I believe that moral nihilism is the most appropriate stance. This is because I’ve come across no reason to believe that moral facts (ie. imperatives that are true independent of a subject’s preferences or values) exist—for instance “You ought to strive to maximise wellbeing”.

For me the books Ethics: Inventing right and wrong and The myth of morality were key in reaching this conclusion.

Russell Blackford’s review of Sam Harris’ book The Moral Landscape (well worth a read) is useful for understanding this attitude.

Sometimes Harris seems to think that the course of conduct which maximizes global well-being is the morally right one because “morally right” just means something like “such as to maximize global well-being.” But this won’t do. It’s no use telling somebody (we’ll call her Alice) to act so as to maximize global well-being on the ground that this is the morally right thing to do, while also telling her that “morally right” just means “such as to maximize global well-being”: the upshot is that Alice is told to act to maximize global well-being because this will maximize global well-being! That’s circular. If she is more committed to a goal such as maximizing her own well-being, or that of her loved ones, than to maximizing global well-being, she is not thereby making a mistake about anything in the world. Nor is she doing anything self-defeating, if she maximizes her own well-being, or that of her loved ones, whenever these conflict with maximizing global well-being.

Posted: May 16th 2011

See all questions answered by bitbutter

There are meta-ethical theories? Didn’t know that. Is moral relativism a meta-ethical theory? If so, I support that, for the simple reason that I can not support any kind of moral absolutism. Absolutism would require a truly absolute reference point in reality, and there is no such thing; so we’re left with propositions that we treat as absolute because that’s what people seem to need, such as “don’t murder”.

That’s about as far as my interest in the subject goes. I have a life, you know!

Posted: May 15th 2011

See all questions answered by brian thomson