An inchoate thought of mine, which I am throwing out for discussion.
A recurring theme in some of Cassandra's posts and arguments -- and a healthy thing to examine, whether or not she's right in each particular case -- is conservatives and libertarians falling into the same argumentative vices as their leftist opponents. It's comforting to think the other fellows are less honest, so that "the evidence of [the right side] is to be accepted against [the wrong side] in every case." But, as she's right to watch for, people sharing the true, correct opinions can and do fall into the same intellectual vices as those who oppose them.
Knowing that leaves me no less convinced that my opinions are true and correct (that's what having opinions means), but...I haven't seen strong evidence that people holding one opinion are more virtuous than people holding another, or that I can tell who's a better neighbor by what his ideology is.
(This is a moral problem I have with some world religions, incidentally, since they doom your soul based on your opinions...about whether God exists, for example, or how many of him there are. But that is another story.)
Experience and
pop-psychology books convince me that it isn't really right to think of a human mind as a unified whole, with a single "virtue" statistic, but more like a set of subroutines that run simultaneously and don't always cohere. People don't think their way into being virtuous, at least most of them don't ("high-functioning sociopaths" may be an exception) and I don't see why evolution would select for logical consistency. And so perhaps it isn't surprising that a lawyer who'd go to the wall for his clients, or a soldier who'd fall on a grenade for his countrymen, can be an absolute beast to his wife. Broadly speaking it's about being concerned toward your fellowman...but it's unevenly applied. Likewise I can't help but admire a sincere patriot...but if you've served, or even if you haven't, I bet you've known a few who were "decency challenged."
Now, what's interesting to me is this -- can our experiences test the idea, about whether ideas relate to virtue? You know that Phineas Gage had much of his morality torn out by a piece of iron (though per that link, he was able to grow it back; a message of hope too often ignored). A base where I used to work went joint...so that the Air Force took over basic police functions while I was there...and one of them told me how surprised he was at how many domestic violence reports he got from the Warrior Transition Unit. I wasn't very surprised....without going too far, I had to deal with TBI soldiers on occasion, and some of them (and only some of them) really did seem to have their self-control and related virtues shaken a little loose.
None of the articles I've read about Phineas Gage relate whether his political views, his religion, or his ideology changed at all. And the nature of my duties -- and the way I prefer to conduct them -- is such that I almost never learned a soldier's ideology. I have a notion, which I can't prove, that none of these fellows took a sharp turn Left or Right, or High Church or Pentecostal, when they lost some brain functioning and some moral restraint with it...but I was wondering whether anyone here has knowledge, or experience, or thoughts, suggesting a link?
(I have one relative who made an enormous "moral leap upward" when she got religion, and her political views changed at the same time, but I think her changed opinions came as a package deal with the religious experience rather than a result of being more virtuous per se.)
38 comments:
If you're going to undertake this, you are going to need to be clear on what your terms mean. So let's start with just one question, which you need to resolve in order to proceed with the inquiry: is virtue one thing, or many?
I mentioned the Protagoras the other day, and it happens that Protagoras and Socrates go around on this question as well as the problem from the Meno. You might want to look it over while you're considering the question. It turns out to be a difficult question to answer adequately. But that's just the sort of problem you enjoy.
It'll be tonight before I can write a proper answer...but this morning I just wanted to say "Thanks!" because that was good reading!
"is conservatives and libertarians falling into the same argumentative vices as their leftist opponents."
In war, when atrocities are only performed by one side in the beginning, it eventually dove tails into an even spread later on.
In circumstances where officers have tried to give orders to the contrary, they were either ignored or in the case of the SS in Germany, just plain bypassed as well as ignored.
You're welcome, Joe. I should mention that I'm writing a small piece on the dialogue at this time, so I expect to benefit from the conversation. However, I mention it mostly because that problem is one you're trying to wrestle with in your initial thoughts, and it's one you will need to explore carefully to map out your ideas.
I will be interested to read that piece. I've read the dialogue now and wish I had long hours to talk about it...I love some of the little asides, and hope they come out in your piece.
But let me answer the question you put to me. If you'd asked me 10 years ago what virtue or morality is, I would've replied with lots of confidence that it was one thing...which I used to sum up as "pragmatism with a long-range view." Something like the view Protagoras and Socrates ascribe to the vulgar herd...that actions that increase pleasure in the long run are virtuous, and actions that increase pain in the long run are not. And I don't think that's a bad way to think about it even now.
The problem is....I now think that virtue and morality, like religion and sexual desire, are at bottom evolved faculties and work through instincts. (Which faculties are sometimes broken, complicating the issue.) It's all very well to construct logical theories as to what makes an action (or a person) virtuous, or funny, or sexually attractive...but the reality is going to come out in "meatspace" and probably won't be so neat as any system we create to explain it.
So I am now inclined to think that "virtue" is many things, in the sense that many kinds of actions can be called virtuous, but what really unites them is the feelings they inspire rather than their consequences.
Which might in turn be a reason why a person whose ideas would have terrible consequences can still, in his own life and his dealings with other people, exhibit all kinds of virtues; and why the one (if I am right) doesn't tell you very much about the other.
