![]() I'm not sure that I see the problem of moral dilemmas for Gibbard's semantics. The assumptions are so simple, it is very difficult to see how those models don't describe perfectly possible situations. Slote's example is actually due to Timothy Williamson. Michael Slote describes one informally (Beyond Optimizing). Marcus.īut the best case that moral dilemmas are possible (even utilitarian moral dilemmas) are models containing infinite sequences of improving worlds and a suitably defined principle of obligation. Greenspan argued this was, as I recall, as did Bernard Williams and Ruth B. There are also fewer arguments for moral dilemmas that appeal to "moral residue" claims or claims that no matter what you do it still seems apt to feel remorse or guilt. The deontic theorems needed to generate a contradiction are more dubious than the claim that moral dilemmas are possible. You can still generate a contradiction in standard deontic logics (SDL), but that's not a big deal. In fact the validity of a deontic "theorem" varies with the moral theory you adopt. Now there are any number of deontic logics that accomodate moral dilemmas. Pointing to alleged dilemmatic situations was never the most promising approach. There are very good arguments for the possbility of moral dilemmas that do not rely (as they used to) on intuitive responses to detailed examples. If the fourth option is correct, then expressivist metaethics is not as purely “meta” as it is usually advertised. If this seems like an implausible construal of the dilemmatists’ views on moral theory, we have the fourth option to fall back on. On this view, the dilemmatists are construing moral theory as the study of what to feel remorseful for, not the study of what to do. An expressivist might then construe their “…is (not) morally permissible” as expressing, not commitment to a plan of action, but commitment to norms for feeling remorse. In favor of the third solution, one might point out that advocates of moral dilemmas often appeal to the rightness of remorseful feelings no matter your choice of action in a dilemmatic situation. The first two solutions don’t strike me as very plausible. What we learn is that Gibbard’s semantics is not theory-neutral but carries consequences for an adequate first-order moral theory. The two predicates are in fact quite similar, but they are theoretical terms defined by their roles in substantive moral theories.Gibbard’s “okay to do” and the moral dilemmatists’ “morally permissible” are predicates that don’t have much to do with one another this is a pseudo-problem due to bad translation.Gibbard’s semantics shows that moral dilemmas are impossible, and those who have argued otherwise are in fact deeply confused.Moral dilemmas are possible, and Gibbard’s semantics can’t account for them, so Gibbard’s semantics are wrong. ![]()
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