The Box Cards
Caution! Philosophy ahead!
I handwrote these notes from 1983-96 during my day job. They were written on 3x5 tagboard cards at work and thrown into a box when I emptied my pockets at home. Hence "The box cards."
All of this is "raw scribble" with some [editing applied] for clarity.
Caveat: some views have changed in 20-30 years. Intuitions!
A philosopher's notebook. Thought on the spot. Enjoy.
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My main concerns here are the effect of science on ethics, the ethics of science, and especially how to justify ethics in a scientific culture.
That and the occasional wisecrack (I can't help it).
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If there are such things as Good and Evil, politicians have a 50:50 chance of doing the right thing. Why, then, will they do the wrong thing more than 50% of the time?
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Justification is the key to ethics. Where an action must be justified to others, there is the moral domain.
Everything humans do in groups must be justified to each other.
[I can reasonably expect others to demand justification if my actions will affect them.]
Therefore almost everything humans do belongs to the moral domain.
To act outside the moral domain, subject to no judgment beyond oneself, one's actions must affect absolutely no one, directly or indirectly, but oneself. That is rare.
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The first demand of the moral domain is justification. The first request in moral justification is to show that one's actions cause no one to suffer. The second request is to show why you [morally] must act as you are choosing to do.
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Positively justify your actions. "Why not" does not say "why to."
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I ask you to justify -- positively justify -- your actions. Do not ask me why not. Tell me why you should.
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Telos, as conceived by classic thinkers, was considered as a property of entities, external and objective. "Purpose" was inherent in every object -- as if the prey were designed for the purpose of feeding the predator, for instance.
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Science can find no telos -- purpose -- built into anything. This observation should severely caution anyone who wishes to entrust society to science.
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Ultimately science discovers no "human purpose" beyond the role of master predator. If we want such a thing as human purpose, we must make it for ourselves.
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Human purpose (telos) once assumed in classic philosophy is replaced in modern moral philosophy by "motive." We now assume an "emotive" source of human morality [rather than a teleological ground of ethics].
Someday that [replacement] will be seen as a classic mistake.
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Other than as master predators, we are not made for any purpose at all: we're meaningless. Our "moral purpose," then, is blank.
This blankness is the core of existentialist philosophy and [it also] informs the objections of the church (for instance) against the scientific point of view.
There are other objections [to the scientific view] besides. The first that comes to mind is the theory of natural law [that nature contains a moral code or that good and evil are natural properties of entities, as red is a property of apples].
But natural law is suspect because in the cosmos, we can find laws for what "is," but no laws that say "ought." [re Hume] This does not make ethics impossible. It just makes it an object of something other than science.
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It is impossible to construct a moral science. Moral questions are not questions of fact.
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Either a thinker "believes" in telos, or does not. Scientists do not. Churches do. Mystics do. But ours today is a scientific culture.
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Columbus set sail for India because spice is the variety of life.
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"Motive" is often discussed or connected with the "will" and obviously [both] are internal to individuals. Motive is considered an appropriate replacement for telos in meta-ethics mostly because it is intrinsic to us [as telos no longer is]. Motive is thought to be emotional. Emotions are, at least, observable: all people have emotions.
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Supposedly "motive" can be discussed psychologically, making something about ethics appear at least partly scientific. Since emotions are considered usually selfish, ethics is considered mostly self-interest and that interest is subjective (practically by definition).
This subjectivity became the baseline assumption of 20th century moral theory. "Emotivism" is a [subjectivist] theory of [moral] motivation. Currently morality is believed to be emotionally controlled.
The problem is, this account of ethics doesn't work.
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Emotion cannot reliably justify actions and on the scientific view, emotion is [must be] considered unpredictable. [One person's emotional response to a situation may differ inexplicably from another's.] This model of ethics undermines our ability to understand ethics at all, especially in a scientific culture.
Yet ethics is something every human culture does -- every one, without exception, primitive or advanced.
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In trying to explain ethics, we have stumbled exactly where "motive" was assumed to power judgment. It is inaccessible to objective examination. For if emotion is called the motivator of our actions it is internal [subjective] and thus inaccessible to science.
If we accept the logical positivist argument that everything, to be considered "real," must be observable by science, and also accept the idea that moral judging cannot be done scientifically [as in Ayer], then judgment (and therefore ethics) cannot be considered "real."
That is obviously false. False because all humans "do ethics."
This explains why logical positivism fails [in ethics]. Its analysis of moral statements [occurs] in a vacuum. As judgments themselves cannot be analyzed by science [Ayer 1936], ethics becomes merely academic.
That is as unreal as philosophy can get. That's much of the reason philosophy today is considered superfluous [even useless] by many people: its arguments seem disconnected from daily life.
Socrates would rather take hemlock than allow such a thing: philosophy, he thought, belongs within the lives of real people.
Welcome home from the clouds, philosophers. My philosophy shall be dirt real.
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Emotion is not reliable for the job of moral judgment. Neither can "emotion" explain how humans create morality, especially if self-interest is its only characteristic. For our emotions are not necessarily or only "good," while ethics is by definition a striving for goodness -- whatever that may be.
The alternative explanation -- the 21st century replacement for emotive ethics -- will be reason. This need not mean, and to me does not mean, logic only. Reason is unique to humans and it contains aspirations that do not centrifuge out in a test tube.
Realigning moral theory [to reason] accordingly is a revolution. It will be resisted and reviled, criticized and denigrated. And accepted.
But the arguments are complex and painfully difficult to craft. And always into the headwinds of science [scientism].
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To show what is at stake in 21st century moral theory, consider: if ethics makes no sense to a scientist (or a scientific culture), then science (or the culture itself) will proceed without ethics.
A world that operates without ethics can do wrong unwittingly and cannot do right knowingly.
People want the right things done (meaning that morally or not), and a just society is one of those things. To know no ethics is to know no justice. And nations burn accordingly.
Not knowing what ethics is would become our hell. Imagine having no well formed or coherent objection to the holocaust. If no one could describe why or how it's wrong, it would be impossible to object.
If we cannot object to a holocaust upon the Jews, then we cannot object to a holocaust upon ourselves. And if science insists upon undermining ethics, it cannot object to a holocaust upon scientists.
Now consider another example, less speculative because it is today an active and yet unresolved issue:
If it is not understood what (if anything) is morally wrong with "playing God" with human evolution, that will be done. And will be done without ethics.
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The uncertainty of emotive ethics when faced with unprecedented (usually technological) situations is the crucial problem that must be overcome by 21st century moral theory. It cannot be overcome by improving the emotive model.
Scientists, incidentally, would rather we [philosophers] did not overcome it.
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When somebody says to you "don't look in the box," do you say "okay," or do you wonder what's inside? Wouldn't you want to know why anyone says don't look? Why would scientists want us not to subject science to moral review? Would they like an extra century to convince us worms are beautiful, before they show us the worms?
[Consider DDT, chlorofluorocarbons and nuclear weapons among the great contributions of science to humanity: what is the justification?]
This is what bothers me about Sagan, Crick and other scientists: wherever they weigh in on ethics, they object to ethics. In fact, they change the subject and transform ethical issues into a choice between clear-eyed science and myth, ignorance and superstition. Bulletin: Ethics is not ignorant, gentlemen.
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Science is not a license to toy with nature.
Look out there: [nature] is huge, complex, largely invisible, mostly unpredictable, extremely powerful and just plain dangerous. To see it otherwise is folly.
I will always look inside the scientist's black box. After all, I was raised to be a scientist. But when I do look, I will bring a means to judge what I see inside.
And I will not accept "amoral science" arguments to convince me not to do that [judging] morally. "Science is amoral" is untrue.
[As science affects people, it belongs to the moral domain.]
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The idea that motive is necessarily emotional is not true. Motive can be reason -- that is, "motives" can be reasoned and reason can cause action. [contra Hume]
If that is not true, we are not free. For emotion is not free. It is reflex. Reason is free, as emotion is not.
What we need to understand is dispassionate thought: reason.
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The philosopher who cheerfully conflated motive and emotion was David Hume. He held that only emotion can move the will. This meant that judgments must originate in our emotions or they will not carry out.
Nobody questioned that -- in the Enlightenment, in fact, this was considered a brilliant insight. That is why self-interest today sits at the heart of moral theory and, in fact, has become the true king of our politics and economics: our ruler is the invisible hand, not of reason but emotion. Our market economics and our politics both are controlled by our "wants."
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The people are said to be ruled by emotion. Business is said to be ruled by reason. Now think "marketing." Does that tell you anything?
The corrupt would like us to remain swayed by emotion, and love it.
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A conclusion derivable from Ruth Benedict: we can tell a lot about society from who becomes elite in it.
If corruption becomes elite, it is time to fight corruption.
If you are elite and corrupt, then it is time to fight you.
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Anyone who thinks "reasoned motives" cannot occur (ie, action is not motivatable by reason) cannot do politics well. Justification and justice are mysterious wherever emotion is assumed to rule judgment, but very clear where reason is assumed instead.
A politics that assumes reason as the basis of moral judgment knows its audience and can speak in public clearly, succinctly and analyzably.
Assuming emotion, politics is allowed to speak in the tongue of demagogues.
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It is a corollary to my account of ethics as reason that reason and logic are not exactly the same. Morality is not necessarily or always logical any more than it is necessarily or always emotional.
But it can be reasoned, always.
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Moral relativism, as commonly argued, cannot justify anything.
For anything to be "relative," it must be relative TO something:
1) to something of its own type and
2) to something besides itself
Both conditions must be met.
Relativity is a property of objects in a set in which there are at least two objects of the same class. Their "relativity" is demonstrated by comparison of properties, which shows their relation.
Objects cannot be called relative to each other until they are qualified as belonging to some class in common, and afterwards they are not relative until compared within it. Relativity consists in comparison.
No ethics can be relative, then, without showing "relative to what." Ethics is relative only when one ethics is compared to another. Some philosophers claim "my" ethics can be compared to "your" ethics, thus they are relative. [The claim is valid.] Let's grant that and see what follows from it.
