I donât see how something like morality could be objective. I canât imagine what it would look like for someone to convince someone else that an action was wrong, for a reason that isnât stance-dependent to them (i.e. a reason they donât already find at least partially compelling).
When I was reading much more about this, this made me sympathetic to something like Sharon Streetâs humean constructivism. In short (and from memory) itâs the view that we canât avoid feeling reasons for actions (if you see a truck driving towards a child for example, you feel a reason to help them), and also that we want consistency. So morality is just kind of there in our responses to the world, and the work of figuring out what is right is the work of reasoning about the reasons we feel to make them more consistent.
This does lead to the idea that you canât say âyouâre wrongâ to an âideally coherent caligulaâ i.e. someone who took themselves as having reasons to torture for fun, and in fact were correct about thatâin other words, on reflection they would indeed still have reasons to torture. I think this would appear pretty gross to Benthamâs Bulldog, but I bite the bullet. I donât think you can honestly say the ideally coherent caligula is âwrongâ, but you can obviously say âweâre locking you upâ.
Iâm a little reluctant even to accept this account though, because Iâm not sure whether I fully accept that I take myself as having âreasonsâ to act when I respond to specific circumstances. This is clearly the part of the argument where the more cognitivist elements are smuggled in, and I donât know whether I agree with that smuggling.
I donât see how something like morality could be objective. I canât imagine what it would look like for someone to convince someone else that an action was wrong, for a reason that isnât stance-dependent to them (i.e. a reason they donât already find at least partially compelling).
When I was reading much more about this, this made me sympathetic to something like Sharon Streetâs humean constructivism. In short (and from memory) itâs the view that we canât avoid feeling reasons for actions (if you see a truck driving towards a child for example, you feel a reason to help them), and also that we want consistency. So morality is just kind of there in our responses to the world, and the work of figuring out what is right is the work of reasoning about the reasons we feel to make them more consistent.
This does lead to the idea that you canât say âyouâre wrongâ to an âideally coherent caligulaâ i.e. someone who took themselves as having reasons to torture for fun, and in fact were correct about thatâin other words, on reflection they would indeed still have reasons to torture. I think this would appear pretty gross to Benthamâs Bulldog, but I bite the bullet. I donât think you can honestly say the ideally coherent caligula is âwrongâ, but you can obviously say âweâre locking you upâ.
Iâm a little reluctant even to accept this account though, because Iâm not sure whether I fully accept that I take myself as having âreasonsâ to act when I respond to specific circumstances. This is clearly the part of the argument where the more cognitivist elements are smuggled in, and I donât know whether I agree with that smuggling.