Struan Hellier (struan@clara.net)
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 17:42:28 +0100
Sorry Andy, I missed a bit that I intended to answer.
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>I would love to hear your opinion on what would be of concern to an
>ethicist who has escaped, but certainly not discarded, rational thought. I
>believe that any ethics that cannot be guided by an individual, and thus in
>part by emotion, is irrelevant to our society.
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Clearly emotivism is your only refuge. Either that or pre-philosophical
conviction and superstition. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with
either of these positions but the latter is by definition unreasonable and
so to try and reason it out is pointless, since while the consistency my be
valid it is the inference that is suspect and it is the inference that
irrational thought cannot substantiate.
Once again I would put it to you that if you have 'escaped' rational thought
then, valid though your superstition might be, it is pointless for you to
use the tools of reason to show that you are being reasonable. What you have
is an 'ad hoc' hypothesis that is irrational at the core but dressed in the
veil of rationality. But a good argument cannot be stronger than its modally
weakest premise and so to base an empirical conclusion upon an 'a priori'
premise is simply poor logic, as Kant pointed out in his brilliant
destruction of the Ontological argument.
If you have no intention to be logical then that is fine, but there endeth
reasonable debate. If you have intentions of being logical then you must be
consistent.
I'm not making any value judgement here as to the validity of your position
and if people want to indulge in irrational debate then I can see it might
still have meaning for them, but for me personally I see little point as all
it boils down to is a series of boos and hurrahs.
Regards
Struan
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