From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Tue Jan 12 1999 - 19:20:51 MST
> How did you determine that is your best course? What exactly
> is wrong with a rational, functional, utilitarian morality?
"Rational", "functional", and "utilitarian" are value judgments
as well, so there might be something very "wrong" with them, or
there might not be. Or there might be no way to judge.
Our epistemologies have improved over the years to the point
where many of us are quite willing to express confidence in and
make a personal /commitment/ to the "reality" of propositions
about the world. I plant crops, confident the Sun will rise
tomorrow to nourish them; I treat my infection with antibiotics
rather than leeches; I refrain from filling my gas tank with
milk, confident that my understanding of combustion justifies
that decision. We further have confidence that any two
sufficiently intelligent beings will reach the same conclusions
about nature; we call this "objective reality".
Is there any reason to suspect that our moral philosophies will
not also continue to improve as our natural philosophies have?
Is there some barrier that will prevent future intelligences
from having as much confidence in their choice of action as I
have now in my descriptions of nature? Is there some reason
that two intelligences /cannot/ of necessity reach the same
moral conclusion about the same circumstances? Might it not
be the case that our moral epistemologies will evolve to the
point where I can bet my life that any other intelligent being
will reach the same moral conclusion as I, just as I would bet
it on eir reaching the same physical conclusion as I? I would
call that state of affairs "objective morality".
Objective reality is a powerful concept that allows humans to
do miraculous things, like building bridges that don't collapse
and cars that run. I do not yet have confidence that there
exists an objective morality, but the potential it would hold
for allowing us to do even more miraculous things demands that
I seek it, for the same reason I must seek objective reality.
Just because I can't see it is no reason to abandon the search.
Until then, I also see value in behaving /as if/ there is such
a thing, and making a personal commitment to behaving in a
manner consistent with my current best guess as to what it is,
because I have no better moral epistemology to use...yet.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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