My moral position is A.
Your moral position is B.
Comparison: both are moral positions and they differ. They are relative: same class, comparable. [A can be compared to B.]
Now, on the basis of this proven relativity, choose one position. Choose the better moral position, based on any criterion available from the information provided.
There are no criterion bases available, other than difference.
Comparison cannot justify anything. It contains no justification proposition at all. Relativism does not address how a moral action is judged; it only says one moral position can be compared to another. In a "relative" [ethics], there is no decision model. Relativity in fact does not entail even that a decision must be made.
Yet a moral question is one that requires a decision. Justification is requested. Conflicts among interests must be resolved. Valuations must be made or identified and chosen, then applied. "Relativism" is not equipped to do these things.
It is equipped to compare alternatives, not to choose among them.
Some philosophers (Rorty is an example) want to convince us that, absent such a decision model (which they readily grant is absent) moral decisions are, in principle, impossible. [Voxpop: judge not.] No ethics can outrank another and any decision is valid.
That is a fallacy.
The absence of a decision model (or justification proposition) within relative ethics does not entail that no decision models are possible. It does entail that relativity itself cannot decide moral questions. It also entails that, to make moral decisions or justifications, some other theory must provide the decision model.
Nothing about ethical relativism entails that there cannot be any other moral theories [it recognizes all]. Therefore ethical relativism admits [and, according to its own validity assumptions, must defer to] other decision models.
[If it does not defer, it denies all justifications and thus is not a moral theory at all; justification is the qualifier for the moral domain. This is what's wrong with nihilism and moral skepticism too. If it cannot justify, it is outside the moral game.]
Wherever "relative ethics" is invoked to justify (or de-justify) anything, the argument is fallacious precisely because relativist ethics lacks any model for justification.
Moral relativism is a clever claim, but useless. It is not a principle. It is insufficient. It can do no moral work.
This means, of course, that relativism is a meta-ethical observation, true enough -- but not a [prescriptive] moral theory.
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[Richard Rorty 1931-2007 RIP]
Kant had Hume. I had Rorty.
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Ethical relativism is not suitable [sufficient] to support an applied ethics.
To understand this in concrete terms, imagine the scientists who faced "moral outrage" after cloning a sheep, producing the infamous "Dolly." Imagine them standing before the world declaring that it was ethical to create Dolly "because ethics is relative."
It is extremely interesting to me that, although Rorty and others (including the scientists themselves) might prefer to accept that argument, the scientists did not make that argument. If they had, their moral incoherence would have been revealed. It is a fallacy. Such an egregious fallacy, nobody would dare to make the argument.
But it is quite plain that they believe it, OR they want the rest of us to believe it, to make room for Dolly.
Guess what. It's working.
[What they did say was, "It's only research." And it was cleared by the ethics committee.]
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"Why not" isn't good enough. Tell me why you should.
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The claim "science is amoral" is:
I am a scientist, therefore [morally] I can investigate anything I please.
(Including how to burn the planet to a cinder, killing everything.)
(Including how to turn your daughter's children into robots.)
(Including how to go to the moon while children on earth are starving.)
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Judging must be reasoned and deliberate, or it isn't judgment. Judging without deliberation is reaction only.
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Judging is not emotion.
If judging were emotion, it would not be free.
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If Clark Kent, neither can Superman. [So there, Nietzsche.]
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It is not "what is morality" or even "what is moral thought," but rather "what requires us to think morally" that we should study.
The answer [to what is morality] could be genetic, but "thou shalt not kill," per se, probably is not in our genes.
The content of our moral thought is more important to consider than "what is morality." The content certainly must be thought up because it's certainly not built in.
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Culture as the context of every human thought and action explains almost all of ethics. Almost.
What it does not explain is the wisdom of those we have called wise, such as Confucius, Mencius, Mohammed, Gautama, Jesus and Socrates (among many others). It also does not explain great human servants such as Gregory the Great, Ghandi, M L King, Norman Borlaug, Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa.
Culture does not explain where we get our "higher aspirations."
[GC2010: I now believe it does explain that. But Occam would roll over in his grave. LOL.]
But it does know them when it sees them.
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It would be interesting to treat ethics purely as a matter of quality control. "I don't care what your motivations are, if you are not going to contribute something positive to the quality of life around here, you're fired."
Moral [TQM of] Science, anyone?
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The only true object of the will is the self. The only true object of moral thinking is the other.
This is why the doctrine of self interest (or the "will," moved by emotion), in ethics, fails.
[2010: Self interest is not a moral principle; it is, in fact, what ethics intends to overcome.]
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The "will" as usually presented is full of emotional reasons why ethics does not matter. The will can ignore ethics and emotion can override it.
Emotion is unreliable as the basis of moral theory because emotion is unreliable, period.
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Five cognates of willing
Volition:
If there is will, it is voluntary.
It is nothing -- not will -- if not voluntary. [cf Arendt]
Choice:
Willing cannot occur if the outcome is predetermined.
[Choices must be available, or decisions are not possible.]
Command:
Voluntary choice is not [sufficient] for willing to occur.
[We can choose all day, and do nothing.]
We also must command ourselves to act upon a choice.
[Willing is commanding.]
Choices are made, then willed.
Possibility:
To be an object of the will, the goal must be possible:
It is not possible [for instance] to will the past.
It is not possible to will a rock to live.
It is not possible to will others to think, judge or act.
It is possible to will oneself to think, judge or act.
Deliberation:
To satisfy the other cognates, deliberation must occur.
Deliberation is reason; it is thinking, and always free.
Willing without deliberation is reflex, and never free.
In fact, without thinking there is no will.
Willing can be only thinking and thinking is always free.
The term "free will" is a redundancy.
[Arendt: "There is no sense in speaking of the will, if it isn't free."]
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The only ethics that approximates scientific objectivity is utilitarianism. But the utilitarian strategy raises a question about "spiritual needs." Gratification of the human spirit is not part of the utilitarian calculation. The question is, can it be? And if so, how?
Or if it cannot be calculated in, show me a different moral theory.
[2010: Human spirit is vague -- "need for happiness" more clear]
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How much CAN we know about human behavior that may inform ethics, before the relevant science is exhausted? What IS observable about ethics? How much of moral thinking DOES science explain?
[GC2010: Much of my reading since has pursued this. Early 80s onward there is much attention to this in sci and phi. Moral "wiring" is a current frontier in neurosci and also informs, for instance, "experimental phi"]
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Utility is different enough from other conceptions of ethics, it does not [constitute] a specifically moral philosophy in the traditional sense of the word: it aims only at distribution of benefit. The problem is: defining "moral" to encompass utility as belonging to the moral class [domain].
"Benefit" seems quantifiable, but traditionally it is "good" that is sought in ethics. They are not exactly the same, and "good," to a utilitarian [or scientist], is an exotic term.
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A society that breaks down is not conducive to science.
A question, then: can science be a value?
[not sure what this really meant but I dont want to lose it. LOL]
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Ethics is: amazing behavior for the spiritual well-being of people.
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Why is peer pressure such a powerful incentive to conform? Fear of ostracism. We are social. Even criminals create support groups, as for instance in honor among thieves. [cf JQWilson The Moral Sense]
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Such is the vitality of telos, "symbolic" though it may be, it has still survived even skepticism about truth and the decline of faith. It has survived these because telos does not depend on faith or truth. It's something we do, not something that is. We make it.
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We must reason to reach telos and if that is possible, we can reason morally as well.
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Choice may be the only moral principle that an objective frame of reference can recognize. If we think choice is all that morality is, however, someday we'll regret it. I think we're regretting it now.
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Oliver Johnson in Royal Society of Philosophy #VI, 1973:
(Paraphrased) The classical objection to relativism is found in Hobbes: if value occurs only in the individual, then a thing (or idea) has no value of its own. This means the same object (or idea) may be good today and not tomorrow, and if any two people disagree, the same action is both good and evil at the same time. (p. 171)
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[this note was typewritten on tagboard ... means I was in the front office at the time, flirting w/a certain highly intelligent 6' tall julia roberts lookalike blonde again.]
12/13/94
I don't think moral absolutism would gain anything by being scientific.
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What did Hume tell us, with the is/ought problem?
Only that moral judgment is not an "is" object [it's an ought].
But if we say that judgment is a process [an object], the is/ought question cannot be asked because the construct Hume objects to doesn't exist. There is no "ought from is."
There can be ought from a process.
That process may be describable. Exit Hume.
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Be an example, or someone will make one of you.
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Self-interest is:
Ethx4Jrx
Now if VA would allow 8 characters on a license tag...
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It's interesting that some people believe if God does not exist, then a church or religion cannot exist, or if religion isn't "true" its moral teachings aren't valid.
If God does not exist and religion isn't true, aren't religion and ethics all the more fascinating? They would indicate something deeply endearing about humans.
If religion is just an invention, this indicates something more endearing than the existence of God would entail: that humans have invented ethics as we once thought only God could do.
No one can say, as a scientist might, that God does not exist and religion isn't "true" without implying that humans on our own, in the higher aspirations of our moral behavior, may be equally as unreachable by science as God is.
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[written in 94 -- after first WTC attack late 93]
The conflicts between "Islam and the West" are cultural: each sees the other as barbaric.
And, within each culture, the other IS barbaric. Neither side should ignore that in its own way, one is just as barbaric as the other.
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All wars are culture wars.
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Unless all conventions are justified, convention is an insufficient view of ethics. Yet ethics, to exist, must be invented and therefore it's conventional -- made by us. That's just not all there is to it.
The question is, what else is there to it?
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Nature (I can't help it) vs. Nurture (I can't help it).
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The phrase "moral equivalent of war" is often used, implying that drastic measures are justified in this case or that, the same as war sometimes might be justified.
But there are more immoral justifications of war than moral ones, and more immoral equivalents of war.
