If *a lot* here depends on substantive judgement calls in reflective equilibrium, isn't calling the arguments all terrible too strong? I would hope whatever standard you use for deciding whether an argument was terrible wouldn’t depend much on substantive judgement calls. I think all choices of formal grounds require substantive judgemen…
If *a lot* here depends on substantive judgement calls in reflective equilibrium, isn't calling the arguments all terrible too strong? I would hope whatever standard you use for deciding whether an argument was terrible wouldn’t depend much on substantive judgement calls. I think all choices of formal grounds require substantive judgement calls, too, but typically much less controversial ones, so I also agree this is at least somewhat unavoidable, but I think the lines you're drawing probably are pretty controversial. That pain is inherently bad, or at least not inherently good, seems far more straightforward and far less controversial.
I think one of the problems is that the argument you ultimately fall back on is to basically just assert lives can have positive value, which I'd guess is ~totally unpersuasive to almost anyone sympathetic to person-affecting views who has thought much at all about them. It's obvious that they’d be denying this or something similar. I think if I judged by standards like you do, I'd consider this a terrible argument, because to me it's obviously silly to say that we have reason to create people for their own sake, and that misses the point of ethics.
You're free to consider my arguments terrible! It's a judgment call. (If you think what I'm saying is "obviously silly", all things considered, then that sounds a lot like "terrible" to me.)
As I've tried to stress, this sort of substantive judgment differs importantly from purely academic assessments. Many substantively terrible arguments can still contain valuable philosophical insights that make them worth publishing in academic journals, discussing seriously in philosophy seminars, etc. Here I'm just talking about what I think people should actually *believe* at the end of the day. But I freely admit that it's all contestable -- like the existence of the external world, and literally everything else in philosophy.
If *a lot* here depends on substantive judgement calls in reflective equilibrium, isn't calling the arguments all terrible too strong? I would hope whatever standard you use for deciding whether an argument was terrible wouldn’t depend much on substantive judgement calls. I think all choices of formal grounds require substantive judgement calls, too, but typically much less controversial ones, so I also agree this is at least somewhat unavoidable, but I think the lines you're drawing probably are pretty controversial. That pain is inherently bad, or at least not inherently good, seems far more straightforward and far less controversial.
I think one of the problems is that the argument you ultimately fall back on is to basically just assert lives can have positive value, which I'd guess is ~totally unpersuasive to almost anyone sympathetic to person-affecting views who has thought much at all about them. It's obvious that they’d be denying this or something similar. I think if I judged by standards like you do, I'd consider this a terrible argument, because to me it's obviously silly to say that we have reason to create people for their own sake, and that misses the point of ethics.
You're free to consider my arguments terrible! It's a judgment call. (If you think what I'm saying is "obviously silly", all things considered, then that sounds a lot like "terrible" to me.)
As I've tried to stress, this sort of substantive judgment differs importantly from purely academic assessments. Many substantively terrible arguments can still contain valuable philosophical insights that make them worth publishing in academic journals, discussing seriously in philosophy seminars, etc. Here I'm just talking about what I think people should actually *believe* at the end of the day. But I freely admit that it's all contestable -- like the existence of the external world, and literally everything else in philosophy.