What do you think about this approach to talking about morality?

Asked by LostInParadise (32183

) March 4th, 2016

I came across this site about a year ago. A recent posting about when to walk away from a disagreement (agree to disagree) reminded me of it. The approach is based on the ideas of the 20th century philosopher W.D. Ross, who I had previously not heard of.

We could argue over the specifics, but I think the overall approach makes a lot of sense. Most moral disagreements are due to conflicting moral obligations. We can agree on the rightness of two moral obligations. Things get tricky when we must trade off between them. For example, we have obligations to ourselves and to others. How do we balance between the two?

We also have a loose hierarchy of categories of moral acts, considering some to be of higher priority than others. There will always be exceptions, but we can agree on an overall framework, or at least are able to articulate differences of opinion regarding what the framework should be.

We will always have disagreements, but it is helpful to have conceptual tools to pinpoint as accurately as possible just where it is that we disagree.

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2 Answers

I will use religion to illustrate my thoughts on this. Most if not all religions have the same moral obligation tools in their tool boxes. It will be how they employ these tools based on their philosophies and why most religions will vary often greatly. And as you pointed out the hierarchy of which tools they will give greater priority and emphasis to will also vary. Then it is merely a choice as to which religion the faithful will hitch their wagon to. But IMO you do not need be religious to employ to these moral obligation tools as most Atheists and Agnostics I have met have the sample moral tools in their toolboxes.

So when we have discussions with others who are from different backgrounds our hierarchy of of our moral tools will often be prioritized differently and where agreeing to disagreeing will conclude a discussion. Neither one is right or wrong our moral obligation tools are just in a different order.

Cruiser (40454

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That whole thing just looks like a description of what most people already think, not an explanation of why it is right to think that way. So it’s not really an approach to morality. It’s a piece of moral anthropology.

Uberwench (3254

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