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Regardless what "a morally good choice" actually means, any loss in the ability to make one is detrimental to humanity.
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"Law of the jungle" arguments in ethics -- Hobbes comes to mind -- create a jungle. "Nice guys finish last" might be true empirically but as a justification for action, it is an argument for immorality.
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Ethics must make sense to a scientific world, or else science will be done without ethics.
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Minsky misses the content of thought. It will make a difference what items of information, not just what decision models, are provided to the prosthetic brain to do its work. The artificial brain can be left blank of all moral values and stocked with the logic of utility only, and thus be left free to kill without a moment's pause.
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A negative argument in favor of Ethics: Asking whether it is possible to justify moral judgments, it is clearly inappropriate to say no.
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Let logic stand for science and science for logic. Now propose a moral science and explain why not.
[result: unfinished paper "Radical Freedom and Its Consequences" c.2001]
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Complete this phrase:
MORAL __________
a. Certitude
b. Rectitude
c. Attitude
d. Reason
It is fundamental to understanding my philosophy, that I always will pick D.
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Ethical relativism doesn't mean as much in Calcutta as it does to us.
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For me, ethics is reason -- not myth, not emotion, not metaphor, and not logic.
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What makes us more than "moral animals" -- which implies judging by reflex, not reflection -- is our belief in ideals and truth.
They may be mythical, but mythmaking is part of the moral process. Science maintains a myth that nature is lawlike, even though it does not know all the laws. This is a useful myth -- in fact necessary to the ongoing project. Myth is simply whatever we tell ourselves shall be the context of our questions.
That we deliberately become moral humans is more important than being moral animals. One is under our control, the other not. But to make that point it must be argued that reason can motivate as readily as emotion.
It must not be considered reasonable that we can be motivated -- moved, propelled, inspired -- by myth without examining the content of the myth -- otherwise we are anti-intellectual.
Anytime we refuse to examine anything, we are not allowing our only unique talent to help us. We must examine (and rationally invent) even our myths.
However, we might be merely programmable and soon ruled by cynics, if all that is required for ethics is mythmaking. As in Hollywood.
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All language is manipulation. [that's what it was invented for]
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All language is manipulation. Get over it.
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The problem with moral sentiment is, it's not always reasonable but it's always certain.
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Reason is not shrill.
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God invented nature. Man invented nurture.
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Where self-interest is our main moral principle, any conflict of interests must be resolved by power. If the power is corrupt, the solution will be bad. But power cannot be revealed as corrupt on a principle of self interest only -- in fact, corruption may appear justified and its corruptness may be invisible, if measured only on self-interest.
In the world we have today, since self-interest is our dominant moral theory, those who are corrupt challenge us to explain what is morally wrong with their corruption. They practically defy us to explain, for our belief in self-interest explains only power and corruption, not why corruption is immoral.
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You believe in self interest, right? the devil asks, cleverly.
And you can happily go to hell, nodding yes.
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Aristotle and Plato both see "Justice" as the key to a good society.
Plato in particular is an elitist. An entire class of society must be trained to "know" justice better than the common person, and make policy accordingly. Despite the voxpop claim that democracy began in Greece, this is not what we believe to be democracy and the concept of justice that lies beneath it therefore is suspect for us as well.
We do not need to refute Plato. I say he is safely ignored. [on almost everything]
But the question "what is justice" stands. It was not answered by the Greeks well enough to sustain modern society, so it's unresolved even if their own era thought it was settled.
Today, justice is the balancing of interests and balance must favor the common people equally with the elites. Where that is not so, democracy is a sham. Where this does occur, justice is fully possible and peace and stability are at hand.
There is no comprehensive 21st century update for such ideas. Perhaps we've been too busy chewing over "ethics is relative" to think much about new ethics in a technological society.
The idea that technology has run ahead of ethics is a point made by Dewey -- and left open, as a question. Dewey is mostly a complaint.
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We should argue from stability, and maintain that the just society is stable. For the people will follow justice and not rebel.
This idea occurs in Confucius and Mencius repeatedly, and the observation each time occurs nearby, that corruption is the greatest injustice. That is true because no justice can obtain if the system is corrupt. Even in the best society, justice is difficult enough to maintain without corruption. With corruption, it is impossible.
I define corruption as a cynical skewing of the balance of interests in favor of the holders of power, at the expense of ordinary people.
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Self interest cannot be the only principle or even the main or first principle in ethics. It is insufficient to maintain a good or just society. Worse: it CANNOT maintain a good or just society.
For self-interest begs to be corrupted, and must also hide it.
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Science cannot define a moral problem.
If that is so, it cannot recognize a moral problem.
If that is so, it cannot solve a moral problem.
That makes science a moral problem.
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Not everyone fits her own culture. One who does not is living in hell. This is what I learned from Ruth Benedict. But what she implies by this is, a personality is relative to its culture. It's not wise to leave it at that. How morally good is the culture?
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[one of my worst ...]
Roundulence is relieved by flatulence.
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Norms occur in nature. They are the limited range of possible adaptations [or permutations], given the environment [system] in which they occur.
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Adaptation always responds to the present environment. The present environment itself is constantly changing. Extinction: the result of environmental change for which insufficient adaptation has occurred. The normal range of genotypes no longer fits the current environment.
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It is not survival of the fittest, but of the most adaptable.
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If a fetus can be called "not human" but a machine can be called human, then human extinction is inevitable.
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Idealism is what happens when a symbolizing animal starts asking a lot of damn questions.
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If France "lost its conscience" with the death of Sartre, as the obits said, that would explain the mess that was French politics before he lived, while he lived, and now.
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Do not have your mouth full when you read the phrase "Kierkegaardian Marxism."
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I still do not understand the concept "dialectical materialism" no matter how many times and ways it's been explained. One thing I understand: Sartre cannot explain it. And neither can Marx.
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When I first read him (I was young!) I thought Hegel was beautiful. When I got to Zeitgeist, I thought that was a gorgeous idea. Reason marching down through history like a host of angels sword in hand was truth, as if truth on fire.
I also thought astrology was true. Now I don't.
If you can think like Hegel, there is something wrong with you.
You do NOT need to be a scientist in the Vienna Circle to see the problem. It's magical thinking.
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It's easy to forget that science is just a way to inspect the world and a language to describe it. It is an idealistic way. It worships facts. Facts are its ideal. Science is an idealism, not itself a set of facts. It is a method. It holds no facts itself. It's a way to find and state facts -- within its own ideal.
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I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Conspiracies require too many people to think alike, conclude alike and take the same actions, all for the same reasons. Conspiracy must be coordinated -- too well to occur in any bureaucracy, for instance.
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When machines have power, their decisions will benefit machines.
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Considering how a computer might replace a human in every way, the issue arises whether emotion can occur in a computer. This would require the mechanization of emotion -- and that will always be a simulation. Simulated emotion and natural emotion are not the same. Simple as that.
[02/2010: "Same." Equivalence is not sameness. Equivalence allows an analog; sameness requires an identical. "Functional equivalence" arguments for machine consciousness rest upon this fallacy. No matter how "equivalent" to a human we make a machine, we will not make it human because it is not the same. The difference is, the human is biological. Its emotions are not simulations.]
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The insightful, interpretive side of human nature is where the spirit is. It's unreliable -- many people have no insight and no human spirit to speak of -- but in certain individuals it's sublime.
[02/2010: No machine ever will be sublime in this sense.]
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Droids do not require sacraments. Humans do.
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Be sure to send me a postcard in hell, when God lets a machine into heaven.
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Anti-intellectualism guarantees manipulation of the unthinking by the unscrupulous.
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There are people who believe real democracy must die a quiet and painless death to establish real order. The quiet and painless part is necessary so the death will not be noticed, and not protested.
Anti-intellectualism succeeds in anesthetizing our judgment first, and thus will democracy go, quietly.
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Do you know when you're being manipulated, or do you just know when you FEEL manipulated?
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[The idea] that capitalism intends to manipulate us into buying a lot of stuff, ain't the half of it.
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If we want to be different from the Boomers, we need to be more intellectual than the Boomers.
[I am a Boomer. I was an incorrigible hippie until I was 30 or so, and went to school with the younger end of Gen-X. I consider myself a Gen-X thinker.]
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Since the soul or spirit has been so rebuked or refuted by science, why look for it? Today soul is theorized as Id, Ego, Superego, or Emotion, Motive, Mind. None of these, whether mind or body, explains the higher aspirations: the intent to achieve "good" or "justice," for instance, or simply the intent to treat people well.
I usually use the word spirit and it means "whatever makes us seek our higher aspirations." Could be God. Could be us. Still it's there.
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It cannot be real until you dream it.
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Let's define science. Bet you can't.
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Let's define spirit as conditional, in brackets only, as science does.
Let us say "spirit" occurs only where there is reason.
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Two spirits, good and evil, approached each other on the street and both refused to turn aside, so they collided.
The evil spirit passed straight through without affecting the other, for the other was holy.
heh.
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The word "spirit" might mean soul as "ghost" but that is not what I mean when I use the word. It's not a ghost-soul that flies around.
Spirit is a conscious need to know or see ourselves as human.
[02/2010: It is, in a sense, just an expectation of ourselves. A myth about humans "being" human. So if you say human spirit is a myth, you are correct: it's our myth of ourselves. But you have not shown by this, it is not real.]
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The theory that an idea is an event, not a thing, is more acceptable now that science understands the universe is an event, not a thing.
[p.s. The Hopi have always believed the universe is an event, not a thing.]
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Both Sagan (knowledge) and Rorty (freedom) present what they believe to be our "human destiny." But these are claims about ends -- the ultimate end or purpose of humanity. That is to say, destiny is the new word for telos. If Sagan and Rorty can say that, I can say telos.
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We should be careful when we speak of what the human species is "meant" to be. It makes a difference to both goals and means, to say we are meant to be free, meant to be knowers, or meant to be wise. Personally, I think wisdom is the greatest aspiration.
