Intro CH. Skepticism and Subjectivism Flashcards
Skepticism and Subjectivism
SKEPTICISM AND SUBJECTIVIM:
MORAL NIHILISM:
CULTURAL RELATIVISM – Which takes as its starting point the fact that there has been great moral diversity over time, and at different places at the same time.
MORAL NIHILISM – It contends that there is simply no such thing as morality— or, to put it another way, nothing can be morally wrong.
- Suggest that, while there are different customs in different times and places, in a deeper sense there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as morality. Although people find it important to follow the traditions of their society, it has been said that they are nothing more than traditions—in many ways, they are arbitrary and could have been quite different. This is a very radical criticism of morality.
- Moral nihilists may nonetheless do what morality is said to demand, either because they happen to want to do what is normally done in their society or because acting immorally often leads to legal or social punishment.
- But the nihilist’s position is not so much about what to do or not do. Instead, the nihilist simply denies that morality has any fundamental justification.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM and MORAL EGOISM** – **These views are known as forms of egoism – It could be suggested that the moral nihilist is merely someone who follows their own self-interest, supposing that instead of obeying some sort of code of conduct, the rational, moral, or the only possible thing to do is pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
- The nihilist just acts as he or she feels, arguing that there is no good argument for anyone to do anything else.
Who, then, are the moral nihilists? Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900 – C.ritic of the morality of his day.
- Famous works: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886).
REVALUATION of all VALUES – Generating a new type of morality.
- Nietzsche’s project may not have been so much to reject morality but to call for what he terms a revaluation of all values,
- Getting “beyond good and evil” means that the terms good and evil are to be replaced by good and bad.
THRASYMACHUS – Character in Plato’s dialogue The Republic who argues with great force at the opening of the book that “justice is the interest of the stronger,”
- But his position is one that Plato sets out to refute rather than defend.
- Perhaps here we have stumbled on the real-life moral nihilist: the psychopath. Few, if any, philosophers have recommended the psychopath’s position as one that captures the truth about morality.
Morality and Custom
MORALITY and CUSTOM:
- The question of whether the rules of morality have an independent justification or are simply customs or habits that we find hard to break.
Dostoyevsky’s (1821–81) masterful novel Crime and Punishment (1866):
- He argues that it can be right to ignore conventional morality in pursuit of higher goals:
- Then Newton would have had the right, and would even have been obliged . . . to get rid of those ten or a hundred persons, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind.
RASKOLNIKOV:
- Seems to think that conventional morality is a type of conspiracy of those who are not strong or willful enough to survive through their own efforts and so need artificial rules to hold others in place.
- Morality is a device to protect the weak from the strong.
- In some circumstances the truly strong person has the right, or even the duty, to ignore the rules if the opportunity is presented. As soon, however, as it is stated that the strong person has the “right or duty” to break conventional rules, one conception of morality has been replaced with another. This is not a form of pure nihilism after all, but rather a form of morality that gives the strong special rights.
Morality as a Device to Curb the Strong
Morality as a Device to Curb the Strong – Raskolnikov’s view that splits society into “the herd” and “the elite” is also associated with Friedrich Nietzsche.
- Nietzsche’s key idea is that we must subject contemporary morality—the morality we currently find ourselves with—to scrutiny and examine its nature and the justifications we give for it.
- For Nietzsche, contemporary morality was the morality of the Christian church, which had its own categories of virtues and vices, justified by human belief in God’s will.
- To be a good Christian and therefore a “good person,” you need to be humble, pious, and meek. But to be like this, says Nietzsche, is to accept what he calls a SLAVE MORALITY.
- Is it a bad thing to be an evil person, if to be evil is to be the opposite of humble, meek, and pious?
DAVID HUME (1711–76), as early as 1751 – Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self- denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues . . . are rejected everywhere by men of sense . . . because they serve no manner of purpose. . . . We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the category of vices. . . .
- To put it another way, we can ask whether Christian morality is “fit for purpose.”
- For Nietzsche the key test seems to be whether these values are “life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species- cultivating”
- For Nietzsche it is necessary to replace one set of obsolete values with a more positive set suitable for our time.
- Although in a sense Nietzsche did believe that morality is purely a device used by the weak to curb the strong, his immediate target was the Christian morality of his day.
- Nietzsche’s view seems to be that despite its strong grip on modern life, Christian morality is out of date and now does more harm than good.
- There is a deeper form of morality—the morality of good and bad rather than good and evil—that is not a device used by the weak to curb the strong. Instead, it is a morality the strong can use to assert themselves.
- And that, in turn, may be why many people find Nietzsche’s approach to morality disturbing: his admiration for the small minority of the strong and talented at the expense of “the herd,” the ordinary people, which includes the great majority of us.
