When I started teaching philosophy, many people, especially left-wing people, believed in being tolerant and non-judgmental. People said things like, “It’s always wrong to judge people.” Being “moralistic” was a sin. Today, there are fewer complaints about moralism. Conservatives were never bothered by moralism, and progressives have now become some of the most judgmental people on the planet. So there are few people left to complain about moralism.
Mike, your doctrine of moral objevtivity is of course right on target. But I am not clear about how standards or moral vs. imoral conduct can be applied to nations rather than individuals. Was Russia behaving morally when it invaded Ukraine? Ask Mearsheimer
Of course you are right about moral objectivity where indivivuals are concerned.
but what about nations. There moral intuition seems cloud up --- Is Russia wrong to invade ukraine?
Is Israel (full disclosure: I live in Israel) behaving morally in its current invasion of Gaza. The very essence of moral intuition, whose existence you proclaim, seems to fog up when my country is on the scales. I have a friend whose uncle was recently killed in Gza as collateral damage. This guy was an opponent of his government. He just had the bad luck to be living next to a rocket launcher. Who was responsible for the death of this innoccent? -- given Israel's need to protect its public. Your answer??? Laurin
"Pretty much all of the genuinely important topics have already been discussed to death, making it nearly impossible to find something new to say about them." Really??
I would think there's lots of underexplored territory in ethics. A few examples: 1) Trying to use formal epistemology to create (reflectively equilibriaized) theories based on systems of mutually inconsistent intuitions. 2) Using neural networks to assist building moral particularist theories in certain domains. 3) Exploring the ethics of humanoid creatures like Neanderthals.
Mike, your doctrine of moral objevtivity is of course right on target. But I am not clear about how standards or moral vs. imoral conduct can be applied to nations rather than individuals. Was Russia behaving morally when it invaded Ukraine? Ask Mearsheimer
Of course you are right about moral objectivity where indivivuals are concerned.
but what about nations. There moral intuition seems cloud up --- Is Russia wrong to invade ukraine?
Is Israel (full disclosure: I live in Israel) behaving morally in its current invasion of Gaza. The very essence of moral intuition, whose existence you proclaim, seems to fog up when my country is on the scales. I have a friend whose uncle was recently killed in Gza as collateral damage. This guy was an opponent of his government. He just had the bad luck to be living next to a rocket launcher. Who was responsible for the death of this innoccent? -- given Israel's need to protect its public. Your answer??? Laurin
"Pretty much all of the genuinely important topics have already been discussed to death, making it nearly impossible to find something new to say about them." Really??
I would think there's lots of underexplored territory in ethics. A few examples: 1) Trying to use formal epistemology to create (reflectively equilibriaized) theories based on systems of mutually inconsistent intuitions. 2) Using neural networks to assist building moral particularist theories in certain domains. 3) Exploring the ethics of humanoid creatures like Neanderthals.