No scientist I've read uses "wisdom" except as a noble-sounding synonym for knowledge -- which it is not.
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We might kill telos as an idea, but we can't kill the impulse that searches for telos. And there is our telos.
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In Comte, there is a theory that humanity has progressed through three stages: a mythical, a religious and now a scientific; and the present scientific stage is the culmination. I think that was a great idea, but we're paleolithic, neolithic, and now obviously monolithic [in constant search of the ultimate, the final cause, the ideal].
As soon as we begin to substitute synonyms where Comte listed science, it becomes obvious science is not the culmination claimed by Comte. When we plug in "knowledge" there, as Sagan does, the issue is resolved as Comte sees it. But suppose the culmination of being human is not knowledge, but wisdom. Who thinks knowledge is enough for us, or that wisdom is not higher?
Ask what wisdom is; I do not know. Ask what knowledge is; nobody understands that either. But compare the two. Wisdom, as an aim or ambition, cannot be trumped by knowledge.
[And wisdom must be reason.]
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Most music in the world is festive -- even funeral music. The West has some of the most somber music in the world. Even the music of death in other cultures is more festive than ours. In some places it is even raucous, to [boisterously] strike fear in the hearts of evil spirits -- [laughing in their faces] intending to ward off evil.
[evil feeds on fear, laughter shows no fear]
Meanwhile our music of death is just sad.
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There are millions of people who do not envision the universe as a clockwork or progress as a perpetual engine, and who would like to be something more than replaceable parts in a mechanical future.
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Carl Sagan is proof that a little bit of education goes a looooong way.
Apparently it's already a running gag that his extra-heliospheric message in a spacecraft bottle could convince alien predators that we taste like chicken.
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The Church adopted an Aristotelian science based on an ancient concept of harmony and order in nature. It needed only enough science to make this harmony plausible, to show that nature revealed God's power and will.
The scientific "revelation" that nature contains no such meaning was devastating to the Church. The shell of the Church still exists but the angels no longer live there.
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What is "natural" in law is that we naturally make law. It says whatever we say it does. That's it. What would you like it to say?
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Political correctness assumes or implies we're all too stupid to judge for ourselves the worth of others. It is enforced belief, as corrupt as the will to power.
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Science asks us if spirit is anything real. What reason is there to suppose this is a proper scientific question? Are numbers real?
To say that "the soul" or "God" is not scientific is only to say that science cannot see it. Especially if those are invented or metaphoric, science will never see it.
If your hunga is designed to detect only bunga, then bunga is all you will see. But if there is anything other than bunga, the fact you can't see it does not prove it doesn't exist. Absence of detection is not the same as non-existence, as even science says. [you need more than a scientific argument against soul or God]
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The Church thought that civilization went wrong approximately at Galileo.
Science thought that civilization went wrong approximately at the Church.
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Idealism is tantamount to describing the world as a metaphor, then inventing a metaphor for it.
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Holism will be the conclusion of 21st century thought. There is no sense in parts, without wholes.
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Let's forget the idea that "holism" includes the claim that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A whole is only "greater than any part," and exactly the sum of all parts. The "greatness" comes from what wholes can do, that no part does. The significance considered must be limited to the characteristics of a whole as a completeness. The whole is the entity on which the definition of any part depends.
Anything "greater" than that gives scientists the heebie jeebies and something stupid and semantical to bang the holists' heads with.
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The state of the art in 20th century thought was uncertainty. [The uncertainty of the subjective mind.]
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Philosophy tends to discuss ideas ahead of people. But history itself always puts people before ideas.
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Most ideological campaigns ride upon a crude account of history to be used in battle.
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Law firm: Canasta, Brutus and Short
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Culture is not designed.
Culture is not discovered prefab.
It is invented. But it's a bootstrap operation.
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Does the universe actually perform the operations of the calculus used to describe it? This question can be used many ways: when a scientist begins to speak of "Truth" for instance. Which is the truth, the object or its description?
Is it not a fact that science can speak only of the predictiveness of its calculus, not its truth? For a calculus is not itself the actuality. It isn't science that's true, it's nature that's "true," and science tries to calculate how it works. That's it.
This is why I distinguish between truth and actuality. What science really wants to know is the actuality, but all it can give is a description that's true or false.
Science is a piano factory, not a music factory. A utensil.
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A word is like a single place in the brain. It is nothing without its associations. The brain is associative: an engine of association.
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Science has moved from arguing itself as desirable, to calling itself our means of survival. If not for science, human survival would not be the desperate issue it is today. If it has become our means of survival, then, it is like the fire department proving its necessity by setting the barn on fire.
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Love is not an emotion.
It is an activity.
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The fact that the world reveals its secrets to logic does not make it a logical world.
Logically speaking, the only parts of the world logic can see are the ones that are logical.
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We must reject magical thinking, even when done by a scientist. We cannot dilute ideas in reagents and suck their contents down to elements. Ideas are invented, not natural entities. A science of content creation would be laughable. Hocus pocus.
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If spirit is nothing logical and the commonality between science and philosophy is logic only, then no scientifically acceptable philosophic method can understand human spirit. We should emphasize reason, not logic; wisdom, not knowledge; and thinking rather than emotion to philosophize a world view that considers spirituality a natural trait of human beings. A culture who looks at humanity that way needs very little else to become a moral culture, or produce a just society.
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The idea that spirit is nothing logical does not necessitate that we abandon it. There is a human spirit and it arises from reason, not logic alone.
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In recognition of the Progress brought to our Commonwealth by Science, in the 21st Century the Queen shall bestow the accolade of Knighthood upon Her most worthy Subjects by touching to their shoulders a sterling silver tactical Nuclear Missile.
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Language is inherently manipulative. When we look at the actual words included in our vocabularies, we can see that most of language was invented expressly to influence others' thoughts.
Two examples: adjectives and adverbs.
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Born in the nuclear age is born jaded.
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There is a difference between "reality" and actuality. The first is our perception; the second is the object to be perceived.
There is too much sloppy use of the word "real" in epistemology and metaphysics. "Reality" I call the perception -- internal, subjective, uncertain: constructed by us [both consciously and unconsciously]. The world out there is to be called actuality: whatever is there whether we think so or not.
I find that plugging in these terms correctly in other thinkers' essays reveals occasionally conflation, sometimes sleight of hand with rhetoric and at worst, complete idiocy.
My distinction does not mean "nothing is real" or that knowledge is impossible, but only that reality is not "out there," while actuality is. Description is possible and those descriptions can be true or false (contra Rorty). And p.s., that's damn hard work, as Sagan said.
In an epistemology that discusses "reality" as if that is the only object [as it's the only term in use] -- the discussion is incomplete, for it either forgets about actuality or fails to distinguish between ourselves and the world [the most egregious error]. We do need science for some things.
My complaints about science concern its arrogance -- such as its tendency to hog the notion "truth." Some scientists conflate reality and actuality in their epistemological essays too -- no less idiotic for coming from a scientist. But philosophy done well by a scientist avoids this.
To "behold the real" is not to "behold the actual." Both reality and actuality are necessary to describe the human world (and do epistemology). Science is best where it informs the distinction. Philosophy is worst when it does not.
What is the actuality we can behold? Ourselves.
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As Hume shows us, if thought examines itself too closely it collapses. This is the secret of the skeptic and the skeptic is the prototype of the nihilist.
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Guitar chords: Am - C - G - D - F - G - Am - G - F
repeat as needed, even 1000 times per day
[I don't remember what this plays. I'm sure it is either a Dylan song, or a GC riff on a Dylan song. Assuming it's Dylan, it's one song played 1000 different ways. LOL.]
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We could see they were going to lose the game, so we went to bed before it was over. They won.
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Science must hold that logic is all there is to reason. Philosophy must hold that reason is more than logic.
But in modern PHI, this "more" is seen as emotion or sometimes spirituality (resembling the ancient concept of a "soul"). Both SCI and PHI emphasize reason but they don't both mean the same thing.
Philosophy should pay more attention to dreams and intuitions.
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Jimmy Carter is referred to as "Jetlag Jimmy."
[It is now 2010 and it's still true.]
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Now here's a name:
Gertrude Himmelfarb
The De-Moralization of Society:
from Victorian Virtues to Modern Values
Knopf ISBN 0-679-43817-3
$24.00
cheap if it's any good
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Hegel and Marx show that an idealism is a powerful thing and therefore a dangerous, and not necessarily good, thing.
Since people easily think metaphorically or mythologically, myth and metaphor should be considered ripe for telling lies.
For me, ethics is reason and not myth, not emotion, not metaphor.
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On the Hipness of Cool
In America, cool is our most important product.
And our most frequently marketed product feature is "more." Try to find an ad anywhere that does not, in one way or another, sell "more." If "more" were not an ingredient, we wouldn't buy it.
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People once believed sorcerers had greater than normal knowledge.
Why didn't ancient humans kill the sorcerers?
The same reason we do not kill the scientists.
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Post-modern ironists are now so poorly educated, they can't even make good arguments. That's good for the rest of us. But we shouldn't let them become professors.
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Who ever proposed that we always need a smart answer to a stupid question?
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Who ever said that only a scientist can question science? If that is so, then only the religious can question religion, only a bureaucrat can question public policy, and only criminals belong on juries.
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Post-modern professors have, and are teaching, attitudes. Not reason.
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Euphoria.
Stuporia.
"A sense of stuporia."
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You may be able to manage an economy, a nation or a society, but you cannot manage a culture.
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[ 1994 - card was used as a bookmark stuck into Cassirer's "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Vol 1 - Language" ]
The human is a social primate, whose physical adaptations to the biosphere are erect posture, bipedal locomotion, five-digit hands featuring opposable thumbs that facilitate fine manipulation of objects, a relatively large cranium featuring an intricately developed forebrain, and whose behavioral adaptations are cultural, consisting primarily in toolmaking and language which, interacting with a capacity for symbolic thought, are used to manipulate and even invent the conditions of its existence.