- Nietzsche attempts to undermine conventional morality, by the interpretation we have been considering he is not really a moral nihilist, because he seeks to establish a different morality.
INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVISM
INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVISM:
CULTURAL RELATIVISM – Which is the view that morality is relative to each person’s culture.
- One of the difficulties we noted with cultural relativism is that even within a culture, people often disagree deeply about morality.
- That thought might push us into a more individualist direction: There is no general truth about morality, even within a culture.
Rather, in this view, each person’s code of ethics is subjective in the sense of being unique to that person. This position, often called INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVISM.
- Something that many people suspect to be true about morality— especially when they meet and argue with someone who holds a different view.
- When people disagree on an objective matter of fact, at least one of them is wrong.
- Some other issues are purely subjective, where the notion of right and wrong seems out of place.
- The question we face is where morality fits.
The basic issue is whether values are:
OBJECTIVE – There to be discovered.
SUBJECTIVE – Meaning created in some way by us.
- And if we do create them, is this something we do in the context of humanity as a whole, or within each group or culture, or for each of us as an individual?
CULTURAL SUBJECTIVISM – better known as CULTURAL RELATIVISM.
INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVISM
- Our question is whether we should treat disagreement about morality in the way we treat disagreement about basic matters of fact, or in some other way.
- Consider another area of apparent disagreement: two children arguing about whether chocolate or vanilla ice cream is better. One says, “Chocolate is much better than vanilla.” The other says, “You’re wrong; vanilla is so much better than chocolate.”
- She is really reporting, “I prefer the taste of chocolate to vanilla.” Similarly the other child is really saying, “I prefer the taste of vanilla to chocolate.”
- Once these views are restated, something remarkable has happened. There is no disagreement any more. Both statements can be true.
- But when arguing about which is the better flavor, there is a sense in which both children are right and another sense in which neither of them is.
- This proposal for dissolving the disagreement suggests that statements apparently attributing values to objects, such as “Chocolate ice cream is lovely,” really express something about the person making the statement, perhaps “Eating chocolate ice cream gives me great pleasure.” And it is easy to see how to apply this to moral judgments: “Nelson Mandela was a good person” would mean something like “I strongly approve of the character and actions of Nelson Mandela.”
- In this view, moral judgments do state facts, but different facts than we first thought: facts about the person making the judgment rather than about Nelson Mandela.
- Subjectivism has the appeal that it dissolves moral disagreement.
- But this comes at a cost. Are we ready to say that moral disputes are no more important than disputes about the better ice cream, where both parties can state their view and simply move on? In other words, subjectivism dissolves moral problems without resolving them. Is that acceptable?
Expressivism
EXPRESSIVISM – The view that moral judgments state facts about the person making the judgment: the fact that he or she has an attitude of approval. Moral judgments express attitudes without stating that you have them.
- Different form of individual subjectivism known as expressivism
EMOTIVISM or EXPRESSIVISM – The idea that moral statements express our attitudes or our emotions.
- The heart of these views, though, is the claim that saying “Nelson Mandela is a good person” is rather like saying “Nelson Mandela!” in a particular tone of voice that expresses strong approval.
- As in the previous version of subjectivism, this view denies that the judgment says something about Nelson Mandela. But in the expressivist view, it doesn’t literally say anything about the person making the judgment either. What it does is express their attitudes or emotions rather than stating that they have them.
NONCOGNITIVISM – The view that moral judgments express emotions rather than state facts.
COGNITIVISM – Is the view that moral propositions express “genuine” beliefs, that will be true or false, even if it may be difficult to tell which.
- Noncognitivism, naturally, denies that moral propositions express genuine beliefs.
- Rather, they express something about the agent: tastes, preferences, emotions, or something else that is subjective to the person expressing the judgment.
- Cognitivism and noncognitivism are concerned primarily with whether moral statements express genuine beliefs.
- In moral argument we often give reasons for our views.
- And occasionally we convince another to change his or her view, or we even change our own.
- How could that be if the noncognitivist is right, and a moral judgment is a mere expression of an attitude?
A.J. AYER (1910-89) – Prominent expressivist. Pointed out that most moral disagreement concerns background information rather than the judgment itself. Says attitudes don’t change, instead, better input (information or evidence) is provided that allows the person to change their stance so that the additional information can be used to better reflect their existing attitude.
Improving background knowledge—thought—rather than merely changing the judgment.
- Point is that apparent moral disagreement is often a result of one person not having all the facts available and that, once there is agreement on the facts, his or her moral judgment may change.
- Moral judgments have a special role in our lives and conversation.
- We use them to communicate and try to persuade others of our position.
