Truism 5: One is only required (by our language games) to justify moral claims one or two levels
Scholium*: Justifying moral claims is a language game in Wittgenstein's sense, but only in a philosophical language game do we justify the justifications. That is why many people prefer to make God the source of morality.
Scholium: All moral claims are founded on duties, not utilities
Scholium: Moral duties and rules encode past utilities
* I'm going to use this term now instead of "corollary" (see comments to Truisms 4)
- Log in to post comments
I'm not sure I understand your use of "utilities".
In moral philosophy there are basically two basic competing accounts of moral rules - one is that they are founded on utilities like "maximising happiness" or "minimising harm"; the other that they are simply duties that have no further calculus. [Boy, I'm simplifying a lot here!] What I want to do is say that utilitarianism is not the basis for justifying moral rules, but that moral rules "encode" as it were some of the utilities that we as a society have found useful. In other words, a moral principle is a summary of what has previously contributed to a good social order.
Of course, such principles are not perfect - contingency, lags in moral revision, incomplete information and the like make them not very good utilities, but that is why we have them nonetheless.
Thanks.
But, on an evolutionary account, we wouldn't expect them to be perfect, would we, just good enough?
Oh, if it were only true, then we could gladly commit metaethics to the flames...
On duties and utilities - from an evolutionary perspective the former are proximate and the latter are ultimate. So from past utilities are evolved proximate mechanisms, such as intuitions, that promote that utility (in this case, pro-social tendencies). Similar to what you're saying in your third scholium, really.
But justifying the buggers is another story. I think recent psychological evidence suggests that while moral proscriptions feel like they're universal, objective, facts about the world etc - they actually aren't (a kind of error theory).
Certainly, they need to appear like they are universal - we'd be less inclined to follow them if they felt like mere preferences - but when it comes time to justify them there's actually no objective, universal, facts about the world to ground them on. So, yeah, God serves as a nice bump on the slippery slope where some can hop off, but for many philosophers, the slope continues - unless we acknowledge that moral proscriptions are just fancy preferences.
I have a bunch of similar thoughts on my blog, if you're interested.