Okay, with respect to an ethical conflict that most here are likely to be familiar with, draw a comparison between the knots example above and the gap between your current value judgment regarding this conflict and the value judgments of those who are trained as ethicists to encompass an argument far more likely to secure the optimal “quality of life” for all those involved in the conflict.
What on earth are you actually arguing here? There clearly is a gap between those who know very little about knots and those who know practically everything about them.
But how would that gap be closed with respect to conflicting goods? For example, how would it be encompassed pertaining to, say, the construction of Trump’s wall on the border with Mexico? One can clearly imagine a huge gap between those who know little or nothing about building such a wall and those who are experts. But how about the gap between those who argue that it is wrong to build this wall and those who argue that it is right?
Chess? A game in which there are fixed rules, with moves that any particular human brain either will or will not have the capacity to calculate better than another human brain. A game in which computers have been programmed to out “think” even the most sophisticated flesh and blood “masters”?
Yes, a game. I’m playing a game in a particular context … a personal state (tired, irritated, focused, distracted), an opponent that I probably did not select and who I may know nothing about. I have a certain knowledge and skill and so does my opponent. The existence of masters and computers able to precisely calculate the variations does enter into the game beyond what I and my opponent have learned from them prior to the start of the game.
It seems we are more or less in sync about chess as a game embedded in a set of either/or rules long established; and in which individual minds will be more or less equipped to master them.
But what of the is/ought examples that I noted above? What is the equivalent here when we bring in our own “expert” ethicists to resolve these or other conflicting goods?
Or am I still missing a crucial component of his argument?
What you seem to miss is that what you post is a looking back.
You’re not interested in “how ought one to live?”, you’re interested in “how ought one have lived?” … yesterday, last month, last year.
A lot of the things that you bring up are irrelevant while playing the game.
I don’t understand your point here. The past, present and future are just manifestations of the same human condition. How they are implicated in a chess game is one thing, how they are implicated in conflicting value judgments that may revolve around the game of chess something different.
Or so it certainly seems to me “here and now”.
Unless, of course, you or others are able to persuade me that “in reality” “as a matter of fact” they are not really all that much different at all.
It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
Kierkegaard
You take what you’ve learned from the past about chess into the present such that in the future you will have learned all that much more. You play chess better.
Now, with respect to any particular moral conflict that might come along in playing the game, how do we determine in turn which frame of mind reflects the most rational assessment? You become a better ethicist.