24.00: Problems of Philosophy Prof. Sally Haslanger December 10. 2001 (Meta-Ethical Subjectivism(or Non-cognitivism) For the past couple of weeks we have been focusing on the following questions i)Which acts are right and which are wrong? Which acts ought we to perform? ii)What makes an action right or wrong? What about the action determines its moral status? Our third question has received less attention iii) How do we know what is right and wrong? This last question is especially pressing for those who maintain that morality is an objective matter, that there are objective moral facts that serve as a basis for moral evaluation. Several questions immediately emerge for such a view: if there are objective moral facts, why is there so much moral disagreement? What sort of things are these moral facts supposed to be? Unlike ordinary physical facts, moral facts are not knowable by observation: we don' t see or taste that lying is wrong, and such facts are not part of our physical theories. But then where are such facts supposed to reside and how do we gain access to them? The moral relativist might seem to have a strategy for responding to these concerns moral facts are just facts about what societies approve/disapprove of. One version of cultural relativism is An action is morally right iff it is permitted by the ultimate mores of the society in which it is performed (608) Shafer-Landau considers an individualistic form of relativism he calls normative subjectivism An action is morally right iff the person judging the action approves of it. (605) So, for example, attending lecture regularly is morally right (judged by me)iff I approve of attending lecture regularly Correlatively, attending lecture regularly is not morally right judged by you) iff you do not approve of attending lecture regularly An apparent advantage of these relativistic approaches is that the"spookiness"of"moral facts"seems to dissipate. Moral facts are nothing more than sociological/anthropological or psychological facts about us as groups or individuals, so they are no less mysterious than these other facts; moreover, there is no special worry about how we could come to know them We considered several objections to moral relativism previously, and Shafer-Landau's main arguments against normative subjectivism should be familiar from that discussion. A further question, however, is whether the relativist strategy of educing moral discourse to talk simply about what we/I approve of does justice to the normativity of ethical life. Put simply, the concern is that a description of an individual's(or culture' s)attitudes(or practices )does not capture the force that moral claims carry in specifying not just what is, but what ought to be. E.g., someone might affirm that American culture permits the production and sale of hate propaganda and violent pornography But also maintain that.24.00: Problems of Philosophy Prof. Sally Haslanger December 10, 2001 (Meta-)Ethical Subjectivism (or Non-cognitivism) For the past couple of weeks we have been focusing on the following questions: i) Which acts are right and which are wrong? Which acts ought we to perform? ii) What makes an action right or wrong? What about the action determines its moral status? Our third question has received less attention: iii) How do we know what is right and wrong? This last question is especially pressing for those who maintain that morality is an objective matter, that there are objective moral facts that serve as a basis for moral evaluation. Several questions immediately emerge for such a view: if there are objective moral facts, why is there so much moral disagreement? What sort of things are these moral facts supposed to be? Unlike ordinary physical facts, moral facts are not knowable by observation: we don't see or taste that lying is wrong, and such facts are not part of our physical theories. But then where are such facts supposed to reside and how do we gain access to them? The moral relativist might seem to have a strategy for responding to these concerns: moral facts are just facts about what societies approve/disapprove of. One version of cultural relativism is: An action is morally right iff it is permitted by the ultimate mores of the society in which it is performed. (608) Shafer-Landau considers an individualistic form of relativism he calls normative subjectivism: An action is morally right iff the person judging the action approves of it. (605) So, for example, attending lecture regularly is morally right (judged by me) iff I approve of attending lecture regularly. Correlatively, attending lecture regularly is not morally right (judged by you) iff you do not approve of attending lecture regularly. An apparent advantage of these relativistic approaches is that the "spookiness" of "moral facts" seems to dissipate. Moral facts are nothing more than sociological/anthropological or psychological facts about us as groups or individuals, so they are no less mysterious than these other facts; moreover, there is no special worry about how we could come to know them. We considered several objections to moral relativism previously, and Shafer-Landau's main arguments against normative subjectivism should be familiar from that discussion. A further question, however, is whether the relativist strategy of reducing moral discourse to talk simply about what we/I approve of does justice to the normativity of ethical life. Put simply, the concern is that a description of an individual's (or culture's) attitudes (or practices) does not capture the force that moral claims carry in specifying not just what is, but what ought to be. E.g., someone might affirm that: American culture permits the production and sale of hate propaganda and violent pornography. But also maintain that: