Metaethics

By Dave McFaul

Is something good because we love it or do we love something because it is good? Metaethics has different ontologies of the good that offer a pluralism of different states of truth that any ethical statement may occupy. Something may depend on us, such as being false, mere likes and dislikes, or procedures for constructing an answer. Or, a realist perspective can be invoked that uses self-correcting feedback, reflective equilibrium, or hermeneutic circles to ontologically focus on natural functions, causal properties and consequences, as well as non-natural open-ended normative series, and also appropriate subjective human feelings. Virtues combine all these.

In contrast, Hegel has six categories of Evil. He defines evil as when we may know what is right but do what is wrong anyway. Self-deception is thinking the good is whatever we want to say it is. Nietzsche justifies feeling immune from moral reproach by dismissing such things as the arbitrary jealous ranting of lesser beings too scared to take a risk. Viewing the world as ugly can rationalize the evil we do. Foucault saw recidivism, the way those in prison tend to go back there, as the efficient result of a pyramid of surveillance where inmates cannot watch those watching them. Their self-identity is formed through the paranoia of getting caught without knowing it, and punishment is a file that is never closed. This way they can be forced to spy on other delinquents.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 168831525X
• ISBN13: 9781688315259
• Release Date: August 2019
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"