> once we settle on a general ethical theory that seems “principled” or inherently plausible, I’m not inclined to expect any further explanation of why that moral theory is the true one. How about you?
My quick take: (some) higher-order moral theories "are climbing the same mountain on different sides." Of course we should do the best thi…
> once we settle on a general ethical theory that seems “principled” or inherently plausible, I’m not inclined to expect any further explanation of why that moral theory is the true one. How about you?
My quick take: (some) higher-order moral theories "are climbing the same mountain on different sides." Of course we should do the best thing and follow the ideal-contractualist thing and follow the end-of-ideal-inquiry thing; at a high level all of these must be valid paths. No one of them is the true one.
It's plausible that, at a suitably high level of abstraction, the different "paths" can be understood in such a way as will result in convergence. (This is especially so if we reinterpret the various procedural methods as building in that *independently true* moral beliefs are more ideal! That's not usually how they are intended, though.)
But there's a real question which (if any) higher-order property does genuine explanatory work. I'd be surprised if they *all* do. It would be interesting to read a sustained defense of that idea though. (Parfit's convergence-seeking project always seemed misguided to me for this reason. He didn't attend enough to the explanatory question to even bother defending the view that each side of the moral mountain was *equally* responsible for holding up the peak.)
> once we settle on a general ethical theory that seems “principled” or inherently plausible, I’m not inclined to expect any further explanation of why that moral theory is the true one. How about you?
My quick take: (some) higher-order moral theories "are climbing the same mountain on different sides." Of course we should do the best thing and follow the ideal-contractualist thing and follow the end-of-ideal-inquiry thing; at a high level all of these must be valid paths. No one of them is the true one.
It's plausible that, at a suitably high level of abstraction, the different "paths" can be understood in such a way as will result in convergence. (This is especially so if we reinterpret the various procedural methods as building in that *independently true* moral beliefs are more ideal! That's not usually how they are intended, though.)
But there's a real question which (if any) higher-order property does genuine explanatory work. I'd be surprised if they *all* do. It would be interesting to read a sustained defense of that idea though. (Parfit's convergence-seeking project always seemed misguided to me for this reason. He didn't attend enough to the explanatory question to even bother defending the view that each side of the moral mountain was *equally* responsible for holding up the peak.)