So if virtues are many things, you have an even stronger version the problem that Socrates is raising about opposites. Justice has an opposite, and wisdom has a different opposite. That means that justice has nothing to do with wisdom.
Now that sounds like what you're saying, but it's a big problem because some of the virtues are necessary conditions for the others. We had that discussion about chivalry and courage recently. You can't develop chivalry without courage, so the opposite of courage is related to chivalry. On the other hand, you can develop courage without chivalry -- there are other things besides horseback riding that are dangerous -- so the opposite of chivalry is not necessarily related to courage.
Which means that you end up being able to map out at least some connections between virtues, even if we view them as separate things rather than parts of a whole.
So what about justice and wisdom? Are they connected?
Well, I don't agree with Socrates' idea that everything can have only one "opposite." Opposites belong to words, and there's no guarantee that our words are going to line up so neatly with reality. (Which I think is why he falls into such a terrible error in the Meno...imagining that "knowledge" can only be "taught" or "recollected"...and imagining that from the way he defines the words rather than from evidence about how the mind works.)
That said, yes, absolutely related - under my current understanding. When you cultivate wisdom or justice, I think you (broadly speaking) get the same kind of satisfaction and inspire the same kind of admiration, down on the instinctive level.
Even under my older understanding, somewhat related; wise decisions and just ones both tend to make your fellowman happier in the long run.
(I think Protagoras sometimes used "related" to mean "the person who has the one has the other"...in which case my view is "partially related"...I think there's a tendency for the very just man to be a very wise one, but it's by no means a certainty.)
What makes my older and newer views diverge is something like the contrast between "justice and piety." Now I strongly suspect my own "god module" is badly damaged or broken completely - I haven't believed since I was 7 years old - but I can't help but notice that "piety" can draw the same admiration, of what looks to me like the same kind, as wisdom and justice. Yet really dedicated piety can inflict enormous suffering, and (if the religion is false, as I believe them all to be)...inflict it to secure a good that will never come true.
Thomas More was a sternly just man - he said once, and it fit his character, that if he had his own father in court against the Devil, and the Devil was in the right, then he should have judgment. I have no doubt that attitude did a lot of good in his professional life. He was also extremely pious (and brave too)...but his piety manifested itself in having people punished for the heretical books they held...which to my eyes is a terrible consequence. Yet I can't doubt that in his own heart, and those of his co-religionists, these were all part of his "virtuous" character, and inspired the same satisfaction and admiration.
I used to like to say that an Episcopalian was a Catholic with authority issues :p
That was mostly a joke at my own expense, since it accurately describes my struggle with faith. There are times when I sense God, but how much that informs my daily actions... well, it's not as much as it should be, certainly.
I think the term moral sentiment is a very apt one. For a long time now, I've believed that much of what I call morality is actually moral aesthetics.
Interesting questions in your post!
Well, I don't agree with Socrates' idea that everything can have only one "opposite." Opposites belong to words, and there's no guarantee that our words are going to line up so neatly with reality.
Well, no, not just words: although of course they belong to words, and even more purely logical concepts. (Every logical language, I believe, contains a statement to the effect that 'if any sentence x is valid in this language, then so is not-x.')
But contraries are necessary in change of any kind. If you go out into the world and get sunburned (to use an example the Greeks liked), your skin darkens. So it's moving on a scale with opposing ends: a given person's skin can get 'just this light' and it can also get 'just this dark,' and these things are not words, but facts about the skin (and influenced by things like melanin levels, etc).
Now that's a different kind of opposite than the logical "not-X," but it's the kind Socrates is thinking about (which is why he talks about the opposite of wisdom being folly, rather than something like "not-wisdom"). And the point he's making is that sometimes it seems as if something that is folly isn't only unwise, it's also unjust.
Now what you're saying here is that there is a connection. So what kind of a connection is it? Is it accidental? (I.e., are you suggesting that it just sometimes happens that the wise thing to do is also the just thing to do, or vice versa?) Or is there something about the relationship that is structured, like with courage and chivalry?
That's an asymmetric relationship, but it isn't a part/whole one of the kind Socrates is thinking of: courage isn't a part of chivalry, but is rather a necessary condition for the development of chivalry. The reverse isn't true, as I noted just above. So the relationship isn't symmetrical, but it also isn't one of part/whole (the only asymmetrical relationship Socrates offers).
So what is the right relationship? I think if you can begin to explain that, you'll begin to find answers to the problems you're thinking about.
I'm going to wave off the debate about the virtue of piety for now, though we can come back to it if you like when we've mapped out the terms of the problem. It's the thing you're wanting to explore at the end, but the foundations need to be secure before you stretch for the face of God. :)
The Ancient Greeks had a different metaphysics than modern Westerners do. Aristotle, for example, had Essences as the foundation of existence, metaphysics, while the Chinese had the 5 Elements.
They were essentially the same as the pentagram in Western magick, where one geometric side is opposite another's corner. It's one method of taking high level information and distilling it down to a more practical dimension.
So when or if they speak of opposites, I think of it in that frame, but I don't go by their metaphysics. Modern metaphysics is more easily tested and verified by individuals, and downgrading to the 5 Elements or Aristotle's Essences, would make things more, not less, complicated to consider.
