> But a poverty of theory -- unless you acknowledge the moral arguments you put
> forth as moral.
Guilty as charged, m'Lud, to the poverty of theory about moral sentiments. I no longer feel the need to have a theory about everything. For one thing, it seems quite likely that there are areas where theorizing amounts to idle speculation, absent any means of deciding whether one theory is better than another. Of course idle speculation is harmless and can be fun but there's no reason why everybody should have to do it.
People use the words "moral" and "morality" in quite different senses. The two broad categories are the subjective and the normative. In the subjective sense of 'moral', I'm expressing a sentiment or an intuition of my own. These are very strong sentiments and we're often willing to act on them in a rather extended way. An example of this extended moral action might be if I feel that owning slaves is repugnant to me, then I may not just refrain from doing it myself, but try to stop others from doing it too.
The normative sense is the one in which we say that slavery is wrong for everybody everywhere all the time -- based on some theory -- and so the ancient Romans, for example, ought to have given it up, and we're better people than they were to the extent that we no longer practice it (mutatis mutandis, caeteris paribus, etc.). This normative conception of morality is often yoked by secular moralists with a conception of 'progress'.
Are we un-entitled to extended moral action *unless* we have a normative theory or at least believe in the validity of the normative conception of morality? Philosophers often talk as if this were so: that we have to justify the moral basis for our actions, or at least believe that they're justifiable qua timeless norms a la Kant, before we can act on them in any area larger than mere personal preference.
This dogma -- the requirement for an ethodicy or praxidicy or whatever -- seems itself to require some justification. Granted, in this economy, it's nice to keep as many people employed as possible, including philosophers.
> Or, as some people might put it, une misere de la philosophie.
Some people might say that was a tautology. Enlevez la misere!
--
Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org