1 of 1- iwpoe
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Moral Skepticism and Reason
So, I've had brewing in my head a long time an argument against moral skepticism that hinges on normativity being a core aspect of reason itself. I would sketch it out like this:
Some ontological commitments:
A. There are agents.
B. Agents have wills.
C. Agents have beliefs.
D. Agents have reason.
E. Agents can act through their wills.
F. Agents can determine their beliefs as an act of their will.
G. Reason has a practical, deliberative, or normative aspect.
1. Moral skepticism generally takes the form of a general doubt with respect to normativity as such.
2. I take normativity to be the realm or aspect of thought that provides standards, justification, or validity for the willful actions of an agent, i.e. normativity is an aspect of practical reason.
3. The rhetoric of 1 deploys a persuasive strategy meant to convince one to give up practical reason.
4. But persuasion itself requires an appeal to normative standards, i.e. persuasion is an exercise of practical reason, because it is an activity in which you attempt to get other agents to use reason to choose to abandon their belief in practical reason.
∴ The very act of affirming denying practical reason is the exercise of it, a performative contradiction and often a propositional contradiction (insofar as various normative propositions will be tacitly employed in the affirmation).
Does this work?
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- Mysterious Brony
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Re: Moral Skepticism and Reason
@iwpoe
Have you ever read Kai Nielsen's "Why Should I be Moral?" He concludes that pure practical practical even with a good knowledge of the facts will not get you to morality. What do you think?
- iwpoe
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Re: Moral Skepticism and Reason
Mysterious Brony wrote:
@iwpoe
Have you ever read Kai Nielsen's "Why Should I be Moral?" He concludes that pure practical practical even with a good knowledge of the facts will not get you to morality. What do you think?
I'll look at it. The source of normative imperatives is a troubling meta-ethical problem, but I've tried to leave that to the side.
Others can correct me, but as I understand it the Thomistic tradition (following hard on the ancients) thinks there is an immanent set of tele that we can see quite clearly. From my own Hegelian intuitions that seems basically correct. Why is there a prohibition on murder? Because... (thus follows a story about the place of the prohibition of murder in society and its function). The question why be moral would eventually revolve around the question "Why is there a moral order at all, and why participate in it?" The answers would essentially be because it is the expression of what we are/because that is the answer to all of your questions about how to be.
I'm sure that won't satisfy the moral skeptic, but sometimes depending on the position you're working against, there ultimately is no answer for the skeptic, because we won't hear answers and is determined that he be unanswerable. On some level he's denying the very discourse of questions and answers. He's like a pub bully, and you need to move on to the next bar.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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