us what they
> are. But I note it as a fact that argument rarely persuades people that
> their own cherished views are wrong.

I think that argument is more limited than a lot of other pragmatists would
make.  Even many non-pragmatists would agree that "argument rarely
[although, perhaps, a non-pragmatist would disagree about how rarely]
persuades people that their own cherished views are wrong."  Posner, to cite
one example, believes that there is good reason to reject a superior
argument (likely to be sound and valid) if our prior intuitions find it
disagreeable.  This holds even if one can condition themselves in such a way
that they can, indeed, eventually accept the argument.

Some non-pragmatist philosophers, like Rawls, think the goal of moral
philosophy is to square our pre-existing intuitions with each other.

-- Luke