Preface B Supplement.
Clarifications.
As already put forward of course, it is not expedient that an author
constantly corrects his published treatises, each time he finds an inaccuracy
or a minor error.
Treatise No 6 the section “Ethics and politics”.
The promised justification of what is the basis of
ethics has the following premise:
As long as we
do not possess a complete knowledge and understanding of our situation in the
world, we cannot speak about the world with decisive certainty and thus neither
about a possible basis of what the right ethics and politics are. Thus, we have
to concentrate upon many fields in order to clarify and discuss these
questions.
It can be objected that this statement about the
necessity of clarification is insufficiently justified. However, such an
incompleteness just supports the point of view that clarification is necessary
for answering the discussed questions. For as long as we cannot conclude
anything decisive about the possible meaning of life or the basis of ethics, we
must study many fields, and thus get a better basis of reaching a conclusion.
Inspired by this result, it can be argued in the following
way for the basis of an ethics:
If we
presuppose that it is necessary to clarify what the basis of ethics is, we must
necessarily conclude that we have to study it.
Opponents to
the existence of an ethical basis will perhaps just assert that they prefer a
certain ethics or moral without justifying it, such as Alfred Ayer assumes that
we can. However, unsubstantiated statements are groundless and thus arbitrary.
(Cf. the section “The concept of semantic meaning”.) If the opponents do not
advance justifications, they assert
nothing and thus do not contribute to the debate, but keep aloof from it. For
this reason, they have to advance and clarify their arguments in order to
participate in the debate, which means that they must admit that clarification is
necessary.
This study
demands favourable conditions of life
for everybody. Thus, we have a basis of ethics. This argument is logically
committing, and thus inavoidable.
To clarify the argument, it can be compared to a
similar but less conclusive argument. Such one can be advanced about the question about the possible meaning of
life. If someone asserts that this question must be clarified, he is
certainly logically committed to assert that this demands clarification, and
that this demands favourable life conditions. However, by this we have not
gained an answer to the very question of the possible meaning of life, but just
a statement about the conditions for
clarifying it. And this is not immediately a statement bout the very question
about the possible meaning of life.
We can again look at the question about a basis of ethics. If someone asserts that this
question must be clarified, as concluded above, he is logically committed to
assert that this demands clarification, and that this demands favourable life
conditions. This does certainly not give us an immediate answer to the asked
question either, but only a statement about the conditions for clarifying it.
This criticism can be countered thus:
The conditions for clarifying ethical questions are
itself exactly an ethical matter. For the basis of an ethics is identical to
the conditions of a determination of the different moral questions.
Literature.
[Berkeley
88] George Berkeley: Principles
of Human Knowledge
Penguin Books (London 1988)
Penguin Books (London 1988)
[Cole
81] Peter Cole, ed: Radical
Pragmatics
Academic Press (London 1981).
Academic Press (London 1981).
[Dummett
78] Michael Dummett: Truth and
other Enigmas
Duckworth (London 1978)
Duckworth (London 1978)
[Fraassen
80] Bas C. van Fraassen: The
Scientific Image
Oxford University Press (Oxford 1980)
Oxford University Press (Oxford 1980)
[Grice
94] H. P. Grice: “Logic and Conversation”, i Basic Topics in the Philosophy of Language, Robert M. Harnish
(ed.), (Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994).
[Kuhn 70] Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, Enlarged
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago 1970).
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago 1970).
