Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Why should we believe that unrestricted free speech results in the triumph of the... best? most truthful?... opinions? Science, thank goodness, never adopted Mill's speculative view: science ruthlessly winnows out bad papers, bad experiments, and bad theories, giving them the least exposure possible -- perhaps just an editor, perhaps an editor and two referees -- so that only better science gets published. (Of course, mistakes are made! But the system largely works.) So in morals, why should we expect free speech to produce good results? In fact, I claim that in morals have excellent reason to think it will produce degeneracy: after all, who doesn't like to be told that those vices they want to indulge in really are virtues? Does someone think "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" won out because it was the best advice, or because it panders to what we are inclined to do anyway?

"For the subsequent history of moral philosophy has been a history of ramifying disagreement in which all of [Henry] Sidgwick 's attempted reconciliations of hitherto warring post-Enlightenment points of view into a synthesis -- which was itself intended to foreshadow a coming convergence of an even more complete kind -- I have been dissolved into new and multifarious conflicts. Universalizability theorists, utilitarians, existentialists, contractarians, those who assert the possibility of deriving morality from rational self-interest and those who deny it, those who uphold the overriding character of an interpersonal standpoint and those who insist upon the prerogatives of the self, disagree not only with each other but among themselves, and the certitude of those who maintain each point of view is matched only by their inability to produce rational arguments capable of securing agreement from their adversaries. Thus post-Sidgwickian moral philosophy, judged by the standards...

Deontology and utilitarianism are both abstract conceptions of ethics, and therefore, partial and defective. Their plausibility derives from two factors: 1) They each get at part of the truth: it is true, as deontologists insist, that principles are an important part of ethics. And it is true, as utilitarians contend, that the consequences of one’s actions are an important part of ethics. 2) Each approach is able to benefit from the defective nature of the other: so long as rationalism is understood as the only possible approach to ethics, then, to the rationalist, deontology appears to be the only alternative to utilitarianism, and vice-versa. So deontologists can strengthen their appeal by pointing out the obvious defects in utilitarianism (it ignores principles), while utilitarians do the same by noting the obvious defects in deontology (it ignores consequences). It is like a war between one’s right leg and left leg over which is the essential limb in walking: each leg can c...

I believe I was the first person to note in print just how Aristotelian Oakeshott's analysis of rationalism is, although I must credit Noel O'Sullivan for dropping the hint that got me going in that direction. Here is the kind of thing I was getting at: "At the start of the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle observes that moral action does not arise from deliberation. In order to think clearly about virtue, one must first already have a virtuous disposition formed by good habits. Aristotle drily remarks that the endless ethical debate of some philosophers is really just a sophisticated way of doing nothing. You become virtuous – and thus able to understand virtue – by acting virtuously. Nobody ever reasoned their way into right living." "...the endless ethical debate of some philosophers is really just a sophisticated way of doing nothing": Peter Singer springs instantly into my mind!

I've noted this before, but since it came up recently in the comments, let me briefly explain my view on this again: 10,000 BC: Gor: The enemy is coming! You must warn our village as fast as possible! Sab: I will start running there right now! 400 BC: Galestes: The enemy is coming! You must warn our polis as fast as possible! Sabro: I will start riding there on my horse right now! 1820 AD: Galeano: The enemy is coming! You must warn our city as fast as possible! Santo: I will hop on the train going there right now! 1920 AD: George: The enemy is coming! You must warn our city as fast as possible! Sam: I will phone them right now! 2015 AD: Gene: The enemy is coming! You must warn our city as fast as possible! Samson: I will text them right now! The answer to a question can be (and very often is!) both objectively correct (or not) and situationally relative.

"What is inherently impossible is not morally binding. This means that when scarce goods are involved, loving your neighbor as yourself cannot always mean loving your neighbor equally with yourself. 'Since you cannot do good to all,' wrote Augustine, 'you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.'" -- John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics , p. 37 And note the interesting similarity of Augustine's phrasing with Hayek's!

Consequentialism, I find,is typically espoused by people who like to see themselves as "hard-headed," practical, empirical sorts of folks. So, faced with something like the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of WWII, they say, "Unlike starry-eyed idealists, I am a realist: I consider the consequences. The US won the war; therefore, dropping the bombs was worth it." (Note: I am not saying all consequentialists would approve of dropping those atomic bombs. I am just presenting a typical sort of consequentialist argument.) They actually convince themselves that people subscribing to other ethical systems don't think of the consequences of actions! I guess it shows how easy it is too willfully blind oneself, because it ought to be rather obvious that the US winning the war was not quite the only consequences of dropping the bombs: there is also the minor consequence of a quarter of a million dead Japanese, and many more maimed and injured. The peop...

Consequentialism tells us it is good to do something if the consequences of doing it are good. But how do we judge if the consequences are good? If we do so by looking to their consequences, obviously we have entered an infinite regress. Therefore, we need non-consequentialist criteria for judging a consequence good or bad. In that case, consequentialism turns out to be not a complete system of morality, but merely the idea that we ought to pay attention to the consequences of our actions. But what moral theory says we should not pay attention to those consequences?! Every moral thinker of whom I am aware would differentiate between cutting a person with a knife to kill them from cutting them with a knife to save their life in an operation, which is judging the action by its (likely) consequence. (Yes, intentions are involved, but the intentions just are aiming at a certain outcome, right?) So consequentialism is either impossible or trivially true.