(This is the first in what I anticipate to be a series of three essays on moral inquiry. The second will be a survey of some traditional themes and their contemporary applications, and the third will focus on the “center” around which such inquiries ought to be oriented.)
Statements of moral/ethical[1] evaluations are often confronted in turn by the varyingly self-righteous demand, “Who are we to judge?”
Anyone who has taught classes in ethics (and I've done so both in traditional “brick and mortar” settings as well as online) will encounter that phrase repeatedly. It is an only slightly more specific version of the basic question “Says who?” to any claim of ethical evaluation.
The overt nature of the logical fallacies involved in such questions should scarcely require notice, which makes it all the more irritating that the fallacies do, indeed, need to be constantly and repetitiously addressed. Among other things, the “who” questions are bald-faced Red Herring fallacies as well as Complex Questions[2] because the issue of “who” is irrelevant, and presupposes as facts matters that are in reality patently false: The question takes for granted the implicit assumption that the only way an answer of ethical standing or judgment can be determined is by a kerygmatic and bald-facedly authoritarian announcement.
There is an even deeper issue to be examined in the above, but before getting to it one must first set aside a common misunderstanding to an ambiguity in the verb “to judge” and its various cognates. On the one hand, there is the sense of judgment in which one “passes sentence” even to the point that one actualizes the punitive conditions of one's condemnation. This is the sense of “to judge” that the Scripture itself condemned. (The New Testament, at least; the Old joyfully wallowed in sadistically dishing it out.)
But there is a second sense of “to judge,” and that is to give a reasoned evaluation. Persons eager to eschew the Old Testament version often enough abandon with equal elan any claim or pretense to even allow, much less employ, reason in ethical matters, because reason involves making judgments. The breathtaking absurdity of such a move is called “relativism,” and is the deeper issue hinted at above. But to close out this sub-topic, the proper response to the accusatory claim, “Who are you to judge,” is quite simply, “Who do you imagine I have to be? It is altogether sufficient that I am a rational agent for me to pass a reasoned evaluation on this subject.”
The antithesis of reasoned evaluation is relativism. Relativism is in essence the denial that any rational standard exists, can be found or can be made that could suffice to license any judgment beyond that of the utterly whimsical. Any judgment – oh, excuse me, “evaluation” – is always and only “relative” to some person, or group, or “perspective” for its validity. There is no objectivity to such standards according to the relativist, only what happens to be asserted within some “local” bracket or frame of reference whose validity is exhausted by the person or persons making the claim.
Occasionally the attempt is made to expand the perimeter of that bracket, to make it bigger and therefore “more important.” For example, rather than collapsing into pure subjective (that is, individual) relativism, an appeal might be made to the society or culture group. But such appeals do not escape the basic logical problems of relativism (all of which orbit around the proclaimed absence of objective standards). After all, what standard of objective evidence could the relativist possibly appeal to that would put the culture group (“cultural relativism”) upon a “better,” “higher,” “more logically valid” footing than the most perfectly arbitrary and capricious claims of any particular individual? Indeed, what are the claims of a culture beyond the collective claims of the individuals who compose it, and who just happen to more or less agree with one another in their various relativistic “perspectives?”[3] Since the claims of the culture have no better logical footing than those of the individual, “cultural relativism” has no reasoned basis with which to differentiate from the most aggressively subjective relativism imaginable.
The above line of reasonings might be criticized on the grounds that it represent a “Slippery Slope” argument which many credible sources would call a fallacy[4]. But one would have to believe in the objective standards of sound reasons and effective inquiry – i.e. “logic” – to advance such an argument in the first place. But the only way one can believe in such a standard is to also be convinced of its value. Which is to say, logic as a cognitive standard can only be rationally judged to be of any value if one is rationally satisfied that one ought to reason in such a way. But any claim of “ought” is ultimately an ethical claim. Any claim that one “ought” to reason logically is a claim about the Right thing to do, the Good form of reasoning, the Valuable method of inquiry.
Lest there be any lingering doubt, the above argument does indeed place various ethical propositions at the very foundation of even the possibility of reasoned inquiry. Before there can be science, before there can be logic, before there can be any concern for truth at all, there must first be an accepted axiom that such things are good. So any attempt to quarantine relativism to “merely” an ethical claim is doomed to have that quarantine shattered by the rational necessity of an ethical commitment to the truth.[5]
If we accept the reality of facts and of the meaningfulness of rational standards of inquiry into those facts, then we have already committed ourselves to the objective reality of at least some standards of value and evaluation. This commitment is to the objective reality of such standards, but how far does such a commitment take us? Even if we accept the moral burden of truth, what guarantee does this give us that there is anything like a general moral reality of “The Good,” that such a reality is open to anything like rational inquiry, or that our ideas of such things amount to anything more than our parochial tastes and preferences? Another way of phrasing this would be: “What guarantee do have that moral inquiry will actually succeed, that is provide us with genuinely rational, objective standards of moral evaluation?”
The only response to this question is that there is no proof that any inquiry will succeed except the actual success of that inquiry, at which point the question is moot. The fact that a subject of inquiry proves difficult is no excuse for assuming that the inquiry itself is pointless. After thousands of years since the West's first written inquiries into the subject, we still do not have an adequate or complete theory of gravity, and yet gravity is one of the most manifestly obvious relational structures in our lives. But anyone who came forward and suggested that inquiry into gravity was pointless, or that gravity had no objective reality would surely be dismissed outright as an utter fool. So by the same token, the fact that moral questions do not yield themselves up to casual investigation or reduce themselves to trivial simplicities is no evidence that said questions are meaningless, or that their answers are no more than capricious declarations. Answers may be hard to find but that (by itself[6]!) does not mean they do not exist.
One might respond to the above by asking how it differs from an overt (and ultimately relativistic) leap of blind faith? After all, doesn't the above basically say we should just “hope” that things will work out? But such a question presupposes – either implicitly or explicitly – a false dichotomy[7]. Just because we can offer no ironclad proof of a proposition (the evidently implicit part) does not mean that accepting that proposition is an act of faith. In the case here, there are obvious practical reasons for taking seriously the claim that there are real standards in the world and that inquiry is a rationally meaningful activity: namely, without such an axiom, inquiry itself cannot even get started! Inquiry might fail, but never even trying is the only thing that can guarantee such failure a priori. To reject the axiom that inquiry is meaningful and the results can be objective, in the absence of genuinely compelling reasons to do so, is the ultimate form of irrationalism since it undercuts the very possibility of success while offering nothing in compensation. This is true whether the inquiry is scientific or moral. But this is precisely what relativism does: it rejects the objectivity of standards of inquiry and standards revealed by inquiry. It thus rejects rationality itself.
Given the logical vacuity of relativism one might wonder why so many otherwise well meaning persons would endorse it, particularly around issues of ethics? As a general rule it is unwise to arrogate to one's self the privilege of saying what another person's thoughts and beliefs “really” are, yet I would like to cautiously suggest a speculative response to the above question. I suspect that there is another false dichotomy at play here: person's who have been variously hurt or offended by some viciously absolutist ethical systems of standards leap to the unjustified conclusion that the only protection offered is the denial of all standards in relativism. In other words, the retreat into relativism is an attempt to find tolerance in an otherwise intolerant world.
