Cheap Morality, was Re: anti-zionism

[Michael McIntyre]

It's probably a good idea not to fetishize "value" as if it were some substance that ethical action intends to maximize.  Special new improved altruism!  Now with 35% more value!  It's one way of reducing ethical discourse to stark terms of "good" and "bad", leaving out the question "what kind of good?" or "what kind of bad?"  We might do well to heed Elizabeth Anscombe's suggestion that we abandon this "specifically moral ought" in favor of more specific terms appropriate the situation in which agents act: courageous or cowardly, just or unjust, kind or malicious, etc.  So, for example, we can argue about whether or not something contributes to human welfare (one of those questions that crosses the empirical/normative boundary without being clearly resolvable into either), without getting caught up in the endless quest for a determinate response to the question "but why should I value human welfare?"

MM


>>> seamus2001 at attbi.com 05/11/02 20:32 PM >>>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: Cheap Morality, was Re: anti-zionism


> Carrol wrote:
> > Are "moral positions" being confused with attitudes of approval or
> > condemnation? And is it assumed (and if so on what basis) that any
act
> > of approval or disapproval is (tautologically) a moral judgment?
>
> Ethics is concerned with assessments of value.  An agent's approval or
> disapproval for any given act, person, or thing relies upon some sort
of
> judgment (or, if, Carrol prefers, disposition) to regard the act,
person, or
> thing as being valuable or lacking in value.

=================

What's a non-circular definition of value?

Ian