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A Usenet Thread Ostensibly on
Can Science Say If God Exists?
Contributors
Martin Dann
J.W. Tait (Chase)
J.M. Pritchard (Jeff)
Ken Beirne
Abner J. Mintz
Most messages were posted to the following newsgroups, although some excluded one or two from this list:
alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism,sci.philosophy.meta,talk.atheism,talk.origins,talk.philosophy.humanism,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.misc
The Subject heading for all is:
Subject: Re: Can Science Say If God Exists?
However there is little in these messages about Science or God, so that heading is misleading. The subject matter is primarily, but not exclusively, ethics.
From Martin Dann Thu Nov 21 07:54:23 1996
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 06:54:23 +0000
From J.W. Tait Thu Nov 21 23:00:18 1996
Date: 21 Nov 1996 17:00:18 -0500
From J.M. Pritchard Fri Nov 22 22:46:09 1996
reply to Dann's reply to Pritchard
Date: 22 Nov 1996 16:46:09 -0500
From J.M. Pritchard Sat Nov 23 20:12:56 1996
Date: 23 Nov 1996 14:12:56 -0500
From Ken Beirne Sun Nov 24 12:42:50 1996
reply to Pritchard
Date: 24 Nov 1996 11:42:50 GMT
From J.W. Tait Sun Nov 24 19:13:01 1996
Date: 24 Nov 1996 13:13:01 -0500
From Ken Beirne Mon Nov 25 03:44:38 1996
reply to taitjw 24 Nov
Date: 25 Nov 1996 02:44:38 GMT
From Martin Dann Tue Nov 26 00:56:20 1996
reply to taitjw 24Nov
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 23:56:20 +0000
From J.M. Pritchard Tue Nov 26 05:58:34 1996
Date: 25 Nov 1996 23:58:34 -0500
From Ken Beirne Tue Nov 26 04:11:35 1996
Subject: reply to Pritchard ? Nov
Date: 26 Nov 1996 03:11:35 GMT
From Ken Beirne Tue Nov 26 08:26:07 1996
reply to Pritchard
Date: 26 Nov 1996 07:26:07 GMT
From J.M. Pritchard Tue Nov 26 20:43:31 1996
Date: 26 Nov 1996 14:43:31 -0500
From J.W. Tait Tue Nov 26 23:53:11 1996
Date: 26 Nov 1996 17:53:11 -0500
Not included here: Text retained in reply by Beirne Nov27 08:53:25 GMT
As a reply to Pritchard's reply to Beirne Nov26 03:11:35 GMT, it does not have anything added by Pritchard in the intermediate message.
From J.W. Tait Wed Nov 27 01:06:24 1996
Date: 26 Nov 1996 19:06:24 -0500
From Ken Beirne Wed Nov 27 09:43:10 1996
Date: 27 Nov 1996 08:43:10 GMT
Reply to Pritchard's reply to Beirne Nov26 03:11:35 GMT
From Ken Beirne Wed Nov 27 09:53:25 1996
Date: 27 Nov 1996 08:53:25 GMT
Reply to Tait Nov26 22:53:11 GMT, which was a reply to Pritchard's reply to Beirne Nov26 03:11:35 GMT
From Martin Dann
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 06:54:23 +0000
J.W. Tait writes
>Martin Dann wrote:
>
>>Self-interested altruism is an oxymoron. If ‘altruism is acting in one's own self-interest’, then it isn't altruism.
>
>>Getting a feeling of self worth from an act doesn't mean the act was done out of self-interest. You can get a warm feeling from an altruistic act, if the reason you carried out that act was not to get a warm feeling.
>
>I'd like to see if you'll go further with this. If "self-interested altruism" is oxymoronic, then will you go further and say that altruism cannot have a rational basis?
No, I shall do my best to argue that it does have a rational basis (below).
>
>If the warm feeling was not my motivation for the altruistic act, then what was? Knowing that I would feel worse or guilty if I didn't help whoever is just the flip-side of the same thing.
My desire to help, be kind, do what I can for someone. Emotions motivate. If my 'emotional intelligence' is well developed I will have empathy, even love for my fellow creatures and will be moved (motivated) to help them. If that leaves me with a warm feeling it is confirmation that I was right to follow my feelings. But it by no means follows that because I get this warm feeling, that that was the reason I acted. As for avoiding feeling worse or guilty, the fact that I may have done this is irrelevant to the motivation for my action. And in any case, is this always a factor? How many people feel guilty for not having given up their comfortable lives to risk life and health in the refugee camps of Zaire?
>Any analysis of the act prior to it results in some projection to the state of affairs following the act, and choosing the most desirable one. Sometimes the choice is between serious inconvenience or danger vs. guilt or remorse, but you will choose what you see as the least uncomfortable option.
Is it true that every decision we make is based on this analysis? I don't think so. First, there is not always that clear distinction between thought and action. Second, as above, guilt does not necessarily come into it. Third, while I have been using the 'serious inconvenience/danger' examples for dramatic effect not all altruistic acts depend on this. Most acts of selfless kindness involve no special inconvenience or danger. Altruism isn't confined to high profile acts of great sacrifice. I'm not actually sure that all altruistic acts are moral acts! I'm thinking of the Robin Hood syndrome - committing crimes against one group of people (the rich) out of altruistic concern for another (the poor).
Decisions about danger vs. guilt are not, therefore, prerequisites for an act to be altruistic. What is a prerequisite is that the motivation for the act arises out of care, empathy, concern, love (philos rather than eros) for the recipients of the act. We do it because we care. And if this gives us a warm glow - well good, because it should. But that was not the motivation for the act of altruism.
>
>Thus, altruism can't have any rationality behind it. Or can it?
>
>While I object to the simplistic "enlightened self-interest" that is being proposed in this group, there must be some component of self-interest in any moral decision-making, if only because it is you making the decision.
>
>I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, since you've been a coherent contributor thus far (and you give Jeff someone else to vent his relativistic non-relativism on:).
I'm working on Jeff. He thinks he's working on me, so don't say anything, will you? Yes I believe that there is rationality behind altruism, although I can't come up with anything so neatly simplistic as 'socialization', or 'social contract' or 'enlightened self-interest'. All animals are born with the predisposition to be the kind of animals they are. That is fairly trivially true. But I believe that humans are born with intellectual potential, and a drive to learn; with a potential for learning and developing language, and a drive to communicate; with feelings and emotions, capable of development and refinement, and with a drive (here's the tricky bit) for the 'good'. This sounds a bit like 'self-interest', and in a way of course it is. It is self-interest to be that kind of person but it does not follow that the behaviour that results from this is self-interested behaviour. We lead better, more fulfilled lives if we develop our intellect, learn to share ideas, and communicate effectively, and develop our emotional intelligence to become 'good' moral characters.
I am no biologist, anthropologist or sociologist so I can't say where these drives come from - our evolution as social animals maybe. I don't want to bring in any transcendental power here. But for reasons that I believe could be rationally explained, one of the ends humans are driven to is a fulfilled, 'good' life. (Good is doing too much work here I know. I don't exclude all the material goods we seek, or health and happiness, but I do include the emotional fulfilment brought about by our moral development.
To make the basis of altruism truly rational I have to go further, I think, and consider altruistic behaviour and ask what moral feeling/emotion is responsible for that behaviour, and then argue why it is 'good' to have that moral feeling (used to be called 'virtues'). To go through everything would take a book, so I won't. I shall just suggest that it is possible - at least sufficiently to claim that I am at least not being irrational!
Cheers!
--
Martin
From J.W. Tait Thu Nov 21 23:00:18 1996
Date: 21 Nov 1996 17:00:18 -0500
Abner J. Mintz wrote:
>>>"We disagree. Why cannot there be more than one thing that is 'right'? Some problems can have multiple correct answers, you know. If I ask you how to get out of a building, must there be only one right answer, and all the other exits are objectively wrong?"
>>Ah, but if you ask which is the "right" way to get out of the building?
>"The person I asked may well answer that it depends on my objectives ... If I want the quickest way out, the right way will depend on where I am in the building. If I want the most convenient way to the street outside, the front door might be the right way, not the back. If I want the nicest route on my way out, the way that goes down the corridor with pictures might be the right way. And so on."
>"My point was just that: that there may be more than one 'right' way out, and similarly there may be more than one 'right' moral code."
Thus, the person might easily answer that there is no right way out of the building. There are merely more or less convenient/quick/beautiful ways out. That would be much clearer. It would also keep 'right' from being a superfluous synonym for 'best'. So, as yet, there can only be one "right" moral code. If there are many acceptable ones, there can only be better or worse ones, and the word "right" just doesn't apply.
>>>"An effort to do what is right does not, in and of itself, incorporate the view that there can be only one thing which is right.
>> Actually, that's precisely what's implied by the word.
>"'Right answer' is not synonymous with 'one, and only one, best answer'. There are many situations where multiple answers can be right."
Right just means acceptable in this case, so why use it?
>"If there are sixteen drugs that will cure the disease with equivalent amounts of side-effects etc. ... which one is right? Or are they all right?"
They are all useful, or acceptable, and perhaps one is "best". To have "right" answers, you need potential "wrong" answers, which requires a closed system. You'll have a tough time applying that to morality.
>"Similarly, imagine that people went to whatever afterlife they envisioned. If they believed in heaven, they went to heaven; if they believed in the Happy Hunting Ground, they went to the Happy Hunting Ground; etc. In that case, which religion was right about the afterlife? They all were!"
It depends on whether they thought everyone else was going somewhere unpleasant, in which case they were partially wrong. But this is a different issue. Right as 'correct' is different than moral right in conversation ('that was the right answer' vs. 'that was the right thing to do'). Perhaps the homonym is confusing you.
>"You'll have to come up with some reason better than just defining it that way to have there be only one right answer to every problem ... because I don't accept that definition, as it contradicts my experiences and the above thought experiments."
I think I just did.
[snip]
Cheers,
Chase
From J.M. Pritchard
Date: 22 Nov 1996 16:46:09 -0500
Martin Dann wrote:
>J.M. Pritchard writes
>Jeff:
>>>>>> How do we get from socialization to morality? Socialization is morality: the trip is not a far one.
>Martin:
>>>You are using a concept of 'moral' I cannot share. Indeed, I would say that your 'morality' is not morality at all. If you are right - and instinct is all it is, then we are not moral creatures at all, and in this area at least, our rationality counts for nothing.
>Jeff:
>> You mean then, that (on my view) what we have been calling "morality" all these years was not morality at all - in fact, such a thing does not exist. I, on the other hand, don't think we have to apologize to metaphysics for what our words are not. The word "morality" describes the same overt behaviours it ever has - it does the same work in our linguistic economy. Not seeing this belies your understanding of Wittgenstein.
>Not at all. We have a common understanding of the clear distinction between morality and instinct. The work that "morality" does, in a Wittgensteinian sense if you will, covers a 'family' of behaviours and actions, one of the main common characteristics of which is a sense of 'goodness' or 'rightness' being attached to the act. The family includes altruistic behaviour, evidence of empathy, caring and love for the recipients of our action. I would say that 'instinctive' acts came way outside the family of behaviours we call moral. I think it is you being free with language here, not I.
The distinction between morality and instinct is clear or fuzzy as the case may be. I am not denying that the distinction is made, or saying that the basis for making the distinction is somehow faulty. I am merely saying that viewing this distinction as an analytic one is an unworthy move - and that consequently our investigations into even larger relations between morality and instinct (larger than a "mutually exclusive" relation, for instance) are prima facie justified.
>>>So I agree that there is something within us that we strive to fulfil, (like an instinct if you will) but I do not agree that it ends there. I think we have free will, and because of that the capability of acting against our own interests. We can buck nature. I guess that's the curse of rationality. And that, for me, is why we can be moral creatures. Morality is not just instinct - it can be learnt and developed - we can choose not to follow that instinct. We are not irrevocably programmed by our genes. If we were, 'moral' would have no sensible meaning.
>> I have a more organic view of the interaction. There is no sharp dichotomy between "instinct" and "free will" for instance. Your return on my words has a more Cartesian currency than I would like.