One example of a modern geometric distillation is criminal psychology's 3 sides of a triangle for the elements required in a crime. Opportunity, Intent, Ability(power). They may call it different names, but the concept is the same. Without any one of those 3 sides, the triangle does not exist, and thus crime does not exist. One can also draw more circles and more geometric relationships between the opposite of ability, and try to create a relationship to the rest, but that gets complicated.
Just like in geometric proofs, it must be proven to work on both a geometric and real life level.
I've found this methodology to be useful, even though I don't subscribe to European magicians, Chinese 5 elements, Japanese elemental theory, or Greek metaphysics.
Modern metaphysics is more easily tested and verified by individuals, and downgrading to the 5 Elements or Aristotle's Essences, would make things more, not less, complicated to consider.
Who are you thinking of when you speak of "modern metaphysics," Ymar? My sense is that the opposite of this claim is true, but I suspect you and I aren't reading the same authors.
By the way, JW, you may enjoy reading JS Mill's introduction to his commentary on the Protagoras. It has something of Twain's attitude in it:
considering the almost boundless reputation of the writings of Plato, not only among scholars, but (upon their authority) among nearly all who have any tincture of letters, it is a remarkable fact, that of the great writers of antiquity, there is scarcely one who, in this country at least, is not merely so little understood, but so little read. Our two great “seats of learning,” of which no real lover of learning can ever speak but in terms of indignant disgust, bestow attention upon the various branches of classical acquirement in exactly the reverse order to that which would be observed by persons who valued the ancient authors for what is valuable in them: namely, upon the mere niceties of the language first; next, upon a few of the poets; next, (but at a great distance,) some of the historians; next, (but at a still greater interval,) the orators; last of all, and just above nothing, the philosophers. An English bookseller, by the aid of a German scholar, recently produced an excellent edition of Plato;[*] the want of sale for which, by the way, is said to have been one of the causes of his insolvency. But, with the exception of the two dialogues edited by Dr. Routh,[†] we are aware of nothing to facilitate the study of the most gifted of Greek writers, which has ever emanated from either of the impostor-universities of England; [40] and of the young men who have obtained university honours during the last ten years, we are much misinformed if there be six who had even looked into his writings. If such be the neglect of the best parts of classical learning among those whose special vocation and whose positive duty it is to cultivate them, what can be expected from others? Among those who are engaged in the incessant struggle which, in this country, constitutes more and more the business of active life—every man’s time and thoughts being wholly absorbed in the endeavour to rise, or in the endeavour not to fall, in running after riches, or in running away from bankruptcy—the tranquil pursuit not only of classical, but of any literature deserving the name, is almost at an end. The consequence is, that there are, probably, in this kingdom, not so many as a hundred persons who ever have read Plato, and not so many as twenty who ever do.
You can read the whole thing here.
I used to like to say that an Episcopalian was a Catholic with authority issues.
Maybe an atheist is an Anglican with even bigger authority issues...
Now what you're saying here is that there is a connection. So what kind of a connection is it? Is it accidental? (I.e., are you suggesting that it just sometimes happens that the wise thing to do is also the just thing to do, or vice versa?) Or is there something about the relationship that is structured, like with courage and chivalry?
Well, on my current understanding...the major connection is that a person who is just is more likely (not "absolutely certain," but "more likely") to be wise as well, regardless of whether a given act of his will exhibit one or both of those qualities.* And the same for many other virtues as well.** The point of my original post is...I don't think that makes him more likely to hold one opinion over another; or that an accident that leaves him less virtuous (such as some TBI's have been known to do) will change his ideology, his slogans, or his voting patterns.
I do think that wisdom...in the sense of foresight and self-control...is an ur-virtue in that being wise can lead a person to other kinds of virtuous acts (if he looks to the long run and has self control, he will practice temperance over gluttony, for example. I hope it would lead him to deal justly as well, but I don't think that will always be true).
But as I mentioned in the original post, I don't believe most people "think their way into being good"...I mean, by reasoning out the consequences of their actions as opposed to following rules and instincts. And that's probably just as well...only a few of the people I meet put time into thinking about moral philosophy, but a great many of them keep their word, do their duty, and employ good manners, by habit and by temperament.
_____________
*The combination of a passion for justice without wisdom to temper it is a dangerous one...I've heard it suggested that Harold Godwinson's brother Tostig was a tragic example.
**If you use crime and law-abiding behavior as a stand-in for virtue...there's one advantage to that; it's actually measured. And there is a strong correlation between lower intelligence and higher criminality...one that cuts across race and social class. You can read all about it in Chapter 11 of The Unreadable Blasphemy by Emmanuel Goldstein and Louis Cyphre.
To say that a person who is just is more likely to be wise than not is to say that there is a correlation; this is a good modern way of speaking, because it avoids causes. Hume himself -- prince of atheists, I suppose -- liked this mode because it avoided trying to speak of things that can't be observed.
The problem with it is that it doesn't answer the question we were after in any useful way. What exactly is the connection between wisdom and justice? We can say just what it is in the case of courage and chivalry: the one is a necessary condition for the other, and thus bears an asymmetric relationship that is not of the part/whole kind, but rather a relationship of priority.