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[END]
I handwrote these notes from 1983-96 during my day job. They were written on 3x5 tagboard cards at work and thrown into a box when I emptied my pockets at home. Hence "The box cards."
All of this is "raw scribble" with some [editing applied] for clarity.
Caveat: some views have changed in 20-30 years. Intuitions!
A philosopher's notebook. Thought on the spot. Enjoy.
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My main concerns here are the effect of science on ethics, the ethics of science, and especially how to justify ethics in a scientific culture.
That and the occasional wisecrack (I can't help it).
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If there are such things as Good and Evil, politicians have a 50:50 chance of doing the right thing. Why, then, will they do the wrong thing more than 50% of the time?
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Justification is the key to ethics. Where an action must be justified to others, there is the moral domain.
Everything humans do in groups must be justified to each other.
[I can reasonably expect others to demand justification if my actions will affect them.]
Therefore almost everything humans do belongs to the moral domain.
To act outside the moral domain, subject to no judgment beyond oneself, one's actions must affect absolutely no one, directly or indirectly, but oneself. That is rare.
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The first demand of the moral domain is justification. The first request in moral justification is to show that one's actions cause no one to suffer. The second request is to show why you [morally] must act as you are choosing to do.
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Positively justify your actions. "Why not" does not say "why to."
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I ask you to justify -- positively justify -- your actions. Do not ask me why not. Tell me why you should.
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Telos, as conceived by classic thinkers, was considered as a property of entities, external and objective. "Purpose" was inherent in every object -- as if the prey were designed for the purpose of feeding the predator, for instance.
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Science can find no telos -- purpose -- built into anything. This observation should severely caution anyone who wishes to entrust society to science.
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Ultimately science discovers no "human purpose" beyond the role of master predator. If we want such a thing as human purpose, we must make it for ourselves.
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Human purpose (telos) once assumed in classic philosophy is replaced in modern moral philosophy by "motive." We now assume an "emotive" source of human morality [rather than a teleological ground of ethics].
Someday that [replacement] will be seen as a classic mistake.
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Other than as master predators, we are not made for any purpose at all: we're meaningless. Our "moral purpose," then, is blank.
This blankness is the core of existentialist philosophy and [it also] informs the objections of the church (for instance) against the scientific point of view.
There are other objections [to the scientific view] besides. The first that comes to mind is the theory of natural law [that nature contains a moral code or that good and evil are natural properties of entities, as red is a property of apples].
But natural law is suspect because in the cosmos, we can find laws for what "is," but no laws that say "ought." [re Hume] This does not make ethics impossible. It just makes it an object of something other than science.
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It is impossible to construct a moral science. Moral questions are not questions of fact.
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Either a thinker "believes" in telos, or does not. Scientists do not. Churches do. Mystics do. But ours today is a scientific culture.
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Columbus set sail for India because spice is the variety of life.
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"Motive" is often discussed or connected with the "will" and obviously [both] are internal to individuals. Motive is considered an appropriate replacement for telos in meta-ethics mostly because it is intrinsic to us [as telos no longer is]. Motive is thought to be emotional. Emotions are, at least, observable: all people have emotions.
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Supposedly "motive" can be discussed psychologically, making something about ethics appear at least partly scientific. Since emotions are considered usually selfish, ethics is considered mostly self-interest and that interest is subjective (practically by definition).
This subjectivity became the baseline assumption of 20th century moral theory. "Emotivism" is a [subjectivist] theory of [moral] motivation. Currently morality is believed to be emotionally controlled.
The problem is, this account of ethics doesn't work.
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Emotion cannot reliably justify actions and on the scientific view, emotion is [must be] considered unpredictable. [One person's emotional response to a situation may differ inexplicably from another's.] This model of ethics undermines our ability to understand ethics at all, especially in a scientific culture.
Yet ethics is something every human culture does -- every one, without exception, primitive or advanced.
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In trying to explain ethics, we have stumbled exactly where "motive" was assumed to power judgment. It is inaccessible to objective examination. For if emotion is called the motivator of our actions it is internal [subjective] and thus inaccessible to science.
If we accept the logical positivist argument that everything, to be considered "real," must be observable by science, and also accept the idea that moral judging cannot be done scientifically [as in Ayer], then judgment (and therefore ethics) cannot be considered "real."
That is obviously false. False because all humans "do ethics."
This explains why logical positivism fails [in ethics]. Its analysis of moral statements [occurs] in a vacuum. As judgments themselves cannot be analyzed by science [Ayer 1936], ethics becomes merely academic.
That is as unreal as philosophy can get. That's much of the reason philosophy today is considered superfluous [even useless] by many people: its arguments seem disconnected from daily life.
Socrates would rather take hemlock than allow such a thing: philosophy, he thought, belongs within the lives of real people.
Welcome home from the clouds, philosophers. My philosophy shall be dirt real.
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Emotion is not reliable for the job of moral judgment. Neither can "emotion" explain how humans create morality, especially if self-interest is its only characteristic. For our emotions are not necessarily or only "good," while ethics is by definition a striving for goodness -- whatever that may be.
The alternative explanation -- the 21st century replacement for emotive ethics -- will be reason. This need not mean, and to me does not mean, logic only. Reason is unique to humans and it contains aspirations that do not centrifuge out in a test tube.
Realigning moral theory [to reason] accordingly is a revolution. It will be resisted and reviled, criticized and denigrated. And accepted.
But the arguments are complex and painfully difficult to craft. And always into the headwinds of science [scientism].
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To show what is at stake in 21st century moral theory, consider: if ethics makes no sense to a scientist (or a scientific culture), then science (or the culture itself) will proceed without ethics.
A world that operates without ethics can do wrong unwittingly and cannot do right knowingly.
People want the right things done (meaning that morally or not), and a just society is one of those things. To know no ethics is to know no justice. And nations burn accordingly.
Not knowing what ethics is would become our hell. Imagine having no well formed or coherent objection to the holocaust. If no one could describe why or how it's wrong, it would be impossible to object.
If we cannot object to a holocaust upon the Jews, then we cannot object to a holocaust upon ourselves. And if science insists upon undermining ethics, it cannot object to a holocaust upon scientists.
Now consider another example, less speculative because it is today an active and yet unresolved issue:
If it is not understood what (if anything) is morally wrong with "playing God" with human evolution, that will be done. And will be done without ethics.
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The uncertainty of emotive ethics when faced with unprecedented (usually technological) situations is the crucial problem that must be overcome by 21st century moral theory. It cannot be overcome by improving the emotive model.
Scientists, incidentally, would rather we [philosophers] did not overcome it.
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When somebody says to you "don't look in the box," do you say "okay," or do you wonder what's inside? Wouldn't you want to know why anyone says don't look? Why would scientists want us not to subject science to moral review? Would they like an extra century to convince us worms are beautiful, before they show us the worms?
[Consider DDT, chlorofluorocarbons and nuclear weapons among the great contributions of science to humanity: what is the justification?]
This is what bothers me about Sagan, Crick and other scientists: wherever they weigh in on ethics, they object to ethics. In fact, they change the subject and transform ethical issues into a choice between clear-eyed science and myth, ignorance and superstition. Bulletin: Ethics is not ignorant, gentlemen.
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Science is not a license to toy with nature.
Look out there: [nature] is huge, complex, largely invisible, mostly unpredictable, extremely powerful and just plain dangerous. To see it otherwise is folly.
I will always look inside the scientist's black box. After all, I was raised to be a scientist. But when I do look, I will bring a means to judge what I see inside.
And I will not accept "amoral science" arguments to convince me not to do that [judging] morally. "Science is amoral" is untrue.
[As science affects people, it belongs to the moral domain.]
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The idea that motive is necessarily emotional is not true. Motive can be reason -- that is, "motives" can be reasoned and reason can cause action. [contra Hume]
If that is not true, we are not free. For emotion is not free. It is reflex. Reason is free, as emotion is not.
What we need to understand is dispassionate thought: reason.
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The philosopher who cheerfully conflated motive and emotion was David Hume. He held that only emotion can move the will. This meant that judgments must originate in our emotions or they will not carry out.
Nobody questioned that -- in the Enlightenment, in fact, this was considered a brilliant insight. That is why self-interest today sits at the heart of moral theory and, in fact, has become the true king of our politics and economics: our ruler is the invisible hand, not of reason but emotion. Our market economics and our politics both are controlled by our "wants."
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The people are said to be ruled by emotion. Business is said to be ruled by reason. Now think "marketing." Does that tell you anything?
The corrupt would like us to remain swayed by emotion, and love it.
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A conclusion derivable from Ruth Benedict: we can tell a lot about society from who becomes elite in it.
If corruption becomes elite, it is time to fight corruption.
If you are elite and corrupt, then it is time to fight you.
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Anyone who thinks "reasoned motives" cannot occur (ie, action is not motivatable by reason) cannot do politics well. Justification and justice are mysterious wherever emotion is assumed to rule judgment, but very clear where reason is assumed instead.
A politics that assumes reason as the basis of moral judgment knows its audience and can speak in public clearly, succinctly and analyzably.
Assuming emotion, politics is allowed to speak in the tongue of demagogues.
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It is a corollary to my account of ethics as reason that reason and logic are not exactly the same. Morality is not necessarily or always logical any more than it is necessarily or always emotional.
But it can be reasoned, always.
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Moral relativism, as commonly argued, cannot justify anything.
For anything to be "relative," it must be relative TO something:
1) to something of its own type and
2) to something besides itself
Both conditions must be met.
Relativity is a property of objects in a set in which there are at least two objects of the same class. Their "relativity" is demonstrated by comparison of properties, which shows their relation.
Objects cannot be called relative to each other until they are qualified as belonging to some class in common, and afterwards they are not relative until compared within it. Relativity consists in comparison.
No ethics can be relative, then, without showing "relative to what." Ethics is relative only when one ethics is compared to another. Some philosophers claim "my" ethics can be compared to "your" ethics, thus they are relative. [The claim is valid.] Let's grant that and see what follows from it.