But this retreat is “absolutely” self-defeating. After all, in the absence of objectively compelling standards, how can one possibly make a credible claim that, say, herding millions of people into gas chambers is “wrong”? To say that genocide is “evil” one has to have a standard of evaluation by which such claims can themselves be justified. And why should anyone care about tolerance, unless there was something “valuable” and “good” in it? Absent such a standard, why not be intolerant, even viciously so? Without a standard to appeal to, all the relativists can say is that they don't like intolerance. But without a standard of evaluation, why should anyone care what relativists or anyone else feels about things?
Indeed, in the absence of objectively valid standards, the only people who really “get” the world are the sociopaths, the Bernie Madoffs and the Ted Bundys. This is because in the absence of objectively valid standards of ethics, then the only thing left is the power to get away with things. And while it is surely the case that this latter is exactly the only rule many people operate by, relativism reduces us to the enthusiastic endorsement of this rule as the only one there is. Any discussion of “ought” becomes meaningless.
__________
NOTES:
[1] Some people use the terms “moral” and “ethical” (and their respective variations) to mean different things: “moral” for value-oriented practices of a particular culture and “ethical” as the abstract theory of what ought to be done. I, however, make no such distinction. It is not a matter of what the terms “really” mean: Both terms have the same root meaning, the first coming from Latin and the second from Greek, so any claim about how they “really” ought to be used is largely just pretentiousness. Since the above mentioned distinction is not one that I'll have occasion to use, I choose to treat them as meaning the same thing and will alternate between them as stylistic balance and personal whimsy happen to move me at the time.
[2] http://www.fallacyfiles.org/redherrf.html , http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html . Any person with even a passing interest in logic and its numerous fallacious misuses should have the Fallacy Files ( http:www.fallacyfiles.org ) on their favorite list.
[3] There is, in point of fact, a fairly well formed answer that can be given to this frankly rhetorical question. But such an answer takes for granted the objective and rational validity of certain standards of evaluation for the establishment of its claim. The only way a relativist could endorse such a response is by first explicitly rejecting relativism. The overtly self-contradictory nature of such a move will not, in general, trouble the genuine relativist, but for the rest of us it will place their claims squarely where they belong: on the same level as barnyard noises. I'll offer some comments on the role(s) of the community and the individual in moral inquiry in a later essay, the third of this series.
[4] For example, http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html .
[5] One might compare the discussion in Edgar Sheffield Brightman's Moral Laws, The Abingdon Press (1933), especially the first third of the book, to page 125.
[6] A particularly tricky issue this: when do we finally admit that a question is badly framed &/or that an answer is not to be found? Areas of formal logic, mathematics, and abstract computer science are the one's where genuine proofs of impossibility are likeliest to come about. I suspect that in more empirical matters the principle set of metrics will be pragmatic ones of interest and use. Even in formal arenas, the driving factor is often a pragmatic one: if people did not find the conjectural aspect of Fermat's “Last Theorem” to be of inherent interest, then they would not have fretted over it for over 350 years until the Wiles-Taylor proof. Wikipedia provides a reasonably accurate and quite accessible discussion of this latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem . In the case of ethical matters per se, the interest is there already, so the practical reasons for engaging the issue are real and trump any nihilistic laziness.
[7] Which is yet another informal logical fallacy: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html
Comments
By the bye, the only way you can assert that
many "objective" inquiries aren't
is if there is a valid standard of objectivity against which such failure(s) can be measured: the claim of "is" is as contentful or vacuous as the claim of "is not." Relativism is not the claim that our inquiries are inadequate (since this presupposes a grasp of "adequacy"); it is the claim that they are meaningless.
Your mention of
standards that simply aren't shared by everyone
is rather misplaced. The issue is not about people's agreement -- which would be an overt argumentum ad populum fallacy http://www.fallacyfiles.org/bandwagn.html -- but what is correct or true? Obviously any claims to these latter deserve a considerable measure of reasoned skepticism; experience with empirical science has shown that the approach to such things is difficult, while ethics is surely much harder.* If it was only a matter of popularity, then ethics would be the easiest thing in the world.
* Charles Hartshorne who died a few years ago at the too-young age of 103. During his long and productive career he spent almost all of his time writing and publishing on metaphysics (all though he was also a world-class, if amateur, ornithologist). A colleague of mine once asked Hartshorne why, in over 65 years of publishing, he'd never written on ethics. Hartshorne never blinked: "Because metaphysics is easy," he said, "ethics is hard."
Gary Herstein | 07/14/09 | 15:45 PM
Inquiry might fail, but never even trying is the only thing that can guarantee such failure a priori. To reject the axiom that inquiry is meaningful and the results can be objective, in the absence of genuinely compelling reasons to do so, is the ultimate form of irrationalism since it undercuts the very possibility of success while offering nothing in compensation. This is true whether the inquiry is scientific or moral. But this is precisely what relativism does: it rejects the objectivity of standards of inquiry and standards revealed by inquiry. It thus rejects rationality itself.
The problem I have here is that you've linked all forms of inquiry together and concluded that to reject the inquiry itself is a rejection of rationality. First, it is not reasonable to suggest that all forms of inquiry are legitimate, so therefore it is not unreasonable to suggest that many lines of inquiry aren't worth pursuing because no conclusion or result can ever be attained. This is routinely done in the sciences, where many ideas are simply discarded as having no probability of producing fruitful results. So, it may be legitimately concluded that there may be reasons for rejecting (as axiomatic) that objective truths will ever be found.
One of the reasons for such a conclusion is in the term "objective" which suggests something which exists independent of interpretation or "spin", so that whatever else one might think, it is unarguable that the "truth" being considered exists as a fact or fundamental property of nature/universe/etc. However, this also implies a universality to this information that must exist regardless of who is observing, so it must apply equally to bacteria as it does to humans. If it doesn't, then it can't be objective because there are boundaries against which it won't operate and therefore requires a particular perspective or viewpoint before it can be considered "true".
Similarly, we would then be forced to consider whether anything we discovered was applicable to the universe at large. At this point, it is clear that we can't possibly know all the circumstances for which something holds true. While science comes very close by postulating laws that have broad applicability, even here there are circumstances where it is unknown whether a particular "law" or "theory" would hold.
In the case of ethics or morality, for such a result to be considered "objective", it would have to rise above this constraint, by being applicable to all potential living organisms as well as all known organisms, since any qualification would render it back into the relativistic camp since it becomes dependent on perspective.
In my mind, since we can't know all the circumstances for which an ethical or moral principle can be applied, we are already prevented from finding anything that we can consider universal or objective. Therefore any conclusions we reach are necessarily biased by our own perspective and therefore can't be considered objective.
Gerhard Adam | 07/14/09 | 21:51 PM
First, it is not reasonable to suggest that all forms of inquiry are legitimate
I'm curious how it is less than obvious that I never said nor implied any such thing. Perhaps you can actually quote the sentence that makes that claim? Because insisting that I just guess is less than reasonable, and I have used the phrase "reasoned inquiry" often enough that it seems to me that any claimed ambiguity on the subject is a little artificial.