>Not intended. Why should saying that 'doing something which requires no rational input differs from the process of freely deciding to do this, or that, or nothing', is Cartesian?
Because the whole question of determinism and free will is a dead question to me. To think of these things as somehow in opposition, as the case with morality and instinct, is moving in a smaller circle than I am moving in, all hubris aside. Remember Hegel? Now I'm not the biggest exponent of Absolute Spirit in the world, but he did have some interesting things to say about dichotomization.
>> I think the whole view of setting man as something apart and in contrast to nature is a mistake. This might be existentially romantic, but ultimately I don't see why this is an intelligible idea at all. It presupposes something ex nihilo. How do you get something which is not nature out of nature?
>>Clumsy.
>So how can anything whatsoever not be nature? And if everything is nature what is the point in using the word?
It can only be to convert the people who are still interested in the dichotomy. Once everyone has been assimilated the word will drop away like an atrophied limb, I expect - except perhaps for historical purposes.
>I forgot who I was talking to when I said 'we can buck nature' - that was clumsy. OK, our rationality is natural, our emotions are natural and the stress between them from which flows morality is natural. We also naturally seek the good, but the tensions within us lead us sometimes to wilfully choose to do otherwise, often hurting ourselves as much as anyone else. That's what I clumsily called 'bucking nature' (I meant our nature) and of course there is nothing unnatural about it at all.
I don't like the idea that there is such a thing as "human nature". In fact, I am going to make some concessions to you about the humanity-language bond in this light.
>> And naturally, our morality is always developing. The world develops, we develop, morality develops.
>Is some kind of objective morality that is developing? Isn't it that humans develop better morality?
These are uninteresting questions. I don't think that the interpretation of "progress" as continuing approximation to a destination can hold any water. The destination evaporated with Kant - and the penchant to speak in these terms today is pure nostalgia. Moral discourse does not progress in the sense of getting closer to a destination. This way of thinking about progress is over. If "progress" is to maintain any meaning at all it can only refer to a growth characterized by the seeking of more interesting, more enduring, more "praiseworthy" goods. In the future we will measure progress only in terms of how we can further our enjoyment of existence and how we can experience things in new ways, not by relating our experience to some "ultimate" good, a "limit-notion" of rationality, or to the quantities we consume.
>> Habits and instincts develop - they evolved, after all, over years of development. Technology allows us to take a more direct hand in our own evolution but the process has not changed. In fact "irreversible programming by our genes" strikes me an oxymoron.
>In fact I think that's more or less what I meant when I said 'we are not irrevocably programmed by our genes'. As you say, we can't be.
My apologies - I misunderstood this statement.
>Jeff:
>>>>resist the interpretation that I am proclaiming some form of determinism).
>>>But it is sometimes difficult to resist :(.
>> You are thinking in terms which force you to understand the objects of my discussion as something determinate. But this is the wrong way to go about it. All words are social constructs - there are usually certain paradigm cases, but definitional accuracy always fades away at the extremes. There are no "things". There are only relations.
>Be fair - I did say 'difficult' not 'impossible';-). Because I choose not to agree, or play your different language game, doesn't necessarily mean that I am being forced into anything I don't want to be.
Fair enough.
>>>> With regard to the Nazis, when we say "socialization is immorality" clearly what we mean is "that kind of socialization is immorality." But this just means that we have two conflicting versions of morality. Peas and carrots. (This is not relativism - I repeat, this is NOT relativism.)
>>>But it sometimes looks like it : (. How do you choose between conflicting versions of morality? If you say we shouldn't, how do you account for the fact that we do. We actually expect everyone to agree with us that Nazi morality was evil/bad – call it what you will. Even most of the surviving people who were part of that society admit it was a gross mistake, and struggle to come to terms with how they got swept along by it.
>> We choose between conflicting versions of morality all the time. For me, morality, like instinct, is omnipresent. Don't fool yourself - I actually think that my description of the world is morally better than yours is.
>Mmmmm who is fooling whom? You have yet to convince me that you have a coherent morality. We have lots of stuff that looks like relativism but is most certainly NOT - you say. You claim that the difference between the morality of the Nazis and the morality, say, of a society of Monks is no more than 'carrots and peas'.
No, I am not saying it is "no more than 'carrots and peas'". I am not reducing. If you have this impression then you or I have mis-communicated somewhere along the line. I am only saying that there is considerable overlap in these determinations - between "morality" and "taste", for instance. Obviously, the former is loaded with a lot more significance than the latter; that alone counts for something because that significance is real and has manifest consequences. Once again, however I will use my "mass" analogy. Just because I say everything has a mass doesn't mean I am saying everything is of equal weight.
>And we have a morality which removes, without apparent compassion, human rights from anyone (sorry, anything) who doesn't have the requisite faculties intact at the time.
At the time and in the conceivable future. And I never said that a disadvantaged "human" was to immediately be accorded animal status. No doubt they are worth more than mere "animals". Here you are fudging what I have said.
>> This is, in part, what enables me to speak with such vicissitude when I see people making avoidable misinterpretations of what I am saying. Willful stupidity = immorality IMO.
>Gosh - you mean that disagreeing with you is immoral? (Oooops more willfull stupidity - sorry!).
No, I think you are honest. At least you entertain unfamiliar ideas with a relatively unbiased light. For my idea of what constitutes "willful stupidity" check out my discussion with Nando, which has since been discontinued.
>> Your example contains some questionable themes. You obviously know that when the Nazis were in power, there was a great deal of support for them. Naturally there was some resistance as well, but then most of the world was against the Nazis. But on the whole, I think your example does more to prove my point than to hinder it.
>No, I think I have raised considerable doubts about the source of morality being socialization. I confess that if you claim that the Nazis were just a different kind of moral society, and that the difference between them and any other society is no more significant than the difference between carrots and peas, then I have failed:(
I have NEVER said that the difference between Nazis and other societies was "no more significant than the difference between carrots and peas." In fact, significance is the thing which I have continuously been harping on as the sole determinant for distinguishing moral and aesthetic preferences. Why do you insist on interpreting my words in this way? The difference between Nazi sensibilities and our sensibilities is significant. It is significant to us. It is not analytic.
Martin:
>>>>>I would not reject autistic people from the social structure any more than I would reject criminals and sociopaths.
Jeff:
>>>> I would. Call it a biological predilection. Or an opinion. Or a moral judgement. Or whatever. Language is the prerequisite to play the human game (not necessarily vocal language, however). To communicate is what it means to be human.
Martin:
>>>So you reject babies, people in comas, people with advanced altzheimers (sp?) disease etc? You are going to have to fudge around the edges of your hard line here aren't you?
Jeff:
>> We all know that babies grow up. Perhaps if they grew up and proved to be severely maladapted - like the autistic - then they might not be wholly "human". People with truly advanced altzheimers are no more human than any other vegetable. People in comas can be cured, but barring that, I will say they are useless. I'm not saying that they all ought to be shot or anything of the sort, but then I'm also not the kind of guy who goes around kicking puppies. Obviously if someone wants to say that they're entitled - admittedly my views look like they support that. C'est la vie. If it came down to the crunch (say, global starvation), we would be obliged to strip away the autistic and those with altzheimers. Anything that opposed that would be a tacit endorsement of suicide for the species. But generally if somebody kicks a puppy in my presence I'll smack them.
>And as far as I can see you have no real reason for that other than that you are that kind of Guy. But back to this tendency of yours to want to exclude anyone from the human club who isn't wearing the right tie (language).
I'm not even saying that such a distinction can be analytically made (for it certainly cannot), but only that our prejudices are justified to the extent that we do make the discrimination between potential speakers and non-potential speakers. This is a tough question, with no easy answers. Don't be so naive as to suppose I am suggesting one.
>There are many who would argue that being human confers a certain moral status, not shared by non-humans. Denying these significant groups human moral status has, as I have said earlier, serious consequences for the way we treat them - and that isn't just a simplistic 'who would you throw out of the lifeboat' problem. Relying on nice, non-puppy kicking guys like you seems risky to me.
Yes, but as I stated above, the idea that I am going around labelling people with stickers which read "Human" and "Non-human" is a coarse caricature of my view. I do not make these determinations when they are not forced upon me, as they are in this discussion.
>Your view just seems to cut right across the common view. Society (mine anyway) shows more outrage when violence or other crimes are committed against those we normally think of as needing greater help and protection - babies, old people, those with incapacitating illnesses. It seems strange that people would behave like that about non-humans, so your view seems idiosyncratic.
Yes, this is an interesting point. People are indeed more outraged when say, an old senile woman is beaten up, than when a young man is. But I'm not sure what you or I can really say about this. It's also a fact that abortion is a hot topic. Is killing an unborn baby as much or even a greater crime than killing a healthy, self-sufficient member of society? On the face of it I would say no, but you are free to disagree. Saying that one view of the matter is a common one is simply to condemn my view to the relative fringe, but I know where I am. This cannot be an argument against my trying to insinuate my view into the mainstream.
>>>To be honest, I object very strongly to this kind of attitude, because it encourages prejudicial behaviour which has serious consequences for the way we treat the more unfortunate people in our society. The next step is to say that it is part of being human to have sight and hearing, so we should reject blind and deaf people from society. Next we start on people who aren't quite as intellectually agile as the rest of us.
Sight and hearing have nothing to do with language-using. You are placing me on a ramp I am not willing to sit on.
>> All moral behaviour is prejudicial behaviour.
>You are fond of these dubious aphorisms;-).
You might say they are "untimely".
>> I personally despise the dishonest kind of nonsense which proclaims that it isn't.
>It isn't so. Sorry but I'm not prepared to be dishonest in order to convince you of my honesty. I think you are playing your own language game again. Most uses of 'prejudice' involve unfavourable feelings.
Yes, I use a polemical language, but only because I think that when I have made the point for a dubious correlation that the more natural correlations will follow. I could also have used the word "passionate" in lieu of "prejudicial". But the point is that both of these words are, in a sense, critically superfluous. Why should we care which one we attach in philosophical discourse?
>Prejudice also implies preconceptions not based on thought or reason. I think you are going to have to explain to me why I am being dishonest, and if I am unaware of the fact (which I am) why you should despise me?
The bit about the dishonestly was not directed at you. You appear to be a paradigm of honesty, and that is why I am hopeful that I must eventually win you over to my side.
>> We are bigoted toward bigots. So be it. The sociopathic killer is also an unfortunate, wouldn't you say? Tread this line carefully, if at all.
>Can't resist a challenge;). Why does everything have to be so black and white? Why all this hate and intolerance. 'Unfortunate' is not the word I would have used, but I think a kind and caring person might have a twinge of sympathy for the kind of life this person must have, knowing that it is so remote from our own. I could do that while passing the guilty verdict and turning the key - even throwing it away if necessary.
You appear to have been socialized well. [snipped thread not to be pursued]
>> Liberal rhetoric will be given short shrift by me. I am more liberal than any liberal rhetorician, but I will still describe the facts with as much precision as I can.
>It was you who claimed to be wall to wall rhetoric wasn't it?
Touche. But I have developed a more refined taste. I prefer the flavour of "subtler" rhetoric. This is what it means to be logical, after all.
>>> You may argue that you include babies because they have a primitive form of communication (screaming!), but then so do cats and dogs. We accept into society these people you exclude because even if they themselves are incapable (either temporarily or permanently) of communicating, they are the kind of creatures that normally do. We recognize then as the same as us. They are humans. Deficient maybe, but humans never the less, and societies - moral societies - protect and care for such people.
>> Babies do not have language. Their screams are effective noises. They do not "decide" to scream. Those with permanent loss of linguistic functioning (note that this includes all non-verbal forms of communication as well, I take as "language" any form of sign-ification) are not "human." They live in a world I cannot even imagine (a non-linguistic one), and which I do not hold to be common.
>I was right - you don't think babies are human. They are Jeff. They are human babies, or baby humans. Your language theory will have to take account of this. And as for living in a world you can't imagine, what kind of reason is that? Perhaps you have a poor imagination!
