Question Do ethical opinions need to be justified philosophically? Causing someone needless suffering is wrong but is there any indubitable facts that can be obtained through reason and logic that justifies that opinion?

Accepted:
March 17, 2011

Comments

I don't think that there is any need to justify one's ethical or moral beliefs: religion, for example, is a traditional source of the moral commitments of many people, but religion differs considerably from philosophy in that philosophy seeks, unlike religion, to give reasons for certain beliefs or commitments. Consider some moral precept advanced, for example, in the New Testament; the principle in question may well be true, but no justification is given for it in the New Testament; a philosophically inclined believer might, by contrast, seek to provide some rational justification for the principle. And this is a distinctively philosophical contribution to our lives. As Alex George, the creator of this website, writes in the Preface to the second volume of questions derived from this site, What Should I Do? Philosophers on the Good, the Bad, and the Puzzling: "The goal of acting ethically is quite elusive....Philosophy can be of some value here. Philosophers, after all, have been in the business of thinking about such matters since there have been any philosophers at all. By 'some value' I do not mean that philosophy always, or even often, supplies answers. But even when it does not, it can provide some clarity and some guidance as one tries to make one's way through the usual cloud of confusions, fears, and aspirations that settles around our moral deliberations" (pp. vii-viii).

Now even if one tries to justify some moral belief or principle, and succeeds not only in clarifying an issue but even providing an answer to one's question about whether, for example, some action is morally permissible, it's not clear to me that this answer will be based on an indubitable fact. (I myself take it to be characteristic of philosophical questions that they do not admit of resolution by appeal to facts, although their resolution may advert to facts, and instead depend on argumentation: this is one respect, to my mind, in which philosophy differs from the empirical sciences.)

Now the fact that philosophical justifications do not admit of indubitability--one can always raise questions about justifications that are given for philosophical claims--may lead one to fear that the answers that philosophers give are not certain. I myself sometimes am inclined to think that uncertainty may be endemic to philosophy, although whether it is and even if so, how significant this is, is itself another philosophical question which I won't even begin to try to resolve here.

Question Do ethical opinions need to be justified philosophically? Causing someone needless suffering is wrong but is there any indubitable facts that can be obtained through reason and logic that justifies that opinion? Accepted:March 17, 2011

Question Do ethical opinions need to be justified philosophically? Causing someone needless suffering is wrong but is there any indubitable facts that can be obtained through reason and logic that justifies that opinion?

Accepted:
March 17, 2011