Disagreements on moral matters can arise at home, and even within oneself.
When they do, one regrets the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared with science.
The empirical foothold of scientific theory is in the predicted observable event; that of a moral code is in the observable moral act.
But whereas we can test a prediction against the independent course of observable nature, we can judge the morality of an act only by our moral standards themselves, here, by neccesity we enter into solipism.
We seem to think, when speaking about moral matters, that our sentences are judged against an independent criterion; independent, that is, from what we merely happen to believe. A coherence theory of truth in ethics.
The knowledge claims for morals are thus epistemologically (claims to knowledge) flawed, because there is no ascendent theory, 'It is the right and moral act.' I mean what makes it right and moral
if it is only opinion.
When they do, one regrets the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared with science.
The empirical foothold of scientific theory is in the predicted observable event; that of a moral code is in the observable moral act.
But whereas we can test a prediction against the independent course of observable nature, we can judge the morality of an act only by our moral standards themselves, here, by neccesity we enter into solipism.
We seem to think, when speaking about moral matters, that our sentences are judged against an independent criterion; independent, that is, from what we merely happen to believe. A coherence theory of truth in ethics.
The knowledge claims for morals are thus epistemologically (claims to knowledge) flawed, because there is no ascendent theory, 'It is the right and moral act.' I mean what makes it right and moral
if it is only opinion.
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