Since your argument above seems to hinge either largely or entirely on this Straw Man (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html) assertion, I'm not sure that I can or need to respond to the rest.
Gary Herstein | 07/15/09 | 19:35 PM
I like that Gerhard, can I borrow it?
Steve Davis | 07/14/09 | 04:46 AM
There is a quote by Alfred North Whitehead (which I can look up if absolutely have to) to the effect that human beings are not rational, they are at best only occasionally rational. But as Whitehead himself clearly argued, this is not an argument against rationality -- which, after all, is an ideal to be aimed at -- only a statement of "facts on the ground."
More generally, "facts on the ground" do not by themselves tell us anything about ideals (which are more concerned with potentia and possibilities rather than actualia). I do not suggest that anyone is making this error in the above, but it is a common mistake on this point to assume that because things "are" one way, that addressing ourselves to how they ought to be is either meaningless or pointess. This latter is just another flavor of relativism, and yet another logical fallacy. Confusing "is" and "ought" is to conflate two different modalities http://www.fallacyfiles.org/modalfal.html . (Again, I do not suggest that this error is being committed here, but the discussion provided a useful segue to mention the subject, which my personal experience indicates does occur with considerable frequency.)
Gary Herstein | 07/14/09 | 15:53 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtckVng_1a0
(Further commentary would be superfluous .....)
Gary Herstein | 07/14/09 | 17:04 PM
In the classical (Judeo-Christian) sense, when someone uses the retort "who are you to judge?", they are often referring to judging other people, or judging subjective values, not necessarily math or physics. Used properly, I would think that it implies that the foundation of someone else's argument rests in subjectivity. "who are you to judge" might be a good reply to someone who tells you you should go to college, but it wouldn't work if someone tells you that people who go to college have a greater chance of finding a job. Moreover, the retort can smell out a hint of subjectivity in an objective-sounding statement, eg, "People who go to college have a greater chance of finding a job, therefore you ought to go to college".
I'd be curious about your take on Robert Pirsig if you've read him. He did a great job at distinguishing the objective/subjective,&then focusing on the area where they meet. The conclusion that subjectivity (or call it relativism) exists & is real doesn't mean that it applies to everything.
kerr jac | 07/14/09 | 21:54 PM
I would argue that you need to exercise care in the above. You seem to be conflating "having a standard" with "having a standard that has been validated by rational inquiry." Along the lines of the concluding paragraphs of the essay/argument, this would technically be an equivocation (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/equivoqu.html) that might in turn be used to justify the false dichotomy of the relativists.
It seems to me that you are not arguing for relativism, but for context sensitivity; the two are not the same. Attending to the multiplicity of factors at play is an entirely reasonable thing to do in any inquiry. Also -- though this is a topic I intend to discuss in the next entry in this series (whenever I get that done) -- moral inquiry is nothing at all like the a priori application of mechanical rules or conclusions. The point is that it is inquiry, not dogmatism.
By the bye, this point is classically made by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. One must take circumstances and situations into account in order to rationally evaluate them. (For example, Bk II, chap. 6, 4 -- 8 lines 1106a25 -- 1106b7; and Bk V, chap. 10, lines 1137a32 -- 1138a3.) I would argue that the focus on inquiry is ultimately central to all of the greats, but this can be obscured by their reliance on epistemological theories that themselves did not properly appreciate the differences between rational inquiry and the achieved products ("knowledge" proper) of such inquiry. (My earlier post on logic as inquiry develops my position on this subject a bit more explicitly: http://www.scientificblogging.com/inquiry_inquiry/blog/logic_inquiry)
Gary Herstein | 07/15/09 | 19:51 PM
It seems to me that you are not arguing for relativism, but for context sensitivity; the two are not the same. Attending to the multiplicity of factors at play is an entirely reasonable thing to do in any inquiry.
I wasn't meaning to point to the multiplicity of factors, so much as categorizing different types of factors, regardless of how many there are. Some things in the world (or judgments about them) are subjective, others are objective.
Among the subjective, the ultimate example is the judgment of people. The retort "who are you to judge" likely comes from Jesus' refrain "judge not, that ye be judged". Certainly you can try to judge people,&then act off of those judgments. Based on this, the small % of Bernie Madoff's in the world might simply judge most people as fools&take advantage of them. But their judgments aren't any more "correct" than anyone else's.
From an objective perspective, how would you even begin to judge people? By their achievements? IQ? Friendliness? Health? Good looks? Certainly you can judge various quantifiable factors of people, but the point remains that it's rather difficult to judge a person as a whole. Even if *you* could somehow come up with a system for the judgment of a whole person, then indeed who would *you* be to judge another person? What would make your system more qualified or objective than any other system that someone else might come up (& then use it to judge you)?
This does not automatically give leeway for people to do whatever they please&to allow criminals to roam the street, & it doesn't mean that the world is absolutely relativist. Moreover, objective statements can be built on subjective ones, & vice-versa. In a sense the modern economy is built upon objectively exploiting the subjective. Hollywood's profit margins - an objective figure - is from Americans' subjective enjoyment of its films. Move Bollywood to California, & it wouldn't make 1/4 of the same amount of profit, despite its massive size. Is it such an extreme statement to say that enjoyment of a film is subjective, & it varies *relative* to when & where it's released? & the example of films, I would argue, is just the tip of the iceberg.
But that is not to deny an objective reality when dealing with matters less subjective. If you were to watch a physcist giving a scientific presenatation, and then ask, "who are you to judge?", his proper response would simply be, "I am a phycisit", or if he is less accomplished, "I am someone who has studied the laws of physics"
kerr jac | 07/15/09 | 22:41 PM
The difficulty of "judging a person as a whole" is irrelevant. Laziness is not an excuse for irrationalism. And why do you fall back on the already discounted excuse about what "I" or anyone else believes? This, again, is the relativist's dodge; like all forms of relativism, it is logically vacuous. You are trying to reduce matters of reasoned inquiry to dogmatic and authoritarian declarations. Why? Not only have I said nothing to support such purely rhetorical gesture, I have set out a number of quite explicit reasons to reject such an irrational move.
And the physicist, if he is possessed of the littlest shred of competence at all, would say not such thing as you suggest above. She would say, "it has nothing to do with me: I am talking about facts." Again, you quite frankly betray an irrationalist tendency by explicitly presuming that such discussions reduce to authoritarian pronouncements. If that is the case, then why should anyone even pretend to care about truth, morality, or anything else? If that is the world entirely as the world is, then all there is is the vicious capacity to impose one's "authority". If you actually believed that that was the world we lived in, then your willingness to argue with me on the point would be patently self-contradictory. But you don't believe that, you are arguing with me, so you clearly believe that there really is a fact of the matter, and that getting the facts right genuinely matters.
Look again at the supposed counter-examples you have proferred above: none of them evinces as little as the pretence of rational inquiry.
Also, please take into account that it is an objective fact that so-and-so subjectively belives that X, if indeed it is the case that so-and-so belives that X. But the objective fact that so-and-so believes that X is -- by itself -- indicative of nothing other than itself. How are reasoning inquirers to actually evaluate this belief? THAT is the question that matters! So I invite you to resist the blatantly (and, frankly, viciously) authoritarian fallacy of trying to reduce matters to an issue of what "I" say, etc. Reason is a matter of objective evaluation, not capriciously kerygmatic declarations.
