[lbo-talk] Vegetarianism

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Sat Sep 3 10:20:13 PDT 2005


Luke Weiger wrote:


> Since you seem to be more interested in moral anthropology than moral
> argument, I'll note that there's no evidence at all that it's "quite common"
> for ethical systems to take no interest in what harms we're obligated to
> avoid inflicting and what benefits we're responsible for doling out.

I think you underestimate the creativity and ingenuity of people when it comes to creating ethical systems and moral justifications. Hey, I agree with you in a practical sense: I try to take into consideration harm and benefit when I make decisions. However, I see no need to elevate that socially contingent decisionmaking process to an Abstract Moral Principle that must be applied by any right thinking people in any social context. I guess I'm just emphasizing that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophies.


> It's a position that devours itself. One of the more robust areas of social
> concensus on moral matters is as follows: the truth values of ethical claims
> aren't entirely contingent on social concensus. You'd have a very hard time
> convincing anyone (other than perhaps a few renegade pomos) that enslaving
> the blacks was OK back when most Americans were comfortable with it.

Making the (admittedly obvious) claim "morality is based on social consensus" is not the same as the claim "the analysis of morality must be based on social consensus". Social action is a topic of scientific investigation, like the motion of the planets; just as astronomical theory does not have to correspond to common sense, rigorous theories of social action (including moral decisions/behavior!) do not have to correspond to common sense. There's no problem here.


>>To steal shamelessly from Wittgenstein: moral claims are part of a form of
>
> life; they are not fundamental axioms that exist above
>
>>and beyond the social relations that create them.
>
>
> That sounds a hell of a lot more like Marx than Wittgenstein. The latter
> was an emotivist; not a subjectivist. As an error theorist, I'm a bit
> skeptical of the distinction, but Wittgenstein probably wasn't.

Read some more Wittgenstein: it's not that he was skeptical of the distinction, it's that he considers the philosophical labels you use and any possible distinction among them a waste of time.

Miles



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