There's a simple rebuttal from the moral particularist: That it's very intuitive to them, and that's all that's necessary to endorse it. You are welcome to raise as many points against it as you wish, but if their intuitions are strong enough, then these objections just aren't going to be good enough.
Like any philosophical topic, once we grant carte blanche to intuitions, an intuition can always be arbitrarily stronger than any defeaters against the position held on intuitive grounds.
Well, these are intended to show extremely unintuitive implications and theoretical costs of it. The particularist could bite the bullet. However, this is a cost of the view.
That's just it though: whether something is "intuitive" or not depends on the intuiter. A particularist can just point out that *they* find particularism more intuitive than whatever intuitions there may be to the contrary. Indeed, that may even be the whole reason why they remain a particularist: when they weigh up all their intuitions for and against it, they come down on the side of particularism.
People simply don't put the same weight on different intuitions. And I see no way to resolve such differences in intuitions using the methods of contemporary analytic philosophy. It all comes down to: you have your intuitions, and I have mine, and never the twain shall meet. Given this, I suspect contemporary analytic philosophy is incapable of resolving such disputes.
Gotcha. I don't know about you, but I find the irresolvability of these problems to be both frustrating and a hint that maybe there's something wrong with philosophical methods. If they can't solve the problems we want to solve, it may be that we should look for new methods, or reconsider whether the problems we think we face are genuine problems.
This is part of why I think there's no fact of the matter about these issues. If you get the chance, check out Horwich's "Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy." I'm sympathetic to that view, and generally think most of the problems philosophers are face aren't real problems, just pseudoproblems born of linguistic and conceptual confusions and ambiguity.
There's a simple rebuttal from the moral particularist: That it's very intuitive to them, and that's all that's necessary to endorse it. You are welcome to raise as many points against it as you wish, but if their intuitions are strong enough, then these objections just aren't going to be good enough.
Like any philosophical topic, once we grant carte blanche to intuitions, an intuition can always be arbitrarily stronger than any defeaters against the position held on intuitive grounds.
Well, these are intended to show extremely unintuitive implications and theoretical costs of it. The particularist could bite the bullet. However, this is a cost of the view.
That's just it though: whether something is "intuitive" or not depends on the intuiter. A particularist can just point out that *they* find particularism more intuitive than whatever intuitions there may be to the contrary. Indeed, that may even be the whole reason why they remain a particularist: when they weigh up all their intuitions for and against it, they come down on the side of particularism.
People simply don't put the same weight on different intuitions. And I see no way to resolve such differences in intuitions using the methods of contemporary analytic philosophy. It all comes down to: you have your intuitions, and I have mine, and never the twain shall meet. Given this, I suspect contemporary analytic philosophy is incapable of resolving such disputes.
I agree that perhaps it's unsolvable. Whether a particularist will be convinced will depend on the particularist.
Gotcha. I don't know about you, but I find the irresolvability of these problems to be both frustrating and a hint that maybe there's something wrong with philosophical methods. If they can't solve the problems we want to solve, it may be that we should look for new methods, or reconsider whether the problems we think we face are genuine problems.
This is part of why I think there's no fact of the matter about these issues. If you get the chance, check out Horwich's "Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy." I'm sympathetic to that view, and generally think most of the problems philosophers are face aren't real problems, just pseudoproblems born of linguistic and conceptual confusions and ambiguity.