Ethics

Posted on September 13, 2009
Filed Under Philosophy | 10 Comments

OK, the first post back from “blogging vacation.” (Actually I’ve been doing lots of tech blogging, but not the heavier stuff here)

Now I don’t really study Ethics too much for reasons I’ve outlined before. It seems to me though that one can characterize the basic ontology within ethical study as the following. (1) those who think there are determined answers to any ethical question “since the beginning” and that this constitutes ethics and (2) those who think ethics is found in something other that determinate propositions.

Those who fall into camp (2) tend to often be in continental Europe or else are philosophers in Britain, Australia or the US who are largely sympathetic to major European philosophers like Levinas, Heidegger, Derrida, etc.

Those who fall into camp (1) tend to still make up the majority of philosophers, from what I can see.

What’s interesting is the those in camp (2) can adopt a lot of the philosophy of those in camp (1). For instance you might see yourself as skeptical that there are “Eternal Answers” as part of a basic ontology. Yet you might also see the Ethical Demand that arises in human relationships demanding that we consider the consequences of our actions and see that some form of consequentialism has to inform our thinking on ethics. (Indeed that tends to be where I place myself)

The answer those in camp (2) tend to give is that our radical finite situatedness means that we never know “Eternal Answers” (which for various reasons I’ll call Platonism – even though the position applies equally to figures like Kant) I think this is much more than just an epistemological move – since there are just tons of inherent epistemological problems in any form of consequentialism. Rather I think it is the idea that even if there were a “God’s eye observer” (here meaning the Platonic God) that the finitude and subjectivism of human choice entails there can’t be an answer. That is the problem of answer isn’t that of knowing all facts. It is much more that values are unstable in terms of basic ontology.

Now I’ve argued that what I call the Platonic forms of philosophy (here meaning Platonism very broadly – well beyond Plato himself) is pretty difficult to reconcile with LDS thought. I recently made this claim at Times and Seasons (here) The main problem was fantastically explained by Blake Ostler in his theological volumes. It’s the old Euthyphro dilemma. Is God good because he wants the good or is the good good because God wants it? That question really raises the fundamental problem of Ethics. Blake’s answer is to take Ethics in terms of love and love arises out of basic human relations that just can’t be reduced to propositions.

That said, one really should acknowledge the Bruce R. McConkie position in which there are a set of potential truths (here presumably meaning propositions) and that God knows all their truth values. (That is there aren’t propositions that are as yet undefined but which may become defined) Ethics would then be propositions of the form “X is good” where X is some description of an action.

I think some who adopt the more Levinasian perspective throw out the McConkie position too quickly.

Related posts:

  1. My Ethics Philosophy
  2. Ethics and the Death of God
  3. Ethics without God, Aristotle style
  4. On Ethics
  5. Ethics and an Other Book
  6. Levi, Ethics and Politics

Comments

10 Responses to “Ethics”

“Blake’s answer is to take Ethics in terms of love and love arises out of basic human relations that just can’t be reduced to propositions.”

This is very similar to certain forms of the feminist ethic of care.

Rather than referring to the Platonic approach to ethics, why not just say “ethical realism”, i.e. ethics is something you “can be wrong about”.

Now ethical realism must be grounded ultimately in non-cognitive (non-subjective) meta ethics. For example if pain leads to ethical questions, pain must be objectively real (i.e. something you can be wrong about). And if you can be wrong about the infliction of pain, you can certainly be wrong about ethics. And if you can be wrong about ethics you can certainly be wrong about love.

Finally, I think the Euthyphro dilemma here is completely irrelevant to a view of the world where God does not ultimately determine the nature of good and evil.

I think it’s more than just ethical realism though. An utilitarian for instance is an ethical realist. Clearly a Kantian demands much more than maximizing some property defined out of our linguistic tradition though.

I am not sure exactly what you are referring to Clark. I believe that Kantianism, to the degree it is true at all, has a long run consequentialist basis. In addition, I think the epistemological problems with consequentialism, while significant in practice, have no bearing on whether it is true or not.

One last issue – I don’t think it is reasonable to believe that all ethical questions are determinate. Creativity and free will exclude that possibility. So while long run consequentialist ethics are clearly something you can be wrong about, there is often an enormous indeterminate area in between the things that are clearly wrong and clearly right on a long run consequentialist basis. The zone in between depends on the subsequent actions of both the actor and all the other individuals affected. Assuming LFW, that is not a determinate question, completely aside from epistemological issues.

Really? I’ve never heard Kantianism defended in terms of consequentialism.

I should add that I agree if LFW is true that it might be a big problem for consequentialism. But as time goes on I get more and more skeptical about LFW. On the other hand I suspect one could still go for rule utilitarianism. Of course I know there are debates about how different rule utilitarianism from Kantianism (and maybe that’s what you were referring to) as well as whether it can really be separated from act-utilitarianism. I admit I’m not well versed on the debates though.

I am not defending Kantianism per se – I am claiming that to the degree it is true, it is a form of rule utilitarianism.

I would also say that if LFW isn’t true then ethics is reduced to what Ernest Rutherford called stamp collecting – of no practical relevance whatsoever, nothing but a descriptive science at best. Standing on the corner watching the world go by, as it were.

Clark,

There is a reason why you have never heard Kantian Ethics “defended in terms of consequentialism.” That reason would be because it is not consequentalism. While rule-utilitarianism is an attempt to defend utilitarianism against attacks from Kantians, Kantian Ethics itself rejects rule-utilitarianism (though Kant himself lives prior to Bentham and Mill). Some people do present the first conception of the categorical imperative as being similar to rule-utitilitarianism (some might present it as: what would the world look like if every followed such a maxim) but that is due to a misreading of Kant. Kant is pretty clear about rejecting teleological thought is general which would clearly include any form of consequentalism.

What is LFW?

Libertarian Free Will – the form of free will that maintains that free agents can initiate causes that change the future from what it would be otherwise.

The alternative is compatibilist free will, which maintains that free will is compatible with determinism, even though if determinism is true every such “freely willed” action was set in stone at least fifteen billion years ago.

Actually an other popular alternative is just to deny freedom entirely. i.e. accept incompatibilsm yet deny most linguistic forms of freedom are actualized.

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