Jesus. Babies are potentially human. And of course they are "human babies"- they are the babies of humans. If babies did not develop past the age of 6 months, then they would not be human. But as it is we can understand them as nascent human beings - because they develop into the real thing.
>> Obviously, if some autistic is minding his own business I couldn't care less, any more than I care about the neighbourhood dog. But I'm not obliged to feed that dog, or shower it, or house it.
>So, this is your world of better morality? Interesting!
No it's not a description of what behaviour would be like in that world. Perhaps I would feed and house the neighbourhood dog. But all the same I'm not obliged to do it. We do it if we want to. Legislated morality is not morality at all. Ever seen (or read) "A Clockwork Orange"?
> >Martin:
>>>>>But if a human was raised by wolves, I'd be less ruthless than you in expelling them from humanity. They would be humans raised by wolves, not non-humans.
>Jeff:
>>>> This is just another blatant disagreement. As you've seen, "language" is the key for me (as it is for Wittgenstein and Turing). The only thing I can say is that mine is the more consistent (and therefore, more useful) definition. If you are judging humanity by "form" rather than by "action" (as I am) then you run into the absurd case: imagine a wolf shaped exactly like a human. How is this creature different from the human raised by wolves? "Potential"??? ;) I think you see the bind.
>[....]Martin:
>>>I have no difficulty whatsoever in understanding the definition 'this is a human being who has been raised by wolves'. Sure, their behaviour is going to be aberrant when judged from a human viewpoint, but I have made my views on the way we should treat people with aberrant behaviour clear earlier. I believe that rejecting such people as non-human is inhuman. Potential? Not necessarily. But suppose that wolf-child was taken into society, and despite your views, was accepted as human, and through love and patience, eventually becomes indistinguishable from anyone else in society. Job on Wall Street, wife and kids, etc.. Is it just a wolf in human clothing? Is it now human? If so how could the same person be human and not human?
>Jeff:
>> You still have not stated how we could distinguish between the wolf-human and the human-wolf. What do you take yourself to be identifying when you say "This is a human"? A certain shape? A string of DNA code? Unless you are identifying a set of behaviours (and, I would attest, specifically complex linguistic behaviours) it's going to get absurd.
>Well, remember Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblances. All the things you mention might lead me to include the wolf-human within my concept of 'human' despite the lack of some others. Sorry Jeff, but I don't think you can throw people out of the human 'club', with all the potential consequences that has for them, on the basis of a pedantic approach to language.
Nothing pedantic about this approach. Thorough, perhaps, but always adaptable in accordance with what is most evolutionary successful in the long term. Actually, I'll concede to you here. I'm not trying to isolate a characteristic which we can then use to distinguish between humans and non-humans. I'm not Satan. I'm only seeking to describe the discriminations which we already make between humans and animals. Ultimately, I don't think a genealogical approach will allow us to correlate these discriminations with physical characteristics. The first discriminations (to the extent that there were "first discriminations") would have to have been made on the basis of behaviour.
>> Add a couple of years to that wolf-child. Let's say he's 30 when we find him. Still think we can rehabilitate him?
>So he is now a human being who has severe behavioural problems due to his upbringing. He needs treating with great care and sympathy.
I'm not so sure about this. In fact, I'm not sure how "compassionate" a move it would be to take him out of his environment and place him in ours. It could only cause him distress, our good intentions notwithstanding.
>>>As I implied earlier, language is not rationality. I am not going to pretend to separate them, but the one is not the other. I find this view depressing and I suspect nothing I say can influence you in any way.
>> This is the difference as you rightly note. All I can ask you is: what do you mean by rationality? The biggest idea I can ever practically get in return would be "language". You must think that the universe has played quite a trick on you.
>Why would I think that? Rationality is the exercise of reason. It gives us the ability to decide between this and that, and is thus essential to our free will. It enables us to control our feelings and emotions and therefore enables us to behave in a moral way. Sure, language of some kind - or at least the ability to communicate through language or behaviour, is the only evidence we have of rationality - but rationality and language are not the same thing.
>>>Of course there is no rational argument to persuade you that you should prefer peas to carrots. This is 'sheer predilection'. But if you like molesting children you are a moral monster. I know that, everyone else who does not share your monstrous immoral inclinations knows that.
>> No one is denying this, but you kindly emphasized the circularity of the reasoning involved. This is my point.
>One is 'sheer predilection'. The other is a moral monstrosity. Big difference! Not sure what point that could make for you.
It is a moral monstrosity because we say it is. What other reasons could you possibly be appealing to?
>>>And if you cannot find any rational arguments to support the view that molesting children is wrong, I don't think you are trying.
>> Of course any paedophile can find a rational argument to support the view that molesting children is wrong. But the point is that you can find a rational argument to support anything. Arguments do nothing to conclusively refute or endorse a given predilection. If the predilection actually changes, that's another matter. I used to hate both peas and carrots.
>Again, misses the point of the difference between predilection and moral judgement.
>[.....]
>>>What is this 'Reality'? Is it anything like 'reality'?
>> I see you deny yourself some of the more auspicious of the transcendental accoutrements - the capital 'R'. Unfortunately your faith shines through in your argumentation.
>My faith in what? The inherent potential good within human kind if we take the trouble to nurture and develop it?
This is a very interesting statement. It can be interpreted many different ways.
>> You asked in your last post why people seemed bent on interpreting your views into a theist context. I replied that you still paid homage to the god Nietzsche referred to when he said "God is dead". As long as you look for something deeper than convention this will be true.
>So if I want to look below the surface, beyond 'convention', I am committing myself to some kind of theistic view? Interesting. Radically wrong, but interesting.
Explain to me whatever it is you take yourself to be appealing to "below the surface" and I will explain how it is already contained in what I take to be "convention."
>>>> Some descriptions are better and worse according to context. If I am tying my shoes and you ask me why, I might reply, "Well, I want to play baseball." I could also reply, "Well, particles are in motion." Rationally speaking, both are true.
>>>Ah - we do have different views of rationality. Yours is probably technically right. I think mine is more for ordinary people;).
>> When I want to make the distinction you do, I tend to use "rational" and "reasonable". Computers are rational. But people are reasonable. The difference is a vital one, I'll admit - the latter is loaded with moral suppositions.
>Computers are machines. We use 'rational' by analogy. Rationality is the ability to reason. Computers don't have that. And you are right about the moral implications of reason. There is no morality without reason.
In my experience, "rational" is gaining to critical use I put it to, and losing the looser interpretation. But if you wish I will use "logical". You may transpose "logical" wherever I have said "rational". I would reverse your claim: there is no reason without morality.
>[.....]
>>>I'm getting confused. Probably my fault not yours. We have: 'morality is socialization'. We have: 'morality is instinct'. So socialization is instinct. So, we have 'instinct' ensuring that morality (i.e. instinct) is not 'arbitrary and random'. Is this actually saying anything meaningful?
>> No need to get analytic. A=B, A=C so C=B. Well, maybe.
>Well definitely!
I only meant I wasn't sure whether it could be applied to my argument.
>> I'm saying, (I think) that the morality is a matter of internal, not external consistency.
>Does this mean that you see morality as subjective rather than objective?
I don't like those words. They make incisions in something I don't see as coming apart. That's why I resist being categorized as one or the other.
>> It is "right" so long as it keeps us going. Human beings have complex needs - consequently they require a lot of spiritual/moral/artistic context to keep them going and to keep their interest up. They have to think they are good people, on the whole.
>They have to be good people - then they are fulfilled.
In my experience, all this can mean is that I have the experience of being a good person. So we mean the same thing.
>> This is why we can never (in the conceivable future) become a lot of depraved incestuous murderers and still expect to evolve as a civilization. That kind of mutation presupposes change on an unprecedented level - which I prefer to leave to idle speculation. Emphasis on "idle" personally, I'd rather lift weights or write music.
[In other words, complacent about the future.]
[snipped stuff about current philosophical climate.]
[snipped potted h of Phl nonsense]
I have a lot of respect for existentialism. As a matter of fact I would've called myself an existentialist if you talked to me a couple of years ago. A disease is sometimes a quickening.
>> We have inherited a similar problematic. Many people think that we ought to return to a form of Platonism. I don't think there is any question of a return, mainly on the grounds that most people bring against my view - it is too "pragmatically" contrived. There's no "rational" argument: it's simply not an idea I can take seriously anymore. It's like watching a guy who says he can juggle five balls - meanwhile he keeps dropping them. I've seen enough. The fact of the matter is, we've never had a truly post-modern world conception. It might be exciting. Certainly for me, it's more palatable than the alternative - and who knows? It might be more fun than yet another reiteration of medievalism in the 21st century.
[snip]
Jeff
From Pritchard Sat Nov 23 20:12:56 1996
Date: 23 Nov 1996 14:12:56 -0500
I have to admit Ken, I was beginning to wonder when we would come into dialogic conflict with one another. Your threads have heretofore been interesting and learned, but always struck me as curiously arcane. Naturally this is no argument, but to my mind one can defend any position at all. Only the future will tell which of our positions was and is the most tenable.
Ken Beirne wrote:
>J.M. Pritchard wrote:
>> >Not intended. Why should saying that 'doing something which requires no rational input differs from the process of freely deciding to do this, or that, or nothing', is Cartesian?
>> Because the whole question of determinism and free will is a dead question to me. To think of these things as somehow in opposition, as the case with morality and instinct, is moving in a smaller circle than I am moving in, all hubris aside.
>Oh, yuck. Sounds like you haven't moved hubris aside anywhere near far enough. Care to describe this "larger" circle that you imagine others are not travelling in?
To say that free will and determinism is a live issue one would have to tacitly admit to a number of Cartesian assumptions which I am not prepared to make. Among these are the supposition that man is some kind of "thinking thing" and that his relation to the "external" world consists in a kind of subject/object, mind/body, immaterial/material dichotomy. These differences are "analytic" because they describe things which are wholly different, and thus, their commune is the source of much logical anxiety. Fortunately, to divide the world into two mutually exclusive chunks is not the furthest extent of our imagination. Beyond this we have to (a logical "have to", if you will) imagine someplace where these opposites are conjoined - because that is our experience. To say that it is a vital question whether my acts are being "compelled" or whether I am freely "choosing" them is a false dichotomy. We are neither wholly and mechanistically compelled to perform an act - otherwise our experience of consciousness would serve no purpose - nor do we descend like ethereal ghosts upon the plane and decide ex nihilo upon a course of action - our desires are always in part shaped by what has gone before - without a previous context we cannot decide.
Total compulsion and total freedom are equally arbitrary and equally meaningless concepts. Thus the interesting question becomes not whether we are free or compelled (as if we could be one and not be the other), but to what degree we are coerced. This is a question of "violence and reason", not of "free will and determinism" - and the difference is that one resorts to metaphysical theorizing while the other describes something manifest.
> >> Remember Hegel? Now I'm not the biggest exponent of Absolute Spirit in the world, but he did have some interesting things to say about dichotomization.
>Bizarre is not the same as interesting.
Many people might disagree. In any event an absolute "sameness" does not exist, so it's a judgement call.
>> >So how can anything whatsoever not be nature? And if everything is nature what is the point in using the word?
>> It can only be to convert the people who are still interested in the dichotomy. Once everyone has been assimilated the word will drop away like an atrophied limb, I expect - except perhaps for historical purposes.
>This explains a lot, Jeff. You are one of the Borg?? I realized that the new Star Trek was opening today, but didn't realize you had stolen a march on it.
I like the word "assimilate". It conjures up lucid metaphors - and yes, the comparison with the "Borg" isn't entirely off base. But for me it isn't a question of assimilating or not assimilating. What appears natural for us today to believe is the result of a past assimilation. So it isn't really something you can single out for ridicule on the basis that you are describing a "type" of behaviour or argument. As I've already told Martin, it's all essentially propaganda. The question is whether the future is going to embrace mine or yours, or maintain the propaganda it is using now (which is actually quite close to yours).
