Ethics will always boil down to some sort of subjective, unfalsifiable judgments. That’s the nature of a judgment. However, we can take steps to make sure that the particular evidence on which be base those judgments is firmly grounded in objective reality, universal and accessible to all. I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make here.
Even taking that premise as given though - that ethical judgments ought to be objective, universally accessible etc - I guess I don’t see how that drives you to consequentialism. Presumably I could be a good little Kantian and still be just as attentive as the utilitarian to whatever the particular facts of a case happen to be, just as commited to objectivity, universality etc. I’d just be drawing different conclusions.
I’m missing the connection between consequentialism and epistemic virtue that you’re drawing.
The Kantian bases their ethical judgments on a categorical imperative that exists priori to experience. So yes, a good little Kantian might pay very close attention to the details and facts of reality. However, the criterion off of which they make their moral claims and judgments is not based off of such details and facts. The consequentialist, on the other hand, makes ethical judgments that are causally related to their observations. Deontological judgments are based on a priori criterion, while the consequentialists are based on a posteriori criterion. Therefore consequentialist ethics are causally related to some degree to reality. Not so of deontology.
I simply don’t see how the view that, “Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may always say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done,” or something similar is necessarily based on experience. Bentham, the author of those words and somebody I take to be paradigmatic consequentialist, certainly doesn’t seem to think they are. He continues:
One may say also, that it is right it should be done; at least that it is not wrong it should be done: that it is a right action; at least that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and wrong and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none… Has the rectitude of this principle been ever formally contested? It should seem that it had, by those who have not known what they have been meaning. Is it susceptible of any direct proof? it should seem not: for that which is used to prove every thing else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it is needless.
The argument here is that words like “ought” and “right” are meaningless if construed in any way other than Bentham’s. That sounds like an a priori justification to me. Which is not to say that you couldn’t have an a posteriori justification for a consequentialist ethics. But my relatively narrow point is just that there’s no special reason that your epistemic commitment to empiricism or whatever should be pushing you in this ethical direction as opposed to any other. One’s attentiveness to the particulars of a given ethical dilemma has little to do with whether or not one thinks the Principle of Utility or the Categorical Imperative ought to be the criterion on the basis of which they make ethical judgments.
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interruptions reblogged this from logicallypositive and added:
I simply don’t see how the view that, “Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may always say...
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logicallypositive reblogged this from interruptions and added:
The Kantian bases their ethical judgments on a categorical imperative that exists priori to experience. So yes, a good...
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