Gary Herstein | 07/15/09 | 23:18 PM
So I invite you to resist the blatantly (and, frankly, viciously) authoritarian fallacy of trying to reduce matters to an issue of what "I" say, etc.
A disadvantage of writing is that sometimes tone can be mis-conveyed. Rest assured, I'm more interested in discussing the issues at hand rather than you as a person.
I'm not sure how you can take the argument that some judgments (or lines of inquiry) are not absolute,&generalize it to mean that every single judgment must then be relative. Some objects in the world lend themselves to being objectively reasoned with (such as natural laws), and others don't (such as whole people). There maybe some leeway or argument about whether certain objects in certain contexts fall on the objective or subjective side, but to completely ignore the subjective is to cut oyt a large part of reality.
Look again at the supposed counter-examples you have proferred above:
none of them evinces as little as the pretence of rational inquiry.
But the objective fact that so-and-so believes that X is -- by itself -- indicative of nothing other than itself. How are reasoning inquirers to actually evaluate this belief? THAT is the question that matters!
It's not self-evident that reason&inquiry are the only things that matter; can reason alone produce an argument for this? Certainly reasoners see reason as most important, but musicians will say the same of music. Is not the argument that reason is the most important rather authoritarian in&of itself? More likely the import of reason will be judged by its utilitarian results, not by reason itself.
A more enlightened view, I would argue, is more nuanced towards what it is analyzing. The problem -&this arises in science as well - is that not every problem that people come up with are solvable by reason or science alone. A portion of bad science often rests not so much in incorrect reasoning (ie, an error), but in the misapplication of reason itself. In the measurement of IQ, the debate does not so much rest on whether the time it takes participants to complete a puzzle was accurately measured, which would be an error; but rather in whether the task measures a facet of intelligence. One may argue counter that the misapplication of reason is a type of incorrect reasoning. But this still admits that reason can be misapplied.
This isn't meant to attack to reason as a whole, but rather to sharpen her application. Just like science, the ultimate application of reason rests not so much in blindly declaring her ultimate rule&applying reason to everything, but rather in admitting her limitations & proceeding henceforth. Reason, just like science, can't solve everything. But if we're better aware of what reason is particularly good (or bad) at solving, then her use will be all the sharper.
Indeed, it would be rather surprising if reason were equally good at dealing with every single aspect of the world. It's a further step in the wrong direction to then declare that only those things which reason is capable of handling are worthy of import or inquiry. A better approach is to begin with whatever object or problem one is considering, and then to tailor your methods accordingly. Again it's not extreme to say that reason is best at handling those sorts of things that reason is good at handling. But to then demand that either it still must be applied to everything else, and/or that those things that it cannot be applied to are unworthy of discussion, is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
kerr jac | 07/16/09 | 19:48 PM
First let me apologize for my own tone: personal and irrelevant (to the topic) issues have made unnecessarily edgy. Thanks for your patient reading, despite my rather sad contributions.
Second, I find many things in the above puzzling. Are you assuming that I am assuming that reason is completely codified as a set of mechanical rules, or something along similar lines? Permit me to highlight some points.
I'm not sure how you can take the argument that some judgments (or lines of inquiry) are not absolute,&generalize it to mean that every single judgment must then be relative
This again seems to be imposing upon me a false dichotomy that I have explicitly rejected. Perhaps if you could explicitly quote where I said that?
Some objects in the world lend themselves to being objectively reasoned with (such as natural laws), and others don't (such as whole people)
What would "non-objective" "reasoning" look like? The notion is atrociously self-contradictory, since such "non-objective reasoning" is utterly indistinguishable from barn-yard noises. Reason is either objective -- which is to say binding upon others -- or else it is nothing but whimsical and capriciously vacious noises: the mooing of the cow, the bleating of the sheep, the braying of the donkey, the clucking of the chickens. That is not reason; that is merely "espression." (By the bye, that line is something I explicitly address above in the original essay: to whit, the connection between value judgments and truth judgments.)
The problem -&this arises in science as well - is that not every problem that people come up with are solvable by reason or science alone.
(I have previously distinguished reason and science, and hopefully you are doing so in the above as well. So please forgive me the gratuitous redundancy of saying again that logic (inquiry into inquiry), reason and science are not the same thing.)
I would respond, so what REASON can you give for the above? What REASONED defense could you give for an unreasonable "answer"? (Is "unreasonable" the wrong word? What would be a REASONABLE term?) What REASONED distinction could you imagine to justify your explicitly "unreasonable"(?) "answer" from other unreasonable "answer's"? Because quite obviously if there is a REASON to distinquish your position from, say, Nazism or Stalinism -- and I assume there is such a REASON -- then the distinction is (in direct contradiction to your own evident claim) clearly not in the least bit unreasonable.
What are these problems that people come up with that are unsolvable by reason? If they are unsoblable by reason, how is any such "solution" distinguishable from the most arbitrary, vicious and whimsical application of brute force and violence? I mean, are you now going to offer a REASON for such a distinction? Are they aesthetic problems? But who legislated that these are trans- or un-reasonable? (And if "who" is the wrong question, then what objective standard OF REASON are you bringing to bear to determine the matter?)
It's a further step in the wrong direction to then declare that only those things which reason is capable of handling are worthy of import or inquiry.
I am trying to imagine what possible sense could be given to such a sentence, but I am drawing a blank. What possible REASON could you give for believing that?
Gary Herstein | 07/17/09 | 19:39 PM
Philosophy, religion, ethics and morality (are Ideals), but are subjective.
anonymous (not verified) | 07/17/09 | 22:05 PM
(Apologies for my delay in responding, by the bye.)
Gary Herstein | 07/20/09 | 18:15 PM
evaluation&relativism. An assumption I made - perhaps
questionable - was that reasoned evaluation represented an objective
process, relativism a subjective one.
The antithesis of reasoned evaluation is relativism. Relativism is in
essence the denial that any rational standard exists, can be found or
can be made that could suffice to license any judgment beyond that of
the utterly whimsical.
I would respond, so what REASON can you give for the above? What REASONED defense could you give for an unreasonable "answer"?
...
What are these problems that people come up with that are unsolvable by reason?
Predicting the stock market.
(I have previously distinguished reason and science, and hopefully you
are doing so in the above as well. So please forgive me the gratuitous
redundancy of saying again that logic (inquiry into inquiry), reason
and science are not the same thing.)
Perhaps I am confusing my terms, but the reason why, in certain instances, a reasoned response is not your best bet would be because reason fails to be of service in answering such questions, or because there is a good reason for why reason does not help you solve a given problem. The most obvious examples are empirical or scientific ones, instances where science advances not so much by accurate prediction, but by predicting probabilities (as in locating an electron) or conditions of increased volatility (as in predicting the weather).
Applied to ethics, there is no particular reason for why common people deserve to live, or for why you should treat your neighbor well. Any "reason" for doing such certainly comes after the fact. That is, it often comes from philosophers or ethic-ticians seeing that people in society tend to treat others with dignity, and coming up with reasons for why. And moreover, they may come up with some good, interesting, and unique reasons. But people aren't explicitly being motivated by these reasons; often we don't know why we do things the way we do. The point being that the act of elucidating the reasons for why people behave the way they do won't drastically affect their behavior. There is a reason for that, and it is b/c, like most animals, humans are not motivated by explicit reasons.
