Quiop on Good Thoughts

[Quiop]

>"Why would you trust *irresolvably inconsistent* intuitions (/implicit principles) to give you any useful guidance at all?"

I'm not sure I accept the substitution of "implicit principles" for "intuitions." This substitution seems to be smuggling in the assumption that ethical thinking must always be based on some sort of principles, which is precisely what I am questioning here. (I don't think this terminological difference lies at the heart of our disagreement, but it is worth noting in passing.) As for why I should trust them — I don't! But it doesn't really matter. They are going to guide my moral thinking, whether I trust them or not.

> "insist upon solving the inconsistency, and work through which intuitions are least costly to give up"

[I think this is our most important point of disagreement, so I'll address it in a separate comment.]

> "if you're wanting to argue that the kind of systematic theorizing that I'm engaged in is likely to be 'detrimental'."

I should clarify a linguistic ambiguity in my original comment — my intended meaning was "there may be certain situations where commitment to systematicity leads to bad moral thinking", not "it may be the case that thinking systematically is (generally) detrimental to moral thought". I agree completely with your suggestion that the world would be a better place if more people thought about ethics more systematically, and in more explicitly consequentialist terms, than they currently do.