Im always annoyed how people conflate the two horns of the meta-ethical problem of the so-what problem. The first horn is the question concerning the ontological grounding* for ethical propositions (the common view seems to be that this has no answer. This is why the philosopher Ronald Dworkin felt that meta-ethics was useless and would only lead to moral skepticism (he thought that the ontological grounding was something that should just be accepted).). The second horn is the question concerning why I should be motivated to act ethically. I see quite often people use the second horn as a defeater for the first - which it isnt (Unless one subscribes to an extreme version of internalism). *The ontological grounding is a problem through out all meta-ethics which concerns the idea that every ethical answers seems to rest on at least one unsupported ethical premise (why you ought to do what ethically ought to be done). Michael Smith points out that every attempt to settle this in non-normative terms has been a failure. And if I recall correctly, this was one of the reasons why George Moore thought ethical answers must be sui generis (something of their own kind (not equivalent to anything natural and or supernatural)).
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 20:12:20 +0000
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