My moral position is A.
Your moral position is B.
Comparison: both are moral positions and they differ. They are relative: same class, comparable. [A can be compared to B.]
Now, on the basis of this proven relativity, choose one position. Choose the better moral position, based on any criterion available from the information provided.
There are no criterion bases available, other than difference.
Comparison cannot justify anything. It contains no justification proposition at all. Relativism does not address how a moral action is judged; it only says one moral position can be compared to another. In a "relative" [ethics], there is no decision model. Relativity in fact does not entail even that a decision must be made.
Yet a moral question is one that requires a decision. Justification is requested. Conflicts among interests must be resolved. Valuations must be made or identified and chosen, then applied. "Relativism" is not equipped to do these things.
It is equipped to compare alternatives, not to choose among them.
Some philosophers (Rorty is an example) want to convince us that, absent such a decision model (which they readily grant is absent) moral decisions are, in principle, impossible. [Voxpop: judge not.] No ethics can outrank another and any decision is valid.
That is a fallacy.
The absence of a decision model (or justification proposition) within relative ethics does not entail that no decision models are possible. It does entail that relativity itself cannot decide moral questions. It also entails that, to make moral decisions or justifications, some other theory must provide the decision model.
Nothing about ethical relativism entails that there cannot be any other moral theories [it recognizes all]. Therefore ethical relativism admits [and, according to its own validity assumptions, must defer to] other decision models.
[If it does not defer, it denies all justifications and thus is not a moral theory at all; justification is the qualifier for the moral domain. This is what's wrong with nihilism and moral skepticism too. If it cannot justify, it is outside the moral game.]
Wherever "relative ethics" is invoked to justify (or de-justify) anything, the argument is fallacious precisely because relativist ethics lacks any model for justification.
Moral relativism is a clever claim, but useless. It is not a principle. It is insufficient. It can do no moral work.
This means, of course, that relativism is a meta-ethical observation, true enough -- but not a [prescriptive] moral theory.
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[Richard Rorty 1931-2007 RIP]
Kant had Hume. I had Rorty.
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Ethical relativism is not suitable [sufficient] to support an applied ethics.
To understand this in concrete terms, imagine the scientists who faced "moral outrage" after cloning a sheep, producing the infamous "Dolly." Imagine them standing before the world declaring that it was ethical to create Dolly "because ethics is relative."
It is extremely interesting to me that, although Rorty and others (including the scientists themselves) might prefer to accept that argument, the scientists did not make that argument. If they had, their moral incoherence would have been revealed. It is a fallacy. Such an egregious fallacy, nobody would dare to make the argument.
But it is quite plain that they believe it, OR they want the rest of us to believe it, to make room for Dolly.
Guess what. It's working.
[What they did say was, "It's only research." And it was cleared by the ethics committee.]
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"Why not" isn't good enough. Tell me why you should.
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The claim "science is amoral" is:
I am a scientist, therefore [morally] I can investigate anything I please.
(Including how to burn the planet to a cinder, killing everything.)
(Including how to turn your daughter's children into robots.)
(Including how to go to the moon while children on earth are starving.)
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Judging must be reasoned and deliberate, or it isn't judgment. Judging without deliberation is reaction only.
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Judging is not emotion.
If judging were emotion, it would not be free.
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If Clark Kent, neither can Superman. [So there, Nietzsche.]
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It is not "what is morality" or even "what is moral thought," but rather "what requires us to think morally" that we should study.
The answer [to what is morality] could be genetic, but "thou shalt not kill," per se, probably is not in our genes.
The content of our moral thought is more important to consider than "what is morality." The content certainly must be thought up because it's certainly not built in.
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Culture as the context of every human thought and action explains almost all of ethics. Almost.
What it does not explain is the wisdom of those we have called wise, such as Confucius, Mencius, Mohammed, Gautama, Jesus and Socrates (among many others). It also does not explain great human servants such as Gregory the Great, Ghandi, M L King, Norman Borlaug, Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa.
Culture does not explain where we get our "higher aspirations."
[GC2010: I now believe it does explain that. But Occam would roll over in his grave. LOL.]
But it does know them when it sees them.
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It would be interesting to treat ethics purely as a matter of quality control. "I don't care what your motivations are, if you are not going to contribute something positive to the quality of life around here, you're fired."
Moral [TQM of] Science, anyone?
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The only true object of the will is the self. The only true object of moral thinking is the other.
This is why the doctrine of self interest (or the "will," moved by emotion), in ethics, fails.
[2010: Self interest is not a moral principle; it is, in fact, what ethics intends to overcome.]
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The "will" as usually presented is full of emotional reasons why ethics does not matter. The will can ignore ethics and emotion can override it.
Emotion is unreliable as the basis of moral theory because emotion is unreliable, period.
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Five cognates of willing
Volition:
If there is will, it is voluntary.
It is nothing -- not will -- if not voluntary. [cf Arendt]
Choice:
Willing cannot occur if the outcome is predetermined.
[Choices must be available, or decisions are not possible.]
Command:
Voluntary choice is not [sufficient] for willing to occur.
[We can choose all day, and do nothing.]
We also must command ourselves to act upon a choice.
[Willing is commanding.]
Choices are made, then willed.
Possibility:
To be an object of the will, the goal must be possible:
It is not possible [for instance] to will the past.
It is not possible to will a rock to live.
It is not possible to will others to think, judge or act.
It is possible to will oneself to think, judge or act.
Deliberation:
To satisfy the other cognates, deliberation must occur.
Deliberation is reason; it is thinking, and always free.
Willing without deliberation is reflex, and never free.
In fact, without thinking there is no will.
Willing can be only thinking and thinking is always free.
The term "free will" is a redundancy.
[Arendt: "There is no sense in speaking of the will, if it isn't free."]
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The only ethics that approximates scientific objectivity is utilitarianism. But the utilitarian strategy raises a question about "spiritual needs." Gratification of the human spirit is not part of the utilitarian calculation. The question is, can it be? And if so, how?
Or if it cannot be calculated in, show me a different moral theory.
[2010: Human spirit is vague -- "need for happiness" more clear]
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How much CAN we know about human behavior that may inform ethics, before the relevant science is exhausted? What IS observable about ethics? How much of moral thinking DOES science explain?
[GC2010: Much of my reading since has pursued this. Early 80s onward there is much attention to this in sci and phi. Moral "wiring" is a current frontier in neurosci and also informs, for instance, "experimental phi"]
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Utility is different enough from other conceptions of ethics, it does not [constitute] a specifically moral philosophy in the traditional sense of the word: it aims only at distribution of benefit. The problem is: defining "moral" to encompass utility as belonging to the moral class [domain].
"Benefit" seems quantifiable, but traditionally it is "good" that is sought in ethics. They are not exactly the same, and "good," to a utilitarian [or scientist], is an exotic term.
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A society that breaks down is not conducive to science.
A question, then: can science be a value?
[not sure what this really meant but I dont want to lose it. LOL]
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Ethics is: amazing behavior for the spiritual well-being of people.
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Why is peer pressure such a powerful incentive to conform? Fear of ostracism. We are social. Even criminals create support groups, as for instance in honor among thieves. [cf JQWilson The Moral Sense]
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Such is the vitality of telos, "symbolic" though it may be, it has still survived even skepticism about truth and the decline of faith. It has survived these because telos does not depend on faith or truth. It's something we do, not something that is. We make it.
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We must reason to reach telos and if that is possible, we can reason morally as well.
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Choice may be the only moral principle that an objective frame of reference can recognize. If we think choice is all that morality is, however, someday we'll regret it. I think we're regretting it now.
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Oliver Johnson in Royal Society of Philosophy #VI, 1973:
(Paraphrased) The classical objection to relativism is found in Hobbes: if value occurs only in the individual, then a thing (or idea) has no value of its own. This means the same object (or idea) may be good today and not tomorrow, and if any two people disagree, the same action is both good and evil at the same time. (p. 171)
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[this note was typewritten on tagboard ... means I was in the front office at the time, flirting w/a certain highly intelligent 6' tall julia roberts lookalike blonde again.]
12/13/94
I don't think moral absolutism would gain anything by being scientific.
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What did Hume tell us, with the is/ought problem?
Only that moral judgment is not an "is" object [it's an ought].
But if we say that judgment is a process [an object], the is/ought question cannot be asked because the construct Hume objects to doesn't exist. There is no "ought from is."
There can be ought from a process.
That process may be describable. Exit Hume.
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Be an example, or someone will make one of you.
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Self-interest is:
Ethx4Jrx
Now if VA would allow 8 characters on a license tag...
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It's interesting that some people believe if God does not exist, then a church or religion cannot exist, or if religion isn't "true" its moral teachings aren't valid.
If God does not exist and religion isn't true, aren't religion and ethics all the more fascinating? They would indicate something deeply endearing about humans.
If religion is just an invention, this indicates something more endearing than the existence of God would entail: that humans have invented ethics as we once thought only God could do.
No one can say, as a scientist might, that God does not exist and religion isn't "true" without implying that humans on our own, in the higher aspirations of our moral behavior, may be equally as unreachable by science as God is.
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[written in 94 -- after first WTC attack late 93]
The conflicts between "Islam and the West" are cultural: each sees the other as barbaric.
And, within each culture, the other IS barbaric. Neither side should ignore that in its own way, one is just as barbaric as the other.
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All wars are culture wars.
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Unless all conventions are justified, convention is an insufficient view of ethics. Yet ethics, to exist, must be invented and therefore it's conventional -- made by us. That's just not all there is to it.
The question is, what else is there to it?
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Nature (I can't help it) vs. Nurture (I can't help it).
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The phrase "moral equivalent of war" is often used, implying that drastic measures are justified in this case or that, the same as war sometimes might be justified.
But there are more immoral justifications of war than moral ones, and more immoral equivalents of war.
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Regardless what "a morally good choice" actually means, any loss in the ability to make one is detrimental to humanity.
