Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:46 pm
If I have Kantianism in mind, I have no idea how it got there. I have an open mind, actually, and I'm trying not to anticipate what your answer might be.
Do you mind me asking if you have any formal education in regards to ethical theory? Kantianism is one of the first two or three systems of ethics one is taught in a basic course, so naturally, I assumed you were probably thinking of Kant.
Logic and rationality are also things that God must have created then, so did he use them to base morality on?
Logic and rationality would, of course, not be properties that would precede the existence of things. They are attributes of arguments and reasoning, and so you would naturally need arguing, reasoning creatures before they would be relevant.
What I am getting at is, is there any line of reasoning by which we can work out what is morally good, or are the specifics of morality like the gender of German nouns, where we have to learn each one individually?
That's a good question, actually. But I think the answer isn't simple.
There are certainly moral principles, meaning precepts that apply to more than one situation. Let's take the 10 Commandments, just because they're a set of moral precepts everybody thinks they already know. "You shall not steal," for example, applies to many situations, even without specifying what is being "stolen." However, there are some moral injunctions that do need to be explicitly instructed. It isn't evident, for example, what principle would generate the item in the 10 Commandments that says, "Remember the Sabbath Day..." The reason for that one only appears much later in the Bible, and isn't generated from a more universal principle. So somebody trying to obey it would have to take it as a given, and perhaps only learn afterward
why it was given.
So the short answer would be that some ethical situations can be deduced from general principles, and some can only be practiced initially by way of command, and the principle behind them follows after.
But it's certainly not the case that current ethical theory has been able to find any universal, impersonal rule for deducing an ethical decision. So Kant's idea that reason would guarantee us the ability to find the right answer to all moral questions has certainly come up dusty; as has Mill's idea of using the axiom that we should maximize pleasure and minimize pain, or Aristotle's /Aquinas's idea that a "golden mean" principle or a set of "virtues" would unlock the right moral answers. Certainly no moral philosopher of any weight today is thinking that such values as "care" or "feelings" are grounds for moral judgments...
The word "ought," which is essentially to all ethics and morality, is actually a contraction of two English words: "owe + it." So when we say that so-and-so "ought" to do something, we mean he "owes it" to do it.
But most people would not know the etymology of "ought", I certainly didn't, so it is hard to see how that is what we mean when we say the word.
Not so hard. I agree that most people are unaware of that etymology, but knowing it shows where the idea has descended from, and what it might imply, if it implies anything at all anymore. And it clearly does: for you can't say "You ought..." to somebody, and not have them ask you, "Why?" (that is, unless you just mean the "ought" of probability, as in, "It
ought to rain tomorrow." That has no tinge of duty in it; but must uses of "ought" do definitely convey to a person that he/she owes some sort of service to somebody else, or some kind of response to a given situation.)
But we can turn the question around on the asker, and as: if "ought" means something different now from "owe-it," what would that thing the word "ought" signals be? If not duty / obligation / necessity / responsibility, then what?
I always thought it had the same meaning as "should", but then "should" probably doesn't mean exactly what I think it means, but I know what I mean by it.
Should is, indeed, a rough synonym. And the common element is that idea it conveys that one has...and here I struggle for a word you wouldn't find troubling...a duty, an obligation, a responsibilty, an indebtedness, a propriety...anyway, something that suggests that the precept in question is
not merely up to one's feelings, but that one "ought" to do it, regardless of how one might temporarily feel, and even if it's difficult to do, and even if it requires a loss or sacrifice of some kind.
When we say, for example, "Parents
should always love their children," we don't mean to say, "
It's likely parents
will all love their children." We certainly don't mean, "It will always be
what they feel like doing, for parents to love their children": in fact, the injunction rather assumes that will NOT be the case -- that there will be moments when the children will tax the parents' ability to love them, but that the parents have an obligation to overcome their momentary feelings and act in love toward them anyway. What we're really trying to say is, "Parents owe (something, somehow) always to love their children."
But what is that
thing that powers the "should," or the "owe" in such a statement?
If it's not the
loveableness of the children, nor the
probability of it happening, then what is it that makes that statement make sense?
Maybe that makes clear what we mean when we say "ought," or "should." We are definitely trying to point to a duty that overrides feelings or circumstantial advantage, and has nothing to do with mere probabilities.
But what are we calling on, in order to justify such a precept? That's the essential question.
