Bottom-up development
In the journey discussed at the end of the previous entry, however, I do not want to get too far ahead of myself. I was very impressed by a discussion in Lila: An Enquiry into Morals, by Robert M. Pirsig. The basic claim was that top-down development, at least of books, is not nearly so efficient as bottom-up development. Pirsig had thousands of little slips of paper that he used like note cards that he kept filed away, and it made it very easy for him to develop his book when he decided that it was time. All he had to do was take any two slips, say, "Which comes first?", and arrange them in the appropriate order. To integrate a new slip into the queue, all he had to do was ask himself the same question with the top slip, and then work his way down the queue until he determined its proper place. Over time, he found that the slips were organising themselves into sections, the sections into chapters, the chapters into parts, and the parts into a book.
Now that's development! It would be far easier to utilise your thoughts effectively if they could self-select their own structure like that, democratically electing it, as it were. The potential would even be there to create emergent structures that you never could have anticipated if you had tried to force everything into a predetermined structure from the top down. In my opinion, it is part of the general crudity of utilitarianism that it inevitably tries to force everything into a predetermined structure. In that respect, a discussion from my lecturer in Distributive Justice helped shed light on the situation, about centralism versus non-centralism in ethics. A centralist perspective was one whereby you had to judge the morality or immorality of any given action in terms of a centralised theory, such as utilitarianism. A non-centralist perspective was one whereby you judged the morality or immorality of each action individually, and inferred your general principles, if any, from there. In my opinion, one would not need to be a non-centralist about ethics in order to benefit from a non-centralist approach to ethical analysis. You could quite plausibly judge a number of different actions in different situations as right, wrong or indifferent without any eye to a centralist theory, potentially for years. Over time, however, a general pattern to your moral judgements could start to emerge.
Ah, but what would be the ethical equivalent to the sections, chapters and parts of Pirsig's book development? What sense would it make, for example, to take two cases in your hand and say, 'Which comes first?'
I guess that in that instance, what you are looking at is like a moral taxonomy. Take, for example, one of the less unhelpful claims made by the external reviewer about my Masters thesis. He said that the discussion of Kant had its moments, but missed altogether the difference between the 'moral geometry' of the Prolegomena, &c, and the rather robust empiricism to be found in the Theory of the Virtues. I find it striking that there should be anything empirical in Kant, and certainly that there should be anything fundamentally empirical. I wouldn't have minded adding that "difference", assuming that it was legitimate, but I doubt extremely that it would have affected any of the essential arguments. What I want to point out for the purposes of this discussion, however, is the use of the term 'moral geometry'. It seems to me that this may be the legitimate difference between a rationalist theory of ethics and an empiricist theory of ethics. A rationalist theory of ethics could quite rightly consist of a 'moral geometry', whereas an empiricist ethics could consist of a 'moral taxonomy'.
I find the notion of a moral taxonomy intriguing, and I can certainly see how you would go about it, as legitimate 'bottom-up' development. First, you round up all the moral observations that you can find--from the real world, presumably. Then you taxonomise them in order to get a greater insight into the structure of ethics. This has the potential for all kinds of moral constructs and insights that would not necessarily be obvious at all from the typical centralist approach. Even if the resulting taxonomy had the organic unity of a centralist theory--and there is no reason a priori to suppose that it might not!--it might have been extremely difficult if not impossible to have been foreseen from a centralist approach. That certainly seems like one viable approach to defining exactly what an "empirical" theory of ethics is. The notion of a "moral observation", of course, would require elucidation first.
Now that's development! It would be far easier to utilise your thoughts effectively if they could self-select their own structure like that, democratically electing it, as it were. The potential would even be there to create emergent structures that you never could have anticipated if you had tried to force everything into a predetermined structure from the top down. In my opinion, it is part of the general crudity of utilitarianism that it inevitably tries to force everything into a predetermined structure. In that respect, a discussion from my lecturer in Distributive Justice helped shed light on the situation, about centralism versus non-centralism in ethics. A centralist perspective was one whereby you had to judge the morality or immorality of any given action in terms of a centralised theory, such as utilitarianism. A non-centralist perspective was one whereby you judged the morality or immorality of each action individually, and inferred your general principles, if any, from there. In my opinion, one would not need to be a non-centralist about ethics in order to benefit from a non-centralist approach to ethical analysis. You could quite plausibly judge a number of different actions in different situations as right, wrong or indifferent without any eye to a centralist theory, potentially for years. Over time, however, a general pattern to your moral judgements could start to emerge.
Ah, but what would be the ethical equivalent to the sections, chapters and parts of Pirsig's book development? What sense would it make, for example, to take two cases in your hand and say, 'Which comes first?'
I guess that in that instance, what you are looking at is like a moral taxonomy. Take, for example, one of the less unhelpful claims made by the external reviewer about my Masters thesis. He said that the discussion of Kant had its moments, but missed altogether the difference between the 'moral geometry' of the Prolegomena, &c, and the rather robust empiricism to be found in the Theory of the Virtues. I find it striking that there should be anything empirical in Kant, and certainly that there should be anything fundamentally empirical. I wouldn't have minded adding that "difference", assuming that it was legitimate, but I doubt extremely that it would have affected any of the essential arguments. What I want to point out for the purposes of this discussion, however, is the use of the term 'moral geometry'. It seems to me that this may be the legitimate difference between a rationalist theory of ethics and an empiricist theory of ethics. A rationalist theory of ethics could quite rightly consist of a 'moral geometry', whereas an empiricist ethics could consist of a 'moral taxonomy'.
I find the notion of a moral taxonomy intriguing, and I can certainly see how you would go about it, as legitimate 'bottom-up' development. First, you round up all the moral observations that you can find--from the real world, presumably. Then you taxonomise them in order to get a greater insight into the structure of ethics. This has the potential for all kinds of moral constructs and insights that would not necessarily be obvious at all from the typical centralist approach. Even if the resulting taxonomy had the organic unity of a centralist theory--and there is no reason a priori to suppose that it might not!--it might have been extremely difficult if not impossible to have been foreseen from a centralist approach. That certainly seems like one viable approach to defining exactly what an "empirical" theory of ethics is. The notion of a "moral observation", of course, would require elucidation first.
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