So why can't we say it in terms of justice and wisdom? Put another way, are you more likely to be just if you are wise, or more likely to be wise if you are just? Leave aside the question of thinking your way to virtue -- which is Socrates' method, but not truly Plato's nor Aristotle's. You can talk about doing your way, which is what you want to do.
But what are you doing? What has priority? How do these things come to be in your character? What are you doing first?
To say that a person who is just is more likely to be wise than not is to say that there is a correlation; this is a good modern way of speaking, because it avoids causes.
Say rather -- it tries to avoid dreaming up spurious causes. We humans are mythmakers for sure. It's very easy to concoct a reason - "unreason and injustice are the work of Satan, and when he gets into your heart, he works two ways at once." Or, "When Adam ate the apple...he left all mankind susceptible to sin." Or "when yellow bile predominates over the other humors, it leads to reckless rage, and so to unwisdom and injustice." Or, I suppose, "when your oedipal conflict is properly resolved, you stop punishing men and women unjustly, because you aren't trying to avenge yourself on mom and dad anymore; and you calm down and stop acting unwisely for the same reason."
I'm all for explanations...when I have a reason to believe them.
To answer your question, let me say again:
"The problem is....I now think that virtue and morality, like religion and sexual desire, are at bottom evolved faculties and work through instincts. (Which faculties are sometimes broken, complicating the issue.) It's all very well to construct logical theories as to what makes an action (or a person) virtuous, or funny, or sexually attractive...but the reality is going to come out in "meatspace" and probably won't be so neat as any system we create to explain it."
So...to a first approximation, the just man is likely to be a wise one because his moral instincts are in working order, rather than because punishing the guilty is itself a wise act.
So right now I don't think either really has "priority" in the way people behave. If it does, I haven't discerned it, maybe because I see "wisdom" tested more often than "justice" (I mean, Gage and the TBI guys I mentioned definitely lost some wisdom, at least for a while, but their sense of justice wasn't tested where I could see.)
(In the long term, I think it is wise to be just, as it is wise to practice temperance...I just don't think most people practice the latter virtue because of the former. A few, maybe, but not most.)
"Instinct" -- if you mean it seriously, as opposed to just a way of speaking -- is a strange explanation. It's my understanding, and Wikipedia at least seems to agree, that people who study human behavior have largely abandoned the idea that humans have many instincts. Some argue we have none at all; others, just a few.
Now to say that they are "at bottom" a kind of natural faculty is to say something very similar to what Aristotle says, and what Protagoras says; but the bottom doesn't explain more than the potential for the trait. This is Protagoras' explanation for why sons aren't always as good as their famous fathers: a virtue is teachable only insofar as you happen to have a natural capacity for it, just as not everyone can become a great flute player.
But Protagoras, whose position is very close to yours in several ways, built his life around trying to understand how to teach virtue. Now if that project is possible, we need to come up with things like priority relationships: just what should we practice, in order to develop the potential -- what you're calling the 'at-bottom faculty' -- into an actual virtue, rather than (say) an empty impulse.
And it should be encouraging that we have an example before us -- courage -- in which we can talk about that kind of relationship clearly. Of course, towards the end of the Protagoras, Protagoras comes to doubt whether courage is teachable after all: but at that point, he seems to me to be lost in the argument with Socrates that virtues are strictly forms of knowledge.
I do mean it seriously and I don't think the Wikipedia section you cite is up to date...it doesn't cite anyone after 1972. Here is Steven Pinker's article on "The Moral Instinct." In one of his books I read about the experiments he describes on pages 6-7 of the article...I myself took part in a version, maybe 10 years ago...having people make snap judgments about what is or isn't moral, and seeing how things come out as "wrong" from an innate "yuck" factor...one that doesn't derive in an obvious way from the religions or moral philosophies they espouse.
Furthermore, I believe a moral instinct serves an important and discernible evolutionary purpose...it allows humans to function together in groups, as is very useful for our survival both in hunting bands and civilization too.
And...as is often the case with parts of the mind...you can see something about how it works when you see how it's broken. There certainly are characters out there whose "moral sense" is simply broken...sociopaths and the like. You might convince an intelligent one that it's in his best interest to act ethically (in which case he's "high-functioning"), but he won't feel any more guilt than a mosquito. (If you ever revive the movie club I'm nominating The Bad Seed...the old one from the 1950's.) Sociopaths aren't always stupid, nor are they always slow learners....because the moral instinct is not just a matter of learning, but is innate.
And there's some evidence that chimpanzees have a (crude) moral sense of their own...which makes sense if morality is an instinct that improves living in packs or bands, for creatures with enough intelligence to choose to do each other harm. From what my sister the dog trainer tells me, I shouldn't be surprised to learn that some of a dog's reactions feel to him the way guilt feels to me. They certainly look that way.
What makes this even more interesting is this: Nicholas Wade's The Faith Instinct convinced me of what I'd already been suspecting, that religion too comes from an inborn instinct.
Moreover, that instinct serves the same purpose as morality...it binds communities of humans together, down on an instinctive level, so that they'll help and fight for each other.
