Can't wait! Clicking in now....

very cool. will read it in more detail tomorrow (it's 2 a.m. here). for now some of my own thoughts about some Stef quotes you use:

Quote:

the first test of any scientific theory is universality.

if this is true, then psychology cannot be a science unless Stef accepts determinism

moreover, qua morality, the action is characterised by the theory. Applying a theory to a situation means that you pick out certain aspects, ways of seeing the situation, of projecting the framework of the theory onto the situation. So then universality seems to mean that once the situation and action have been characterised in a certain way the same moral rule should apply to that situation and all other instances that share their abstract structure. But this is sort of begging the question since the trick is exactly to find the proper description/characterisation of a situation and all sorts of contextual factors play a role there and there is no single, objective way of doing so.

I hope to be clearer on that later

third point:
If "rape" is a moral good, then "not raping" must be a moral evil

Stef switches to positive actions (concentrating on what one should do and not what one should NOT do) here because he wants to establish the non-universalizability as the basis for not being a valid moral theory. but this is problematic:

if 'helping' is a moral good, then 'not helping' is a moral evil?

or is it morally neutral?

also, if helping is morally good then it is not universalizable either since if i save a drowning man he cannot at the same time help me.

So his switch in itself is problematic and it cannot achieve what he wants to use it for

Well Stefan would argue that only "inflicted" behaviors can be evaluated as morally good or bad. "Helping" would be placed within the realm of "aesthetics."

On your later point that a person might not be able to help you, there's a widely accepted notion in ethics that "ought" implies "can." That is, I can't be morally obligated to do something that I can't possibly do. I doubt that Stefan would disagree, though there are instances where he says things that seem to imply that he isn't taking this principle into account.

also, this is what I just hate about the UPB book: it is so confused and unclear and obfuscated that you first have to spend such an extraordinary amount of time and energy to figure out what he could be trying to say or what he is in fact saying and what the implications are, before you can even begin to critique it.

Most people stop at the trying to figure out what is actually said, and this is exactly what Stef wants: his followers just sort of give up, satisfy themselves with some supposed rules-of-thumb and then take it as their gospel.

And Stef can use the utterly confused nature of the book to just whip silly somebody criticising his ideas: 'no, you just haven't understood this', 'no, I didn't say *that*', so that the person analyzing the ideas just gets dizzy and never reaches firm ground, because there is no firm ground there. It is all obfuscation and manipulation

Well I think I directly quoted Stefan enough in my post that he couldn't reasonably say that he didn't take the position I've attributed to him. Of course, that doesn't mean he won't say that, or that it won't be suggested by anyone else, but I don't think it would be reasonable to do so.

See I also don't like how inflicted behavior needs to be either morally obligatory or morally impermissible. It seems to me that this is an extremely large weakness in Stefan's argument, and I plan to address it in a future post. Just to get people started in thinking about it, can anyone think of an example of an inflicted behavior which is morally obligatory?

but as I try to argue in my prev post, qua universalizability it does not seem to matter whether it is obligatory or should merely be possible to do

but universalizability is the problem itself. I mean, everybody could hit somebody else at the same time, so hitting does not seem inconsistent as a moral rule. Moreover, you don't need say your arm (where you may be hit) to engage in argumentation, so it is not a problem for that either.

If you take a look at my post, you'll find a discussion of two ways in which a universal law could "come into contradiction with itself," one of which being that no reasonable person could ever want the maxim in question to be adopted as a universal law. So it's true that we can conceive of a world in which everyone was always hitting people, but no one would ever want such a rule to be adopted.

All time best response bar none (must be said emphatically with fist clenched, or pointing a finger towards the sky):

But Stewart, it stands to reason!

Ahh but its universaly preferrable that there isn't worldwide chaos. I think that would be his response.