Order and Dispute
Not so long ago, I had a few more thoughts about my Masters thesis. I decided to look into one of the objections raised by the external reviewer: The thesis seemed to depend on the claim that society and its practices could be specified independently of a constitutive reliance on moral terms. As such, s/he said that this claim needed to be defended, or at least more than it was in the thesis. I had not had any thoughts at all about whether society had a constitutive reliance on moral terms. Nor I did not see how it posed a problem for my arguments one way or the other either. My idea for an ethical theory revolved around a putative dependency of ethics on social functioning. How was this weakened if society was constitutively dependent on moral terms? If anything, it seemed to strengthen it if the connection between morals and society were really that strong.
I decided to email my supervisor to ask him this question. He replied saying that much of the subject matter was now too far in the past for him to be of much help. However, he could at least clarify the phrase "constitutive reliance on moral terms". It was not that society was necessarily constitutively reliant on morality, as Patrick Devlin seemed to think. It was that it was constitutively reliant on moral terms. Hence, one could be an error theorist and still hold that society is constitutively reliant on moral terms.
That made sense to me. But then my supervisor surprised me by saying that he actually thought that it was pretty clear that society did not have to be constitutively reliant on moral terms. Our society clearly is, but not every society is. He cited Order and Dispute by Simon Roberts, which cited various such convincing counterexamples. Some societies maintain order and settle disputes in ways that are not strictly legal, and would be question-begging to call moral. I find that idea absolutely fascinating. One of these days I am going to have to go somewhere like the University of Sydney Library to look it up. But seeing as how I live in the Blue Mountains now, it's a little out of my way.
I decided to email my supervisor to ask him this question. He replied saying that much of the subject matter was now too far in the past for him to be of much help. However, he could at least clarify the phrase "constitutive reliance on moral terms". It was not that society was necessarily constitutively reliant on morality, as Patrick Devlin seemed to think. It was that it was constitutively reliant on moral terms. Hence, one could be an error theorist and still hold that society is constitutively reliant on moral terms.
That made sense to me. But then my supervisor surprised me by saying that he actually thought that it was pretty clear that society did not have to be constitutively reliant on moral terms. Our society clearly is, but not every society is. He cited Order and Dispute by Simon Roberts, which cited various such convincing counterexamples. Some societies maintain order and settle disputes in ways that are not strictly legal, and would be question-begging to call moral. I find that idea absolutely fascinating. One of these days I am going to have to go somewhere like the University of Sydney Library to look it up. But seeing as how I live in the Blue Mountains now, it's a little out of my way.
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