Friday, August 31, 2007
Chris Eberle Responds to Andy Koppelman, A Second Time
Here is Chris's first response to Andy Koppelman.
Here is Andy's reply.
Now, Chris responds again:
The claim that human beings have inherent dignity by virtue of their being loved
by God does not commit me to deducing a normative conclusion from exclusively
factual premises. Certainly not to deducing any conclusion about moral
'obligation' solely from factual premises. After all, the claim that each human
being has inherent dignity is a claim about excellence or goodness, not
obligation, and so cannot violate the no ought from is dictum (which I accept in
some formulation).
Nevertheless, the claim that the inherent dignity of
each human being is grounded on the property of being loved by God does involve
some claim about the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, viz., that all
moral/normative properties are grounded on some sufficient non-moral features.
(They are not deduced from, they are metaphysically grounded on, non-moral
properties.) So, for example, a person who has the virtue of courage has that
virtue *by virtue* of her having some other features that are distinct from the
virtue itself -- a set of dispositions or habits that enable her reliably to
respond to danger in such and such specified ways. Possession of those habits
or dispitions grounds the virtue -- a person's possession of those features is
what makes it the case that she has the virtue of courage. People don't just
have the virtue of courage, full stop. They have that virtue *by virtue* of
something else.
Similarly for inherent dignity -- if human beings have
inherent dignity, then they have it by virtue of some property they share --
some property distinct from inherent dignity itself. Of course, you might deny
that all human beings have inherent dignity -- there's a long a venerable
tradition of doing so. And then you'll not be interested in Michael's position
-- he *assumes* that people have inherent worth and then asks -- by virtue of
what do they have that most wonderful property? He gives a theistic answer to
that question. Perhaps that is wrong. Fair enough. Then we'll want to know
what does make it the case that human beings have inherent dignity -- what
plausible secular account if there for that property? Presumably secularists,
and even those who affirm the dictum that we can't derive an ought from an is,
will want to say something about what it is about human beings by virtue of
which they have inherent worth -- even if they are satisfied by the claim that inherent worth supervenes on membership in the human
species.
So, in short, Andrew's appeal to the claim that we can't derive
an ought from an is, or a good from an is, doesn't settle the question to which
Perry provides his theistic answer since the issue has nothing to do with
inferences or deductions in the first place.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2007/08/chris-eberle--1.html