>> >I forgot who I was talking to when I said 'we can buck nature' - that was clumsy. OK, our rationality is natural, our emotions are natural and the stress between them from which flows morality is natural. We also naturally seek the good, but the tensions within us lead us sometimes to wilfully choose to do otherwise, often hurting ourselves as much as anyone else. That's what I clumsily called 'bucking nature (I meant our nature) and of course there is nothing unnatural about it at all.
>> I don't like the idea that there is such a thing as "human nature". In fact, I am going to make some concessions to you about the humanity-language bond in this light.
>You don't "like the idea"? Has it got halitosis? Or is it that you don't like human beings having a nature, it being something of a crimp on free-ranging moralities?
None of this. First of all, the idea is Cartesian, and that alone suffices to refute it IMO. But secondly, it is because we believe we can locate and identify something like a human "essence" that legitimizes things like racism and Nazi anti-semitism. Of course, if we lose "human nature" we also lose "inalienable human rights". But we can't lose what we don't have. Look around you. The corporations are buying your rights as we speak. The whole point of this exercise is to drive home the point that we can't simply "posit" things like "rights". We have to fight for them, demand them. Continually. Because if we stop fighting for them they will erode, as they surely already are eroding.
>> >Is it some kind of objective morality that is developing? Isn't it that humans develop better morality?
>> These are uninteresting questions. I don't think that the interpretation of "progress" as continuing approximation to a destination can hold any water. The destination evaporated with Kant - and the penchant to speak in these terms today is pure nostalgia.
[snipped nonsense about Kant]
> In any case, at the very least, you would have to explain how the "destination" evaporated with Kant, and, for that matter, defend Kant a bit, since I would wager he does not have much authority in this thread, though you might be able to find a few itinerant Kantians on Usenet.
Forget what Kant said. The point is that he provides a beautiful portrait of the futility of philosophizing in a certain way. What you said about buying into a dichotomy is completely true. There is no such thing as a neutral vocabulary - this is in part why I am so careful to construct my own words and my own analogies.
> And why is it that the approximation to a destination holds no water?
This is still meaningful when we are driving to the beach. But it is not when we are en route to a transcendent morality. Kant showed that when we speak about the transcendent, we can only utter lies. Consequently, if you want to be able to speak about moral progress in this way, you will have to elucidate a non-transcendent destination (i.e.: something appreciable by the rest of us). However then we are free to say that this is not progress at all - because perhaps it is moving in precisely the opposite direction that we wish to move, to the non-transcendent destination that we have in mind.
>> Moral discourse does not progress in the sense of getting closer to a destination. This way of thinking about progress is over. If "progress" is to maintain any meaning at all it can only refer to a growth characterized by the seeking of more interesting, more enduring, more "praiseworthy" goods. In the future we will measure progress only in terms of how we can further our enjoyment of existence and how we can experience things in new ways, not by relating our experience to some "ultimate" good, a "limit-notion" of rationality, or to the quantities we consume.
>Actually, you have said the same thing twice, once as the thing you are attempting to refute, and once as the refutation. If one were to go back to Aristotle, you would find that the notion of "furthering the enjoyment of existence," is precisely what the destination is toward which ethical thought attempts to progress, not progress in the historicist process of ending history, but in the sense of possibly gaining knowledge about human beings. It has, by the way, nothing to do with "ultimate" anything, or "limit-notions" of anything, which are your own inaccurate categorizations of the idea that there is a morality consistent with human nature.
That paragraph came directly out of an essay I am currently working on, and so was a little out of context. The "ultimate" good refers to scientistic Cartesian thinking. The "limit-notion" refers to their Hegelian counterparts, and was taken directly from a book by Hilary Putnam. These are not my own categorizations at all. I know next to nothing about Aristotle but would like to know more.
>> >Mmmmm who is fooling whom? You have yet to convince me that you have a coherent morality. We have lots of stuff that looks like relativism but is most certainly NOT - you say. You claim that the difference between the morality of the Nazis and the morality, say, of a society of Monks is no more than 'carrots and peas'.
>> No I am not saying it is "no more than 'carrots and peas'". I am not reducing. If you have this impression then you or I have mis-communicated somewhere along the line. I am only saying that there is considerable overlap in these determinations - between "morality" and "taste", for instance. Obviously, the former is loaded with a lot more significance than the latter; that alone counts for something because that significance is real and has manifest consequences. Once again, however I will use my "mass" analogy. Just because I say everything has a mass doesn't mean I am saying everything is of equal weight.
>So the differences of carrots and peas are, in your view, really moral differences?? What is the moral content? And if there is none, then how is the use of the metaphor of carrots and peas not reductionism?
There is a similar process of determination going on when we decide between matters of taste and matters of morality. The latter are generally more "serious" than the former. But there are borderline cases which I can use to sketch my point. Consider someone who decided to leave their home without any clothes on. Now on one hand it's fairly harmless so we might construe this as a matter of "taste". But on another interpretation he is flaunting the rules of society, and potentially exposing our children to stimuli we do not want them exposed to - in this case his decision clearly becomes a matter of morality. Whether something is construed as "taste" or "morality" is almost always dependent upon where we place it on a harmless/serious continuum; that is, upon the foreseeable consequences of the act. I am only reducing if you take me to be undermining the validity of these harmless/serious determinations but I am not doing this.
>> >And we have a morality which removes, without apparent compassion, human rights from anyone (sorry, anything) who doesn't have the requisite faculties intact at the time.
>> At the time and in the conceivable future. And I never said that a disadvantaged "human" was to immediately be accorded animal status. No doubt they are worth more than mere "animals". Here you are fudging what I have said.
>What is the basis of their greater worth than that of animals?
The same basis of any "worth" in a relatively stable economy: the amount we are willing to "pay" for it. That is, the basis of their greater worth is the fact that we say they are of greater worth.
>> >No, I think I have raise considerable doubts about the source of morality being 'socialization'. I confess that if you claim that the Nazis were just a different kind of moral society, and that the difference between them and any other society is no more significant than the difference between carrots and peas, then I have failed:(
>> I have NEVER said that the difference between Nazis and other societies was "no more significant than the difference between carrots and peas." In fact, significance is the thing which I have continuously been harping on as the sole determinant for distinguishing moral and aesthetic preferences. Why do you insist on interpreting my words in this way?? The difference between Nazi sensibilities and our sensibilities is significant. It is significant to us.
>And is its "significance" to us anything more than an illusion under which we are operating?
This is your biggest mistake, and this is the crucial difference. Who said anything about an "illusion"? Why should something be invalid simply because it is my opinion, and not "grounded in objective reality" as you neo-transcendentalists like to believe?
>> It is not analytic.
>Meaning??
That whether something is significant or not is not dependent upon any criterion of transcendent validity. It is strictly a matter of inter-communal determination.
>> >There are many who would argue that being human confers a certain moral status, not shared by non-humans. Denying these significant groups human moral status has, as I have said earlier, serious consequences for the way we treat them - and that isn't just a simplistic 'who would you throw out of the lifeboat' problem. Relying on nice, non-puppy kicking guys like you seems risky to me.
>> Yes, but as I stated above, the idea that I am going around labelling people with stickers which read "Human" and "Non-human" is a coarse caricature of my view. I do not make these determinations when they are not forced upon me, as they are in this discussion.
>All this means is that we must take care to make sure that no one who thinks like you ever gets into a position of authority where they might have to make such decisions all time. But, then, that is what the actual moralities and laws of nations do, all the time. It is all well and good for you, as a powerless individual with no influence on anything, to say that you can think anything you want, especially if you promise to remain powerless, but working moralities involve making such decisions all the time, as Camus points out in The Rebel –– to live is to kill, and we do not yet know whether killing is justified.
Well now the political spetum begins in earnest. However, the style of thinking I am endorsing is not something which would find its fullest fruition in the outdated modes of representative democracy. It moves toward something which is more "socialist", broadly speaking. My point in the above paragraph, though, is mainly an economic one. As long as our society can support borderline cases why shouldn't it? If you, like Camus in The Rebel, haven't yet decided between living and committing suicide then I don't think rational argument is going to help the cause. Your reason for bringing him up eludes me.
>> Yes this is an interesting point. People are indeed more outraged when say, an old senile woman is beaten up, than when a young man is. But I'm not sure what you or I can really say about this. It's also a fact that abortion is a hot topic. Is killing an unborn baby as much or even a greater crime than killing a healthy, self-sufficient member of society? On the face of it I would say no, but you are free to disagree. Saying that one view of the matter is a common one is simply to condemn my view to the relative fringe, but I know where I am. This cannot be an argument against my trying to insinuate my view into the mainstream.
>But it would appear from your perspective that nothing is ever an argument against anyone's attempting to insinuate any view into the mainstream.
That is quite perceptive, and quite true. I'll try to be equally perceptive. Why do you take this to be an absurd position to hold? What absurd consequences do you see that I do not, given that we make daily discriminations between things we are going to take seriously and things we are going to ignore?
>> >It isn't so. Sorry but I'm not prepared to be dishonest in order to convince you of my honesty. I think you are playing your own language game again. Most uses of 'prejudice' involve unfavourable feelings.
>> Yes I use a polemical language, but only because I think that when I have made the point for a dubious correlation that the more natural correlations will follow. I could also have used the word "passionate" in lieu of "prejudicial". But the point is that both of these words are, in a sense, critically superfluous. Why should we care which one we attach in philosophical discourse?
>Perhaps because they are not, in fact, critically superfluous, and have completely different connotations, even implications of untruthfulness (e.g. there is nothing which prevents something "passionate" from being honest and true, but "prejudicial" involves implications of willful bias in defiance of truth.)
There is some "truth" in what you say. But of course, I am trying to change those connotations. And the notion of "truth" which you elucidate above is one that I repudiate - so you are begging the question somewhat. I do not want to think of truth as something disconnected from prejudice. This is to implicitly endorse the idea of "truth" as a transcendent - and I think this idea of truth is responsible for much harm and much tyranny. Think of me as an equal opportunity philosopher - I am freeing up our "good" as well as our "bad".
Your prejudices are always there. You have them. Where are you going to go so you can make "true" determinations? These determinations are already corrupted when you say them. Therefore nothing is "true" in your sense. We become universal sceptics. This is neurosis.
>> Touche. But I have developed a more refined taste. I prefer the flavour of "subtler" rhetoric. This is what it means to be logical, after all.
>Cute redefinition attempt, but no go.
Well then we are drawing the lines. This is fine with me because I have no existential neurosis about whether it is better to kill than to be killed.
>> Babies are potentially human. And of course they are "human babies"- they are the babies of humans. If babies did not develop past the age of 6 months, then they would not be human. But as it is we can understand them as nascent human beings - because they develop into the real thing.
>On the other hand, since no human beings entirely realize their capacity, we are all in varying stages of being "potentially human." In fact, it would be more to the point to say that we call human beings human in the light of their human potentiality, rather than their degree of realization.
I am not talking about "degrees of realization". We call things "human beings" because they are fully realized, paradigmatic examples. So your comments about potentiality go by the wayside. In fact I find any kind of talk about mere potentiality to be kind of distasteful, in a science-fiction kind of way.
> That would be more consistent with actual usage, since we do not say that human beings become human at any particular point, though we do accuse them of becoming "mature"(usually falsely). In this light, human babies, being potentially fully human are human, in much the same way as any adult is fully potentially human (and closer to fuller realization).
I am willing to agree with you completely on this point because I don't see how it contradicts anything I have previously said. But that is because "potential" here is connected with actual, manifest development. Thus, human babies are "human" because their potentiality is so manifest it is practically tangible. And the future always feeds back into the present in this way.
>> No it's not a description of what behaviour would be like in that world. Perhaps I would feed and house the neighbourhood dog. But all the same I'm not obliged to do it. We do it if we want to. Legislated morality is not morality at all.
[snip ref. to A Clockwork orange.]
>The largest and most potent part of morality is legislated morality. Political societies are organized around their legislated moralities, and the reinforcements of those moralities in the social and political institutions.
I'm not sure. It seems to me that a morality has to be fairly widespread and fully "assimilated" before we think to legislate it. In this sense, legislation is always a "reactionary" move because it seeks to restrict future change in a particular regard. Something like prohibition is an exceptional case, and we know what happened there. And this disagreement just correlates with the irrational-rational flow disagreement that we have in general.