(Incidentally, realizing this makes me less smug about my atheism than I used to be. To someone who lacks the instinct, there is no religion that's going to persuade him by evidence or logic. That doesn't mean we atheists are the only guys who are smart enough to figure that out. For many of us, it simply means the bit that makes most men into natural believers is broken in us. So the world isn't full of dummies who fell for a trick I see right through; they're feeding a need I just happen not to have.)
That's doubly interesting because, as I mentioned before, piety is generally recognized as a virtue, as a moral attribute, and when I look at it in terms of instincts ("what makes a man moral") instead of puzzling it out from first principles ("what makes an act moral")....I can agree!
btw, on teaching courage...I do think that the moral instinct has some flexibility, and most people can be trained (I don't say "taught," but "trained"...because this is about feeling, not thinking) to admire bravery and despise cowardice more than they otherwise would. (Sexual fidelity, and calling the opposite immoral, is nearly universal as an instinct...but within limits people can be trained to chaste or permissive standards, as they have been throughout history.)
But I remembered an anecdote from David Howarth's Waterloo: Day of Battle (which, if you don't know, is an account made entirely of anecdotes...letters and diaries from men who were there). There was one British soldier who managed to scramble off right before the battle, and crept back up the night after. What was interesting is that his messmates didn't hate him, the way deserters are normally hated (I've prosecuted a few in my day, and know it!)...they seemed rather to forgive him because they understood "the kind of man he was." I think those soldiers understood on some level that this particular coward lacked something, and treated him as they would a "weaker vessel."
And maybe you, like me, have met a person or two who knew all about bravery and cowardice...but in some part of his own life hit a limit and didn't take the braver course (and despised himself for it later). Yet such a person would never multiply two by three and get seven...because the latter is about "knowledge" while the former is about "feelings and instincts."
Well, it's interesting that Socrates and Protagoras both agree without argument that piety and justice are roughly equivalent in content. They even seem to agree about the priority (justice is prior to piety, because the gods should love what is pious because it is just, rather than the pious thing being just because the gods love it).
They don't agree -- Socrates makes a huge deal about this elsewhere -- about the ontology. Protagoras believes (according to historical records other than this dialogue; Plato does not have him make reference to it here) that all values are human-created, as indeed humans are the measure of everything at all -- whether it exists, or does not exist. Socrates believes, or seems to believe in Plato's hands, that justice has a reality independent of (and prior to) the gods -- that they are also bound to it, and perhaps more strongly. That differs from, say, Hesiod, who takes justice and similar things to be divine products.
The Jewish tradition is different. Abraham argues with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, convincing God that it would be wrong to destroy the city if he can find ten just men living there. It turns out -- perhaps God knew it all along -- that there aren't ten, or even two, as we are reminded in Paint Your Wagon.
But John Derbyshire once made a point similar to the one you are making here. He is of your own bent, sort of -- a practicing Anglican, I think at least he used to be -- but of the sense that science will eventually destroy religion's hold on human imagination. However, he says, it's no problem for the believer to say that there's some instinct in the human brain that disposes one to believe: after all, it's mere orthodoxy to say that God made man in His image, and of course provided man with some impulse to seek Him. That's just what a God who is the author of Nature should do.
So -- this is the kind of argument we call 'natural theology,' an attempt to know God by his works, which is problematic philosophically but nevertheless sometimes an interesting line of attack -- what would it mean if such a God provided otherwise good men, such as yourself, with no such impulse? Well, it's the kind of thing you could argue both ways.
You could argue that God is wholly unfair, and is damning you out of hand, because you won't believe in Him.
Or you could argue that God has a purpose for it -- perhaps to challenge men to use their minds more in trying to understand the moral structure, rather than taking it too easily 'on faith.' In that sense, the presence of good men who would challenge them would be a spur to try to examine their principles, and their understanding, more carefully.
Aquinas thought that the way that men were 'made in God's image' was precisely in this access to Reason. Pope Francis said something recently about atheists that suggests he's operating on a similar line of thought.
However, all this is the stuff about piety that I agree is your ultimate objective; but first you need to map out your terms. :) So let's return to the other matter.
Do you know of Wittgenstein's private language argument?
For the magnificent Mr. Derbyshire, that Anglicanism is a definite "was"...he's moved from that to mysterian (similar to what Martin Gardner was, incidentally). In fact, it was Mr. Derbyshire's review of The Faith Instinct that inspired me to run out and buy it. I had read Boyer's book, which he links to in the review, on my own before; I found Wade's to be much more persuasive, though Boyer did make some good points.
(Incidentally, I have seen it argued by an atheist that the best religious regime for liberty was not the American free-for-all, but 19th-century Anglicanism...where, if you wanted a political career, you had to pay lip service to the official faith -- which was good enough for the unenlightened masses anyway -- but in practice could think what you liked, and the official creed was inclined to leave people alone. I don't exactly believe it but might be persuaded.)
I loved Paint Your Wagon -- but the funniest Sodom & Gomorrah parody I've ever seen is this one. (It's a questionnaire being handed out to find the righteous men in Sodom.)
Now, all that said...my goal in the original post is not really "religion and morality"* but "ideology and morality."
