----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 3:39 PM Subject: Re: perversely wrong
> 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.
Thanks for the suggested reading. This might be a stupid question, but what is to preclude the possibility of having reached reflective equilibrium with a set of intuitions that cohere but are nonetheless false?
> If someone came up with an
> argument that slavery was better than freedom,
You can't just come up with a convincing argument purporting to show that slavery is 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.
Not really. Consequentialist arguments explain what's wrong with slavery quite well, even though they may not satisfy you.
> 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.
Do the facts explain our observing them, as Harman claims is the case in the sciences?
> 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.
On certain naturalistic metaethical accounts, the abscence of ethical facts would necessarily lead to the conclusion that moral statements can't be true.
> 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.
I wouldn't think anyone would want to explain their seeming epistemic privilege by appealing to luck.
-- Luke