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Lec 5 Chapter 3: Subjectivism. PHIL 2525 Contemporary Moral Issues. Protagoras: Agnostic. "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.
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Lec 5 Chapter 3: Subjectivism PHIL 2525Contemporary Moral Issues
Protagoras: Agnostic • "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.
Protagoras: Moral Skeptic • "Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not"
The main points of Protagoras’ moral skepticism: • There is no ultimate moral truth • Our individual moral views are equally true • The practical benefit of our moral values is more important than their truth • The practical benefit of moral values is a function of social custom rather than nature
William Graham Sumner: • We learn [the morals of our society] as unconsciously as we learn to walk and hear and breathe, and [we] never know any reason why the [morals] are what they are. The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find the facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom and habit.”
David Hume 1711 - 1776 • Simple subjectivism... • ‘morality is a matter of sentiment rather than fact…’ • A sense like our other senses...filtering our experience...
The agent: the person doing (or not doing) the action • The receiver: the person directly affected • The spectator: the person watching and judging
Hume's moral theory: • Agents perform actions. • Receivers experience pleasure or pain. • Spectators sympathetically experience the pleasure or pain. • The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or pain constitutes a moral assessment of the agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait to be a virtue or a vice.
Hume's moral theory: • Agents perform actions. • Receivers experience pleasure or pain. • Spectators sympathetically experience the pleasure or pain. • The moral spectator's sympathetic pleasure or pain constitutes a moral assessment of the agent's character trait, thereby deeming the trait to be a virtue or a vice.
Hume's moral theory: The agent performs an act The receiver either benefits or suffers The spectator judges what he sees • If the spectator approves, the act was moral • If the spectator disapproves, the act was immoral Also important: Moral actions stem from character: • Virtuous • Vicious
Hume: simple subjectivism... • “defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.”
Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: • It cannot account for moral disagreement
Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: • It cannot account for moral disagreement • It implies that we’re always right
Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: • It cannot account for moral disagreement • It implies that we’re always right • It makes morality itself a useless concept
Simple subjectivism seems good and easy and tolerant... But it has traps: • It cannot account for moral disagreement • It implies that we’re always right • It makes morality itself a useless concept • It reduces moral choices to mere likes and dislikes
The Second Stage: Emotivism Emotivist Thesis: • moral judgments -- though they have the surface grammar of statements -- are really disguised commands.
3.5: Rachels responds: Moral judgments must be supported by reasons... • If you like peaches, you don’t have to defend your preference • But if you like torturing cats, you should have a reason
3.5: Rachels’ counterproposal: There are moral facts... • It's a false dichotomy to think • Either there are moral facts in the same way that there are facts about stars and planets • Or else "values" are nothing more than the expression of subjective feelings. Maybe there’s a third way...
3.5: Rachels "Moral truths are truths of reason: • that is...a moral judgment is true if it is backed by better reasons than the alternatives." P 45
Conventional ethical relativism • If we are all our own moral arbiters, how can there be any ‘morality’? • Conventionalism tries to blunt the harshness of that by requiring ‘social acceptance’
Traps here also... • Hitler had social acceptance for his invasion of Poland • George Bush had social acceptance for his invasion of Iraq
Rachels conclusion... • moral thinking and moral conduct are a matter of weighing reasons and being guided by them • in focusing on attitudes and feelings, Ethical Subjectivism seems to be going in the wrong direction
Leopold and Loeb 1924 • Clarence Darrow for the defence
