Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint E-Book

Catherine Wilson

• Herausgeber: Open Book Publishers
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual’s reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about ‘oughts’ and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming.Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest.

Leseprobe

METAETHICS FROM A FIRST PERSON STANDPOINT

Catherine Wilson is the Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. Catherine has worked in the history of philosophy, moral theory and aesthetics and has taught and published extensively in these fields. Her publications include A Very Short Introduction to Epicureanism, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (2008 and 2010), Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory (2004 and 2007) and (with C. Wilson and D. Clarke), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (2011).

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint

An Introduction to Moral Philosophy

Catherine Wilson

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© 2016 Catherine Wilson

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Catherine Wilson, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0087

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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-198-4

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DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0087

Cover image: Nick Jewell, ‘Tiree Perspective’ (2008), CC BY 4.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/macjewell/2736570618

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Dedicated to Caroline, Willy, and Harry, my siblings—and friends for life.

Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgements

1

Enquiry I

5

The Enquirer finds that the moral opinions and practices of mankind form a confusing jumble in which, while strong convictions reign, it is hard to see why any moral claims can claim to be true or to be known by anyone. She decides to doubt everything she has assumed hitherto about moral good and moral evil and her understanding of them.

Enquiry II

17

The Enquirer decides to doubt whether any actions, situations, events, and persons can really be good or bad, right or wrong, morally permissible or morally impermissible.

Enquiry III

31

The Enquirer continues to ponder the notion of a value-free universe. She comes to the realisation that the world seems to be saturated experientially and linguistically with values. She entertains the possibility that a race of Destroyers of Illusion who use language differently has discovered that values are unreal and that there are only likings and dislikings. She discovers nevertheless that she does know at least one fact about what is good.

Enquiry IV

39

The Enquirer discovers that, as far as her self-interest is concerned, there are certain things that are good and bad for her and therefore things she ought and ought not to do. The Enquirer discovers that she can also know something about what is in the self-interest of other people.

Enquiry V

53

The Enquirer discovers that she knows some of the ‘Norms of Civility’ dictating how Person 1 ought to behave towards Person 2 in certain typical situations and wonders why these norms are observed and whether it is always good to observe them.

Enquiry VI

63

The Enquirer determines what makes a relationship between Person 1 and Person 2 morally significant and investigates the origins of hermoral feelings and attitudes. She then discovers that prudence and self-interest sometimes have a moral dimension insofar as they concern the relations between a Present Self and a Future Self.

Enquiry VII

75

The Enquirer discovers an analogy between the Present Self’s natural and moral concern for the Future Self and the Narrow Self’s natural and moral concern for the Extended Self of kith and kin. She goes on to ponder whether she has any natural concern for Strangers and why she ought to care about them.

Enquiry VIII

87

The Enquirer returns to a consideration of the position of the Destroyers of Illusion to try to determine whether moral claims are nothing more than claims about the likings and dislikings of the person who asserts them, or nothing more than expressions of attitudes and the issuing of invitations and commands, without any epistemic significance. She comes to the conclusion that the Destroyers lack a coherent position, and she goes on to consider how to think about moral norms and demands and the possible motives and reasons for being moral.

Enquiry IX

95

The Enquirer ponders the questions of whether there are moral truths, whether there is a method for discovering them, and what the reach and limits of moral knowledge might be. She considers in what sense there has been moral progress and an increase in moral knowledge.

Summary

107

Endnotes

115

Suggestions for Further Study

117

Introduction

© Catherine Wilson, CC BY http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0087.10

At every level of philosophical enquiry into moral theory, from the introductory to the advanced, the question of the objectivity or subjectivity of moral judgements resurfaces. Are there moral truths—or only opinions and beliefs? If there are such truths, how can we come to know them? Can one coherently deny that any moral opinion is better than any other? And could one simply turn one’s back on morality and, if so, what would this involve?

