On Sat, 25 Jul 2009, Michael Smith wrote:
> What may be confusing Carrol, and is certainly confusing me, is this:
> what does "morality" mean to you if not "abstract universal principles"?
> Most of the philosophy of morals consists of trying to find a basis for
> such principles -- and it hasn't been a shining success.
You are identifying morality with Kantian moral philosophy. Which I fully agree has been a failure (except perhaps for framing black-letter law, which really should apply to everyone equally within its jurisdiction). But everyone who talks about morality on this list talks about competing moralities. By definition, if there's more than one, neither of them is universal.
AFAICT, nobody on the "morality is important" side of this argument is a Kantian. We've never had a convention, but off-hand I'd say we're all distant distaff descendent of Nietzsche and Durkheim -- that all of us believe moralities are based on, and are the basis of, social groups and worldviews.
Such actually existing moralities are neither universal nor eternal -- they change visibly over one's lifetime and changing them is much of what political and cultural conflict is about.
It is true using the inherited vocabulary of morality to describe such really-existing moralities leads to many paradoxes. But that's precisely why we want to talk about it. Intellectually, there is lots to be done.
If the choice were really between Kantian moral philosophy and nothing, I'd probably choose nothing too. But that's got nothing to do with the debate on this list.
Michael