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"Law of the jungle" arguments in ethics -- Hobbes comes to mind -- create a jungle. "Nice guys finish last" might be true empirically but as a justification for action, it is an argument for immorality.
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Ethics must make sense to a scientific world, or else science will be done without ethics.
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Minsky misses the content of thought. It will make a difference what items of information, not just what decision models, are provided to the prosthetic brain to do its work. The artificial brain can be left blank of all moral values and stocked with the logic of utility only, and thus be left free to kill without a moment's pause.
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A negative argument in favor of Ethics: Asking whether it is possible to justify moral judgments, it is clearly inappropriate to say no.
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Let logic stand for science and science for logic. Now propose a moral science and explain why not.
[result: unfinished paper "Radical Freedom and Its Consequences" c.2001]
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Complete this phrase:
MORAL __________
a. Certitude
b. Rectitude
c. Attitude
d. Reason
It is fundamental to understanding my philosophy, that I always will pick D.
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Ethical relativism doesn't mean as much in Calcutta as it does to us.
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For me, ethics is reason -- not myth, not emotion, not metaphor, and not logic.
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What makes us more than "moral animals" -- which implies judging by reflex, not reflection -- is our belief in ideals and truth.
They may be mythical, but mythmaking is part of the moral process. Science maintains a myth that nature is lawlike, even though it does not know all the laws. This is a useful myth -- in fact necessary to the ongoing project. Myth is simply whatever we tell ourselves shall be the context of our questions.
That we deliberately become moral humans is more important than being moral animals. One is under our control, the other not. But to make that point it must be argued that reason can motivate as readily as emotion.
It must not be considered reasonable that we can be motivated -- moved, propelled, inspired -- by myth without examining the content of the myth -- otherwise we are anti-intellectual.
Anytime we refuse to examine anything, we are not allowing our only unique talent to help us. We must examine (and rationally invent) even our myths.
However, we might be merely programmable and soon ruled by cynics, if all that is required for ethics is mythmaking. As in Hollywood.
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All language is manipulation. [that's what it was invented for]
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All language is manipulation. Get over it.
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The problem with moral sentiment is, it's not always reasonable but it's always certain.
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Reason is not shrill.
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God invented nature. Man invented nurture.
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Where self-interest is our main moral principle, any conflict of interests must be resolved by power. If the power is corrupt, the solution will be bad. But power cannot be revealed as corrupt on a principle of self interest only -- in fact, corruption may appear justified and its corruptness may be invisible, if measured only on self-interest.
In the world we have today, since self-interest is our dominant moral theory, those who are corrupt challenge us to explain what is morally wrong with their corruption. They practically defy us to explain, for our belief in self-interest explains only power and corruption, not why corruption is immoral.
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You believe in self interest, right? the devil asks, cleverly.
And you can happily go to hell, nodding yes.
=====
Aristotle and Plato both see "Justice" as the key to a good society.
Plato in particular is an elitist. An entire class of society must be trained to "know" justice better than the common person, and make policy accordingly. Despite the voxpop claim that democracy began in Greece, this is not what we believe to be democracy and the concept of justice that lies beneath it therefore is suspect for us as well.
We do not need to refute Plato. I say he is safely ignored. [on almost everything]
But the question "what is justice" stands. It was not answered by the Greeks well enough to sustain modern society, so it's unresolved even if their own era thought it was settled.
Today, justice is the balancing of interests and balance must favor the common people equally with the elites. Where that is not so, democracy is a sham. Where this does occur, justice is fully possible and peace and stability are at hand.
There is no comprehensive 21st century update for such ideas. Perhaps we've been too busy chewing over "ethics is relative" to think much about new ethics in a technological society.
The idea that technology has run ahead of ethics is a point made by Dewey -- and left open, as a question. Dewey is mostly a complaint.
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We should argue from stability, and maintain that the just society is stable. For the people will follow justice and not rebel.
This idea occurs in Confucius and Mencius repeatedly, and the observation each time occurs nearby, that corruption is the greatest injustice. That is true because no justice can obtain if the system is corrupt. Even in the best society, justice is difficult enough to maintain without corruption. With corruption, it is impossible.
I define corruption as a cynical skewing of the balance of interests in favor of the holders of power, at the expense of ordinary people.
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Self interest cannot be the only principle or even the main or first principle in ethics. It is insufficient to maintain a good or just society. Worse: it CANNOT maintain a good or just society.
For self-interest begs to be corrupted, and must also hide it.
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Science cannot define a moral problem.
If that is so, it cannot recognize a moral problem.
If that is so, it cannot solve a moral problem.
That makes science a moral problem.
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Not everyone fits her own culture. One who does not is living in hell. This is what I learned from Ruth Benedict. But what she implies by this is, a personality is relative to its culture. It's not wise to leave it at that. How morally good is the culture?
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[one of my worst ...]
Roundulence is relieved by flatulence.
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Norms occur in nature. They are the limited range of possible adaptations [or permutations], given the environment [system] in which they occur.
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Adaptation always responds to the present environment. The present environment itself is constantly changing. Extinction: the result of environmental change for which insufficient adaptation has occurred. The normal range of genotypes no longer fits the current environment.
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It is not survival of the fittest, but of the most adaptable.
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If a fetus can be called "not human" but a machine can be called human, then human extinction is inevitable.
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Idealism is what happens when a symbolizing animal starts asking a lot of damn questions.
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If France "lost its conscience" with the death of Sartre, as the obits said, that would explain the mess that was French politics before he lived, while he lived, and now.
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Do not have your mouth full when you read the phrase "Kierkegaardian Marxism."
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I still do not understand the concept "dialectical materialism" no matter how many times and ways it's been explained. One thing I understand: Sartre cannot explain it. And neither can Marx.
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When I first read him (I was young!) I thought Hegel was beautiful. When I got to Zeitgeist, I thought that was a gorgeous idea. Reason marching down through history like a host of angels sword in hand was truth, as if truth on fire.
I also thought astrology was true. Now I don't.
If you can think like Hegel, there is something wrong with you.
You do NOT need to be a scientist in the Vienna Circle to see the problem. It's magical thinking.
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It's easy to forget that science is just a way to inspect the world and a language to describe it. It is an idealistic way. It worships facts. Facts are its ideal. Science is an idealism, not itself a set of facts. It is a method. It holds no facts itself. It's a way to find and state facts -- within its own ideal.
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I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Conspiracies require too many people to think alike, conclude alike and take the same actions, all for the same reasons. Conspiracy must be coordinated -- too well to occur in any bureaucracy, for instance.
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When machines have power, their decisions will benefit machines.
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Considering how a computer might replace a human in every way, the issue arises whether emotion can occur in a computer. This would require the mechanization of emotion -- and that will always be a simulation. Simulated emotion and natural emotion are not the same. Simple as that.
[02/2010: "Same." Equivalence is not sameness. Equivalence allows an analog; sameness requires an identical. "Functional equivalence" arguments for machine consciousness rest upon this fallacy. No matter how "equivalent" to a human we make a machine, we will not make it human because it is not the same. The difference is, the human is biological. Its emotions are not simulations.]
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The insightful, interpretive side of human nature is where the spirit is. It's unreliable -- many people have no insight and no human spirit to speak of -- but in certain individuals it's sublime.
[02/2010: No machine ever will be sublime in this sense.]
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Droids do not require sacraments. Humans do.
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Be sure to send me a postcard in hell, when God lets a machine into heaven.
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Anti-intellectualism guarantees manipulation of the unthinking by the unscrupulous.
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There are people who believe real democracy must die a quiet and painless death to establish real order. The quiet and painless part is necessary so the death will not be noticed, and not protested.
Anti-intellectualism succeeds in anesthetizing our judgment first, and thus will democracy go, quietly.
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Do you know when you're being manipulated, or do you just know when you FEEL manipulated?
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[The idea] that capitalism intends to manipulate us into buying a lot of stuff, ain't the half of it.
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If we want to be different from the Boomers, we need to be more intellectual than the Boomers.
[I am a Boomer. I was an incorrigible hippie until I was 30 or so, and went to school with the younger end of Gen-X. I consider myself a Gen-X thinker.]
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Since the soul or spirit has been so rebuked or refuted by science, why look for it? Today soul is theorized as Id, Ego, Superego, or Emotion, Motive, Mind. None of these, whether mind or body, explains the higher aspirations: the intent to achieve "good" or "justice," for instance, or simply the intent to treat people well.
I usually use the word spirit and it means "whatever makes us seek our higher aspirations." Could be God. Could be us. Still it's there.
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It cannot be real until you dream it.
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Let's define science. Bet you can't.
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Let's define spirit as conditional, in brackets only, as science does.
Let us say "spirit" occurs only where there is reason.
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Two spirits, good and evil, approached each other on the street and both refused to turn aside, so they collided.
The evil spirit passed straight through without affecting the other, for the other was holy.
heh.
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The word "spirit" might mean soul as "ghost" but that is not what I mean when I use the word. It's not a ghost-soul that flies around.
Spirit is a conscious need to know or see ourselves as human.
[02/2010: It is, in a sense, just an expectation of ourselves. A myth about humans "being" human. So if you say human spirit is a myth, you are correct: it's our myth of ourselves. But you have not shown by this, it is not real.]
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The theory that an idea is an event, not a thing, is more acceptable now that science understands the universe is an event, not a thing.
[p.s. The Hopi have always believed the universe is an event, not a thing.]
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Both Sagan (knowledge) and Rorty (freedom) present what they believe to be our "human destiny." But these are claims about ends -- the ultimate end or purpose of humanity. That is to say, destiny is the new word for telos. If Sagan and Rorty can say that, I can say telos.
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We should be careful when we speak of what the human species is "meant" to be. It makes a difference to both goals and means, to say we are meant to be free, meant to be knowers, or meant to be wise. Personally, I think wisdom is the greatest aspiration.
No scientist I've read uses "wisdom" except as a noble-sounding synonym for knowledge -- which it is not.
