the stupidest dilema from an intelligent person
Original from Brian Leiter’s blog, comments not in quotations are my own.
Gerald Dworkin poses the following rhetorical question:
If you wanted someone to aid you in making a difficult ethical decision about medical treatment for your child would you be better off consulting a moral philosopher, or a physician who has dealt with similar cases for 30 years? I know whom I would choose.
Are you stupid? I would choose neither. What kind of a dumb question is that?
“The people I would turn to for aid in such a decision are those friends of mine whom I regard as having a certain kind of wisdom and insight about the human condition.”
Not others, of course. I can easily think of a few inclusions and exclusions now. Which I will not mention for fear of offending, but ask me if you so feel inclined =)
“
Moral philosophers are not even more likely to be well-informed or concerned about history and politics than any other group of philosophers. In short, moral philosophers are no more likely than other philosophers to be humanists, with all that that vague word connotes.
It's clear to me why (say) someone working in metaphysics is not likely to have more insight into the human condition than the average mortal. It's because many people working in metaphysics are captured principally by the problem of working out the consistencies of an abstract problem space with only dubious connections to how we live our lives. Moral philosophers tend as a whole to be exactly the same as metaphysicians, except they have chosen a somewhat different problem space to explore the logical relations between theses. There are of course also strong practical considerations in favor of choosing this problem space, as it is more likely to result in gainful employment.
This is not to deny that medical ethicists have an important role to play in hospitals. Medical ethics boards in hospitals play important roles in helping doctors and families make difficult decisions. Some of these decisions are perhaps guided by the moral philosophy done by analytic moral theorists. But I would bet a considerably larger portion are guided by the factors cited by Dworkin, namely "sympathetic feelings, experience with the subject matter, and intuitive insight".
”
Gerald Dworkin poses the following rhetorical question:
If you wanted someone to aid you in making a difficult ethical decision about medical treatment for your child would you be better off consulting a moral philosopher, or a physician who has dealt with similar cases for 30 years? I know whom I would choose.
Are you stupid? I would choose neither. What kind of a dumb question is that?
“The people I would turn to for aid in such a decision are those friends of mine whom I regard as having a certain kind of wisdom and insight about the human condition.”
Not others, of course. I can easily think of a few inclusions and exclusions now. Which I will not mention for fear of offending, but ask me if you so feel inclined =)
“
Moral philosophers are not even more likely to be well-informed or concerned about history and politics than any other group of philosophers. In short, moral philosophers are no more likely than other philosophers to be humanists, with all that that vague word connotes.
It's clear to me why (say) someone working in metaphysics is not likely to have more insight into the human condition than the average mortal. It's because many people working in metaphysics are captured principally by the problem of working out the consistencies of an abstract problem space with only dubious connections to how we live our lives. Moral philosophers tend as a whole to be exactly the same as metaphysicians, except they have chosen a somewhat different problem space to explore the logical relations between theses. There are of course also strong practical considerations in favor of choosing this problem space, as it is more likely to result in gainful employment.
This is not to deny that medical ethicists have an important role to play in hospitals. Medical ethics boards in hospitals play important roles in helping doctors and families make difficult decisions. Some of these decisions are perhaps guided by the moral philosophy done by analytic moral theorists. But I would bet a considerably larger portion are guided by the factors cited by Dworkin, namely "sympathetic feelings, experience with the subject matter, and intuitive insight".
”
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