ERISL:
I’m not saying merely “listen to yourself.” No.
I’m positing an inate faculty along the lines of what has traditionally been termed “conscience.”
To judge whether something, some contemplated action, is right or wrong is–obviously–to render a judgment. Now, how in a general sense does one “judge”? If you are to judge something wherein what is at issue is a matter of precise measurement, AND there are instruments that we have agreed are the last word in making that sort of measurement-- then we measure; and the result is our “judgment.”
But many sorts of cases, and particularly cases touching upon moral/ethical matters, are not such as lend themselves to anything like a precise measurement. There is no instrument; there are no standard units.
For example, is someone asks me, “Does this swatch seem closer to orange, or closer to pure red?”, I’m not being asked a question about angstroms and wave-lengths, but about my own inner language of sensations. To render judgment, I have to do two things. First, I must look…not glance, mind you, but LOOK. Second, I must do my best to fix the deliverence of that look (ie, the received sensation) clearly in my mind, juxtaposed as best I can manage with my whole framework of “how to give names to color sensations” (and many other things).
To get the answer, I don’t do any “figuring” or “calculating” or “reasoning.” No. Just by having the situation clearly in mind, as I described, I “come to conclude” that the color is more like orange or more like red.
When I look at a green light, I don’t have to reason and calculate whether it is what I call green; I just look at it with a certain “open to seeing” attitude–and I become sure of what it is.
That’s “the faculty of seeing and recognizing colors.”
I’m saying moral/ethical judgments are mediated by a somewhat similar “faculty of seeing and recognizing the rightness or wrongness of the case.”
But whereas we practice seeing colors nearly every waking moment, and receive constant feedback as to whether our use of color-language comports reasonably well with the language use of others–moral/ethical situations (above a certain rudimentary level) only come across our bows occasionally, and almost everything about the facts of the given case can be disputed. So we lack practice; thus we lack skill; thus we tend to do poorly in distinguishing conscience from whim (etc.).
That in no way demonstrates that a distinct faculty of conscience, and its distinct subject matter, fails to exist.
“…I mean what are you saying? That moral considerations are not seperate from questions of fact?..”
I’m saying there is indeed a fact of the matter, just as there is a fact of the matter as to whether something looks more like red or more like orange to me. A fact about my individual, private perceptions is still, for all that, a fact. But only I among mere mortals can know that fact AS a fact.
Are you assuming that morality just CAN’T rest upon necessarily private judgments?