A Czech reader sent me some materials in which he raises the title question. One of them is a YouTube video. I will unpack the question in my own way and then pronounce my verdict.
Suppose what ought to be evident, namely, that we are morally responsible for our actions. Among actions are those that could be labeled 'theoretical.' Among theoretical actions are those we engage in when we do philosophy. (And please note that philosophy is indeed something we do: it is an activity even if it culminates in contemplation.) Philosophical actions include raising questions, expounding them, entering into dialog with others, consulting and comparing authorities, drawing inferences, generalizing, hunting for counterexamples, testing arguments for validity, deciding which issues are salient, and so on.
Given our moral responsibility for our actions, including our philosophical actions, there is the admittedly farfetched possibility that we do wrong when we philosophize. Given this 'possibility' are we not being intolerably dogmatic when we just 'cut loose and philosophize' without a preliminary examination of the question of the moral justifiability of philosophical actions?
Suppose someone were to issue this pronunciamento: It is wrong, always and everywhere, to do anything whatsoever without first having established the moral acceptability of the proposed action!
Or as my correspondent puts it: No action can [may] be performed before its ethical legitimation! He calls this the "methodical rule of the ethical skeptic."
My Verdict
The draconian demand under consideration is obviously self-referential and in consequence self-vitiating. If it is wrong to act until I have shown that my action is morally permissible, then it is wrong to engage in all the 'internal' or theoretical actions necessary to determine whether my proposed action (whether theoretical or practical) is morally permissible until I have shown that the theoretical actions are morally permissible. It follows that the ethical demand cannot be met. (A vicious infinite regress is involved.)
Now an ethical demand that cannot be met is no ethical demand at all. For 'ought' implies 'can.' If I ought to do such-and-such, then it must be possible for me to do it, and not just in a merely logical sense of 'possible.' But it is not possible for me to show the moral permissibility of all of my actions.
I conclude that one is not being censurably dogmatic when one just 'cuts loose and philosophizes,' and that we have been given no good reason to think that philosophizing is morally wrong.
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