Metaethics is the study of these and related questions. Unlike the practitioners of ‘normative ethics,’ the metaethicist need not take a position on what anyone may do, or ought to do or is forbidden to do, or on what is morally right or wrong. He or she is interested rather in how moral language and moral thought work, no matter what the contents of anyone’s set of moral beliefs may be or what their practices amount to.

My aim in this book is to address the central questions of metaethics and to give serious answers to them. In writing it, I wanted to present a coherent and positive argument for the existence of moral knowledge that would be persuasive in the face of the possibility that morality is both a natural phenomenon and a human invention. At the same time, I was dissatisfied with many textbook presentations of the ‘isms’ of moral theory. It is all too easy to lose one’s way in a forest of taxonomy and then to abandon all hope and fall back on dogmatism or nihilism. I had in mind a freer sort of enquiry and one that would decisively eliminate both of those options.

It occurred to me that there was a model that might prove useful. Facing an array of competing claims and systems, and saddled with a scholastic vocabulary that had long supported debate and discussion without answering any fundamental questions about the world, a philosopher had once responded by adopting, first, a posture of scepticism—indeed of hyperbolic doubt. Professing to reject all previous systems, he attempted to derive important results in ontology as well as an understanding of human epistemological competence by arguing in a strict linear fashion from his ‘first-person’ standpoint. Although there is much to dispute as well as to admire in his argumentation, Descartes’s strategy is agreed to have paid off handsomely. So I resolved to attempt a similar strategy, inventing an Enquirer who, in a state of uncertainty and confusion, decides to adopt the assumption that nothing is really good or bad, obligatory or prohibited, and that there is no such thing as moral understanding or moral knowledge. My aim was then to explore this position, which I first extended into a radical scepticism about all values ascribed to a group called the Destroyers of Illusion, to see where it would lead and whether it would run into difficulties.

In considering this nihilistic position, my Enquirer discovers that the Destroyers have gone too far in their claim that we live in a value-free universe in which nothing about goodness and worth can be known. The Enquirer realises that she is motivated to pursue what’s good for her and able to come to some firm conclusions regarding her own self-interest. She finds that she can also know, in some cases, what’s good for other people whose situations she comes to understand. The Enquirer then turns to consider the topic of manners—the ‘norms of civility.’ These are social conventions specifying how two or more people in certain situations ought to treat one another. The Enquirer perceives that she mostly knows about and is mostly motivated to observe these norms, but that, as items of knowledge, these conventions have to be learned. Further, acting in a mannerly fashion is sometimes inconvenient or contrary to self-interest. The reasons for ‘opting out’ of a local system of what’s considered good manners, on particular occasions or altogether, are explored. The Enquirer finally proceeds to consider morals—which, like manners, concern the interactions between two or more people and how they ought to treat one another. The similarities and differences between manners and morals are explored in terms of how they become items of knowledge, the motives for conforming to them, and the possible reasons for ‘opting out’ of morality either occasionally or completely.

In thus reasoning out metaethics from a first-person standpoint, the conclusions my Enquirer reaches are that moral claims are different to mere expressions of moral feelings and emotional reactions, though they are firmly tied to our individual and collective preferences; that there are good reasons both for remaining within the morality system and for sometimes rejecting norms accepted by the ambient culture. Further, my Enquirer discovers there is a tendency for moral knowledge to increase when no obstacles are put in its way, and that there is good sense in the notion that moral enquiry is aimed at the discovery of moral truths. There is plenty that is contentious in my construction, as there was in the model upon which it is loosely based, but I hope the line of reasoning can be defended, as well as challenged, by able students. My overall aim is that readers who have worked their way through the arguments will decisively set aside the more commonplace forms of scepticism and moral nihilism to which they would otherwise be inclined. Moral confidence, rather than moral certainty, is the epistemological aim.

