Dissertation: A beginning.

So, kind of like a log of my dissertation efforts, or maybe a "diary"? As well as this I'll hopefully still blog a wee bit - I have some interesting ideas on constitutional reform I'll (maybe) get round to posting later.

As for now, I just want to get down the basic ideas for my dissertation which will be something along the lines of "Can contract theory explain why ethics seem objective while they are in actual fact subjective?".

My idea came from reading Mackie and thinking about Rawls' Original Position. The one big criticism, and apparently something Rawls himself accepted and admitted he had intended, was that the Original Position argument was very much biased from the get-go. The thought experiment was set up in such a way as to favour outcomes Rawls himself would openly support (subjective outcomes). The thought experiment was to give Rawls a way to justify his bias with the original position, which would equate his subjective ideals with those of some objective, unbiased individual behind the "veil of ignorance". Setting up the veil at all requires subjective principles, so the veil and the position and any conclusions reached behind it, are all objective so long as they comply with the subjective rules set up.

This objection to Rawls is something that can be seen (although probably not intended) in Mackie's Error Theory. Mackie suggests that while an objectivist can accept that morality is subjective between states/cultures/sub-cultures, they would argue there is a base moral rule which would suggest that morality is that set of rules ("morals") which comply with whichever set of moral rules is the norm for that state/culture/sub-culture. The objectivists' most basic moral rule is performs (roughly) the same function as the Original Position thought experiment. At least I think it does; this is no doubt an objection I'll need to pre-empt when writing the dissertation.

This is the thought process that brought me to a place where I thought "there might be a dissertation in this...". So I'm left wondering where I am actually going to take the argument. The one choice that is clearest at the moment is "can we use the objection against Rawls to defend Mackie and in the process explain why we might see morality as objective while having to admit morality is subjective in nature?"

Bedtime.