PASSING OVER ETHICS IN SILENCE.

PASSING OVER ETHICS IN SILENCE. In the article I linked to yesterday, David Brooks says:”Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics.” And later: “You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.” Law professors are fond of hypotheticals where the facts can give rise to two or more conflicting instinctive ethical responses. The conflicts are discussed by professor and students. The new view carves out an area –ethics–where there is to be no discussion of issues. The day after Brooks published his article, I was quoting Wittgenstein that “what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” Brooks aptly titled his article “The End of Philosophy.”