There is a huge distinction between the reasons why people behave from an ojbective perspective, and the reasons (or lack thereof) why they behave from a subjective perspective. You can tinker with the objective perspective all you want, but it won't change people's actual moral behavior. It's like the distinction between an omnipotent distant and unrepsonsive God and a personal God. The further you drift towards the distant God, the less relevance you will have on people's actual behavior.
What REASONED distinction could you imagine to justify your
explicitly "unreasonable"(?) "answer" from other unreasonable
"answer's"? Because quite obviously if there is a REASON to distinquish your position from, say, Nazism or Stalinism -- and I assume there is such a REASON -- then the distinction is (in direct contradiction to your own evident claim) clearly not in the least bit unreasonable.
Nazism was a misapplication of reason. I'd argue instead that reason in certain instances - ranging from types of empirical predictions to why children should share their toys - is irrelevant. There is a good reason for why it is not always relevant, but that doesn't make it relevant.
kerr jac | 07/17/09 | 22:15 PM
As phrased, this is supposed to be setting up a dichotomy, but what is the distinction?
In this quote it seems like you are making a dichotomy between reasoned
evaluation&relativism. An assumption I made - perhaps
questionable - was that reasoned evaluation represented an objective
process, relativism a subjective one.
That is, what is the difference between "reasoned evaluation and relatvism" vs. "reasoned evaluation as objective and relativism as subjective"? I agree with the latter, but also with the former, since as near as I can tell they say exactly the same thing.
Your phrase "predicting the stock market" doesn't answer your own question. What kinds of predictions are you invoking here? Are you talking about short-term or long-term predictions? And how does an example of an arbitrary phrase disprove the point I made above? How is an irrational outburst of vocal energy -- "predicting the stock market" -- supposed to refute the role of reasoned inquiry in anything?
a reasoned response is not your best bet would be because reason fails to be of service in answering such questions, or because there is a good reason for why reason does not help you solve a given problem.
I invite you to re-read that, as it is overtly self-contradictory. If it fails to be reasonable, then in what sense can it be considered reasonable? If it does not fail to be reasonable, then in what sense is it not reasonable? Yet this is what you are saying. "Reason fails to be of service" because there is a "good reason" -- excuse me? If there is a good reason, then that is the reason -- "why reason does not help" -- but you just said there was a GOOD reason! How can it be a "good" reason when you just declared there was no reason even possible?
It seems to me like you are confusing having a good reason with having a reason that gives you the answer you want. In any event, what you have said -- in the form in which you have said it -- makes no sense. Because if you have no reason, then you have nothing but vicious, arbitrary, whimsical capricious subjectivism. So why not just commit genocide? Why not torture or steal? It is not as though you can give a reason not to -- unless, of course, you can. In which case, what you have is reason, not relativism.
Nazism was a misapplication of reason
That basically says that the Nazis applied reason in an unreasonable way; this again is an overt self-contradiction. If it was unreasonable, then it was unreasonable. Just because the Nazis claimed to be exemplars of reason was scarcely enough to make them so, any more than Flat-Earthers are representative of scientific physics.
Also, you appear to be treating "reason" as though it is something fixed and previously given. This is like declaring physics to be something to be discovered through prayer and divine insight; ultimately it is why the Greeks (as brilliant as they were) failed intellectually. Physics has revealed itself in the process of inquiry -- as has inquiry itself. Thus, in our more insightful moments with physical science we have come to see taht fallibilism is a basic element of any reasoned inquiry; there is a feedback loop where what we learn makes it possible to learn more and correct what we thought we knew in the past. (Perhaps I am mistaken in this last and am reading too much (or too little) into your comments. FWIW, addressing the difference between moral inquiry and claims of moral knowledge will be the central topic of the 2nd essay ... presuming I overcome my native laziness and get it written!)
By the bye, I should have said this earlier, but thank you for your questions. Do please keep pressing me; it is the only hope I have of actually clarifying my own thoughts!
Gary Herstein | 07/20/09 | 18:44 PM
By the bye, I should have said this earlier, but thank you for your questions. Do please keep pressing me; it is the only hope I have of actually clarifying my own thoughts!
You're welcome, and no problem. Thanks for your stimulating responses.
...if you have no reason, then you have nothing but vicious, arbitrary, whimsical capricious subjectivism.
This is where I think you are making a false dichotomy, as you are over-generalizing "reason". Why isn't possible to have reason in some situations, &"vicious, arbitrary, whimsical capricious subjectivism" in others? In all likelihood, we are most often dealing with a combination of the 2.
"Reason fails to be of service" because there is a "good reason" -- excuse me? If there is a good reason, then that is the reason -- "why reason does not help" -- but you just said there was a GOOD reason! How can it be a "good" reason when you just declared there was no reason even possible?
The model I am going off of is that is reason is often applied atop "vicious subjectivism", both in science and in morality. Medicine can cure diseases, but what is the reason for wanting to cure diseases? Why not study non-diseases? Reason can find a man guilty of a crime, but what is reason for imprisoning him? In all such aspects, we are trying to improve qualities of life, in part thru reason, but the ultimate objective or motivation is rarely rooted in reason itself, it is rooted in the subjective - in human sentiment, values, quality.
When you see someone in pain and feel a tinge of their physical pain, that is subjective. When you act on that empathy, you may try to find out what is that matter and in doing so use objective reasoned inquiry. When you figure out what is wrong, that is an end of the brief inquiry; a light bulb goes off in your head, you think, "eureka", that's subjective. And on and on.
David Hume presents a classical version of this argument in a short treatise, An Enquiry Concerning the Principals of Morals. I particularly recommend the first Appendix, Concerning Moral Sentiment (http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/Hume-Enquiry%20Concerning%20Moral...). After examining situations such as those in the above paragraph, he concludes:
Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: The latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation. Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition. From circumstances and relations, known or supposed, the former leads us to the discovery of the concealed and unknown: After all circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter makes us feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or approbation. The standard of the one, being founded on the nature of things, is eternal and inflexible, even by the will of the Supreme Being: The standard of the other, arising from the internal frame and constitution of animals, is ultimately derived from that Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature, and arranged the several classes and orders of existence.
Hume provides a direct response to your argument that reason is synonymous with human insight: It is not. Human insight uses reason, but it is built atop of subjective things like taste&sentiment.
You also write that I
appear to be treating "reason" as though it is something fixed and previously given.
However, I get the sense that you are at times using reason in this exact same manner as well. Consider your argument that
If it fails to be reasonable, then in what sense can it be considered reasonable? If it does not fail to be reasonable, then in what sense is it not reasonable? Yet this is what you are saying. "Reason fails to be of service" because there is a "good reason" -- excuse me? If there is a good reason, then that is the reason -- "why reason does not help" -- but you just said there was a GOOD reason! How can it be a "good" reason when you just declared there was no reason even possible?
This argument views reason exactly as "something fixed and previously given". The inference is that reason is an implicit piece of every line of inquiry, so you can't have any line of inquiry without reason.