>> >Computers are machines. We use 'rational' by analogy. Rationality is the ability to reason. Computers don't have that. And you are right about the moral implications of reason. There is no morality without reason.
>> In my experience, "rational" is gaining to critical use I put it to, and losing the looser interpretation. But if you wish I will use "logical". You may transpose "logical" wherever I have said "rational". I would reverse your claim: there is no reason without morality.
>Good move. You are both right.
>> >Well, I disagree on the lack of rational argument. And I would prefer to start with Aristotle rather than Plato. I think there is useful work to be done in this area.
>> Me too.
>Okay, who starts?
Not me! As I've already said, I know next to nothing about Aristotle. Of course, I think he is leagues above Plato, but I am still suspicious because I take A to be replying to the Platonic discussion. The way I see it, I don't really want to be involved in that discussion at all - but if I could be made to see how Aristotle might mesh with some of my points this view may change. Another Greek "assimilated"!
Jeff
From Ken Beirne
Date: 24 Nov 1996 11:42:50 GMT
J.M. Pritchard wrote:
>
> The only difference between what you are saying and what I am saying is that you wish to keep the idea of "intent" alive as an ideal, objective relatum ['thing related'?] to what we say about it. To my way of thinking this is a superfluous intellectual gesture which we ought gradually to be weaned away from completely. It is neurotic, because it says nothing. A real, objective "intent" can play only an honorific - not a meaningful - role in our discourse.
Ah, so the thing that was real, the intent of a real human being, must be treated as superfluous, but your fictional suspension of belief in the real world must be taken as gospel? It is neurotic to recognize that a real human being had real thoughts and intentions, but not neurotic to go around pretending that there is no real world to be known and lived in? As it happens, strangely enough, "neurotic" not to say psychotic, is a term usually used for people who have difficulty confronting the world as it is, in favour of their fantasies, and who would rather live in a pretend world.
Real intent cannot play a meaningful role, but suspension of belief in reality is supposed to play a meaningful role?
> >However, a large part, though not all, of the purpose in reading him is to attempt to discern his intent, and perhaps to compare what we think his intent was, to our other possible readings of it.
> Strictly speaking this is not true, as the above illustrates.
No, the above only illustrates that you have a dubious relationship with reality.
> > In addition, it is a little bizarre, though I realize it is au courant, to say that authors cannot convey their intent through their work. It is in line with the idea that human beings cannot communicate.
>
> No. This is the kind of equivocation which leads to relativism. I am not saying that people cannot make noises or gestures which can more or less approximate the instrumental ends to which they were applied - and this is what we call communication in all of its practical, manifest glory.
Oh, good grief. We start with communication. This reductionist stuff is something that comes out of fevered imaginations that do not want to deal with the reality of things. "Noises and gestures" indeed. Our language and perception precede our attempts to boil them down into incoherence of this sort. In fact, if you could not communicate, you could not speak such stuff to me, nor I reply. Do you have the same problems when your wife asks you to bring home a loaf of bread?
> I am only saying that one cannot make a noise or gesture which conveys completely one's entire historico-social context.
And because it cannot convey the thing completely, you choose to say you cannot convey it at all? If you cannot exhaust the being of a fly, does that mean you cannot know anything about it?
> The "communication" you want to describe, i.e. two subjects simultaneously holding a common "representation", does not exist. It is a fruitless picture.
So, when your wife asks you to bring home a loaf of bread, you bring home Twinkies instead? By the way, how am I understanding what you just wrote, if this is true? (I know, I know, you don't "really" know whether I do. Right)
>
> >If communication is possible at all, then conveying one's intent through writing probably is as well, although more difficult because of lack of supporting cues, and inability to confirm.
>
> You think I am saying something which I am not. I am not denying that practically speaking, an author can "convey his intent" - this only means that he can continue to modify his language until it begins to produce somewhat the desired behaviours (that is, through a kind of linguistic bartering).
It really isn't this difficult, Jeff.
>I only mean that the old idea of "intent" as something which is imposed from a higher epistemic category is dead and buried, as indeed it is.
You are going to have to explain this sentence. I have no idea what it means. What is a "higher epistemic category"?
Ken
From Tait
Date: 24 Nov 1996 13:13:01 -0500
Martin Dann wrote:
I wrote:
>>If you haven't projected ahead to the possible effects of your action (such as a good feeling) then it hasn't motivated your action. The question is, why did you do it then? If you feel an impulse to help, and follow that impulse without analysis, you have acted altruistically, but not rationally. You've done it for the same "reason" that a plant turns toward the sun. I don't feel that this diminishes the validity of the act at all, but it is worth clarifying.
>What motivates us is our emotion or feeling. Our emotion is one of empathy, caring and wanting to help. We rationalize that the way to do this is to do 'A'. It is more than just an impulse. For many, it is the way we normally behave. The analysis goes - I want to help X. Doing A will help X. I will therefore do A. Finding that doing A had some emotional payback for me is a bonus. It might not have done, and in any case, that played no part in my analysis.
You are making this so much more complicated than it actually is. Does the plant say to itself "I want X (maximal sun exposure). Doing A (turning) will give me X. I will therefore do A." You use the word rationalize, which invariably comes after the fact. If someone drops their pen, are you telling me that you run this little algorithm in your head before you reach to pick it up? That's way too mechanistic.
It seems that after you do something nice, you have to reverse engineer a rational explanation to feel good about it. "Oh, being helpful there really was rational! Oh good! Now I can be a nice, intelligent person instead of nice, blithering idiot!"
>>>>Any analysis of the act prior to it results in some projection to the state of affairs following the act, and choosing the most desirable one. Sometimes the choice is between serious inconvenience or danger vs. guilt or remorse, but you will choose what you see as the least uncomfortable option.
>>>Is it true that every decision we make is based on this analysis? I don't think so.
>>Not every decision. Just every rational one.
>Not at all. What evidence do you have to support this view? Your own experience? I should be disappointed to think that you had never done a generous or kind act other than because you might have felt guilt if you had not.
No worries. I have done nice things because I have had the desire to do nice things. This is not rational. This is not irrational.
You simply have to lose this false dichotomy. To you everything is either rational or irrational. It doesn't even strike you that there might be actions to which such words might not apply.
>>>Decisions about danger vs guilt are not, therefore, prerequisites for an act to be altruistic. What is a prerequisite is that the motivation for the act arises out of care, empathy, concern, love (philos rather than eros) for the recipients of the act. We do it because we care. And if this gives us a warm glow - well good, because it should. But that was not the motivation for the act of altruism.
>>Then the act is not rational. The way harp away on this indicates that you may have missed my point. Or are you just very tied up in the idea of "rational" action.
>
>Let us be clear. I think it is entirely rational to say 'I am doing A for X because needs my help. What is irrational there?
There is nothing IR-rational there.
>Or I might say 'I am going to give up my job and join a relief agency because I believe it is right for those of us with comfortable lives to help those in desperate need elsewhere in the world'. You may not agree with or understand those reasons, but they are reasons nevertheless. The acts are rational by any meaning of the word in common currency.
Sorry, Martin, but here you're just wrong. To demonstrate this, I am asking you for an example of an 'irrational' action. To you, 'having a reason' makes something rational. Thus, you need to supply an action that can have no reason ascribed to it whatsoever.
As I have said, you are using the word in a variety of ways.
>>>I believe that humans are born with intellectual potential, and a drive to learn; with a potential for learning and developing language, and a drive to communicate; with feelings and emotions, capable of development and refinement, and with a drive (here's the tricky bit) for the 'good'.
>>If it's a drive, then how is it rational? You're using the word in a variety of ways.
>We have a drive to acquire knowledge. We call it curiosity. Is curiosity irrational? Is the whole basis of science and our knowledge of the world irrational?
This is getting a little dull. Curiosity is most certainly not rational, any more than hunger is rational. It is a desire that we seek to fulfil.
>I can do no more than point out again that living a life in a particular way that is in accord with our self-interest does not mean that we cannot perform acts in someone else’s interest. It is in our interests to be people who care for other people for their own sake.
>>>I am no biologist, anthropologist or sociologist so I can't say where these drives come from - our evolution as social animals maybe. I don't want to bring in any transcendental power here. But for reasons that I believe could be rationally explained, one of the ends humans are driven to is a fulfilled, 'good' life. (Good is doing too much work here I know. I don't exclude all the material goods we seek, or health and happiness, but I do include the emotional fulfilment brought about by our moral development.
>>'Good' is not doing so bad. It's 'rational' that's doing too much work.
>Why? I'm working very hard to give you reasons for everything I claim. If you don't like my reasons, it does not follow that I am being irrational.
Martin, martin, martin.....
>>>To make the basis of altruism truly rational I have to go further, I think, and consider altruistic behaviour and ask what moral feeling/emotion is responsible for that behaviour, and then argue why it is 'good' to have that moral feeling (used to be called 'virtues'). To go through everything would take a book, so I won't. I shall just suggest that it is possible - at least sufficiently to claim that I am at least not being irrational!
>>No one is accusing you of being irrational. The question is whether speaking about altruism in terms of rationality is helpful at all. I'm curious as to what is motivating you so strongly to keep these two terms so intertwined.
>Because at the back of all this is my view of morality. This whole discussion of altruism came out of that. Most of the people with whom I am debating hold views which provide no rationality for moral action. Indeed, IMO they do not allow for any morality at all. My view of morality is a rational one (I like to think). I believe it is rational to behave morally and altruistically.
The way you conduct this discourse indicates that your fourth sentence follows from your third, rather than being two incidental points. It seems that being "rational" (whatever the hell you mean by that) is much more important to you than being moral.
It is not rational to be moral, Martin, although it may be moral to be rational.
Cheers,
Chase
From Ken Beirne
Date: 25 Nov 1996 02:44:38 GMT
J.W. Tait wrote in article
> Martin Dann wrote:
>
> >Not at all. What evidence do you have to support this view? Your own experience? I should be disappointed to think that you had never done a generous or kind act other than because you might have felt guilty if you had not.
>
> No worries. I have done nice things because I have had the desire to do nice things. This is not rational. This is not irrational.
>
> You simply have to lose this false dichotomy. To you everything is either rational or irrational. It doesn't even strike you that there might be actions to which such words might not apply.
I think you are missing the different ways in which actions are rational. One can engage in rational actions which are rational simply because they have been reasoned out and are based on reasonable perceptions, and so you reach a rational conclusion about what to do. However, as Aristotle pointed out some time ago, things can be rational because they are consistent with reason, even if you are doing them because your character has developed, and been honed, to such a degree that you tend to do the rational thing easily, whether by habit or because your passions are well-ordered.
This would not mean that you have to engage in great rationalizations after the fact, unless you want to fully analyse and understand your actions, or confirm that they are well-ordered.
>
> This is getting a little dull. Curiosity is most certainly not rational, any more than hunger is rational. It is a desire that we seek to fulfil.
Curiosity is rational if it is ordered by reason to a rational end. Like any passion, it can be irrational, if the person's character is out of control.
> >Because at the back of all this is my view of morality. This whole discussion of altruism came out of that. Most of the people with whom I am debating hold views which provide no rationality for moral action. Indeed, IMO they do not allow for any morality at all. My view of morality is a rational one (I like to think). I believe it is rational to behave morally and altruistically.
>
> The way you conduct this discourse indicates that your fourth sentence follows from your third, rather than being two incidental points. It seems that being "rational" (whatever the hell you mean by that) is much more important to you than being moral.
>
> It is not rational to be moral, Martin, although it may be moral to be rational.
Actually, it is both. Ultimately, for a human being to be moral is to be rational, and for the human being to be rational is moral, since being rational is the major part of being completely human. Now, it may happen that a person is rational for the most part because his/her character has been attuned to reason and rational action, and that that person has actually got limited capacity to engage in a lot of reasoning. But that does not keep the person from being rational, in the sense of performing rational actions.
