Copyright (C) 2019 Dennis Joe Darland
It is often acknowledged that ethics is relative. I agree with that – but I do not think that it means that ethics is not objective. In, e.g. Einstein’s theories of relativity, measurements are relative to the observer. But that relativity is itself objective. The measurements that observer will make can be calculated by other observers. I think ethical relations are often extremely complex. Sometimes they seem simple. But they do involve relations. Now even in what is called first order logic (i.e. logic where you only quantify over objects – not predicates) there is no mechanical way to determine logical truths. (There do always exist proofs – and there is a mechanical way to find them if they only involve properties (one term predicates). By quantifying I mean saying “for all” or “there exists .. such that”. There is, however no mechanical way to find proofs, if there are relations involving two or more terms. Also, it is an even worse situation for higher order logic. Not, only is there no mechanical procedure to find proofs – there sometimes simply do not exist any proofs at all. So, it seems, we can have no hope for finding logical rules for ethics. This does not mean logic is not useful for ethical questions. It just cannot be sufficient. I think we must depend on human intuition – as the basis. These logical results were not known until after Principia Mathematica was produced by Whitehead and Russell in 1910. There were different views on ethics before & since, but these logical facts were not known until discovered by other logicians since then. In fact, the opposite was often assumed.
So, it seems to me, and may be obvious to others, that in ethics, the factual situation is what really needs to be studied. Any discoveries in logic are largely irrelevant. In ethics, I am most influenced by Erich Fromm and R. M. Hare. Thus, I now intend to focus on facts more than logic. I think I know enough logic. I lack knowledge of facts.
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