Ideology certainly can be held with religious fervor and fill that religious need -- I suspect a lot of committed Communists, and other political believers too, have used it just that way. But I'm talking about ideology in the broader sense, whether even the casual conservative or lackadaisical liberal is morally distinguishable from his neighbor, down on the human, day-to-day level. (A different question from whether he could be whipped up into a mob frenzy, to scourge a heretic or slaughter a royal.)
I do not know of Wittgenstein's private language argument. And I have to go to bed now.
____________
* The question of whether a good God would make broken atheists, who are bound to be damned, fits neatly around Romans 9:19, where Paul posits this very thing: "God saves whom he pleases and hardens whom he pleases." And then he anticipates the question, "Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?" And then answers it with a resounding "How dare you ask?"
It's just a variant on the Book of Job argument...that we poor pitiful humans can't see how anything God does really is good, even though it may look evil or arbitrary to us. As I said before...someone who hasn't got the instinct is never going to be talked into believing with arguments like this. But someone who has the instinct may find them perfectly satisfactory, and so won't be talked out of it. It makes their beliefs morally unfalsifiable...
So what Wittgenstein said (in brief) is that we really have no warrant to describe our emotional states. Let us say I experience an emotion, and give it a name (courage, say). Now rather later I experience an emotion, and call it by the same name because they seem similar to me. What is it that lets me be sure that the experiences are the same?
Nothing, Wittgenstein argues (drawing I think, but not mentioning, on a point from Hume). I can't bring the original emotion back out and experience it alongside the new one, because the experience of remembering an emotion is not at all the same as experiencing it directly. So I have nothing to test my sense against except itself: all I can say is that I agree with myself that this one and that one were the same.
So this is an even bigger problem if we're talking about emotions across people, rather than within people. We have been talking about courage as a virtue. Are we really talking about the same thing? Well, we are, if we mean "That virtue (whatever it is, and recognizing that it may not be the same for all people) that allows you to do your duty or your will in the face of danger." But it may be that whatever is letting me do that is not the same as whatever lets you do it; and since we cannot compare the experiences, we may be fooling ourselves in believing we are talking about the same things at all.
Now neuropsychology would like to try to solve this problem with things like fMRI scans. That would give us a kind of public thing to check our experience against: we could say, "Well, you may be experiencing the same emotional state, because your brain appears to be active in the same way as before." Or we could say, "Well, it seems that Joe's brain and Grim's brain approach these problems in different ways; so it is likely that they are applying a common word to unlike states, which if true would be an error."
But of course this doesn't fully solve the problem, because what Wittgenstein is talking about is the phenomenal state, not the brain state. What does it feel like? This is the sort of thing we cannot link to mere brain states.
So here's a part of your problem, in terms of constructing logical or rational systems. We are often talking about things that may really not be the same; it could be that we can speak of courage not as a logical object, but only as an analogical one. If that's true, then we can't always predict that courage will function in the way we expect across individuals.
Paul is reading out of the Old Testament, which -- as a point of theology -- strikes me as the right way to relate to God the Father but the wrong way to relate to God the Son. One of the advantages of Christianity over Islam (and possibly over Judaism) is that it is possible to think about relating to God in several modes.
Just the other day was the Feast of St. Thomas, called Doubting Thomas. Now he is one who refused to believe without proof; and God the Father might have answered him as Job. But Jesus shows him proof.
My personal sense -- certainly unfalsifiable, but so are all the alternatives including the atheist ones -- is that this is an important aspect of the question. Paul is right, in a way, that we shouldn't worry about it: God has purposes we don't always understand, and it won't do to condemn without understanding. But if there's room for Thomas, even as an actual Apostle, there's room for doubters who are people of good will in general. So, at least, it seems to me.
Now neuropsychology would like to try to solve this problem with things like fMRI scans.
More than "would like"..."actually have". Scroll down to the lower parts of the article and see which parts of the brain grow active with some of the different emotions.
But I don't think Wittgenstein was right even in his own day, if you describe him right:
So what Wittgenstein said (in brief) is that we really have no warrant to describe our emotional states. Let us say I experience an emotion, and give it a name (courage, say). Now rather later I experience an emotion, and call it by the same name because they seem similar to me. What is it that lets me be sure that the experiences are the same?
The problem with this formulation is that it (apparently) requires absolute certainty before you have a "warrant" to describe something. I don't accept that for anything. I believe in evidence rather than certainties, because I have limited trust in my experiences and memories. Wait to be certain and I'd never talk at all!
(Worse yet, certainty itself acts like an emotion...and it doesn't always work like a simple probability calculation. You may meet a lawyer who is a lot more certain about what a judge will do with his motion than about the Pythagorean theorem...yet the former is full of unexpected surprises while the latter has been proven in scores of ways.)
If I feel something on one day, and remember what kind of thing caused it and how it made me want to act...and I feel something I call by the same name, that makes me feel and want to act the same way....that is powerful evidence that these two experiences are, in fact, the same emotion. If someone other people use the same words, and describe similar experiences, that's evidence that they're really feeling the same thing. Perfect certainty? No. Evidence? Yes.
When MRI scans show the same parts of the brain lighting up in different people...that's further evidence that the same thing is going on in these different minds, and is properly called by the same name. Also, if moral instincts are an evolved faculty, as I believe them to be, I don't see why we'd evolve multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing.
