Tedious metaethical discussion

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Mon May 13 14:57:38 PDT 2002



> > Ethics is never prior to politics, for two reasons. The first is that
>there
> > are political positions we have that no ethical argument could ever make
>us
> > give up.
>
>You also argue that there are certain ethical principles that cannot be
>undermined by any ethical argument.

Insofar as they can be seperated, which I giess they can for some purposes, yes, that is true.


>
> > I have argued here for the priority of democracy, for example. For
> > many of us, socialism is like that two. Oh in the abstract I suppose you
> > could say, suppose therew ere iron-clad, irrefutable arguments that
> > democracy or socialism led to the Gulag and universal poverty.
>
>What if our actual circumstances brought about these consequences in the
>ways that the arguments suggested?

Well, if racist fantasies were true, perhaps slavery would be just, but where does that get you? We live in the world we do, not a possible world where Arthur Shockley is a good social scientist, or Richard Pipes an expert on the preconditions of freedom.


>
> > The second is that ethics and politics are all mixed up with each other
>and
> > with lots of empirical assumptions about how the world worlds. You can't
> > isolate the ethical element and say, it's prior.
>
>I suppose that if you insist that ethics and politics are inseperable, it
>would indeed be nonsensical to claim that one is prior to the other.
>
>-- Luke
>

Yup. Though I think they are distinguishable for some putposes.

jks

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