chewybrian wrote: ↑February 12th, 2022, 5:26 am
The world would be a better place if we did X. We can afford to do X without any undue hardship. Therefore we should do X. Uncertainty about housing, health care, transportation and such is a fact of life for most people in the US. Most of us are just a couple paychecks away from disaster. Living in that situation indefinitely is a formula for mental illness, and makes it all but impossible for many folks to self-actualize. We should prefer to live in a society of folks who are not mentally ill, who are willing and able to work for the common good because they are not living in fear. If we are on the path to self-actualization, we should naturally want to help others to take that path if we can.
That argument embodies all the fallacies and
non-sequiturs I previously pointed out. It persists in assuming that some collective ("the world," "we," "society"), rather than individual moral agents, is the primary unit of analysis, i.e., the subject of moral concern and the bearer of moral obligations. That assumption is empirically false, and propositions which embody it are non-cognitive (whether they are true or false is undeterminable).
For example, whether the "world would be a better place if we did X," for any given X --- assuming you mean "better for people" --- can only be determined by determining whether doing X would be better for Alfie, Bruno, Chauncey, and every other individual included among those "people." We can make no claim that "The world would be a better place if we did X" WITHOUT making those individual determinations. And, of course, when we set about making them, we'll soon find that doing X may be better for Alfie, but not necessarily for Bruno or Chauncey. So the original claim about "the world" will be false.
Same with "undue hardship." Undue for whom? Unless you spell out the hardships X imposes on each person, and find that it imposes no hardships on anyone, then you can't claim that X is "without any hardship." But, of course, you said, "
undue hardships." But you give no criteria for determining whether a hardship is "undue," and could not do so without knowing how X would impact Alfie, Bruno, Chauncey, etc. I assume you would say that If X confers a benefit on Alfie, but imposes a hardship on Bruno, then that hardship is not "undue" if the benefit to Alfie "outweighs" the hardship on Bruno. But you can't do that weighing, because the benefit and the hardship are both subjective and occur in the value hierarchies of different individuals, and interpersonal comparisons of utility cannot be made.
"Most of us are just a couple paychecks away from disaster. Living in that situation indefinitely is a formula for mental illness, and makes it all but impossible for many folks to self-actualize."
Well, no. The first sentence is false, and the two sentences contradict each other. Losing a job is not a "disaster" for hardly anyone. It is a setback, a challenge, and source of angst for some, but one most people overcome and allay in fairly short order (by finding another job). Calling it a "disaster" is histrionic hyperbole, lefty demagoguery. And if "most of us" face that "disaster," and that situation is a "formula for mental illness," does that mean most of us are mentally ill?
"We should prefer to live in a society of folks who are not mentally ill, who are willing and able to work for the common good because they are not living in fear."
And there it is again . . . "willing to work for the common good."
There is no common good. There are only "good for Alfie," "good for Bruno," etc. And those goods differ from person to person.
^That is what a moral argument looks like, I suppose, and that is what I am saying.
No, that is not what a moral argument looks like. At least, not a sound moral argument. The latter begins from premises which are self-evident or empirically verifiable and yields conclusions which have determinable truth values and follow logically from the premises. No do they beg the question by embedding subjective judgments of value into the premises.