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We might kill telos as an idea, but we can't kill the impulse that searches for telos. And there is our telos.
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In Comte, there is a theory that humanity has progressed through three stages: a mythical, a religious and now a scientific; and the present scientific stage is the culmination. I think that was a great idea, but we're paleolithic, neolithic, and now obviously monolithic [in constant search of the ultimate, the final cause, the ideal].
As soon as we begin to substitute synonyms where Comte listed science, it becomes obvious science is not the culmination claimed by Comte. When we plug in "knowledge" there, as Sagan does, the issue is resolved as Comte sees it. But suppose the culmination of being human is not knowledge, but wisdom. Who thinks knowledge is enough for us, or that wisdom is not higher?
Ask what wisdom is; I do not know. Ask what knowledge is; nobody understands that either. But compare the two. Wisdom, as an aim or ambition, cannot be trumped by knowledge.
[And wisdom must be reason.]
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Most music in the world is festive -- even funeral music. The West has some of the most somber music in the world. Even the music of death in other cultures is more festive than ours. In some places it is even raucous, to [boisterously] strike fear in the hearts of evil spirits -- [laughing in their faces] intending to ward off evil.
[evil feeds on fear, laughter shows no fear]
Meanwhile our music of death is just sad.
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There are millions of people who do not envision the universe as a clockwork or progress as a perpetual engine, and who would like to be something more than replaceable parts in a mechanical future.
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Carl Sagan is proof that a little bit of education goes a looooong way.
Apparently it's already a running gag that his extra-heliospheric message in a spacecraft bottle could convince alien predators that we taste like chicken.
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The Church adopted an Aristotelian science based on an ancient concept of harmony and order in nature. It needed only enough science to make this harmony plausible, to show that nature revealed God's power and will.
The scientific "revelation" that nature contains no such meaning was devastating to the Church. The shell of the Church still exists but the angels no longer live there.
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What is "natural" in law is that we naturally make law. It says whatever we say it does. That's it. What would you like it to say?
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Political correctness assumes or implies we're all too stupid to judge for ourselves the worth of others. It is enforced belief, as corrupt as the will to power.
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Science asks us if spirit is anything real. What reason is there to suppose this is a proper scientific question? Are numbers real?
To say that "the soul" or "God" is not scientific is only to say that science cannot see it. Especially if those are invented or metaphoric, science will never see it.
If your hunga is designed to detect only bunga, then bunga is all you will see. But if there is anything other than bunga, the fact you can't see it does not prove it doesn't exist. Absence of detection is not the same as non-existence, as even science says. [you need more than a scientific argument against soul or God]
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The Church thought that civilization went wrong approximately at Galileo.
Science thought that civilization went wrong approximately at the Church.
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Idealism is tantamount to describing the world as a metaphor, then inventing a metaphor for it.
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Holism will be the conclusion of 21st century thought. There is no sense in parts, without wholes.
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Let's forget the idea that "holism" includes the claim that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A whole is only "greater than any part," and exactly the sum of all parts. The "greatness" comes from what wholes can do, that no part does. The significance considered must be limited to the characteristics of a whole as a completeness. The whole is the entity on which the definition of any part depends.
Anything "greater" than that gives scientists the heebie jeebies and something stupid and semantical to bang the holists' heads with.
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The state of the art in 20th century thought was uncertainty. [The uncertainty of the subjective mind.]
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Philosophy tends to discuss ideas ahead of people. But history itself always puts people before ideas.
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Most ideological campaigns ride upon a crude account of history to be used in battle.
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Law firm: Canasta, Brutus and Short
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Culture is not designed.
Culture is not discovered prefab.
It is invented. But it's a bootstrap operation.
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Does the universe actually perform the operations of the calculus used to describe it? This question can be used many ways: when a scientist begins to speak of "Truth" for instance. Which is the truth, the object or its description?
Is it not a fact that science can speak only of the predictiveness of its calculus, not its truth? For a calculus is not itself the actuality. It isn't science that's true, it's nature that's "true," and science tries to calculate how it works. That's it.
This is why I distinguish between truth and actuality. What science really wants to know is the actuality, but all it can give is a description that's true or false.
Science is a piano factory, not a music factory. A utensil.
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A word is like a single place in the brain. It is nothing without its associations. The brain is associative: an engine of association.
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Science has moved from arguing itself as desirable, to calling itself our means of survival. If not for science, human survival would not be the desperate issue it is today. If it has become our means of survival, then, it is like the fire department proving its necessity by setting the barn on fire.
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Love is not an emotion.
It is an activity.
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The fact that the world reveals its secrets to logic does not make it a logical world.
Logically speaking, the only parts of the world logic can see are the ones that are logical.
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We must reject magical thinking, even when done by a scientist. We cannot dilute ideas in reagents and suck their contents down to elements. Ideas are invented, not natural entities. A science of content creation would be laughable. Hocus pocus.
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If spirit is nothing logical and the commonality between science and philosophy is logic only, then no scientifically acceptable philosophic method can understand human spirit. We should emphasize reason, not logic; wisdom, not knowledge; and thinking rather than emotion to philosophize a world view that considers spirituality a natural trait of human beings. A culture who looks at humanity that way needs very little else to become a moral culture, or produce a just society.
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The idea that spirit is nothing logical does not necessitate that we abandon it. There is a human spirit and it arises from reason, not logic alone.
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In recognition of the Progress brought to our Commonwealth by Science, in the 21st Century the Queen shall bestow the accolade of Knighthood upon Her most worthy Subjects by touching to their shoulders a sterling silver tactical Nuclear Missile.
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Language is inherently manipulative. When we look at the actual words included in our vocabularies, we can see that most of language was invented expressly to influence others' thoughts.
Two examples: adjectives and adverbs.
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Born in the nuclear age is born jaded.
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There is a difference between "reality" and actuality. The first is our perception; the second is the object to be perceived.
There is too much sloppy use of the word "real" in epistemology and metaphysics. "Reality" I call the perception -- internal, subjective, uncertain: constructed by us [both consciously and unconsciously]. The world out there is to be called actuality: whatever is there whether we think so or not.
I find that plugging in these terms correctly in other thinkers' essays reveals occasionally conflation, sometimes sleight of hand with rhetoric and at worst, complete idiocy.
My distinction does not mean "nothing is real" or that knowledge is impossible, but only that reality is not "out there," while actuality is. Description is possible and those descriptions can be true or false (contra Rorty). And p.s., that's damn hard work, as Sagan said.
In an epistemology that discusses "reality" as if that is the only object [as it's the only term in use] -- the discussion is incomplete, for it either forgets about actuality or fails to distinguish between ourselves and the world [the most egregious error]. We do need science for some things.
My complaints about science concern its arrogance -- such as its tendency to hog the notion "truth." Some scientists conflate reality and actuality in their epistemological essays too -- no less idiotic for coming from a scientist. But philosophy done well by a scientist avoids this.
To "behold the real" is not to "behold the actual." Both reality and actuality are necessary to describe the human world (and do epistemology). Science is best where it informs the distinction. Philosophy is worst when it does not.
What is the actuality we can behold? Ourselves.
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As Hume shows us, if thought examines itself too closely it collapses. This is the secret of the skeptic and the skeptic is the prototype of the nihilist.
=====
Guitar chords: Am - C - G - D - F - G - Am - G - F
repeat as needed, even 1000 times per day
[I don't remember what this plays. I'm sure it is either a Dylan song, or a GC riff on a Dylan song. Assuming it's Dylan, it's one song played 1000 different ways. LOL.]
=====
We could see they were going to lose the game, so we went to bed before it was over. They won.
=====
Science must hold that logic is all there is to reason. Philosophy must hold that reason is more than logic.
But in modern PHI, this "more" is seen as emotion or sometimes spirituality (resembling the ancient concept of a "soul"). Both SCI and PHI emphasize reason but they don't both mean the same thing.
Philosophy should pay more attention to dreams and intuitions.
=====
Jimmy Carter is referred to as "Jetlag Jimmy."
[It is now 2010 and it's still true.]
=====
Now here's a name:
Gertrude Himmelfarb
The De-Moralization of Society:
from Victorian Virtues to Modern Values
Knopf ISBN 0-679-43817-3
$24.00
cheap if it's any good
=====
Hegel and Marx show that an idealism is a powerful thing and therefore a dangerous, and not necessarily good, thing.
Since people easily think metaphorically or mythologically, myth and metaphor should be considered ripe for telling lies.
For me, ethics is reason and not myth, not emotion, not metaphor.
=====
On the Hipness of Cool
In America, cool is our most important product.
And our most frequently marketed product feature is "more." Try to find an ad anywhere that does not, in one way or another, sell "more." If "more" were not an ingredient, we wouldn't buy it.
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People once believed sorcerers had greater than normal knowledge.
Why didn't ancient humans kill the sorcerers?
The same reason we do not kill the scientists.
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Post-modern ironists are now so poorly educated, they can't even make good arguments. That's good for the rest of us. But we shouldn't let them become professors.
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Who ever proposed that we always need a smart answer to a stupid question?
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Who ever said that only a scientist can question science? If that is so, then only the religious can question religion, only a bureaucrat can question public policy, and only criminals belong on juries.
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Post-modern professors have, and are teaching, attitudes. Not reason.
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Euphoria.
Stuporia.
"A sense of stuporia."
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You may be able to manage an economy, a nation or a society, but you cannot manage a culture.
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[ 1994 - card was used as a bookmark stuck into Cassirer's "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Vol 1 - Language" ]
The human is a social primate, whose physical adaptations to the biosphere are erect posture, bipedal locomotion, five-digit hands featuring opposable thumbs that facilitate fine manipulation of objects, a relatively large cranium featuring an intricately developed forebrain, and whose behavioral adaptations are cultural, consisting primarily in toolmaking and language which, interacting with a capacity for symbolic thought, are used to manipulate and even invent the conditions of its existence.
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[END]
