There are some intuitions we have about morality that just seem untouchable. It is wrong to torture babies. It is not wrong to hop on one leg. We can be wrong about some moral issues. Could it turn out that we are wrong about these untouchable things? If we find out that we are, I think moral skepticism looms.
Consider: Could it turn out to be inherently morally wrong to dig holes? Or wear socks? Or eat broccoli and cauliflower in the same meal? Not wrong for any particular reason: just wrong in itself?
Now suppose that you make the great trek to the philosophy oracle, and in honor of your visit she lets you get to ask one question. You ask (confident in the answer) : is it wrong to wear socks? And she replies: "wearing socks is one of the most morally intrinsically repugnant things you can do".
The oracle has allowed you to have a bizarre moral revelation. Something that you thought was obviously not morally wrong has turned out to be wrong. Get yourself into the frame of mind where you actually believe the oracle is telling the truth. How do you re-evaluate your other moral beliefs? Can you be as confident now about other things as you were before? Can you be confident that it is not wrong to wear shoes? Or wear gloves? Or walk barefoot in the sand? Can you trust your intuition that it is morally wrong to torture babies and morally right to give aid to the poor?
I propose you should become very very wary about all of your moral judgments. Generally, if your means of coming to your beliefs is revealed to occasionally produce disastrously incorrect verdicts, and you can't explain when or why it does, you should discount each untested verdict. If your intuitions are revealed to be terribly inaccurate in one case, you should question the others.
No comments:
Post a Comment