During the question and answer period of a lecture held on campus today, a classmate posited that since there exist many different ethical systems/theories, each must have something beneficial to offer. How does this follow? Why must each have something beneficial to offer given there exists more than one system? I disagreed with him and suggested that we can take nothing from the existence of competing moral theories (or traditions, as MacIntyre would call them)--at least nothing that would help us decide which of those theories was the best one (read: consistent with objective truth), let alone that they all have something beneficial to contribute to our moral dialogue.
Each theory has the opportunity to vindicate itself through answering (or not answering) difficult moral questions consistent with the first principles of that system. But we cannot determine which, among the many systems, is the best at answering our moral dilemmas. I suppose we'd have to define 'best' and outlay our presuppositions, such as, for instance, my belief in objective truth.
I know MacIntyre, somewhere in his project, answers the question of how are we to communicate when we reside in an ethical tradition, which is largely incommensurable to other, competing traditions. Any help with MacIntyre or other sources who have attempted to answer the metaethical question of which tradition is best, I would appreciate.
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