"Why should ethical anti-realists do ethics?" by Joe Carlsmith
TYPE III AUDIO (All episodes) · TYPE III AUDIO
February 26, 202353m 29s
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (buzzsprout.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
---
client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: not_t3a
---
Ethical philosophy often tries to systematize. That is, it seeks general principles that will explain, unify, and revise our more particular intuitions. And sometimes, this can lead to strange and uncomfortable places.
So why do it? If you believe in an objective ethical truth, you might talk about getting closer to that truth. But suppose that you don’t. Suppose you think that you’re “free to do whatever you want.” In that case, if “systematizing” starts getting tough and uncomfortable, why not just … stop? After all, you can always just do whatever’s most intuitive or common-sensical in a given case – and often, this is the choice the “ethics game” was trying so hard to validate, anyway. So why play?
I think it’s a reasonable question. And I’ve found it showing up in my life in various ways. So I wrote a set of two essays explaining part of my current take. This is the first essay. Here I describe the question in more detail, give some examples of where it shows up, and describe my dissatisfaction with two places anti-realists often look for answers.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why-should-ethical-anti-realists-do-ethics
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why-should-ethical-anti-realists-do-ethics