So it makes sense to call courage courage and guilt guilt until we have a reason to think that there's something different between one man's and another's.
And even if that turned out to be true, the broader words would still be useful...depending on the problem we are trying to solve. If in reality another man's "fear" doesn't feel like my "fear," but the consequence is that we both want to run away, and need an effort to stand our ground...then for a problem like mine it's useful to cover them by the same word.
What I'm interested in is whether the content of someone's opinions (especially his political views) correlates in some way with his personal virtues...like his honesty, his dedication, his generosity, etc. And I'm not trying to reason it out a priori because I don't think it can be done...but rather looking around for evidence, in such little time as I have.
Paul is reading out of the Old Testament, which -- as a point of theology -- strikes me as the right way to relate to God the Father but the wrong way to relate to God the Son. One of the advantages of Christianity over Islam (and possibly over Judaism) is that it is possible to think about relating to God in several modes.
But Paul, like most Christians, thinks they are the same God, and both are infinitely good...right? So the acts of one are just as good as the acts of the other, and the problem remains.
Which, to a believer, is no problem at all -- like Paul (or God himself in Job), he can just attack you for even raising the point.
Atheism is quite falsifiable. If Zeus shows up, and demonstrates his godlike abilities, bam -- there's a god, and atheism is disproven. (To an absolute total certainty? No. But to a standard your average atheist would accept? Yes.) In fact, the Scriptures tell me Yahweh used to present people with that kind of evidence...as in showing himself and talking to Moses...but of course it was all a long time ago.
Well, the fMRI isn't doing quite what Wittgenstein was describing. It is doing something interesting, though, if you accept (as I do not) that brain states and phenomenal mental states are necessarily directly connected.
What Wittgenstein was talking about was not a need for absolute certainty, but the absence of any independent standard at all. If I say, "This is the same car I saw yesterday," the car is available to check. We can work out whether it is, or is not, the car that I saw yesterday.
But if you say, "I feel the same emotion that I felt yesterday," how do you know? The only evidence you have is the feeling you have right now that it is the same. The old emotion is not available, not even to you. It is certainly not available to anyone else.
Now the fMRI people want to say, "Well, but we can at least say that the brain state is the same as yesterday." And that's fine; it's perhaps even helpful. But it doesn't solve the problem, because the brain state isn't the same as the phenomenal state. For one thing, the only way that they are able to tag something as "joy" or "fear" is by self-reporting. How do I know the joy I feel now is the same as what I was calling joy yesterday? As Hume points out, remembered things are not at all the same as things being sensed right now.
But Paul, like most Christians, thinks they are the same God, and both are infinitely good... right?
They are the same God, and both are infinitely good. However, atheists don't usually understand what is meant by "infinitely good" in the Christian philosophical tradition. (Actually, the introduction of the idea of "infinite" is problematic, but one thing at a time.) In fact, philosophical atheists invariably massacre this into a kind of omnibenevolence. That is meant to obligate God not to tolerate anything evil.
What is actually meant by "good" is here explained by St. Thomas Aquinas -- named for the other Thomas, you know.
Actually, atheism is falsifiable even philosophically, now that I think about it. Did you ever read Avicenna?
What I'm interested in is whether the content of someone's opinions (especially his political views) correlates in some way with his personal virtues...like his honesty, his dedication, his generosity, etc. And I'm not trying to reason it out a priori because I don't think it can be done...but rather looking around for evidence, in such little time as I have.
Now that piece on Tolkien v. Heinlein that we were talking about seems like it offers a structure like this, whereby opinions (less political than metaphysical) are tied to things we would think of as virtues in the ancient sense -- things like health; robustness in the face of despair; indeed, a general capacity to grapple with darkness (like Tolkien in and in the wake of the Somme) that might be called courage.
So maybe some opinions about the structure of the world tie in to virtue. But opinions about the proper structure of society? Well, what counts as evidence here?
You know, I wonder if I should speak after Thomas Aquinas; but on re-reading that part of the Summa, I realize how difficult it is if you haven't had substantial training in Aristotelian thought. The concepts sound arcane, because the language is technical and no longer taught.
In fact, modern logic can't handle the old Aristotelian system that Aquinas is using. We talk about these things using modal logic, but our modern modality is usually limited to "possibly" and "necessarily," which isn't what's being discussed here at all. I keep meaning to write a paper on the need to reform modal logic so that we can take advantage of the traditional wisdom and insights of our ancestors.
However, that's for another day.
For today, let me run through the concept. It's really pretty straightforward if you break it out of the technical language.
"To be good" and "to exist" mean the same thing, except that "to be good" carries a connotation of desirability that is not obvious in "to exist." Now existence is not simple in Aristotle, but comes in degrees. So, a thing becomes better when it comes to exist more completely.
An example: let us say that you want a house (a house is desirable for you). Now we have a piece of land available for your house. In our first case, the land is a swamp in which any sort of house will sink forever. It is not possible to build a house here. This impossible house has very little existence: not only does it not actually exist, but it can't possibly exist. This house is no good.
