The Conventional Morality

A recurring comment at the start of this series of meetings on ethics "Telos and Ethos" (Sept. 12 (https://www.meetup.com/The-San-Diego-Philosophers-Roundtable/events/137637472/)) is that although what we have been saying about metaethics has been great and has been consistent, it somehow then falls apart when it is applied to actual examples and real-life scenarios.

And fall apart it should. Metaethics as the presuppositions to ethics can only do so much; it cannot do the job of ethics in applying its principles directly to real-life moral cases. Metaethical notions and principles are only the preliminaries, the preliminaries to any further discussion of ethics, serving only as the contextual background, as the foundation.

Thus, in observing that a real-life scenario cannot be resolved satisfactorily, commenters have implicitly assumed some particular ethical system(s) on which to make their moral judgments. But that is precisely what we have yet to identify and define. Hence, it is premature, at the start of this series on ethics, to make the pre-emptive judgment that ethics is not a science, not able to prescribe moral values, not providing moral principles for action, and so on.

Rather than critiquing something we have yet identified, let us look instead at what is available today in the world. Let us look closely at the conventional morality. Only after having gathered the evidence, can we then determine whether it is the proper ethical system on which to base moral judgments concerning these real-case scenarios.

With a working and thoroughly reviewed metaethical framework, let us analyze and evaluate the conventional morality and its ethos.

What is the conventional morality? What are its prescriptions, such as its values, virtues, disvalues, and vices. How were they brought together into the present package? What are presupposed by them? What consequences follow from following the conventional morality? How does the conventional ethos work through the culture? How does it affect a society adhering to this morality and exhibiting this ethos? How does it affect the conventional individual? How does it affect someone who isn't conventional?

These questions and maybe a few more will be explored.