source: Ethical values can be both objective and yet without a foundation | Aeon Essays
🗒️我的笔记
什么才是道德的基础
- The first question we should ask is: what exactly is a ‘foundation’? We can get clearer on what a foundation is by querying whether a moral theory like utilitarianism might count as one. Utilitarianism says that actions are right to the extent, and only to the extent, that they promote overall wellbeing. So, is utilitarianism in the running for being a foundation for morality? Well, it certainly purports to explain a lot when it comes to right and wrong. Why give to the poor? Promotes wellbeing. Why not punch your neighbour in the face? Doesn’t promote wellbeing. Should the Bank of Canada raise interest rates this quarter? Not clear, because it’s not clear whether it promotes wellbeing. And so on, and so on.
我们应该问的第一个问题是：究竟什么是“基础”？我们可以通过询问像功利主义这样的道德理论是否可以算作一个基础来更清楚地了解什么是基础。功利主义认为，行为在一定程度上是正确的，而且只有在它们促进整体福祉的程度上才是正确的。那么，功利主义是否正在成为道德的基础呢？好吧，当涉及到对与错时，它当然可以解释很多。为什么要给穷人？促进健康。为什么不打你的邻居的脸呢？不能促进健康。加拿大央行本季度应该加息吗？不清楚，因为不清楚它是否能促进幸福感。等等，等等。 - Nonetheless, utilitarianism is not what I have in mind by a ‘foundation’. This is not because utilitarianism is incorrect; it is because utilitarianism is a moral theory. But a foundation is not a moral theory. It’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to ground, or support, or justify, moral theories, and moral claims generally, without itself being a claim within the domain of morality.
尽管如此，功利主义并不是我心目中的“基础”。**这并不是因为功利主义是不正确的;这是因为功利主义是一种道德理论。但基础不是道德理论。**这种东西应该为道德理论和道德主张奠定基础，或支持或证明其合理性，而其本身却不是道德领域的主张。 The right and the good have the feel of being supernatural, like ghosts and auras 正义和善良有一种超自然的感觉，就像鬼魂和光环一样 - So a moral theory doesn’t count as a foundation. What would count? Here’s a possible candidate. One thing that philosophers of language try to do is to explain why terms and concepts refer to the things in the world that they do. Many of these theories of reference invoke the relation of causal regulation – regulation of our ‘tokening’ of the concept ‘cat’ or our use of the word ‘cat’, for instance, by the comings and goings of the long-tailed housepets that like to stretch out on the windowsill. Some philosophers have applied this theory of reference to moral terms and concepts, yielding a view on which a concept like ‘good’ refers to whichever property or cluster of properties causally regulates our employment of it. Anything that then had that property(-cluster) would therefore be good. Note that our starting point here is not a claim or theory that is, intuitively speaking, within the subject-matter of ethics. Rather we began with a theory of reference – something belonging to the philosophy of language – that purports to explain how terms and concepts across the board are anchored in the world. One might say that, in doing so, we gave ethics a foundation.
因此，道德理论不算是基础。什么才算数？这是一个可能的候选人。语言哲学家试图做的一件事是解释为什么术语和概念指的是他们所做的世界上的事情。这些参考理论中的许多都援引了因果调节的关系——调节我们对“猫”概念的“标记”或我们对“猫”一词的使用，例如，通过喜欢在窗台上伸展的长尾家养宠物的来来往往。一些哲学家将这种参照理论应用于道德术语和概念，产生了一种观点，即像“善”这样的概念是指因果关系地调节我们对它的使用的任何属性或属性集群。**因此，任何具有该属性（-cluster）的东西都会很好。**请注意，我们在这里的出发点不是直觉上属于伦理学主题的主张或理论。相反，我们从参照理论开始——属于语言哲学的东西——旨在解释术语和概念如何全面锚定在世界上。有人可能会说，在这样做的过程中，我们为道德奠定了基础。 - What makes a semantic account like the causal theory of reference or a metaphysical view like neo-Aristotelian naturalism a candidate for being a foundation, while a theory like utilitarianism is not? They are capable of serving as foundations for ethics because, basically, they’re not ethics; they’re semantics – they’re about what words and concepts mean – or they’re metaphysics, cataloguing what sorts of things exist in the world. Utilitarianism, by contrast, is ethics, and ethics is no more capable of hoisting itself up by its own bootstraps than is anything else. I think we can go a little further, though. While a theory like utilitarianism offers a direct explanation – maybe a good one, maybe a bad one – of what is right or good or whatnot, our causal theory of reference does not. It offers a theory of what concepts and terms refer to, which has implications for which ethical claims are true, which in turn has implications for what’s right or good. But ultimately, it tells you about what things mean, while a theory like utilitarianism tells you what’s right. One indicator of the difference between the respective theories’ explanatory roles is the difference between them in terms of what we may call ‘domain generality’. Theories like ‘terms refer to the features that causally regulate their usage’ or ‘only things posited by the successful natural sciences exist’ have implications beyond ethics – into what ‘cat’ means, or about whether René Descartes’s postulated res cogitans exists — while utilitarianism is solely a theory of right and wrong, and that’s it.