In composing my text, I found that most of the major issues and concepts of metaethics, ranging from Plato’s worries about the relationship between power and truth, Hume’s account of the virtues, and Kant’s universalisation thought-experiments to contemporary theorising about plans and motives, practical reasons, moral realism, and the Darwinian perspective on human social life were raised at one point or another. Rather than seeing these treatments as belonging to competing theories, I suggest they individually capture different elements of a large and complex picture of moral learning, moral communication, and the progress of moral knowledge. Here, data sources, ideas, and positions are referenced in the endnotes and in the chapter-by-chapter suggestions for further reading. I hope this will make my book useful in a second respect. I would encourage readers to follow up the references that interest them and to study some of the old and new classics of moral theory and metaethics before, during, or after their encounter with the present text.

Though grammarians will wince at each occurrence, I have occasionally used ‘they,’ ‘their,’ and ‘them’ for the singular in order to maintain gender neutrality.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the undergraduate and postgraduate students of Rice University, Houston, Texas and the University of York (UK) who worked their way through earlier drafts of the manuscript. Special thanks are due as well to my referees with their many suggestions for improvement.

Enquiry I

© Catherine Wilson, CC BY http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0087.01

The Enquirer finds that the moral opinions and practices of mankind form a confusing jumble in which, while strong convictions reign, it is hard to see why any moral claims can claim to be true or to be known by anyone. She decides to doubt everything she has assumed hitherto about moral good and moral evil and her understanding of them.

Tot homines, quot opiniones—as many opinions as men! as the saying goes. Ever since I came to know something of the wider world, I have been curious about the variety of beliefs and practices that human beings have accepted and engaged in. I have been impressed by their variety but also sometimes troubled by their character.

Many of the things people do from time to time for the sake of others strike me as noble and heroic. Firemen rush into burning buildings to save the lives of children and animals. Reporters travel to battle zones in war-torn countries to inform the world about what is happening there. Politicians defy opposition to demand civil rights for disfavoured groups, and middle-class people sacrifice luxuries to send their children to school or to donate to famine relief. In ordinary life, people go out of their way to help friends and even strangers, giving each other rides to the airport, assisting with the dishwashing, cheering up the depressed and calming the anxious amongst them.

Yet just as many of the things people sometimes do seem cruel and shocking, and this has been noted and lamented by philosophers for centuries. For thousands of years, people have enslaved their fellow humans to build walls and palaces, to weave textiles, and to farm their fields.1 Now they are enslaved to manufacture sportswear and electronic equipment. From my readings, I have learned that torture was acceptable judicial practice throughout the 17th century, and that only a few hundred years ago in Europe, a criminal could be publically hanged, disembowelled, drawn and quartered. I know that cockfights and bullfights have been considered amusing by many cultures and that ancient people would cut slabs of flesh off their living cattle to eat.2 Massacres and child armies are widespread in the contemporary world, as is sex trafficking. The newspaper brings constant reports of corrupt police officers and politicians. I have read that the ancient Greeks, with their brilliant mathematicians, poets, and sculptors, left their unwanted babies on the hillside to die or to be picked up and raised by strangers.3 Detailed reports of the abuse of children and old people in nurseries, orphanages, and care homes hit the papers on an alarmingly regular basis. It seems their caretakers, or some of them anyway, think that what they are doing is absolutely fine.

I suspect that future generations will look back at some of our current practices—perhaps the prison system, factory farming, and the treatment of workers in the garment industry–with the same disapproval with which we look back on the flogging of sailors and draft animals, the slave trade, the mutilation of women’s feet, and the guillotine. Many of these practices and institutions have been abandoned in parts of the world in which they were formerly common. But did people discover that there were human rights nobody had known about before? Will people of the future discover more rights—perhaps the rights of plants, landscapes, or insects—in addition to ‘human rights’ and ‘animal rights’? Could we decide some day in the distant future that we were actually mistaken about some human rights and come to recognise torture, infanticide, and human sacrifice as morally acceptable?