Re: BHA: Re: Tobin Epistemological relativism

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marko,

>We are in the happy circumstance of knowing
>that science tells us that the ethical faculty is an innate feature of homo
>sapiens

You might be interested to know that a case for this was argued in
*Alethia* (now the *Journal of Critical Realism*) 3:2 November 2000 by
Derek Brereton in a piece entitled 'Ontic morality and human being'.
This is not to say of course that actually existing moralities are
reducible to the moral capacity of the species.

To facilitate discussion, I would be happy to seek Derek's permission to
post this article on the list if it was desired.

Best,

Meryvn


Marko Beljac <beljac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>
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>The fact that we have many fundamentally similar needs is not very helpful,
>unless one is willing to maintain that a need or a desire automatically
>confers a right.  We all have a need to eat, but does that need confer a
>right to eat your neighbor?  Does a person's need for sex confer a right to
>commit rape?  The moment one says, "Well, okay, there are some limits and
>needs don't confer unlimited rights," one is on strictly social grounds.
>Nature doesn't give a damn what you eat so long as it provides nourishment
>that suits your physiology and doesn't poison you in the process; sperm can
>be ejaculated and meet an egg whether the sex is consensual or not.  People,
>however, care a lot.
>
>I would like to make a few comments here. I take it that we are all concerned
>with emancipatory politics. Tobin here is making an argument for the social
>construction of ethics.  I however would argue the opposite. The ethical faculty
>is as much an innate faculty of homo sapiens as the language faculty (although I
>should be careful because even this faculty is supposedly a social
>construction). Ethics, it seems to me quite clearly, is an adaptation for an
>intelligent organism such as ourselves. Tobin claims that people care a lot.
>This of course is true, but the question is why do they care a lot. By holding a
>social constructivist approach toward ethics one is denying that ethics is an
>innate faculty of mind. If Tobin, like Bhaskar, is opposed to Capitalism and he
>lives in a Capitalist society and given that ethics is a social construction how
>is that Tobin opposes Capitalism? Does he oppose Capitalism merely because, for
>whatever reason, he has found himself living within a sub culture or that he has
>read some books but not others? Or is that his use of his innate ethical
>faculty, which he shares with us all, is telling him that there is something
>fundamentally wrong with Capitalism, enabling him to persuade others outside of
>the sub culture that his views are necessarily correct?
>
>Constructivist ethics leads to moral relativism. Moral relativism of course
>precludes universal emancipation. We are in the happy circumstance of knowing
>that science tells us that the ethical faculty is an innate feature of homo
>sapiens and that thereby science does not logically preclude universal human
>emancipation. For all those concerned with a "realist philosophy of science"
>this is something to celebrate, in my opinion.
>
>Marko.
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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