Again I beg to differ. A distinction needs to be made, first, between these 2 views of reason - the one viewing reason as insight, the other as the backbone of every objective argument - and second (more important) between the content and structure of an argument.
If you are going to view reason as the pure structure of any argument, then you can simply zoom out of any argument that I give and say, "but there's a reason for that" or "but your argument is built on reason". Indeed, the structure of Hume's argument is built on reason as well. Note however that this is not the same as saying that reason is human insight. Furthermore, the more you rely on this argument, the more that reason loses its meaning, because it is everywhere by default, and if you think that it's absent, then you simply have to zoom further out. It becomes synonymous with saying the saying, "there's a reason for everything" - it's a common expression, but it quickly loses meaning upon little examination.
If we are only considering reason in this objective and generalized state - as something that is both fixed and objective, and the de facto spine of any line of inquiry - then I agree with you that reason reigns supreme over relativism. At the same time, this particular tone of reason, I think, is so generalized, bland, and inapplicable as to be rendered practically useless.
kerr jac | 07/21/09 | 21:49 PM
Why isn't possible to have reason in some situations, &"vicious, arbitrary, whimsical capricious subjectivism" in others?
Since I've explicitly stated this is the case, the question makes no sense to me. The point is that the latter, being "vicious, arbitrary, whimsical and capricious" is unjustifiable as a choice. On the other hand, and choice that is justifiable is obviously neither vicious, arbitrary, whimsical nor capricious since if it is justifiable, then reasons can be given for it.
Medicine can cure diseases, but what is the reason for wanting to cure diseases? Why not study non-diseases?
First off, isn't it rather obvious that people do study non-diseases? Quite aside from the obvious areas of biology and chemistry, people also study music (which is a non-disease). I'm not trying to be ridiculous here (though that's usually all I actually achieve!) Rather, I want to illustrate a point about precision that I try to take very seriously and encourage others to so as well. Your question is vague, and vagueness, Dewey argued and I agree, is the cardinal logical sin.
Secondly, I wonder if you are equating "practical value" with "subjective"? Health is a practical value for human beings, but it is not a merely subjective one. Even as we must needs redefine what we understand "health" to be, as a guiding ideal of our inquiries it is an objectively real quality of human life -- albeit, "only" a practical one.
This argument views reason exactly as "something fixed and previously given".
This is not an argument but an announcement. You provide no reason to believe the claim, and no such reason can be distilled from the section that you quote. One might have claimed that I was making a bivalent argument (either P or not-P), and supported that claim by the quoted text. Anyone who wishes to claim that the situation was not properly modeled in a bivalent way is more than welcome to appeal to some non-classical &/or paraconsistent system and then show how it applies. I am certainly open to such evidence, and can dig up the citations in other contexts where such things have been (to my mind) effectively carried out. (Sadly, those examples are currently among the vast bulk of my books and journals that are in storage, so it would require some digging to give a genuinely specific example.)
The point being that no such fixed character is in play. I will certainly work with the best tools currently at my disposal, but my doing so presupposes neither that these tools are beyond improvement nor that they are the only tools that exist.
The inference is that reason is an implicit piece of every line of inquiry, so you can't have any line of inquiry without reason.
I may have been sloppy in my expression, so let me clarify (in case it wasn't previously clear) that I mean that reason is <i>EXPLICIT</i> in every piece of every line of <i>GOOD</i> inquiry. (Recall that in the original essay above, I did explicitly situate "truth" as a subset of "morality.") Do activities that have been shown -- <i>in the process of inquiry itself</i> -- to be unreliable, ineffective, even actively perverse, deserve to be called "inquiry" at all? I am not sure that this is a merely terminological question, in which case "good inquiry" maybe a redundancy. But that does not mean that the idea of inquiry, nor that of reason itself, is in anyway closed or fixed. No small part of what makes science reasonable is the fact that its results inform its presuppositions, and the end modifies the beginning. There is a "feedback loop" that is constantly engaged. One applies what one has to refine and, in extreme circumstances, reconfigure what one previously knew.
So can there be inquiry without reason, whether the latter is implicit or explicit? You don't actually give any examples in the above. You appeal to the notion of "human insight" -- and one could scarcely ask for anything more vague and indescriminate. Insofar as I can guess at your meaning, you might be pointing at notions like "intuition" &/or "inspiration." But from your discussion, you appear to want to hold these things up as conclusions, even conclusions of inquiry, that somehow trump reason. If that is your position, then you've fundamentally inverted the actual facts of the matter. These things (and they are real aspects of human experience) are not conclusions but <i>data</i>; they do not form the terminus of inquiry, but only the beginning (if that).
With respect to your "zoom in/zoom out" comments at the end, since they are predicated upon a demonstrable falsehood (that I believe reason is fixed) there's really nothing I can or need say to them.
Finally, as far as distinquishing between the content and structure of an argument, that's nearly (if not simply) meaningless as posed. Even within the most rigidly classical of formal structures, one cannot simply "pour" second-order content into a first-order structure. I've already endorsed formal structures far beyond the classical in the above, so I would add one can hardly introduce non-bivalent contents into bivalent structures.
No, I must draw a line in the sand on that one: such a casual (and "more important"!?) distinction between "content" and "structure" is demonstrably unsupportable by a careful study of just those very things ("content" and "structure") -- a study motivated and driven by reasoned inquiry.
Gary Herstein | 07/23/09 | 19:27 PM
After all, in the absence of objectively compelling standards, how can
one possibly make a credible claim that, say, herding millions of
people into gas chambers is “wrong”? To say that genocide is “evil” one
has to have a standard of evaluation by which such claims can
themselves be justified.
I'm not sure on why there is a need for an "objective" morality, for me to exercise my own evaluation on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of an action. How can we judge that any particular standard is "objective" if it only applies to humans? If we observed a colony of ants taking other ants as prisoners and marching the losers into their equivalent of a gas chamber, would we really be prepared to judge them as immoral?
There are certainly numerous examples of animal behaviors that we would regard as immoral if taken in the human context, so can there be an objective standard if it only applies to specific living organisms?
If we use the previous examples in animals, one could legitimately ask "who are you to judge" and your response is completely correct, but it also begs the question of how we could evaluate a situation for which we have absolutely no life experience to correlate it with.
I can't help but feel that an inquiry into an objective morality or ethics is an excuse to have people avoid taking personal responsibilities for the ideas they have invented. Even if we concluded that there were objective moral standards, why should there existence make a difference beyond creating the argument from authority position.
I realize that I'm not as philosophically stringent and precise as you are, but I don't believe that every logical pursuit produces real-world results. Mathematics is full of logical conclusions that simply aren't true in the real world.
...relativism reduces us to the enthusiastic endorsement of this rule as
the only one there is. Any discussion of “ought” becomes meaningless.
Why should "ought" become meaningless any more than your right to evaluate another's principles. Relativism is precisely the position that grants us the authority to judge and question such values, whereas objectivism carries the possibility that our own values can be negated by a standard not of our own choosing.
Gerhard Adam | 07/29/09 | 19:46 PM
I'm not sure on why there is a need for an "objective" morality, for me to exercise my own evaluation on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of an action.