CARLES LESLIE STEVENSON (1908-79) – Moral judgments do not merely express our emotions, but also include the further element that they are an invitation to others to share in them too.
- Making a moral judgment is not the same as cheering your team on, for normally when you make a moral judgment you expect— or at least hope—that other people will see things the way you do.
- By contrast, when you cheer your team you are not trying to change the allegiance of the rival supporters.
- Stevenson adds this element of intended persuasion to his analysis of moral judgments: They are an expression of your emotions, and an invitation to others to adopt the same emotions. This extended form of expressivism fits better with how we use moral language in real life.
- Subjective position?
- It seems to leave morality completely unconstrained.
- It is tempting to say that anyone who has attitudes or emotions that lead them to express approval for racism is simply a bad person. However, on the expressivist view, by saying this I am simply expressing my disapproval of people who state racist views and am encouraging others to disapprove of them too.
- When I say that someone who expresses racist views is acting badly and ought to stop, I take myself to be talking about the racist, not about myself.
- In cases like this it is hard to resist the thought that at least some elements of morality are more objective than the expressivist allows.
Objective Moral Concepts
OBJECTIVE MORAL CONCEPTS:
OBJECTIVIST – Believes that a certain set of practices is the true or correct moral standpoint.
- Some forms of objectivism start by paying close attention to the language we use when we make moral judgments.
- I have used the words good and bad and right and wrong, but it is worth pausing to think about how we tend to praise and criticize people in ordinary life.
- I have used examples such as “Nelson Mandela was a good person,” but when was the last time you said of a man or woman that he or she was good or bad?
- We often use terms like kind, generous, friendly, welcoming, thoughtful, considerate, open, or brave to praise people, and we criticize them with terms like mean, cruel, two-faced, dishonest, or thoughtless.
- Let’s consider the first term in the list—kind. What is it to be kind?
- It must involve taking another person’s feelings or concerns into account and giving the person attention, time, or money without making them feel that you are doing something especially burdensome.
- If someone says that a woman who has just stubbed out her cigarette on your bare arm is kind, something odd has gone on. Perhaps they were being sarcastic. Perhaps there is some complicated story that puts the action in a different light (perhaps they were helping you remove a parasitic insect that had to be burned out). But if nothing like this applies, then it simply seems to be untrue that this is a kind act or a kind person.
- In other words, morality does seem to involve some objective truths, such as this: Stubbing out your cigarette on someone’s bare arm is not kind.
BERNARD WILLIAM (1929-2003)
THIN and THICK ETHICAL CONCEPTS – Thin concepts— such as right, wrong, good, and bad— are called thin because they often seem to do little more than communicate moral approval or disapproval.
- But the concepts of everyday ethics, such as kind, brave, and considerate, are much thicker than this: They also have what is called a descriptive content, as we saw in the example of kind.
- From this it follows that in some circumstances, it is simply false to call someone kind.
- The key point is that the approval or disapproval seems to be connected to the descriptive element: Unless the action meets the conditions for being kind (or for some other positive ethical concept), we will not approve of it. This is why the concept appears to be objective, after all.
- Subjectivists can agree that some moral judgments have a descriptive element as well as an evaluative side.
- But it may be that the descriptive and evaluative aspects could be separated, with moral judgment remaining with the evaluative element.
- The point of this attempted analysis is to be able to insist that morality remains subjective.
- To test this idea, imagine an anthropologist from Mars, where—let us suppose—there is a moral nihilist culture. This anthropologist simply has no moral concepts. Could this visitor to earth write an anthropological report on human practices, pointing out that human beings have the concept “kind” that they use on certain occasions and precisely analyzing its use?
- This should be possible if the descriptive aspect is separable from the evaluative.
- The subjectivist needs to argue that in the thought experiment, the Martian can use the word kind just as we do.
- Objectivity, in this view, attaches to the descriptive part—the part that the Martian grasps—but not to the subjective evaluation, which the Martian does not share or even understand.
- The subjectivist claim comes down to this: It is one thing to be able to identify kind acts, but quite another to know that society approves of them.
- Is this account plausible? Could you really identify kind acts, or brave acts, or generous acts without approving of them?
- Some contemporary philosophers, such as:
JOHN McDOWELL (b.1942) – Have argued that the descriptive and evaluative elements cannot be detached.
- The Martian anthropologist’s task is impossible: You could not identify acts as kind unless you knew that they were the sort of thing that is found valuable.
- This would mean that at least some of our moral concepts are objective: If you are to have the concept “kind,” you must acknowledge that people who are kind are morally good, in that respect at least.
- Others disagree, arguing that you could know what counts as kind without holding any views that are related to morality. This remains an area for debate.