是什么让像因果关系参照理论这样的语义解释或像新亚里士多德自然主义这样的形而上学观点成为基础的候选者，而像功利主义这样的理论却不是？它们能够作为伦理的基础，**因为从根本上说，它们不是伦理;它们是语义学——它们是关于词语和概念的含义——或者它们是形而上学，对世界上存在什么样的事物进行分类。**相反，功利主义是伦理学，而伦理学并不比其他任何东西更能靠自己的自力更生。不过，我认为我们可以走得更远一点。虽然像功利主义这样的理论提供了直接的解释——也许是好的，也许是坏的——什么是对的，什么是好的，或者是坏的，但我们的因果参考理论却没有。它提供了一个关于概念和术语所指的理论，它对哪些道德主张是正确的有影响，这反过来又对什么是对的或好的有影响。但归根结底，它告诉你事物的意义，而像功利主义这样的理论告诉你什么是正确的。各个理论的解释作用之间差异的一个指标是它们之间在我们可以称之为“领域普遍性”方面的差异。诸如“术语是指因果调节其使用的特征”或“只有成功的自然科学所假设的事物存在”之类的理论具有超越伦理学的含义——“猫”的含义，或者勒内·笛卡尔（René Descartes）假设的“理论”是否存在——而功利主义只是一种对与错的理论，仅此而已。 松鼠辩论，与动机和情感的联系，愚弄了我们 - Correlatively, the fundamental reason why I don’t think that morality requires a foundation is that I deny that the relevant sorts of ethical disputes are akin to ordinary factual disputes. They have features that make it easy to be fooled into thinking otherwise, but in fact they’re crucially different. More specifically, disputes that get called ‘normative ethics’ are most like disputes that many people have labelled ‘merely verbal’ or ‘non-substantive’. A classic example comes from William James’s book Pragmatism (1907). A man is chasing a squirrel around a tree. Is the man thereby going around the squirrel? One disputant says ‘no’, because the man is always behind the squirrel. Another says ‘yes’, because the man is first north of the squirrel, then west, then, south, then east of it. The people in this dispute have different beliefs, to be sure; their conflict is not a conflict of desires or emotions. Still, there’s a clear sense in which they’re not really representing the world in different ways. The side you take in this dispute does not determine, either directly or indirectly by way of inference, the way you think any aspect of the world looks, smells, sounds, etc; nor would taking one side or the other of this dispute guide you to act in a way that achieves your aims, whatever these aims may be and whatever your powers may be. The belief, in other words, doesn’t function in the way a representation like a map does.
与此相对应的是，我不认为道德需要基础的根本原因是，我否认相关的道德纠纷类似于普通的事实纠纷。它们具有很容易被愚弄而产生其他想法的功能，但实际上它们截然不同。更具体地说，被称为“规范伦理”的争议最像是许多人标记为“仅仅是口头的”或“非实质性的”的争议。**一个典型的例子来自威廉·詹姆斯（William James）的《实用主义》（Pragmatism，1907）一书。一个男人在树上追逐一只松鼠。这个人就这样绕着松鼠走了吗？一个争论者说“不”，因为这个人总是在松鼠后面。另一个人说“是”，因为这个人首先在松鼠的北边，然后是西边，然后是南边，然后是东边。**可以肯定的是，这场争端中的人们有不同的信仰;他们的冲突不是欲望或情感的冲突。尽管如此，从某种意义上说，他们并没有真正以不同的方式代表世界。在这场争端中，你所采取的一方并不能直接或间接地通过推论来决定你认为世界的任何方面的外观、气味、声音等;在这场争端中站在一边或另一边也不会引导你以实现你的目标的方式行事，无论这些目标是什么，无论你的权力是什么。换句话说，信念不像地图那样以表示的方式发挥作用。 - It’s these connections with motivation and emotion that fool us into assimilating disputes about utilitarianism, or the ‘trolley problem’, or distributive justice, to ordinary factual disputes. Because they bear on what we do and how we feel, we do not reckon that we can simply ‘go either way’ on them in a willy-nilly fashion. We do not regard them as arbitrary, in other words, in the way that we regard ‘squirrel’. Nor do we think it’s acceptable to settle them by conceptual fiat, as we would settle disputes like ‘squirrel’.
正是这些与动机和情感的联系，愚弄了我们，将关于功利主义、“电车问题”或分配正义的争论等同于普通的事实争议。因为它们关系到我们的所作所为和感受，所以我们不认为我们可以简单地以一种随意的方式“走任何一条路”。我们不认为它们是任意的，换句话说，就像我们看待“松鼠”一样。我们也不认为通过概念上的法令来解决它们是可以接受的，就像我们解决“松鼠”一样的争端。