Depends on what company you want to keep. If you're comfortable with folks like Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, etc. ect. (throwing out the most extreme examples merely to make the point as clear as possible) then of course there is no reason to appeal to objectivity. But if there is no objective difference between your standards and those previsouly listed, then there is no meaningful difference between you and they. I am powerfully inclined to reject such a claim on your behalf, even if you are not. (Barring, of course, objective evidence to the contrary which would not make my day any happier.)
There are certainly numerous examples of animal behaviors that we would regard as immoral if taken in the human context, so can there be an objective standard if it only applies to specific living organisms?
Sorry, but I find that question very obscure. The original article (and the series which -- honest! -- I will be continuing with a part 2 and part 3) is about moral INQUIRY as a rational form of investigation. Animal (including human animal) behavior might variously contribute as evidence in such an inquiry. The question as posed seems to radically conflate issues of animal behavior with rational thought, the latter guided by objective standards revealed through reasoned inquiry. In so far, it is a fairly overt equivocation http://www.fallacyfiles.org/equivoqu.html and logical fallacy.
If we use the previous examples in animals, one could legitimately ask "who are you to judge" and your response is completely correct, but it also begs the question of how we could evaluate a situation for which we have absolutely no life experience to correlate it with.
Again, very equivocal and confusing. Life experience is evidence; rational inquiry can apply such evidence to achieve a reasoned conclusion, but the fact that other organisms -- most specifically those which do not under any set of circumstances even attempt to engage in reasoned inquiry -- fail to reach "the same conclusions" (since they fail to reach ANY conclusions at all, given that they do not engage in rational inquiry in the first place) has no bearing on anything.
I can't help but feel that an inquiry into an objective morality or ethics is an excuse to have people avoid taking personal responsibilities for the ideas they have invented.
I am hard-pressed to imagine how one could even possibly defend such a claim. Nothing serves to more completely dodge the barest scintilla of personal responsibility than denying the objective reality of standards. It all becomes just "another thought" on equal footing with every other thought. What STANDARD OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY do you propose to hold people to once you have denied all reality to ANY standard of personal responsibility? Because the only way such a "standard" could have any claim of any kind whatsoever, is if it was legitimized by its objective reaity.
Why should "ought" become meaningless any more than your right to evaluate another's principles. Relativism is precisely the position that grants us the authority to judge and question such values
That last is just nonsense on stilts. Seriously, pull up any ARGUMENT which is based on REASONS which necessarily claim OBJECTIVE validity that LOGICALLY leads to such a conclusion. What you have presented instead is a bald-facedly Kerygmatic announcement that is overtly self-contradictory. The only position that allows one to pass any form of judgment (and here I do not limit myself to morality; the same is as true of physics as anything else) is one that predicates its stance upon an objectively binding system of facts and reasons. Relativism is the overt and explicit denial of this latter, since the only "reasons" (which are not reasons at all, but mere grunts and animal noises) are only "relative" to whoever happens to make those grunts and animal noises.
"Ought" only has rational weight when that weight is borne by logically justified -- and hence, objectively binding -- reasons. Otherwise, all you have are the barnyard noises competing with one another. And not even the volume with which the noise is produced can be held up as a "standard" by which it is to be evaluated, since you have denied the very possibility of any such standard. And to repeat, a "standard" which is only a "standard" "relative" to me is not a standard at all, since it has no objective basis to be evaluted, judged, or preferred to the equally "relative" "standards" of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. "Ought" either means something that is REAL, because it is objective, or it means nothing at all, because it is nothing more than emotianal ejaculations, mere barnyard noise.
(We can be mistaken about what "ought" means; but we can only be mistaken IF it means something. Either it means something, or it means nothing. If it means nothing, then there is no possibility of error with respect to it, other than the error of supposing that it actually means something. If "ought" means something, then it that meaning is an objective fact, and as such cannot be reduced to mere barnyard noise. "Meaning" qua meaning is an objective fact, and not simply a brute, organic vocalization.)
Reasons, if they are reasons at all, are reasons precisely because they are objectively binding upon reasoning beings. They nature of such "objective binding" might be very complex and situationally nuanced. But such complexity and nuance is then itself an objective fact and as such properly characterized by reasons and objectively binding upon reasoning beings.
Gary Herstein | 07/30/09 | 23:37 PM
Life experience is evidence; rational inquiry can apply such evidence
to achieve a reasoned conclusion, but the fact that other organisms --
most specifically those which do not under any set of circumstances
even attempt to engage in reasoned inquiry -- fail to reach "the same
conclusions" (since they fail to reach ANY conclusions at all, given that they do not engage in rational inquiry in the first place) has no bearing on anything.
The question I'm really asking here, is that if there should be an "objective morality", then it seems that it should also have universal applicability, regardless of whether the species in question is capable of rationalizing a similar argument. In other words, my example of ants killing other prisoner ants, should have a "moral" aspect to it just as humans doing it if there is a true "objective" standard of behavior with which one deals with others of one's own species (it wouldn't apply between humans and ants, but should apply among ants).
Part of the reason I'm asking this, is that if the definition is only species-specific, then how might it apply if we encountered an alien species with intelligence? Could we legitimately claim that there is some "objective" standard of morality to which individuals of these two species would engage? Is it only subject to our ability to reason? If the latter, then might the objectivity be strained if people have different reasoning capabilities?
Perhaps I'm jumping the gun because as you've indicated, you're not proposing a solution, but rather the proposition that a "reasoned inquiry" can be used to determine whether there is an objective morality.
I guess part of the problem I'm having is in considering morality as "objective", since we couldn't possibly know whether there are other permutations that could exist in other living organisms (with intelligence) in the universe. In science, we can use objective definitions, because these phenomenon are independent of our personal perspectives and will operate in the prescribed manner for everyone. With morality, even if we could reason our way to an objective definition, there is nothing to prevent someone from simply applying their own rules (even if they were totally irrational) because the phenomenon itself isn't truly objective.
Perhaps I'm just rambling, but when you mention Hitler, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge, a question that bears considering is that how can their behavior be interpreted if they, themselves, didn't think they were doing any immoral? In other words, wouldn't an objective morality require them to acknowledge their own actions as evil? If it couldn't achieve that, then how do we avoid the simple "might makes right" argument that would allow any morality to be established by the victor? After all, isn't that how we've rationalized our actions towards Native Americans? Just as an example, I hear about strong beliefs in property rights from people living on property stolen from the former residents.
Anyway ... now I know I'm rambling, so help me out here .... what am I missing?
Gerhard Adam | 07/31/09 | 05:02 AM
I guess part of the problem I'm having is in considering morality as "objective", since we couldn't possibly know whether there are other permutations that could exist in other living organisms (with intelligence) in the universe.
I think you have asked an excellent question here. Let us at least grant that this is possible. It would then be an objective fact about reality. The analogy (I hope it is a good one) that springs to mind has to do with food, which is a value for all living things. But not all forms of food are equally nutritious to all organisms, even organisms as closely related as the particular spectrum of carbon-chemistry based life forms on this little planet of ours. One can go further: habits of eating can innure locals to certain dietary choices that will leave visitors white-knuckled clutching "The Big White Telephone to New York." This remains an objective fact.
