After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.
Absolute neutrality? In regard to conflicting goods? Okay, what might that amount to pertaining to an issue like abortion? How can one be neutral given that a pregnant woman is either permitted to have an abortion or she is forced to give birth? The whole point of Roe v. Wade was to get as close to that as possible.Philosophers who aspire to describe reality without resort to myth, too often remain in thrall to the myth of absolute neutrality. Myths are not without their proper uses, and belief in absolute neutrality can be a useful, even an indispensable premise in the practices of science, jurisprudence, sports refereeing, and a host of other activities in which we want to discourage corrupting biases.
Same with gun control. Citizens are either permitted to own bazookas and artillery pieces and landmines and chemical weapons or they are not. Absolute neutrality there?
In fact, it is only when a community embraces one or another rendition of democracy and the rule of law that moderation, negotiation and compromise take us in the general vicinity of neutrality.
Thus...
"The View From Nowhere is a philosophical exploration of these perspectives: the subjective and the objective. It is Nagel's firm belief that both perspectives are real and that the truth about our world can only be gained through an understanding of how these two perspectives coexist in all that we think and do." Cambridge University PressStill, absolute neutrality is a myth, one memorably formulated by Thomas Nagel as ‘the view from nowhere’. There is no ‘view from nowhere’, and any philosophical practice which pretends to occupy that mythical perspective sows confusion.
Yes, in regard to conflicting goods, there are objective facts embedded in the either/or world that are applicable to all of us. And then there are the subjective reactions we have to those facts that, in my view, seem beyond the reach of philosophers and ethicists and political scientists.
And all I can do is to prompt the moral objectivists/realists among us to bring their theoretical assessments to a particular set of circumstances. There we can examine any possible differences between having a view from nowhere and having a view from somewhere...historically, culturally, existentially.
Again, from my frame of mind, moral nihilism does not reject coherent morality so much as prompt those who champion one or another One True Path To Enlightenment to demonstrate why their own sets of facts and assumptions must prevail. Ever and always making the distinction between what we can know logically about abortion as a medical procedure and abortion as a moral conflagration.In this article I will describe and defend my kind of moral viewpoint (not my specific viewpoint). The label I will use for this kind of viewpoint is ‘moral objectivism’, because this creates a stark contrast with ‘moral subjectivism’ and ‘moral relativism’ – the views that no coherent morality is better than any other coherent morality, which along with ‘moral nihilism’ – the denial of any morality – present the most philosophically popular moral perspectives that are not of my kind.