Originally posted by Jim B.
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Don't you see how this point directly contradicts ethical subjectivism? If you can conclude that your subjective moral beliefs and desires are 'mistaken' and can be overriden by criteria of reason and rationality, then your subjective moral beliefs and desires are not always the ultimate arbiters of your moral actions. Unless you maintain that reason and rationality are 'rooted in' your subjective opinions, beliefs, and desires, but then you'd have to say that the same is true of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists, in which case ALL knowledge is 'rooted in,' ie 'begins in' subjective experience, but that trivial point does not establish that all knowledge is therefore subjective in nature.
Yes, but this is the very point I'm making and the point you're apparently missing.
The argument has to do with intra-subjective wrongness, about assessing oneself as being wrong.
We've gone over this before. Ethical subjectivism is about moral deliberation and principles, about beliefs and desires, not about failing to live up to our principles.
The point though is that morality is not a good fit for this kind of understanding of moral deliberation which is based off of one's current mental state. Your own explanation of it, above, where you talk about being mistaken in your moral beliefs in light of reason and rationality, points up the problem with such a simple mechanistic, atomisitic model of deliberation. The fact that it doesn't fit does NOT depend upon an objectivist assumption, as you yourself attest to, above, but is evidenced by "morality talk" of any and every variety. There is ineliminable moral talk by people about actually really being mistaken in their own moral beliefs and really having moral disagreements.
The problem is not that it cannot be objective but that it cannot fit with the concept of "morality" as you yourself have shown above.
I am not saying, as much as you'd like me to be saying it, that it can;t be subjective because then it wouldn't be objective. What I am saying is that subjectivism, in order to be coherent, would require a sweeping revisionism of the entire concept of morality which you yourself are not capable or willing to undertake.
"Having an itch," like my moral beliefs and desires, is a subjective, not an objective, reality. I have privileged access to the itch that no one else has. Unless I am deluded, I cannot be wrong that I have an itch or that I had an itch one minute ago. Unless I am deluded, I cannot be wrong about my current moral beliefs and desires or about the moral beliefs and desires I had an hour ago. If I am accurate in my knowledge, such knowledge, in either the case of the itch or the beliefs and desires, cannot be wrong. The nature of the knowledge is secondary. The inccorigible nature of either kind of knowledge was the point.
You actually make my point in mentioning that with my moral mental state, it is implicated in thoughts, ideas, opinions, and I would add in reasons, unlike the itch, all of which are trans-temporal in nature, which makes the idea of their being 'rooted in' one immediate, more or less arbitrarily chosen, occurrent mental state quite adsurd.
Yes, but this is the very point I'm making and the point you're apparently missing.
The argument has to do with intra-subjective wrongness, about assessing oneself as being wrong.
We've gone over this before. Ethical subjectivism is about moral deliberation and principles, about beliefs and desires, not about failing to live up to our principles.
The point though is that morality is not a good fit for this kind of understanding of moral deliberation which is based off of one's current mental state. Your own explanation of it, above, where you talk about being mistaken in your moral beliefs in light of reason and rationality, points up the problem with such a simple mechanistic, atomisitic model of deliberation. The fact that it doesn't fit does NOT depend upon an objectivist assumption, as you yourself attest to, above, but is evidenced by "morality talk" of any and every variety. There is ineliminable moral talk by people about actually really being mistaken in their own moral beliefs and really having moral disagreements.
The problem is not that it cannot be objective but that it cannot fit with the concept of "morality" as you yourself have shown above.
I am not saying, as much as you'd like me to be saying it, that it can;t be subjective because then it wouldn't be objective. What I am saying is that subjectivism, in order to be coherent, would require a sweeping revisionism of the entire concept of morality which you yourself are not capable or willing to undertake.
"Having an itch," like my moral beliefs and desires, is a subjective, not an objective, reality. I have privileged access to the itch that no one else has. Unless I am deluded, I cannot be wrong that I have an itch or that I had an itch one minute ago. Unless I am deluded, I cannot be wrong about my current moral beliefs and desires or about the moral beliefs and desires I had an hour ago. If I am accurate in my knowledge, such knowledge, in either the case of the itch or the beliefs and desires, cannot be wrong. The nature of the knowledge is secondary. The inccorigible nature of either kind of knowledge was the point.
You actually make my point in mentioning that with my moral mental state, it is implicated in thoughts, ideas, opinions, and I would add in reasons, unlike the itch, all of which are trans-temporal in nature, which makes the idea of their being 'rooted in' one immediate, more or less arbitrarily chosen, occurrent mental state quite adsurd.
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