ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, I argue that moral theories that aspire to metaethical objectivism would do well to produce a general schema for answering the all-purpose moral question ‘What should we do, all things considered?’ Objectivism requires in principle sound and complete moral theories that we have reason to believe can answer this question again and again. It would be unfair to require metaethical objectivists to be able to produce the actual theories that will answer the question. There is no more reason to demand that objectivists elaborate such a theory than there is to demand that scientific realists elaborate a true physical ‘theory of everything’ before we accept scientific realism. Although metaethical objectivists do not have to provide a detailed view that would answer the what-should-we-do question, they must be able to fend off the objection that, due to our disorderly moral thinking, any such view would be conflicted. In this chapter, I argue that normative ethics is unlikely to meet that challenge. I have already claimed that: (1) The overarching moral question is
‘What should we do, all things considered?’ and (2) Answering this question requires that we appeal to all of the considerations we find relevant. These include considerations from the three traditional moral categories – theories of moral obligation, intrinsic value, and character virtues, as well as other moral considerations such as moral autonomy and fairness. These also include nonmoral considerations such as the expenditure of time, effort, and other resources. In section 1, I argue that we cannot replace any of the categories of
moral obligation, intrinsic value, and character virtues with the others. In section 2, I make some preliminary comments about the three moral areas designed to raise initial doubts about whether these three constituents of morality are good candidates for providing coherent answers even within themselves. In section 3, the longest part of the chapter, I use my Everything-Defeats-Everything examples to show the internal disarray of moral thinking. I argue that for every example I provide in which moral obligation, intrinsic value, or character virtue seems intuitively to give the best moral answer, we can find a slightly different example in which reasoning from one of the other two seems to provide a better answer. Moreover, even within the three categories of moral obligation, intrinsic value, and virtue, competing theories defeat each other. I also provide what I regard as unsolvable cases to help
I see the overall picture. In section 4, I discuss the debate whether one’s previous moral status should affect unrelated judgments about that person. In section 5, I discuss whether intrinsic goods can ever be morally bad. In section 6, I support the division of moral labor and show how division of labor contributes to the fragmentation of the moral. I realize that the examples in this chapter do not produce logical
contradictions. Nonetheless, I think the examples show conflicts and infelicities that support subjectivism. Because I do not expect readers to accept all of my assessments of the examples, I provide many. I hope that readers will agree with enough of them to see their force in supporting my conclusion: It is implausible to think that normative ethics can provide answers to ‘What should we do, all things considered?’ that are robust enough to support metaethical objectivism.
