Long-time Pakistani reader A. A. presents me with a nice challenging question:
You hold the view that the central problems of philosophy are insoluble. I assume that also includes central questions of ethics and meta-ethics, such as the existence of objective moral values. What implication does this have, however, for the more peripheral and applied problems of ethics, such as the moral status of abortion? Does it imply that they are also essentially insoluble?
Consistency demands that I drive to the end of the road. So yes, my metaphilosophical thesis implies that the moral problem of abortion, for example, is insoluble. Does the fact that I must, on pain of inconsistency, draw this conclusion amount to an objection to my metaphilosophy? Let's see.
One objection might run as follows. "If you are a solubility skeptic, then you can't take a position for or against the morality of abortion. But you yourself have argued over many posts against the moral permissibility of abortion. You do take a position. Therefore, at the end of the day you are not a solubility skeptic."
I don't think this objection need cause me any trouble. For it is consistent with what I maintain that I also maintain that some arguments on a topic are better than others, and that some are good enough to win our tentative assent, an assent sufficient to justify action in support of our causes. One can be a solubility skeptic and also maintain that some arguments are very bad and bare of probative force. Consider the Woman's Body Argument:
1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
3. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.
This is clearly a very bad argument, involving as it does an equivocation on the term 'part.' For an analysis in depth, see here.
The Potentiality Argument, however, is a good argument. It is not open to any obvious refutation, despite what some people erroneously think. But it is not an absolutely compelling argument. For one thing, its underlying nomenclature and conceptuality is broadly Aristotelian: there is talk of potency and act, substance and accident, and so on. The broadly Aristotelian metaphysical framework, though defensible and ably defended by many, is however not without its difficulties, some of which are explored in my Aristotle category. These age-old difficulties bleed into the Potentiality Argument, rendering it less than absolutely rationally compelling.
Any argument in applied ethics will rest on normative-ethical and meta-ethical presuppositions, with these in turn resting on metaphysical presuppositions. Starting at the periphery with the problems of applied ethics we are ineluctably drawn toward the center where the core problems live. For example, any discussion about the morality of abortion will lead to questions about rights and duties, the nature of persons, identity over time, the nature of change, and many others besides. The insolubility of the core problems extends to the peripheral problems. But this does not prevent us from taking definite rationally defensible stands on such issues as abortion.
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