As to why we pick the logic we do, it is akin to why we pick the mathematics we do in physics – based upon our inductive understanding of the phenomena, our abductive guesses at best explanation, and our testing of the same to see if our ideas hold. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. One can look at the switch from classical physics to quantum mechanics as a switch between logics.

I anticipated your response in #17 and provided a follow up point about logic in my last paragraph of #12. I am interested if you would respond similarly to that point.

But that’s not an intuition. Further I don’t believe in “sense data” the way you seem to be using it. (Sorry, there are technical reasons for this – those who talk about sense data like that are called Empiricists and there are lots of philosophical problems with thinking about things in that way, not the least of which being the nature of what “sense data” is)

Certainly I experience a phenomena of the keyboard, my typing and so forth. But the phenomena of how good and evil are presented to me seem a bit different. Further, when philosophers talk about intuitions they tend to be contrived examples where they ask for people’s judgments about the thought experiment. These judgments are taken to be the intuition. I tend to distrust such things.

I don’t have any eliminatist views that I’m aware of in this regard. However simultaneously I’m rather skeptical about attempts to capture in a totality of definitional views. So while I’m quite sympathetic to loosely consequentialist approaches to Ethics I’m rather doubtful of any ability to define the good in terms of any totality of things or their definite properties.

Put an other way, my view of The Good is that it is real but beyond definition.

Clark, I have a similar question. You appear to me to take the position that the sole basis for any moral belief, or even the belief that we have any moral obligations at all, is intution. Yet intutions are unreliable and not a good guide to the truth of the matter. It seems to me to follow that you don’t believe we have a good basis either for moral judgments or even believing that there is such a thing as moral or ethical obligations at all. Is that you rather eliminativist view?

I have been avoiding dealing with specific consequentialist theories (e.g. utilitarianism) in an effort to hash out some of the issues surrounding consequentialism itself, but the points you raise are good ones, as is to be expected. I won’t (can’t) take on your larger challenge head on here.

But, when you say all these emotions are good in their proper context, it seems you are explicitely not saying that they are all good, per se. It seems that the “proper context” for which sorrow becomes a good is the context in which it is necessary for the realization of happiness or of greater happiness. No? If so, then the argument for proper context might very well point to the view you see as overly simplistic.

I started to respond to your argument about Bentham, but then deleted my response in favor of thinking about it some more.

Your 1. is just the sort of thing I mean when I say we lack perspective, so I agree with your direction on that.

As to 2., I think it does make a difference because this plays directly into our notion of justice. So, for the purpose of the example, it is important that he not volunteer. (If he volunteers it does not isolate the problem that the moral dilemma is working hard to isolate.)

I always have some trepidation when exchanging comments about philosophy with you, Blake, and Jeff, since I, by comparison, have read nothing. So, I allow for the possibility that you may mean something more subtle or nuanced in your language than I am getting from it.

That said, your complaint in #1 seemed to be that at the root of ethical discussions like this one are judgments which have no basis other than the way it strikes us. These “intuitions” are the ultimate ground for the whole discussion, and yet, as you say, sometimes we want to question those intuitions, so how can we do that without sawing off the branch upon which we sit. Is that what you meant?

If so, that seems very parallel to the problems we have with epistemology and even rationality itself. When you see the keyboard in front of you and reason that it is where it appears to be, you base this on the way the immediate sense data strikes you. If I suggest that there is no keyboard, that you are in the matrix, to what can you appeal which does not rely wholly on the way things strike you?

Now, perhaps you will argue that sense data is different than intuitions about morality. Perhaps a better analogy is to our intuitions about logic? Upon what grounds do we hold the law of non-contradiction but an intuition about its truth? Certainly, there have been plenty of people who have denied its veracity, and upon what grounds do we have to argue with them other than that our intuition about logic? And yet, despite the fact that the whole thing rests on our intutions about logic, we still have plenty of opportunities to question other logical intuitions and judge some of our logical intuitions to be ultimately illogical. Seems very analogous to me.

Anyway, that is the sort of angle I had in mind.

I have seen such accounts, but I do not see them as arguments. They simply show how all good could possibly reduce to pain, pleasure, happiness, etc. In this I am greatly influenced by Moore and his arguments against analytic naturalism as it applies to ethics. I must confess that I am not terribly familiar with any arguments which have come after Moore. (That should all change for me next quarter.)

I also see most of these accounts as having overly simplistic conceptions of emotional experience. As if some experience only contain one judgment (good/bad) and that such judgments could some how be tallied in any meaningful way. Pain is a good thing in its proper context, as is anger, sorrow and pretty much any other emotion we can think of (except perhaps envy).

As to norms being exceptional, how about this:
Violating somebodies rights sometimes is the moral thing to do. However, not believing this fact is the moral thing to do. Thus, sometimes it is moral to believe false things. Perhaps, then, rights-talk could reduce to the good which is produced by our not violating them, but in our believing them to be inviolable.

If some account like this is not possible, then I see no way of escaping Bentham’s depiction of rights.

1. Man doesn’t know if he is damning the Miser or Saving him by killing him at instance X, God (as set up in this story) does know the fate of the man post mortally. God is thus able to allow the man’s death while man is not able.

2. If the Miser asked to be killed and asked to have his organs used, would it make a difference?