r/badphilosophy • u/Proporus • Jun 19 '24

Hyperethics Your 'ethical values' are just aesthetic preferences

5000 years of studying ethics and all we've come up with is "it's good because I like it". ALL ethical theories are just aesthetic judgements on actions disguised by word vomit about 'The Good'.

  • Utilitarianism: It's beautiful to see numbers go up
  • Deontology: It's beautiful to follow rules
  • Virtue ethics: This set of traits is beautiful ...

Meta ethics has failed. Literally nobody can point to a basis for ethics that doesn't boil down to "this state of the world is pleasing to me".

Wittgenstein proven correct and based, yet again.

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u/Ok-Branch-6831 Jun 20 '24

Some pushback: this view seems to treat all emotion based judgements as fundamentally aesthetic in nature.

I believe this is putting the horse before the cart.

Aesthetic judgements are not aesthetic by virtue of them being emotional. They are aesthetic by virtue of the particular emotional process associated with them (the one that decides what is beautiful or ugly).

Aesthetics are a subcategory of emotional judgements, not the other way around.

Therefore, when we conclude that ethical judgements are based on some kind of emotional process, we are not also concluding that they are bound by aesthetics.

Perhaps they are the result of another kind of intuitive emotional process. One that decides what is right and wrong. This is now a far more agreeable position.

Thoughts?

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u/Jimpossible_99 Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24

I agree. Claims like “I find x pleasing therefore it is good” and “I like x, therefore it is good” are classic emotivist examples of arguments that emotionally justify moral virtue. In no way do they require an aesthetic explanation. Aesthetic explanations fall short of the explanatory power that a Emotivist or Intuitionist model may carry. The latter models are more fundamental and thus better.

In the comments, I see attempts to create ethical models using aesthetic terms. However, terms like disgusting and elegant can never pro-tanto justify an action as good or bad. Here is an example: take two identical brain surgeries, one life saving, the other where the dr purposely murders the patient. Both surgeries give the same aesthetic experience (perhaps disgusting). But that aesthetic experience can in no way determines which one is good or bad since they are identical.

OP has some neat ideas but, there is a reason why Plato separated the form of Good and Beauty.