Philosophy Now Forum

Richard Garner says it’s about time we got rid of it.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Mora ... l_Delusion

An interesting article.

Two minor points though:

Garner writes that "Our daily kindnesses to strangers are rarely returned, nor do we expect them to be; nevertheless we continue." If this is true then the kindness cannot be that widespread as we would all be on the receiving end as well as giving.

He also writes "Why not allow decisions about abortion and euthanasia, for example, to be made by those directly involved and their relatives, with the advice of medical workers? Where do we get the idea that it is up to us to interject (erroneous) moral beliefs and biases into these difficult and painful deliberations; and why would we ever want to put these decisions into the hands of priests, politicians, or profiteers?" A good point but he seems to be missing the point of the anti-abortionist that the entity most directly involved, the foetus, is unable to participate in the decision making process so the anti-abortionist uses that to justify their own insertion into the argument.

John wrote:An interesting article.

Two minor points though:

Garner writes that "Our daily kindnesses to strangers are rarely returned, nor do we expect them to be; nevertheless we continue." If this is true then the kindness cannot be that widespread as we would all be on the receiving end as well as giving.

He also writes "Why not allow decisions about abortion and euthanasia, for example, to be made by those directly involved and their relatives, with the advice of medical workers? Where do we get the idea that it is up to us to interject (erroneous) moral beliefs and biases into these difficult and painful deliberations; and why would we ever want to put these decisions into the hands of priests, politicians, or profiteers?" A good point but he seems to be missing the point of the anti-abortionist that the entity most directly involved, the foetus, is unable to participate in the decision making process so the anti-abortionist uses that to justify their own insertion into the argument.

Not to mention the problem of figuring out who is involved. Should potential grandparents have a say? How do weigh their opinions, or how do they decide how to weight them, including the unborn baby? And,. what if they cannot reach an agreement? Then what?

Looks like nobody has commented on this article in a while.

Just wanted to say I am in general agreement with Garner on many points except that I think the error at the root of morality is that moral terms, in moral use, denote anything at all.

Given that they don't, apparently normal declarative sentences in which such terms occur in moral use like "Eating asparagus with snails is morally wrong" express no propositions and have no truth values, much like "eating asparagus with snails is taboo."

The same is true, and for the same reason, of sentences like "We have a duty to obey legitimate political authorities," "We have a moral duty to do anything it would be morally wrong for us to omit," or "It is untrue that if God is dead everything is permitted."

But those suffering from the errors of morality think moral terms in moral use denote special, specifically moral properties and that such sentences have a truth value, express moral propositions that if true are moral facts, and may express very weighty if not perhaps in all cases overriding considerations or reasons for or against the relevant sorts of action.

Typically, they also believe of numerous such sentences that in fact they are true and of others that they are in fact false, and it is these beliefs about sentences that comprise the content of their consciences, the catalog of their moral beliefs.

The rest is easy enough to work out from there.

Philo Vaihinger

philovaihinger@gmail.com

http://skepticamongbelievers.blogspot.com/