Ken
From Martin Dann
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 23:56:20 +0000
J.W. Tait writes
>Martin Dann wrote:
>
>I wrote:
>
>>>If you haven't projected ahead to the possible effects of your action (such as a good feeling) then it hasn't motivated your action. The question is, why did you do it then? If you feel an impulse to help, and follow that impulse without analysis, you have acted altruistically, but not rationally. You've done it for the same "reason" that a plant turns toward the sun. I don't feel that this diminishes the validity of the act at all, but it is worth clarifying.
>
>>What motivates us is our emotion or feeling. Our emotion is one of empathy, caring and wanting to help. We rationalize that the way to do this is to do 'A'. It is more than just an impulse. For many, it is the way we normally behave. The analysis goes - I want to help X. Doing A will help X. I will therefore do A. Finding that doing A had some emotional payback for me is a bonus. It might not have done, and in any case, that played no part in my analysis.
>
>You are making this so much more complicated than it actually is. Does the plant say to itself "I want X (maximal sun exposure). Doing A (turning) will give me X. I will therefore do A."
Unlikely, Chase. Not a good analogy (you aren't one of these people who talks to plants are you? ;-))
> You use the word rationalize, which invariably comes after the fact. If someone drops their pen, are you telling me that you run this little algorithm in your head before you reach to pick it up? That's way too mechanistic.
'Rationalize' invariably comes after the fact? I'm writing this stuff automatically, and when I've posted it I shall 'rationalize' about it? (Heh heh - you probably do think I do that <g>). You'll have to explain why most people would think that 'rationalize' often, if not usually, comes first.
And of course I'm not suggesting we don't sometimes just pick up a dropped pen. I'm not about to suggest that is a moral act unless I'm courageously plucking it from the coils of a deadly snake (which would be more stupidity than morality!). I'm just trying to challenge your view that our moral actions have no more rationality behind them than a plant turning towards the sun. We are not plants, we are rational beings. A plant is not aware of turning towards the sun and can do no other. We cannot help but be aware, but we can choose to turn towards or away from the sun at will.
>
>It seems that after you do something nice, you have to reverse engineer a rational explanation to feel good about it. "Oh, being helpful there really was rational! Oh good! Now I can be a nice, intelligent person instead of nice, blithering idiot!"
Why should anyone want to do that? We don't live like that - for the most part we just do things. When you get up in the morning and clean your teeth, do you go through a process of reasoning, or do you just do it (in my case in my sleep!)? Of course you just do it. But would you say that cleaning our teeth is irrational? No - silly. Neither rational nor irrational? Just as silly, because we know perfectly well that it makes sense to clean our teeth otherwise we are going to end up with them in a pot of water by the bed every night. If your kids asked you why you cleaned your teeth, you could give them those reasons. There are good reasons, and it is therefore a rational act even though we go through no algorithms or reverse engineering. Moral acts are rational acts because there are good reasons for doing them, even if we never for a moment run through those reasons in our heads before or after the act. But if asked, we could give those reasons. Before you explode about my use of 'rational' and 'reason', please read on!
>
>>>>>Any analysis of the act prior to it results in some projection to the state of affairs following the act, and choosing the most desirable one. Sometimes the choice is between serious inconvenience or danger vs. guilt or remorse, but you will choose what you see as the least uncomfortable option.
>
>>>>Is it true that every decision we make is based on this analysis? I don't think so.
>
>>>Not every decision. Just every rational one.
>
>>Not at all. What evidence do you have to support this view? Your own experience? I should be disappointed to think that you had never done a generous or kind act other than because you might have felt guilt if you had not.
>
>No worries. I have done nice things because I have had the desire to do nice things. This is not rational. This is not irrational.
Being nice to people is a perfectly rational thing to do. It makes good sense. There are good reasons for acting that way. On both our accounts of morality we are producing 'good' for others, and 'good' for ourselves. We desire 'goods', it is in our nature - you should agree with that. I believe we desire 'goods' for others, and that too is in our natures, but you don't have to accept that for this particular point. So if what we are doing is good, and it achieves good ends, that seems like good reason for doing it. That, believe it or not, makes it a rational act.
>You simply have to lose this false dichotomy. To you everything is either rational or irrational. It doesn't even strike that there might be actions to which such words might not apply.
Yes of course. Why should you think that? I am concerned with moral acts - acts of kindness, generosity etc, which can only be done by humans because we are rational, reasoning creatures. We also pass wind and pick our noses (well, some people do ;-)) but I'm not going to make any claims whatsoever about those activities.
>
[.....]
>>
>>Let us be clear. I think it is entirely rational to say, 'I am doing A for X because X needs my help.' What is irrational there?
>
>There is nothing IR-rational there.
>
>> Or I might say 'I am going to give up my job and join a relief agency because I believe it is right for those of us with comfortable lives to help those in desperate need elsewhere in the world'. You may not agree with or understand those reasons, but they are reasons nevertheless. The acts are rational by any meaning of the word in common currency.
>
>Sorry, Martin, but here you're just wrong. To demonstrate this, I am asking you for an example of an 'irrational' action. To you, 'having a reason' makes something rational. Thus, you need to supply an action that can have no reason ascribed to it whatsoever.
I've suddenly realized that we are talking a different language here! Here am I thinking that 'rational' means something like: "based on reasoning or reason, sensible, endowed with reason, having or exercising reason.....etc" - and you think it has nothing to do with reason! And here am I thinking that 'irrational' means something like: "not in accordance with reason, without the faculty of, or not endowed with, reason", and you are questioning whether such a thing is possible! What can you mean? Animals are irrational. People are often irrational when under the influence of drink and drugs. If I kick my car when it won't start in the morning I am being irrational. I rather think the guy who walked into a school in Dunblane, in Scotland, and killed and wounded a whole class and their teacher was acting irrationally. Road rage is irrational. Loss of temper is irrational - need more?
>As I have said, you are using the word in a variety of ways.
No, I am using it in the conventional way. You want me to use it in a way I haven't fathomed yet.
>
[...]
>
>>We have a drive to acquire knowledge. We call it curiosity. Is curiosity irrational? Is the whole basis of science and our knowledge of the world irrational?
>
>This is getting a little dull. Curiosity is most certainly not rational, any more than hunger is rational. It is a desire that we seek to fulfil.
I don't want to create a dichotomy between curiosity and the direction it takes so I'll stick with it being rational (or capable of being rational).
>
[.....]
>>>>for reasons that I believe could be rationally explained, one of the ends humans are driven to is a fulfilled, 'good' life. (Good is doing too much work here I know. I don't exclude all the material goods we seek, or health and happiness, but I do include the emotional fulfilment brought about by our moral development.
>>>
>>>'Good' is not doing so bad. It's 'rational' that's doing too much work.
>>
>>Why? I'm working very hard to give you reasons for everything I claim. If you don't like my reasons, it does not follow that I am being irrational.
>
>Martin, martin, martin.....
<sigh> Having reasons, being endowed with reason, being based on reasoning is what being rational is. You are looking for something else entirely, and I'm not sure what it is. If doing good, being kind and generous is reasonable, sensible behaviour, it is rational behaviour. By definition.
>
>>>>To make the basis of altruism truly rational I have to go further, I think, and consider altruistic behaviour and ask what moral feeling/emotion is responsible for that behaviour, and then argue why it is 'good' to have that moral feeling (used to be called 'virtues'). To go through everything would take a book, so I won't. I shall just suggest that it is possible - at least sufficiently to claim that I am at least not being irrational!
>
>>>No one is accusing you of being irrational. The question is whether speaking about altruism in terms of rationality is helpful at all. I'm curious as to what is motivating you so strongly to keep these two terms so intertwined.
(I'm beginning to realize that using the word 'altruism' was a mistake in the first place. I couldn't find a better way of expressing my point. Sparked off some lively debate though :-))
>
>>Because at the back of all this is my view of morality. This whole discussion of altruism came out of that. Most of the people with whom I am debating hold views which provide no rationality for moral action. Indeed, IMO they do not allow for any morality at all. My view of morality is a rational one (I like to think<g>). I believe it is rational to behave morally and altruistically.
>
>The way you conduct this discourse indicates that your fourth sentence follows from your third, rather than being two incidental points. It seems that being "rational" (whatever the hell you mean by that) is much more important to you than being moral.
Nope. I can't help being rational. That is what, as a human being, I am. Actually, I don't think I can help being moral - or at least having a moral sense - but I need to work at it. Fooling myself that morality is no more than taste (as some say on this thread) or self-interest, or a social contract based on self-interest, would be abdication of my moral responsibilities. It is but a short step from 'morality is only self-interest', to 'morality should only be self-interest. So if I can't see my interest I won't do it. That is where moral theories can be self-fulfilling.
>
>It is not rational to be moral, Martin, although it may be moral to be rational.
It is both, or we are not talking about morality at all, Chase.
Cheers!
>
--
Martin
From Pritchard
Date: 25 Nov 1996 23:58:34 -0500
Martin Dann wrote:
>J.W. Tait writes
>>>>>Is it true that every decision we make is based on this analysis? I don't think so.
>>>>Not every decision. Just every rational one.
>>>Not at all. What evidence do you have to support this view? Your own experience? I should be disappointed to think that you had never done a generous or kind act other than because you might have felt guilty if you had not.
>>No worries. I have done nice things because I have had the desire to do nice things. This is not rational. This is not irrational.
>Being nice to people is a perfectly rational thing to do. It makes good sense. There are good reasons for acting that way. On both our accounts of morality we are producing 'good' for others, and 'good' for ourselves. We desire 'goods', it is in our nature - you should agree with that. I believe we desire 'goods' for others, and that too is in our natures, but you don't have to accept that for this particular point. So if what we are doing is good, and it achieves good ends, that seems like a good reason for doing it. That, believe it or not, makes it a rational act.
Saying that there are "good reasons" for acting rationally is a complete tautology. Of course, this is only so for somebody who is already "rational". If someone is "irrational" (under this particular analysis of rationality), then there are "good reasons" for acting irrationally. I don't understand what all this talk about rationality and human nature is supposed to accomplish except to seal us even more inextricably inside our respective egocentric bubbles. I'm rational! - No you're not, I am!
Saying that our human nature is to "seek to good" is empty and otiose. Naturally that is our nature because whatever we seek we call "good". The last two sentences were meaningful, but the rest of your paragraph was meaningless (read: a completely insignificant [read: irrelevant for the direction of further action] description of events). And that, my friend, is philosophy.
>I've suddenly realized that we are talking a different language here! Here am I thinking that 'rational' means something like: "based on reasoning or reason, sensible, endowed with reason, having or exercising reason.....etc" - and you think it has nothing to do with reason! And here am I thinking that 'irrational' means something like: "not in accordance with reason, without the faculty of, or not endowed with, reason", and you are questioning whether such a thing is possible!
All due respect, Martin - this is why the word you want to use is "reasonable" not "rational". Something based on reason is reasoning, something endowed with reason is reasoning, not "rationality". Why do you need two words to mean the same thing? They do not.
Jeff
From Ken Beirne
Date: 26 Nov 1996 03:11:35 GMT
J.M. Pritchard wrote
> A question like "what is man" is an authoritarian question. It means to say that whatever we are, we have no choice about it.
You had a choice about your DNA configuration? Is this like Plato's story about those souls between lives, who get to choose their next lives?
>You are a juvenile delinquent, you are a paedophile, you are a "thinking thing".
Now you are in the realm of Sartre's inauthenticity. Saying that someone is a human being is not at all like saying that they are "juvenile delinquents, paedophiles, etc." The latter are the results of choices. Having specifically human potential is not, though what one does with it is.
> Perhaps I was, but whose language am I to use if not my own? The point is that notions of significance come from a specific existential relation, not a transcendent table of values. (This is where Ken and I differ). I wonder where you stand on this issue?
Given that I have never, in my life, referred to a "transcendent table of values," and wouldn't know what such a thing was if I fell over it, this strikes me as overheated imagination (a.k.a. straw man creation) on your part. Is it something like the Periodic Table of the Elements?
> >Well it is you, Jeff, who has claimed to take great care about the words and analogies you use ;-).
