I had been accepted to study for a PhD on the implications of Wittgensteinian meta-philosophy for ethics.
Well, I for one, would’ve liked to have read the thesis! Wonderful, I suppose then most of my background talk was redundant. When it comes to mathematics, I found the arguments in Kripke’s ‘Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language’ quite convincing. I would love to see someone do an in depth translation applying everything Kripke says about arithmetic to total utilitarianism. I think this would be quite useful, and perhaps work well with my ideas here.
Yes, I agree that what I’ve been doing looks a lot like language policing, so let me clarify. Rather than claiming talk of population ethics etc. is invalid or incoherent, it would be more accurate to say I see it as apparently baseless and that I do not fully understand the connection with our other uses of moral language. When others choose to extend their moral language to population ethics, their language is likely coherent within their community. Probably, they have found a group within which they share similar inductive bias which endows their novel uses of moral language with reference. However, insofar as they expect me to follow along with this extension (indeed insofar as they expect their conclusions about population ethics to have force for non-population-ethicists) they must explain how their extension of moral language follows from our shared ostensive basis for moral language and our shared inductive biases. My arguments have attempted to show that our shared ostensive basis for moral language does not straight-forwardly support talk of population ethics, because such talk does not share the same basis in negatively/positively valenced emotions.
Put in more Wittgensteinian terms, population ethics language bears a family resemblance to our more mundane use of moral language, but it does not share the universal motivating force provided by our common emotional reactions to e.g. a hit a to the head. Of course, probably, some philosophers react viscerally and emotionally to talk of the repugnant conclusion. In that case, for them the repugnant conclusion carries some force that it does not for others. So to return to the policing question, I am not policing insofar as I agree that their language is meaningful and provides insight to their community. Claims like “Total utilitarianism better captures our population ethics intuitions than …” can be true or false. However, any move to then say “Your use of moral language should be replaced by uses which agree with our population ethics intuitions” seems baseless and perhaps could be described as an act of policing on the part of the speaker.
>When it comes to mathematics, I found the arguments in Kripke’s ‘Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language’ quite convincing. I would love to see someone do an in depth translation applying everything Kripke says about arithmetic to total utilitarianism. I think this would be quite useful, and perhaps work well with my ideas here.
That makes sense. I personally think that “Kripkenstein’s” views are quite different from Wittgenstein’s own views on mathematics.
It seems there’s a bit of a disanalogy between the case of simple addition and the case of moral language. In the case of addition we observe widespread consensus (no-one feels any inclination to start using quus for whatever reason). Conversely it seems to me that moral discourse is characterised by widespread disagreement i.e. we can sensibly disagree about whether it’s right or wrong to torture, whether it’s right or wrong for a wrongdoer to suffer, whether it’s good to experience pleasure if it’s unjustly earned and so on. This suggests to me that moral terms aren’t defined by reference to certain concrete things we agree are good.
>Yes, I agree that what I’ve been doing looks a lot like language policing, so let me clarify. Rather than claiming talk of population ethics etc. is invalid or incoherent, it would be more accurate to say I see it as apparently baseless and that I do not fully understand the connection with our other uses of moral language… insofar as they expect me to follow along with this extension (indeed insofar as they expect their conclusions about population ethics to have force for non-population-ethicists) they must explain how their extension of moral language follows from our shared ostensive basis for moral language and our shared inductive biases. My arguments have attempted to show that our shared ostensive basis for moral language does not straight-forwardly support talk of population ethics, because such talk does not share the same basis in negatively/positively valenced emotions.
OK so it sounds like the core issue here is the question of whether moral terms are defined at their core by reference to valenced emotions then, which I’ll continue discussing in the other thread.
Well, I for one, would’ve liked to have read the thesis! Wonderful, I suppose then most of my background talk was redundant. When it comes to mathematics, I found the arguments in Kripke’s ‘Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language’ quite convincing. I would love to see someone do an in depth translation applying everything Kripke says about arithmetic to total utilitarianism. I think this would be quite useful, and perhaps work well with my ideas here.
Yes, I agree that what I’ve been doing looks a lot like language policing, so let me clarify. Rather than claiming talk of population ethics etc. is invalid or incoherent, it would be more accurate to say I see it as apparently baseless and that I do not fully understand the connection with our other uses of moral language. When others choose to extend their moral language to population ethics, their language is likely coherent within their community. Probably, they have found a group within which they share similar inductive bias which endows their novel uses of moral language with reference. However, insofar as they expect me to follow along with this extension (indeed insofar as they expect their conclusions about population ethics to have force for non-population-ethicists) they must explain how their extension of moral language follows from our shared ostensive basis for moral language and our shared inductive biases. My arguments have attempted to show that our shared ostensive basis for moral language does not straight-forwardly support talk of population ethics, because such talk does not share the same basis in negatively/positively valenced emotions.
Put in more Wittgensteinian terms, population ethics language bears a family resemblance to our more mundane use of moral language, but it does not share the universal motivating force provided by our common emotional reactions to e.g. a hit a to the head. Of course, probably, some philosophers react viscerally and emotionally to talk of the repugnant conclusion. In that case, for them the repugnant conclusion carries some force that it does not for others. So to return to the policing question, I am not policing insofar as I agree that their language is meaningful and provides insight to their community. Claims like “Total utilitarianism better captures our population ethics intuitions than …” can be true or false. However, any move to then say “Your use of moral language should be replaced by uses which agree with our population ethics intuitions” seems baseless and perhaps could be described as an act of policing on the part of the speaker.
>When it comes to mathematics, I found the arguments in Kripke’s ‘Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language’ quite convincing. I would love to see someone do an in depth translation applying everything Kripke says about arithmetic to total utilitarianism. I think this would be quite useful, and perhaps work well with my ideas here.
That makes sense. I personally think that “Kripkenstein’s” views are quite different from Wittgenstein’s own views on mathematics.
It seems there’s a bit of a disanalogy between the case of simple addition and the case of moral language. In the case of addition we observe widespread consensus (no-one feels any inclination to start using quus for whatever reason). Conversely it seems to me that moral discourse is characterised by widespread disagreement i.e. we can sensibly disagree about whether it’s right or wrong to torture, whether it’s right or wrong for a wrongdoer to suffer, whether it’s good to experience pleasure if it’s unjustly earned and so on. This suggests to me that moral terms aren’t defined by reference to certain concrete things we agree are good.
>Yes, I agree that what I’ve been doing looks a lot like language policing, so let me clarify. Rather than claiming talk of population ethics etc. is invalid or incoherent, it would be more accurate to say I see it as apparently baseless and that I do not fully understand the connection with our other uses of moral language… insofar as they expect me to follow along with this extension (indeed insofar as they expect their conclusions about population ethics to have force for non-population-ethicists) they must explain how their extension of moral language follows from our shared ostensive basis for moral language and our shared inductive biases. My arguments have attempted to show that our shared ostensive basis for moral language does not straight-forwardly support talk of population ethics, because such talk does not share the same basis in negatively/positively valenced emotions.
OK so it sounds like the core issue here is the question of whether moral terms are defined at their core by reference to valenced emotions then, which I’ll continue discussing in the other thread.