Permit me to review one part of my argument here: "Morality is objective" is an hypothesis, but it is an hypothesis predicated upon the minimally necessary presuppositions needed for rational inquiry into the subjec to even be possible. No PRACTICAL reason can be given to reject this hypothesis since such a rejection renders all claims equally "valid," regardless of how vicious, abominable, self-serving, brutal or despicable such claims might actually be. Indeed one cannot apply those previous adjectives to ANY claim unless one is first committed to the above hypothesis.
However, being objective does not require that moral values be linear &/or well-ordered; while it seems rationally necessary that there be some kind of ordering, it may well be only partial. (There is extensive formal work on the notion of a partially ordered set. One might go to http://eom.springer.de/P/p071670.htm or Garrett Birkhoff's classic Lattice Theory, AMS Colloquium Publications, Providence. 3rd Edition, 1979.)
One may indeed have a situation -- as a matter of objective fact -- in which incomparable values compete in a manner that does not permit a simple or simplistic ordering. As a matter of objective fact ... tragedy may indeed be an irreducible fact of reality! That does not make it any less objective; quite the contrary, what makes it tragic is that it IS objective.
I guess part of the problem I'm having is in considering morality as "objective", since we couldn't possibly know whether there are other permutations that could exist in other living organisms (with intelligence) in the universe
This ties in with the previous part, but I want to use the reiteration for my next step in the argument: It is also the case that physical laws may not be uniform across all of space and time. Charles Saunders Peirce is the first scientist I am aware of who suggested that the laws of nature might gradually shift over time. Since Peirce was also a philosopher, he is of course denied credit for this claim and it is given instead to -- if memory serves -- Wolfgang Pauli. (OK, I'm a little bitter; shoot me.) My real point here, though, is that this argument is not unique to moral issues; it also applies to claims of physical science. Yet physics still goes on, and part of that going on is looking for new paths of inquiry that might reveal how the previous ones were inadequate. This is no small part of what makes physics (physical inquiry) rational: the refusal to stop asking questions merely because our best current answers are only local and tentative.
My argument, and my invitation to you, is to apply the same criterion to moral inquiry. At such point that we discover that our previous inquiries were limited by our provincial and narrowly defined sources of data, we can refine our conclusions and our inquiries to become broader and more rational. Look at that last sentence again: was I talking about physics or ethics?
when you mention Hitler, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge, ... wouldn't an objective morality require them to acknowledge their own actions as evil?
First, thanks for your patience with my use of such extreme examples. I appreciate that you recognize the broad rhetorical gestures involved were a use of extremities to clarify subtleties. (Also, I hope my elipsis adequately captures your point). I believe this last is confusing a psychological issue with a logical one. Once again, compare the physical analogy: wouldn't an objective physics require the Flat Earth Society to acknowledge their own claims as mistaken? Well, yes ... provided your Flat Earthers are rational and psychologically honest.
I submit that the same point carries over to the aforementioned "individuals." IF they were rational, IF they were honest, then yes, they would be obliged to acknowledge that their actions were evil
"IF"
But individual failures of rationality do not refute logically valid claims.
(By the bye, I don't think you are rambling. Thank you for asking such careful and thoughtful questions. Not to beat the point to death, though, I note that only someone who held "thoughtful and careful questioning" to be a kind of objective standard to be aimed at in rational inquiry would make that sort of effort.)
Gary Herstein | 08/02/09 | 16:54 PM
Once again, compare the physical analogy: wouldn't an objective physics
require the Flat Earth Society to acknowledge their own claims as
mistaken? Well, yes ... provided your Flat Earthers are rational and
psychologically honest.
Actually this really plays into my question/point. The difference that I was questioning is that whether the Flat Earth Society acknowledges their error or not, the Earth still remains round and the laws of physics still apply regardless of their particular belief. In other words, their belief cannot be acted on in any meaningful way, so they can't influence the outcomes.
My concern is that without the admission of "guilt" or "evil", then the outcome can be manipulated to follow whatever tenet the individual likes, so defining "objectivity" becomes correspondingly more difficult or impossible.
Anyway ... more later
Gerhard Adam | 08/02/09 | 17:08 PM
Both terms have the same root meaning, the first coming from Latin and the second from Greek, so any claim about how they “really” ought to be used is largely just pretentiousness.
Agreed. However, I liked Heinlein's use of ethics as the set of questions having implications for whether you can live with other people, and morality as the set of questions having implications for whether you can live with yourself. Arbitrary? Sure. But it gives students the chance to think about both kinds of issues.
What I didn't like was buying a copy of his Starship Troopers for my kids, and finding out after they'd read it that it was an abridged edition, with all the moral philosophy classes expunged. I lost credibility with the kids and lost a teaching opportunity. Then they (Hollywood, not my kids) made that awful movie from the abridged edition...
Fred Phillips | 07/31/09 | 00:05 AM
By the bye, Starship Troopers is one of my favorite Heinleins, despite the fact that the moral philosophy (which is a reflection of Heinlein's own extreme Libertarianism) is totally insupportable. But Heinlein -- Gods bless him -- wrote an "RKO General/John Wayne storming Iwo Jima" story in 1960 in which the final reveal at the very end of the book is that the main character is (by US 1960 standards) A BLACK MAN! This entire John Wayne fantasy is a shaggy dog story aimed at center-punching "your" (the 1960 white male readers') casually accepted racism directly in the solar plexus. Brilliant story telling.
But to return to my little piece, indeed there can be valid &/or useful reasons (and just try to tease those two qualifiers apart ...) for separating the terms "moral" and "ethical" (and their respective cognates). Those purposes don't really appear here, so I don't try to make the distinction.
Gary Herstein | 08/02/09 | 17:07 PM
Part of the problem is that many "objective" inquiries aren't and all too often such attempts are coupled with legislative pursuits to create both legal and social standards that simply aren't shared by everyone. Human evolution (especially in tribal societies) developed a variety of ways for coping with the circumstances groups found themselves in, and it was this unity that allowed for a large diversity in beliefs (and a sense of relativism) that said that there wasn't necessarily ONE correct way to live.
Such variations would have been subjected to the normal successes/failures of evolution, without a specific "winner" necessarily emerging. Similarly there are many individuals that would have you believe that they have an objective moral or ethical position, and yet there may be a broad range of dissent whereby reasonable people can disagree. In effect, the problem has become that our social group has simply become too large and we're expected to honor all manner of varying beliefs, some of which run completely counter to our own. In such a climate, one has to resist the temptation to force standards on others, or give in to a degree of "relativism" which says that "it simply isn't any of my business".
One can't help but wonder by what criteria so many heterosexuals think that they can set standards for the "gay community"? Instead we see that not only do people want to express their moral viewpoints, but they want to follow it up with legislation. I can understand the need to establish social standards as a means of maintaining a cohesive society together, but this is a difficult and dangerous area to claim objectivity about.
In truth, I have never met anyone that can be truly objective, because we will always view the world through our own filters, and just as you stated that:
Similarly I can argue that defense of a position also might fail, but that doesn't automatically make the other arguments valid. Humans are not rational creatures, but rather they are rationalizing creatures. Therefore I am cautious when it comes to claims of objectivity.