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Show Chapter I. General Introduction to the Project: The Enterprise of Socratic Metaethics 30 experience of my friend on which my feelings are based, there is little I can say to defend my decision. Perhaps I may expect your pity or sympathy for my dilemma, but I cannot expect your respect or agreement. So unless you find me particularly compelling as a role model on nonrational grounds (say, my crucial presence in your upbringing; or my charisma, or broad sphere of social or professional influence; or your desire to stay in my good graces), I can provide you with no reason why the principles on which I acted (and even Humean Anti-Rationalists act on principles, even if they don't think about or formulate them) should govern your behavior under similar circumstances. This is not a peculiarly Kantian objection. Unless a principle on which I act is formulated partially, i.e. with indexical operators, proper names or definite descriptions, we presume it to apply impartially; that is the way language works. Terms and principles have general application to the scope of referents they denote, unless their scopes are restricted explicitly by stipulation or fiat or context. So, for example, if I tell you that dogs are susceptible to gastric tortion, I am either mistaken or else using the term "dog" in an idiosyncratically restricted sense, to refer specifically to large dogs with cylindrical stomachs. Similarly, if I tell you I feel that friendship should come before social welfare, you will naturally take me to be doing more than merely emoting my personal feelings about this particular friend. You will naturally take me to be expressing a judgment that applies not only to my own behavior in this case, but to anyone's who must weigh the relative priority of friendship and social welfare. But since I am merely telling you what I feel, and since what I feel is not directly available to you, I offer you no available justificatory basis for evaluating the applicability of this principle to your behavior. Unless you have some special reason to be impressed with my feelings, you have no reason to be impressed with the principles on which I act. Late twentieth century Humean Anti-Rationalism, then, subverts in practice the enterprise of Socratic metaethics on which it relies in theory, by appealing to interpersonally inaccessible moral states to justify its moral judgments. Ross's Intuitionism was couched in a metaethics that attempted to avoid this outcome, and more recent Humean Anti-Rationalists may adopt a similar strategy. Ross argued that the principles we morally intuit as the outcome of careful and considered reflection on the circumstances in question were objectively valid, in the same way that mathematical intuitionists argue that the objects of mathematical intuition, such as the basic truths of arithmetic, are objectively valid. But this makes intuition, as well as its objects, even more cryptic and cognitively inaccessible than before: What if we have different moral intuitions about the same case? What if yours puts social welfare ahead of friendship? How do we determine which one of us is morally defective, and in what respect? The difficulty Intuitionists face in claiming an © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