>
> Don't misunderstand me. I used the words on purpose. Think of them as nettles. I am trying to develop a critical discourse which has developed a tolerance to irrelevancies, but as it is, I seem to be continually sidetracked by tangential, trivial concerns. For various reasons. ;)
Mostly, one supposes, because from your perspective everything is pretty much trivial.
> >I don't consider blind and deaf people to have failed in any way, so the question does not arise.
>
> Please - spare me your pc-nitpicking. If a piece of merchandise is being assembled, through a completely deterministic procedure, and something happens to go wrong so that in the end it "fails" a quality test - it is not necessarily the "fault" of the piece of merchandise. And
> this is just an analogy, so resist the temptation to say that I am saying the blind "are failed pieces of merchandise", as is your penchant.
It seems more like you are smuggling in a concept of essence or telos under the table, in order to argue that some humans are not fully human. (Language, of course, would qualify, and is in a direct line from Aristotle's "logos" which was both language and reason).
> >>>I was right - you don't think babies are human. They are Jeff. They are human babies, or baby humans. Your language theory will have to take account of this. And as for living in a world you can't imagine, what kind of reason is that? Perhaps you have a poor imagination!
>
> >> Babies are potentially human. And of course they are "human babies"- they are the babies of humans. If babies did not develop past the age of 6 months, then they would not be human. But as it is we can understand them as nascent human beings - because they develop into the real thing.
>
> >That's where we differ. It fits with your idea that deaf and blind people have 'failed'. You say not human, I say a human whose development is arrested. (A thought just occurred to me - insisting that they are human doesn't commit me to any view that they are, or should be treated as, equal in all ways to other humans.)
>
> Open your mind, Martin. I am saying that if babies didn't develop in general then we would have no call for saying that any particular baby was "arrested".
> And if saying someone is a "human" doesn't entail a certain set of behaviours with regard to that person (i.e.: they have a "right to life", can collect welfare, etc.), what significance does it have to make the distinction in the first place?
>
> >> >> Obviously, if some autistic is minding his own business I couldn't care less, any more than I care about the neighbourhood dog. But I'm not obliged to feed that dog, or shower it, or house it.
>
> >>>So, this is your world of better morality? Interesting!
>
> >> No it's not a description of what behaviour would be like in that world. Perhaps I would feed and house the neighbourhood dog. But all the same I'm not obliged to do it. We do it if we want to. Legislated morality is not morality at all.
[may have lost '>'s here]I don't disagree. Legislation and morality are two different things, although it helps if they are in step.
>
> >>>> Add a couple of years to that wolf-child. Let's say he's 30 when we find him. Still think we can rehabilitate him?
> >>>So he is now a human being who has severe behavioural problems due to his upbringing. He needs treating with great care and sympathy.
> >> I'm not so sure about this. In fact, I'm not sure how "compassionate" a move it would be to take him out of his environment and place him in ours. It could only cause him distress, our good intentions notwithstanding.
> >Then the compassionate help we could give would be to leave him where he was and protect him from further human interference.
> So your "compassionate help" in this instance basically boils down to "doing nothing". Interesting turn of events.
> [.....]
> >Do you really think that there are no good reasons why we should not molest, or allow to be molested, children?
>
> NO! When have I said this? Please explain.
So far you have successfully avoided saying what reasons there might be for not molesting children, under frequent request. This tends to lead to speculation that your view of things does not really support any.
> >You agree that we say it is monstrous - why should we say that? Whim? Why should we all seem to share that whim? (Sorry, I forgot again that you find rhetorical questions uninteresting. I am saying that there are clearly good reasons which you, I or anyone else could give).
> Why do you think that just because I am saying that it's "all talk" that one is necessarily committed to equivocating between all forms of "better" and "worse", "informed" or "uninformed", "moral" or "immoral" modes of speech?
Usually saying something is "all talk" means exactly that.
> >Well I simply mean that the whole thrust of philosophy over the last few thousand years has been to look beyond convention - if only to make sense of that convention. So I shall continue to look below the surface (beyond convention).
>
> Philosophy is rife with this kind of "profound" circularity. But in fact it's just a mask to disguise the fact that philosophers are just as confused as everyone else.
That would be odd for an activity which began with the recognition of knowing nothing. In addition, the healthful effects of confusion, and its usefulness for philosophy, is described eloquently in the Republic. If may be that modern and contemporary dogmatists, not to be confused with philosophers, even if they are in philosophy departments, do not understand the nature of philosophy as an activity, rather than philosophy as some body of dicta, or some kind of "ism."
> >> In my experience, "rational" is gaining to critical use I put it to, and losing the looser interpretation. But if you wish I will use "logical". You may transpose "logical" wherever I have said "rational".
> >>I would reverse your claim: there is no reason without morality.
>
> >No, I would not wish to replace rational with logical. They are not the same (gosh, not another dichotomy?).
[snip]
Ken
From Ken Beirne
Date: 26 Nov 1996 07:26:07 GMT
J.M. Pritchard wrote in article
> Saying that there are "good reasons" for acting rationally is a complete tautology. Of course, this is only so for somebody who is already "rational". If someone is "irrational" (under this particular analysis of rationality), then there are "good reasons" for acting irrationally. I don't understand what all this talk about rationality and human nature is supposed to accomplish except to seal us even more inextricably inside our respective egocentric bubbles. I'm rational! - No you're not, I am!
> Saying that our human nature is to "seek to good" is empty and otiose. Naturally that is our nature because whatever we seek we call "good". The last two sentences were meaningful, but the rest of your paragraph was meaningless (read: a completely insignificant [read: irrelevant for the direction of further action] description of events). And that, my friend, is philosophy.
Only to Thrasymachus. You are wrapped up again in solipsism.
>
> All due respect, Martin - this is why the word you want to use is "reasonable" not "rational". Something based on reason is reasoning, something endowed with reason is reasoning, not "rationality". Why do you need two words to mean the same thing? They do not.
They do not mean the same thing. To some extent, the reasonable and the rational overlap, but they are not identical. It is not always rational to be reasonable (e.g. when the circumstances and ends require extreme actions), and it is not always reasonable to be rational. In any case, if we need to get rid of a word, it would be "reasonable," which for the most part has to do with a kind of pre-emptive tendency to go along and negotiate, more or less without regard to the results of the negotiation. Unfortunately, peace is not always the best thing, nor is negotiation.
Sometimes the most rational thing to do is to lose control of one's emotions (i.e. not be reasonable.). They only look the same to you because you have emptied reason of all content.
Ken
From Pritchard
Date: 26 Nov 1996 14:43:31 -0500
Ken Beirne wrote:
>J.M. Pritchard wrote:
>> Saying that our human nature is to "seek to good" is empty and otiose. Naturally that is our nature because whatever we seek we call "good". The last two sentences were meaningful, but the rest of your paragraph was meaningless (read: a completely insignificant [read: irrelevant for the direction of further action] description of events). And that, my friend, is philosophy.
>Only to Thrasymachus. You are wrapped up again in solipsism.
My prolonged conversation with you would seem to belie this point, at least. Consider the rock kicked. As John Dewey said, "soliloquy is the product and reflex of converse with others; social communication not an effect of soliloquy. If we had not talked with others and they with us, we should never talk to and with ourselves." And this is all to point to the instrumental function of language.
>> All due respect, Martin - this is why the word you want to use is "reasonable" not "rational". Something based on reason is reasoning, something endowed with reason is reasoning, not "rationality". Why do you need two words to mean the same thing? They do not.
>They do not mean the same thing. To some extent, the reasonable and the rational overlap, but they are not identical. It is not always rational to be reasonable (e.g. when the circumstances and ends require extreme actions), and it is not always reasonable to be rational. In any case, if we need to get rid of a word, it would be "reasonable," which for the most part has to do with a kind of pre-emptive tendency to go along and negotiate, more or less without regard to the results of the negotiation.
I agree with the distinction. But I don't think we need to get rid of either word. Your categorical dismissal of "reasonable" is a little off-base because it manifestly is not a "pre-emptive tendency to go along and negotiate...without regard to the results." A complete heedlessness of consequences flies in the face of any degree of reasoning - this is itself "unreasonable" by most standards of the word, primarily because to negotiate means to have already anticipated an end to the process, however distant - although I agree "reason" has a lot to do with "negotiation".
>Unfortunately, peace is not always the best thing, nor is negotiation. Sometimes the most rational thing to do is to lose control of one's emotions (i.e. not be reasonable). They only look the same to you because you have emptied reason of all content.
I don't think they are the same and never have. I was just trying to fathom how Martin jumped from "something based on reason" to "rationality."
Jeff
From Tait
Date: 26 Nov 1996 19:06:24 -0500
Martin Dann wrote:
>J.W. Tait
>>Martin Dann wrote:
>>>What motivates us is our emotion or feeling. Our emotion is one of empathy, caring and wanting to help. We rationalize that the way to do this is to do 'A'. It is more than just an impulse. For many, it is the way we normally behave. The analysis goes - I want to help X. Doing A will help X. I will therefore do A. Finding that doing A had some emotional payback for me is a bonus. It might not have done, and in any case, that played no part in my analysis.
>>You are making this so much more complicated than it actually is. Does the plant say to itself "I want X (maximal sun exposure). Doing A (turning) will give me X. I will therefore do A."
>Unlikely, Chase. Not a good analogy (you aren't one of these people who talks to plants are you? ;-))
No, I don't even own a plant. :) I was simply applying your method. There was a good reason for the plant to turn toward the Sun, therefore it was a rational act.
>> You use the word rationalize, which invariably comes after the fact. If someone drops their pen, are you telling me that you run this little algorithm in your head before you reach to pick it up? That's way too mechanistic.
>'Rationalize' invariably comes after the fact? I'm writing this stuff automatically, and when I've posted it I shall 'rationalize' about it? (Heh heh - you probably do think I do that). You'll have to explain why most people would think that 'rationalize' often, if not usually, comes first.
[snip]
The common currency for 'rationalizing' is 'trying to manufacture a chain of logic to justify doing what you already want to do anyway'.
>And of course I'm not suggesting we don't sometimes just pick up a dropped pen. I'm not about to suggest that is a moral act unless I'm courageously plucking it from the coils of a deadly snake (which would be more stupidity that morality!).
So helping someone (by picking up their pen for them) is not a moral act? Why not?
>I'm just trying to challenge your view that our moral actions have no more rationality behind them than a plant turning towards the sun.
Ah, but it was altruism that I was applying that to, not morality. Surely you don't equate the two.
>We are not plants, we are rational beings. A plant is not aware of turning towards the sun and can do no other. We cannot help but be aware, but we can choose to turn towards or away from the sun at will.
Plants continually behave in ways that are conducive to their survival and thriving. There is a "good reason" for just about everything that a plant does. Are you sure they aren't rational? :)
>>No worries. I have done nice things because I have had the desire to do nice things. This is not rational. This is not irrational.
>Being nice to people is a perfectly rational thing to do. It makes good sense. There are good reasons for acting that way. On both our accounts of morality we are producing 'good' for others, and 'good' for ourselves. We desire 'goods', it is in our nature - you should agree with that. I believe we desire 'goods' for others, and that too is in our natures, but you don't have to accept that for this particular point. So if what we are doing is good, and it achieves good ends, that seems like good reason for doing it. That, believe it or not, makes it a rational act.
I would like to ask that you read a book called "Voltaire's Bastards" by John Ralston Saul. Nazi Germany was extraordinarily rational. The Soviet Union was the "rational society".
>>Sorry, Martin, but here you're just wrong. To demonstrate this, I am asking you for an example of an 'irrational' action. To you, 'having a reason' makes something rational. Thus, you need to supply an action that can have no reason ascribed to it whatsoever.
>I've suddenly realized that we are talking a different language here! Here am I thinking that 'rational' means something like: "based on reasoning or reason, sensible, endowed with reason, having or exercising reason.....etc" - and you think it has nothing to do with reason! And here am I thinking that 'irrational' means something like: "not in accordance with reason, without the faculty of, or not endowed with, reason", and you are questioning whether such a thing is possible!
