Comments are for the page: Ethics
(Dis)Agreement
Fascinating idea about ‘ethical fungibility’. I’m going to observe myself to see if I can catch myself in that rationalization!
Meanwhile, this one knocked me out of my dogmatic slumber:
” In fact, nearly everyone in modern societies agrees about nearly everything. “
Is that so?
What of issues of great and vehement disagreement, like:
- policies and role of government (socialism vs. hands-off, etc)
- abortion
- sexual ethics and morality
- animal rights (veganism, animal experimentation, hunting, etc)
- environmental issues
- the death penalty
- wars!!!!
Spelling error or misunderstanding
Ethical nihilism recognizes (accurately) that ethics has none…
By “has none,” do you mean that ethical nihilism recognizes that ethics has no value? I was understanding “has none” initially by thinking ‘has no ethics,’ but that didn’t really make sense either, haha.
Either way, it will be a clarification (^_^)
has none
Trevor, I read it as a continuation of a thought from a few paragraphs back:
The underlying mistaken metaphysical assumption is that, to be meaningful, ethics must have a definite, objective foundation.... Ethical nihilism recognizes (accurately) that ethics has [no definite, objective foundation], but concludes that ethics is merely subjective and/or meaningless. This is wrong....
Pragmatic ethics
Have you run across Hugh LaFollette’s paper “Pragmatic Ethics”?
It seems very close to what you’re getting at. Instead of looking for an a priori set of rules to follow, his focus is on how we develop and evaluate moral habits in actual practice.
From the paper:
A pragmatic ethic employs criteria without being criterial. It is objective without being absolutist. It acknowledges that ethical judgements are relative, without being relativistic. And it tolerates - indeed, welcomes - some moral differences, without being irresolute.
Moral Ecology
I know it’ll probably be a while before you get back to this section, but I wrote a blog post I thought you might be interested in, since your work here is one of the inspirations behind it.
In the post I outline a “myth of Moral Ecology” as an alternative to the Hegelian/Spencerian myth of Moral Progress. Like with Progress, I base my myth on an analogy with evolutionary biology, but without making the mistake that evolution is going someplace.
Such a cocktease
David,
I am absolutely loving your pragmatic analysis of how to respond to meaning; In much the same way, I feel, the Buddha presented not a philosophy, but a practice. The only thing I have to complain about is I wish there were more! Just when you get to the real meat of the matter, I come to a page like this that tantalizingly hints at what you want to express without laying it all out. Please, write more about what the complete stance entails!