There are the all too familiar charges that to deny the objective truth-claim of moral judgments is, in effect, to open the floodgates of unreason and moral irresponsibility, to encourage cynicism in others, and to irrevocably weaken the hold of one's own moral commitments. Most of this, of course, is, in the sense in which Joad means it, itself a form of irresponsible nonsense. It cannot too often or too forcibly be expressed that such writers as Carnap, Stevenson, and Popper have no intention of doing down the importance of rationality in the conduct of life. On the contrary, and this is particularly true of Popper, the whole polemic is directed to the defense of reason in conduct against those misguided crypto-rationalists who identify "goodness" and "obligation" with some trans-empirical or non-natural quality which can be discerned only by some supra-rational intuition. Indeed, their writings should provide a source of comfort to those who still retain some faith in the principles of Enlightenment, and would have the deliberations of men directed toward the probable means to their own well-being rather than clouded or swayed by the power of words disguised as the will of God or as the voice of some transcendental "moral order of the universe."
(Henry David Aiken, "The Authority of Moral Judgments," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 [June 1952]: 513-25, at 516 n. 4)
Note from KBJ: Aiken is confused. The charge is that denying the objectivity of moral judgments has bad consequences. His reply to the charge is that those who deny moral objectivity don't intend to produce bad consequences. Both claims can be true, so Aiken's reply misses the point. What he should have said is that ethical subjectivism can be true even though its espousal has bad consequences. Suppose ethical objectivism is false; should it be affirmed anyway, because it has good consequences? If what may be affirmed or denied is a function solely of the consequences of those actions, then philosophy, which is inquiry for the sake of inquiry, is dead.