This is getting a little frustrating. You keep calling things rational because you can see a reason for doing them. I am not questioning the possibility of irrational behaviour, I'm trying to demonstrate that your broad definition of the term 'rational' leaves no room for it.
>What can you mean? Animals are irrational.
I thought you allowed that there were actions that rationality and irrationality didn't apply to. Now animals are IRrational? Incidentally, animals are rational, in that they certainly do reason.
Lose the Descartes.
>People are often irrational when under the influence of drink and drugs. If I kick my car when it won't start in the morning I am being irrational. I rather think the guy who walked into a school in Dunblane, in Scotland, and killed and wounded a whole class and their teacher was acting irrationally.
Was he? There was no reason for him to do what he did? The fact that he was angry and this was an effective way to vent his anger isn't a reason?
>Road rage is irrational. Loss of temper is irrational - need more?
There is never a reason to lose your temper?
>>As I have said, you are using the word in a variety of ways.
>No, I am using it in the conventional way. You want me to use it in a way I haven't fathomed yet.
I fear that we're both correct.
>>>We have a drive to acquire knowledge. We call it curiosity. Is curiosity irrational? Is the whole basis of science and our knowledge of the world irrational?
>>This is getting a little dull. Curiosity is most certainly not rational, any more than hunger is rational. It is a desire that we seek to fulfil.
>I don't want to create a dichotomy between curiosity and the direction it takes so I'll stick with it being rational (or capable of being rational).
So hunger is rational too?
[snip]
><sigh> Having reasons, being endowed with reason, being based on reasoning is what being rational is. You are looking for something else entirely, and I'm not sure what it is. If doing good, being kind and generous is reasonable, sensible behaviour, it is rational behaviour. By definition.
I believe Jeff has already addressed this to my satisfaction.
Please don't respond to my examples with disbelief. I'm using 'rational' the way you have used it.
Cheers,
Chase
From Ken Beirne
Date: 27 Nov 1996 08:43:10 GMT
J.M. Pritchard wrote in article
> >> A question like "what is man" is an authoritarian question. It means to say that whatever we are, we have no choice about it.
> >You had a choice about your DNA configuration? Is this like Plato's story about those souls between lives, who get to choose their next lives?
> We never had a choice about our DNA configuration because we never existed before that configuration.
No, really?? But being a human being, or being "man" is not something we chose either. We were born with certain natures, and capacities, limits and needs. No choice there. Heck, not even a choice about which country we were born in, and how we would be acculturated. It looks like the whole world is authoritarian, just like the question "what is man?"
> Saying that one would opt for another is tantamount to saying that one would prefer to have had an entirely different history, or a world without gravity. Who is speaking? - presumably someone who is that configuration of historical contingencies, so wishing them otherwise is wishing non-existence. That is illogical when suicide is an obvious and easy alternative to griping.
A wonderful elucidation of the obvious.
> >Now you are in the realm of Sartre's inauthenticity. Saying that someone is a human being is not at all like saying that they are "juvenile delinquents, paedophiles, etc." The latter are the results of choices. Having specifically human potential is not, though what one does with it is.
> Yes Sartre is along similar lines. The question that interests me is this: What is our "specifically human potential?"
Well, that is what one attempts to discern through the study, among other things, of Ethics. At the moment, however, the question is less what it is, than the recognition that there is such, and that the determination of that, and the best ways to fulfil it, is what moral study, and, for that matter, the establishing and enforcement of law and morality, is about.
>
> >Given that I have never, in my life, referred to a "transcendent table of values," and wouldn't know what such a thing was if I fell over it, this strikes me as overheated imagination (a.k.a. strawman creation) on your part. Is it something like the Periodic Table of the Elements?
> Alright, Ken. Apparently I've been arguing with a straw man ever since I started arguing with you. My sincere apologies for any and all misrepresentations of your view.
> This just leaves me even more confused than ever about your choice of vocabulary. Why all this talk of an "objective" reality?
Well, I would be happy to just speak of "reality," but someone is sure to come up and reassure me that it is "only my view" of reality, and is "subjective" reality. Reality, however, is not subjective, though our perceptions of it may be limited, or inaccurate at times, and our opinions about it can be wrong.
>You know my opinion of this word. I now take it that you aren't making any specifically metaphysical claims about the relation of ideas to brute matter.
What is a "metaphysical claim about the relation of ideas to brute matter"? For that matter, what is "brute matter," as opposed to matter, or nature, etc? If you are asking whether I think that our ideas and perceptions are consistent with reality, then, yes, they are, as we all know perfectly well. Are they sometimes off the mark, yes they are, but then we correct them with others of the same kind. As James points out in Essays in Radical Empiricism, the separation of consciousness and the world is utterly artificial. One cannot go from asking how consciousness and the world relate to each other, to saying that they do not, because the whole project presumes the unity and coherence of the relation of consciousness and the world. I.e. you cannot use your ruler to undercut your ruler. And, of course, there is no reason to do so, unless, like the early empiricists, you are engaged in an effort to overthrow previous metaphysical, political and social views, or like the positivists, you are endeavouring to usher in a new age of transformed human nature.
> But if all you are saying is that our perspective is a "real" one, you'll get no argument from me.
This is good to know. Now, don't go undercutting the idea of "real" on me.
> I'm not a sceptic any more than you are a transcendentalist, apparently.
Well, there are transcendentalists and transcendentalists. Are we talking about a 19th century American movement here? If not, I would point out that believing in a transcendent reality (e.g. God), does not necessarily imply believing in some transcendent moral "code" written down somewhere. I would point out that Aquinas recognized that the concepts of natural and divine "laws" were analogical, not literal.
> Naturally I'm sceptical about rationalistic, absolute truths, but not the common, grass-roots variety.
Well, I also like the uncommon, grass roots variety. The ideas of rationalistic, absolute truths have been much more a creation of the past 2-3 centuries, than they ever were of the Western tradition that preceded them (which is not to say that the political systems did not enforce them with a sense of absoluteness, but that is a universal characteristic of political systems, which is a separate discussion)
> >Mostly, one supposes, because from your perspective everything is pretty much trivial.
>
> You were saying something about straw men? All I'm saying is that nothing is either trivial or important a priori. I now take it that both you and Martin agree with this.
Ooh, "a priori" ––– a Kant word. I think you can feel pretty secure that neither Martin nor I (well, maybe Martin is hiding something on me) are up to "a priori"s which, I would point out, were developed by Kant to attempt to overcome the mind/body problem which was foisted on everyone by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc. Had those miscreants not fallen so much in love with the imagined consequences of things like the new science of optics, we might have all maintained the unity of reality and reason that was part of the heritage.
> >It seems more like you are smuggling in a concept of essence or telos under the table, in order to argue that some humans are not fully human. (Language, of course, would qualify, and is in a direct line from Aristotle's "logos" which was both language and reason).
> Not at all. I'm simply indicating how we refer to human beings of varying abilities in common discourse. If we stopped talking about human beings in a certain way then this "essence" would evaporate.
Why is it so hard for you to recognize that we talk about human beings this way because that is the way they are, at least in part. Don't you see that this suspension of reality which you maintain is perverse? The reason human beings talk the way they do about most things, is because that is the way the things are, in fact, at least in so far as we know them. No one ever claimed that we know everything about everything, or even everything about anything. But that is a far cry from saying that we do not know anything about anything (unless we are Socrates, of course).
> >So far you have successfully avoided saying what reasons there might be for not molesting children, under frequent request. This tends to lead to speculation that your view of things does not really support any.
>
> I'm only saying that there are no analytic reasons - that is, no purely logical reasons - for not molesting children, not that there are no "good" reasons.
A lot of what look like false dichotomies here. For one, what would be a "purely logical" reason not to molest children –– that it would violate the principle of identity?? Or the transitive law?
Is this all you mean by "analytic" reasons? What kind of reasons do you call the following: that children are human beings with inherent human dignity; that a violator of children perverts his own nature, and destroys his own human capacities by molesting children? What would make these "non-analytic."
> There are plenty of good reasons. But the "good" here denotes a functionality - these reasons are sufficient to dissuade all except a small minority from participating in these heinous activities.
> If these reasons weren't "good" then presumably we'd have a lot more paedophiles.
Two questions, related to each other. What is the difference between "analytic" and "good"? Why are not functional reasons analytic? I have never thought of functional understandings as non-analytic before.
> >> Why do you think that just because I am saying that it's "all talk" that one is necessarily committed to equivocating between all forms of "better" and "worse", "informed" or "uninformed", "moral" or "immoral" modes of speech?
>
> >Usually saying something is "all talk" means exactly that.
>
> Well then I'm asking you to try and resist that prejudice. Exercise a little of that "free will" that Martin is constantly on about. Change your interpretation - the accepted interpretation, which is based on a false talk/truth dichotomy (i.e.: if something is phenomenon, then it isn't noumenon type thinking). Now I know you both deny that Kantian reference, so I'm asking you to rethink your interpretation accordingly.
I am not sure what you mean here. Are you asking us to "think Kantian" in order to figure out what you mean? God forbid!!!! The sheer distortion of the human mind involved in trying to think like Kant is destructive of all human potentiality.
There is a problem with your "all talk" reference in any case. Life is not "all talk," and especially not moral life or ethical life. If you want to say that "all talk" does not imply a division from the full panoply of human reality, you need to articulate what you mean more.
> >That would be odd for an activity which began with the recognition of knowing nothing. In addition, the healthful effects of confusion, and its usefulness for philosophy, is described eloquently in the Republic. It may be that modern and contemporary dogmatists, not to be confused with philosophers, even if they are in philosophy departments, do not understand the nature of philosophy as an activity, rather than philosophy as some body of dicta, or some kind of "ism."
>[snip hate Plato]
The arguments of Socrates in the dialogues are not necessarily, and quite frequently clearly not, Plato's views. In addition, ... the role of myth, analogy, and "lie"(pseudos) ... is clearly fundamental to the dialogues. The dialogues are, among other things, self-conscious works of fiction. To state the case most broadly, there is no dogma in them at all, though there is a lot of showing what philosophy is about, and how philosophy relates to surrounding society.
One of the main healthful effects of confusion, as described in the Republic (in the Myth of the Cave, among other places), is that it breaks us free from preconceptions, and from the chains of political/social life (the republics), enabling us to see other things, and to see some things more clearly. Confusion is what you get when you go from the cave to sunlight (and almost every transitional step before). The unconfused are generally those still in chains.
Ken
From Ken Beirne
Date: 27 Nov 1996 08:53:25 GMT
J.W. Tait wrote:
> >>That would be odd for an activity which began with the recognition of knowing nothing. In addition, the healthful effects of confusion, and its usefulness for philosophy, is described eloquently in the Republic.
> "Don't confuse Plato with Socrates. Socrates was a very wise philosopher. Plato was just a smart ass"
> –– Gary Brent Madison, postmodern phenomenologist ––
Oh, yuck. For one thing, the "Socrates" to which everyone relates is Plato's creation. In the second place, people insist on not reading the dialogues as dialogues, but as treatises. I suppose it is just as well, because if they understood where Plato was going, it would challenge their dogmatics too much.
> Plato's philosophy most emphatically did not spring from a "recognition of knowing nothing". Postmodern philosophy has much more in common with the pre-Platonic tradition than it does with anything else.
It began with the Socratic recognition of knowing nothing. It did not end there, because Plato was always concerned with the relation of the philosopher and society –– otherwise he would not have written at all, since writing is a political act –– and Socrates probably was not, enjoying the philosophy too much. The criticism of Socrates in the dialogues, such as the attack on philosophers avoiding politics even when the regimes are in extremis, is based on this concern. Plato understood that philosophy as philosophy is essentially subversive, but that it cannot, in fact, afford to subvert. The understanding of the relation of philosophy to the political is a crucial part of philosophy.
You are probably right that the postmodern philosophy has more in common with the chaos of pre-Platonic tradition, since the philosophic understandings gained in 2500 years have been pretty much disregarded, so everyone is back trying to reinvent the wheel. And, hey, we even have a whole universe of academies full of sophists to go with it.
Ken
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