(2) As to the last half of your response, I'm confused. We agree that there is no special need to justify concern for human welfare as "good" to an absolute skeptic. But what about the person who places some other value before welfare, while not denying that welfare is a good thing, all other things being equal? Isn't that what the debate between von Stauffenberg and the German general comes down to: honor vs. welfare? So, eschewing any attempt to justify welfare as "Good", what do you say to the general?
So, you see, I'm not entirely convinced that Anscombe's position is "entirely unsatisfactory." Why can't one argue for a relative priority of goods? Why can't one argue, in this case, that an honorable oath to Hitler is a contradiction in terms? Or that clinging to honor while perpetuating cruelty is a particularly odious form of moral self-indulgence? Or that "honor" is a patriarchal concept that really has no place in ethics at all?
(3) Actually, I think it can be shown that the way rational choice theory tries to finesse commensurability doesn't work - at least the way von Neumann-Morgenstern tried to do it. They propose a lottery in which you first identify your least- and most-preferred alternatives, and then rank all othe alternatives as equivalent to a lottery ticket with specific probabilities of those polar alternatives. This confuses enforced (and probably meaningless) choice with commensurability. Reason doesn't require a complete ranking of preferences, nor is an induced ranking necessarily meaningful.
MM
>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 05/12/02 13:50 PM >>>
>
>It's probably a good idea not to fetishize "value" as if it were some
>substance that ethical action intends to maximize.
No one thinks value is a substance. Value talk is just a way of talking about what makes things good. It doesn't commit you to commensurability among and additivity of quantities of value, although you don't necessarily want to beg the question against consequentialist theories (of the sort thar Like accepts and I reject) by ruling these out definitionall. Moreover there are more kinds of value than moral values. Allan Gibbard has been developing a very attractive general theory of value that he supposes applies to not only moral but other kinds. Don't be surprised that I say this, Luke, I have long told Allan that his theory is not really noncognitivist, and now, in his APA Presidential address, he admits it. Mike, check his Wise Choicesm APt Feelings, the most beautifully written book of metaethics ever written.
> 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?"
Again, consequentialism may be many things, but it isn't silly, whatever it is. It's not obvious that it makes no sense to say that in principle one couldn't assign numbers of value decisions. That is what rational choice theory in fact offers to do.
>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 unjst,
>kind or malicious, etc.
Although I agree that many value terms are incommensurable, leaving things at this stage is totally unsatisfactory, Imagine the following dialog.
German General: It would be dishonorable of me to break my oth to the Fuhrer.
von Stauffenberg: Honor, schmonor, it's cruel and wicked to participate in this evil war. Join me in the plot.
How to resolve this standoff between honor anbd cruelty on Anscombe's terms?
> 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?"
>
>
Ah, well, if someone doesn't see why he should value human welfare, it's not obvious what one can say to him. I don't know why it should bother us or weaken our commitnment to human welfare if we can't think of something. As Mill says, on those whom conscious has no hold, there is is only the pressure of external sanctions. I don't think this is a problem any more than I am bothered by my inability to refute the demon skeptic on his own terms.
jks
_________________________________________________________________ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com