Ethics, Language, Metaphysics, and Epistemology
ETHICS, LANGUAGE, METAPHYSICS, and EPISTEMOLOGY:
ERROR THEORY – The most significant strand of skepticism in the current debate is known as error theory.
J. L. MACKIE (1917-81)** – **ETHICS:INVENTING RIGHT and WRONG (1977):
- He accepts that our ordinary moral language presupposes that values are objective—that in saying “Hitler was evil,” I am attributing an objective value, albeit a strongly negative one, to an object.
- Mackie argues that all statements involving the attribution of objective values to objects are false because, unlike black hair, objective values do not exist.
- In this sense, then, Mackie’s view can be understood as a form of moral nihilism,
ERROR THEORY – Has the consequence that strictly speaking, it is not true that Hitler was evil. But this is not to say that he was a good man, for that would equally be false. Both claims are false because they have a false or erroneous presupposition: that there are objective values. Hence the name error theory.
Argument From Queerness
ARGUMENT FROM QUEERNESS:
PLATO;
- Used the idea of the FORM – Good—the perfect idea of the good
- that we will never encounter in the actual world but that exists in some otherworldly realm.
- The difficulty of making sense of objective values is the basis of Mackie’s argument. He claims, “If there were objective values they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe”
ARGUMENTATIVE QUEERNESS
- Here, the question is essentially “What would an objective value be?” Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
And this argument also raises a question of knowledge: How can we come to know these strange objects?
In the philosophical jargon, questions about how we know things are questions of EPISTEMOLOGY.
- Mackie’s argument also raises an important question of motivation. How can any fact about the world have “BUILT-IN-DONENESS” in the sense that
- My recognition of its existence somehow automatically requires me to pursue it?
- The subjectivist answers the metaphysical question by saying that values are ultimately preferences or emotions that are perfectly ordinary things we encounter in the world.
- And we can know these things in the way we know anything in our own minds, through introspection.
- in the subjectivist view, knowing that something is bad is no more difficult to understand than knowing that being poked with a sharp stick is painful.
- Finally, I am motivated to pursue values because they are my values—my preferences or emotions—rather than something imposed on me by an independent objective reality.
MACKIE’S ARGUMENT:
PREMISE 1: If objective values exist they would have to exist, outside the physical realm, and also have “built-in to-be- doneness.”
PREMISE 2: Nothing can exist, and be both outside the physical realm and also have built-in to-be- doneness inside the physical world.
THEREFORE–
CONCLUSION: Objective values do not exist.
- How do we know Premise 2 is correct?
- One response that Mackie mentions himself is to deny the second premise in the argument above by pointing out that the universe includes many odd things.
- However, anyone responding in this way does have an important challenge to explain what objective values are.
- Do we have to accept Plato’s theory of forms, as just outlined? Or is it possible to build a different form of objectivism.
- In sum, Mackie’s argument does seem to be valid. But its soundness is not so obvious. Each of the premises of the argument can be questioned. I have not shown that they are false, but it is reasonable to say that they are at least controversial.
RESPONDING TO NIHILISM, SUBJECTIVISM, AND ERROR THEORY
RESPONDING TO NIHILISM, SUBJECTIVISM, AND ERROR THEORY:
- Different ways of undercutting objectivism, SUBJECTIVISM
- Seems to preserve the important human freedom of being able to form your own moral views.
- The question is whether anyone, in their heart of hearts, really believes that subjectivism is true. Is it really true that morality allows you to think whatever you want?
- it seems that subjectivism ultimately rests on objectivism: an understanding that some things are good and some are bad, which is why I approve and disapprove of them.
- Objectivism is harder to reject than it may have appeared. But the critics of objectivism can leave us less sure that we know what objectivism is.
Summary
SUMMARY:
- Challenges to conventional views of morality.
NIHILIST VIEW – That there is nothing to morality at all.
NIETZSCHE’S IDEA – That it is necessary to “revalue” our values, as distinct from rejecting all values.
Versions of Individual Subjectivism – The view that morality can be reduced to individual preference.
FORMS OF EXPRESSIVISM – Which claim that moral judgments express attitudes of approval and disapproval, or express our emotions, and invite others to share them.
FORM OF OBJECTIVISM – That claims that when we use objective moral concepts, our moral judgments can be straightforwardly true or false.
MACKIE’S ERROR THEORY – Which states that our ordinary moral judgments are all false because they presuppose the existence of objective values.
- This seems to be a form of nihilism, as discussed earlier in the chapter.
OBJECTIONS TO SUBJECTIVISM – Subjectivist views may be hard to refute, but it is hard to see why we would retain any interest in morality if subjectivism were true.
