ESTABLISHMENT OF ETHICAL OR MORAL TRUTHS IS IMPOSSIBLE

ESTABLISHMENT OF ETHICAL OR MORAL TRUTHS IS IMPOSSIBLE

1. MORALS ARE INTUITIVE

Quentin Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, 1986, http://www.qsmithwmu.com/ethical_and_religious_thought_in_analytic_philosophy_of_language_contents_page.htm , Accessed June 1, 2003 p-np.

Perhaps a suggestion by H. A. Prichard might solve this problem and provide us with the absolute justifications that are needed. Prichard is the second most influential ethical philosopher among the logical realists (after Moore), primarily owing to his classic article “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” published in 1912. Prichard argues that moral philosophy rests on a mistake because it assumes that there needs to be a proof that we ought to do what in our nonreflective ethical consciousness we immediately apprehend as our obligations. There needs to be no proof, Prichard contends, because our nonreflective ethical consciousness is an intuitive knowledge of self-evident obligations.

Quentin Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, 1986, http://www.qsmithwmu.com/ethical_and_religious_thought_in_analytic_philosophy_of_language_contents_page.htm , Accessed June 1, 2003 p-np.

Prichard responds to the objection that “obligation cannot be self-evident, since many actions regarded as obligations by some are not so regarded by others,” by asserting that “the appreciation of an obligation is, of course, only possible for a developed moral being, and ... different degrees of development are possible.”^[19] But this brief response won’t do because it involves a vicious circularity. How do we know which persons are more morally developed than others? Is the person who intuits capital punishment to be immoral more morally developed than the person who intuits it to be morally permissible in some cases? How can we decide without knowing which intuitions are true? It seems we have a vicious circle: the criterion for determining which of two conflicting moral intuitions is true is that the intuition held by the more morally developed person is true, but the criterion for determining which of the two persons is morally developed is that the more morally developed one is the person with the true intuition. It does not appear, then, that Prichard has offered us a means of solving the problem of conflicting intuitions.
3. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH THE TRUTH OF VALUES

Quentin Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, 1986, http://www.qsmithwmu.com/ethical_and_religious_thought_in_analytic_philosophy_of_language_contents_page.htm , Accessed June 1, 2003 p-np.

The above considerations about the unknowability of ethical truths suggest that human life is objectively meaningful but absurd. Human life is objectively meaningful because there is a good in itself, and some of our beliefs about the good in itself are true, but human life is absurd because we cannot know which of our beliefs are true. This conclusion hinges in part upon the definition of “absurdity.” Generally speaking, something is absurd if it is grossly disproportionate with what it is supposed to be, such that this disproportionateness renders the thing or activity clearly contrary to reason. The notion of absurdity as applied to human life implies that human life is grossly disproportionate (in a way that is clearly contrary to reason) to what it is supposed to be. There are at least two ways that human life can be absurd, namely, through being objectively meaningless and absurd or through being objectively meaningful and absurd. In the philosophical literature, only the first sort of absurdity has been discussed, for example, by Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel. I shall illustrate the first sort of absurdity in terms of Nagel’s theory because he discusses a specifically ethical sort of absurdity, and this is directly relevant to our present concerns (Camus’s theory is of a religious absurdity). I shall then explore the meaningful absurdity that is arguably implied by the logical realist ethical philosophy.

GOOD MOTIVE DOESN’T IMPLY GOOD MORALITY

1. IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE MOTIVE

Hans J. Morgenthau, Political Scientist, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND PEACE, 1978, p. 4.

To search for the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both futile and deceptive. It is futile because motives are the most illusive of psychological data, distorted as they are, frequently beyond recognition, by the interests and emotions of actor and observer alike. Do we really know what our own motives are? And what do we know of the motives of others?

Hans J. Morgenthau, Political Scientist, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND PEACE, 1978, p. 12.

Yet even if we had access to the real motives of statesmen, that knowledge would help us little in understanding foreign policies, and might well lead us astray. It is true that the knowledge of the statesman's motives may give us one among many clues as to what the direction of his foreign policy might be. It cannot give us, however, the one clue by which to predict his foreign policies. History shows no exact and necessary correlation between the quality of motives and the quality of foreign policy. This is true in both moral and political terms. We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a statesman that his foreign policies will be either morally praiseworthy or politically successful. Judging his motives, we can say that he will not intentionally pursue policies that are morally wrong, but we can say nothing about the probability of their success. If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know them, not his motives. How often have statesmen been motivated by the desire to improve the world, and ended by making it worse? And how often have they sought one goal, and ended by achieving something they neither expected nor desired?