ethics

[phucung]

Are ethical statements essentially metaphysical and therefore meaningless? I have read that Wittgenstein thought that ethics was one of those topics that you have to pass over in silence. I particularly want to hear Rosa's thoughts about this. I have read that you reject the is-ought distinction. Does this mean you accept ethical statements as meaningful?

[red eck]

Preference Utilitarianism is a structure of ethics based on the principle of equal consideration of all interests. Sentient beings and persons all have interests. I don't think there is anything metaphysical about it. The major debates IMHO seem to be about which animals can be described as 'sentient' or as 'conscious persons'.

Ethical statements certainly are meaningful. And you couldn't be a Socialist without them, otherwise all arguments about social injustice and class oppression would diminish into an endless pit of relativism.

[Diagoras]

Ethical statements are not meaningless. They are just subjective... meaning simply that there is no such thing as an ethical fact that could be objectively discovered or established... the universe has no opinion on rape or genocide, or anything else for that matter. Collective subjectivity of commonly held beliefs among humans means that we can still all find these individual assumptions of ethics and values important... even if they necessarily lack any significance beyond those who are capable of comprehending, perceiving and/or applying them.

[Hit The North]

It would be truer to say that ethics are inter-subjective; in other words, shared in common amongst members of particular communities and rooted in particular traditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism

[ZeroNowhere]

This (http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/tkannist/E-texts/Wittgenstein/LectureOnEthics.html) seems to be Wittgenstein's view on the issue, though it may have changed somewhat, seeing as I'm not sure if that was made in his 'Tractatus' or later days.