Huh?
John says incest can lead to birth defects. This is a biological fact. Nothing those who argue in favor of incest say can make that go away.
But:
Jane argues that, while this may be true, she is having a sexual relationship with her sister. They love each other dearly and have freely chosen to expand that love to include a physical intimacy. A sexual relationship that precludes the possibility of pregnancy.
That is also a fact.
So both sides express facts about incest that are true, pertaining to their own particular context. Facts the other side cannot make go away.
In other words, each particular sexual context involves any number of facts that can be twisted into either a pro-incest or an anti-incest moral narrative.
So how do philosophers, taking all of this into account, come up with an argument that establishes the optimal [most reasonable/rational] frame of mind? An argument that encompasses the moral obligation of all reasonable/rational men and women in regard to incest.
Where are the arguments from OH or Faust or others that make this go away?
In fact, regarding any moral conflict that we are familiar with there are similar sets of facts that can be configured into a pro or con political agenda.
And while it is biologically factual that incestuous sex can result in birth defects, it is also biologically factual that sex between sisters, sex between brothers, sex between family members that preclude the possibility of pregnancy, obviate that factor.
Then one could present the argument that making homosexual incest acceptable and heterosexual incest unacceptable would be discrimination based on sexual orientation. Thus the preferred solution is to make all incest immoral.
Sure they can. Homosexuality is but one more example of facts on the ground that can be twisted into a political prejudice rooted subjectively in dasein and conflicting goods.
But: How does any so-called “preferred solution” not come down to subjective political prejudices rather than to one or another deontological “philosophical” argument in which one is obligated to interpret the facts as consistent with one or another rendition of this:
1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the ideal
3] I have access to the ideal because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational
Are not Jacob and Sauwelios and James Saint and all the other objectivists cut from the same cloth here? They might argue for different Kingdoms of Ends, but they all seem convinced that as “serious philosophers” these can in fact be derived in using the tools at their disposal.
In other words, they all hold particular personal opinions about particular behaviors and they try to stuff them into one or another scholastic analysis. Some with God, some without. But it always comes down to one or another set of so-called “natural” or “ideal” behaviors.
You may claim to have demonstrated “how philosophers would establish something ‘on earth’” here, but you and I are talking about two very different kinds of demonstrations.
Let’s focus in on behaviors that do come to clash over conflicting value judgments relating to issues like incest, homosexuality and abortion.
I just attempted to focus on incest and the consequences and natural aversions. Immediately your tried to shift to the abstractions of value and the Grand Scheme.
Natural aversions? Says who? Both John and Jane above argue that it is “natural” to think about incest the way they do.
And “consequences” construed from what point of view regarding what particular context?
Again and again and again:
What I am looking for from moral objectivists [either sacred or secular] is something analogous to this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
Thus when someone asks me to encompass my point of view regarding abortion as a moral issue, as a value judgment, I can situate my actual changing perspective over time: existentially, for all practical purposes.
And I can note how this particular trajectory culminates in my dilemma above.
But: What if someone asks you? You are either willing [and able] to do the same or you are not.