Sure, but reflective equilibrium doesn't mean you keep all the judgments you started with. You go back and forth, trying to get particular judgments to square with principles that explain them. You may have to revise on both sides. It's called thinking. You may end up far from where you started. Go read Rawls's TJ, pp. 19-122, first ed., just to fix the topic in your sights. We can find give on either side, but it's never required to give up a concrete judgment if you can make enough adjustments elsewhere. That's half of core of pragmatism. Some judgments are provisionally fixed points, we can't iaagine what would make us give them up. If someone came up with an argument that slavery was better than freedom, we'd just assume he was wrong, even if we couldn't see why. Btw, it is _very_, _very_ hard to explain whatis wrong with slavery.
>
> > Say more.
>
>It's hard to see (no pun intended) exactly how one could observe an ethical
>fact. Even though I have realist and naturalist leanings, I haven't been
>able to formulate a good response. (Moore's open question, on the other
>hand, is a piece of cake.)
>
We don't observe a lot of scientific facts either. And if naturalsits are right, and ethical facts are just complicated facts about social relationships, we do observe them. But I think the Harman vs. the Cornell realists debate about the observability of ethics misses the whole point. It turns on a surprisingly primitive naivete about the solidity of a theory-observation distinction--surprising for a prag like Harman. I have argued this with him many times, but he won't listen to me.Who cares whether ethical "facts" are "observable"? The issue is whether moral statements can be true.
>
Davidson argues (I think wrongly) that most of our
>beliefs
> > have to be true. You seem to suggest that most of them are in fact
>false.
> > Any candidates?
>
>Perhaps there exists a deep resvoir of true belief shared by most persons
>that happens to be correct. That isn't what concerns me. I'm simply
>trying
>say that, between any two people, there are likely fundamental divergences
>of opininion on important issues. By definition, both can't be right. And
>I see no reason to think that one (by virtue of superior intelligence,
>education, culture etc.) is likely to be almost always right and the other
>almost always wrong.
These things are possible, it's possible that a lot of my beliefs are false. I jsut think they aren't.
But look, each of us believes hsi won beliefsa re right,a nd yet we disagree about most things, or many, so we believe the other person is mostly wrong. That's not an insult, and I don't offer as an explanation that I am older, wiser, and more educated, though I am--it's true! Youw ill close the gap, to be sure. But I disagree simialrly with Posner, who is older and wiser, if not more educated, and certainly smater, than both of us. It's jsuta tht I have been lucky to stumble across a set of true beliefs. If I didn't think theyw ere true, I wouldn't hold them.
>
>Candidates for false belief: in my own case, I believe that is possible
>that
>Kant revealed the true foundation ethics and Friedman is right on
>economics.
>If so, almost every ethical or political argument I make is wrong. I
>needn't be anywhere near this radical, though: there are probably many
>cases
>where being precisely right is nearly impossible, and, therefore, most
>everyone is just a little off. It follows that such beliefs are strictly
>false.
>
> > You are being humor-impaired.
>
>Oh. So it was a humorous aside...
A humorous way of makinga serious point.
>
> > But in more serious vein, if I disagree with
> > you, it follows that I think you are wrong.
>
>Yes, that goes without saying. The fact that you've said it not once, but
>twice, leads me to believe that you're being unwittingly condescending.
>
Not intentionally. Sorry if it came across that way.
jks
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