Second case: we have a piece of land for your house which really could support a house. This house is possible. Now to be possible means that the house has a greater degree of existence than the impossible house: it exists, at least, as a possibility. But it still won't keep rain off your head.
Third case: we have the same piece of land, but now we have also purchased and brought together all the materials we need for the house. We have also located friends with the right skills, who are willing to donate their time to help you build the house. This house exists more than possibly: what we have here is a potential house. Now Aristotle calls potentiality also by the name of "first actuality," because this is an actual house in a stronger sense than the merely possible house: it's an actual potential. A house really can come to be here in short order. It is a much better case to be in than to have a merely possible house, or to have an impossible house (i.e., no house at all). Still, rain is a problem.
The fourth case is an actual house. This house will do everything a house should do, including keeping rain off your head. It is a far better house than the potential house, let alone the others. It has achieved a kind of perfection of its capacity to be a house (or, as Aristotle says, its "second actuality").
So what Aquinas is saying is that goodness in general is to exist, and the more completely you exist the more you can do whatever it is you were wanted to do.
The next step above that is necessity. It's hard to imagine a necessary house, but imagine that you are guaranteed a house no matter what happens. If something should destroy your house, a new house will be snapped out for you right away. This kind of house is better even than the actual house, because it can't be taken away: it's in pursuit of something like this that we all buy expensive homeowner's insurance, after all.
So is God absolutely good in all his persons? Yes, of course. What does that mean? It means God exists in the fullest possible way -- not just necessarily (the next step up from 'actuality') but essentially. Other sorts of existence are incomplete, and therefore less good.
What Wittgenstein was talking about was not a need for absolute certainty, but the absence of any independent standard at all. If I say, "This is the same car I saw yesterday," the car is available to check. We can work out whether it is, or is not, the car that I saw yesterday.
But if you say, "I feel the same emotion that I felt yesterday," how do you know? The only evidence you have is the feeling you have right now that it is the same. The old emotion is not available, not even to you. It is certainly not available to anyone else.
Suppose the car drives away before you can check it...then your only evidence is your memory of what you saw. But your memory of what you felt is evidence, as is your memory of what you saw. It's not perfect evidence, because memory is not perfect, but it's evidence still. For corroboration I can remember how I behaved and how my body responded when I was feeling that way.
Regardless of this, though, I think Wittgenstein's issue is tangential to mine...he wants to know whether one man practicing generosity is really really feeling the same thing as another; I want to know if "generosity in general" (whether the practitioners are experiencing it the same way or not) is correlated with "ideas in general."
However, atheists don't usually understand what is meant by "infinitely good" in the Christian philosophical tradition.
Based on the link you gave me, Christians don't usually understand what is meant by "infinitely good" in this particular Christian philosophical tradition.
You know, I wonder if I should speak after Thomas Aquinas; but on re-reading that part of the Summa, I realize how difficult it is if you haven't had substantial training in Aristotelian thought. The concepts sound arcane, because the language is technical and no longer taught.
You're right there. He takes off with the idea that
"Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection."
That does not make logical sense to me. Even supposing it to be "clear" that all persons desire their own "perfection" (and I'm not even clear how he's using that word)..."all desire their own X" does not imply "only X makes anything desirable."
I vaguely remember starting Avicenna once at your suggestion but don't think I finished.
Now that piece on Tolkien v. Heinlein that we were talking about seems like it offers a structure like this, whereby opinions (less political than metaphysical) are tied to things we would think of as virtues in the ancient sense -- things like health; robustness in the face of despair; indeed, a general capacity to grapple with darkness (like Tolkien in and in the wake of the Somme) that might be called courage.
So maybe some opinions about the structure of the world tie in to virtue. But opinions about the proper structure of society? Well, what counts as evidence here?
I'm open to suggestions on the last.
Probably I should learn to use the General Social Survey and see if criminality correlates to ideology (criminality, unlike virtue per se, is at least measured in official statistics).
But I already doubt my results before I even learn how to get them, if I find time to do that...in America, at least, "left versus right" tends to be "top and bottom versus middle" (when it comes to social class)...whereas intelligence tends (roughly) "higher as you go higher" and crime tends "higher as you go lower"...already leading me to doubt whether the results would tell me anything.
Opinions are certainly tied to virtues as you say...political ones too...but I think this has to do with whether the opinions themselves are good or bad, rather than whether the persons who hold the opinions are good or bad.*
It's the latter that interest me...and whether there is (as I suspect there isn't) any strong causal relation between the virtues a man practices and the opinions that he holds.
_________________
*In my mind ideas or acts are good or bad according to their effects; but I think people are good or bad according to their moral instincts...a truthful man may not have thought out why truthfulness is beneficial to human society, but he's truthful anyway; a wrongdoer, like Tarquin in Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece, can explain to himself every reason why he shouldn't do that...then do it anyway.
So, let's explore this last thing. Now, you say that people are good or bad according to their moral instincts, but what you really mean is that they are good or bad according to the degree to which they obey their moral instincts. Otherwise, you get trapped in the very problem you yourself identify re: intelligence, i.e., of course the ability of a criminal to explain his reasons will (on average) be less than those of a non-criminal, simply because intelligence negatively tracks criminality to a strong degree.
Furthermore, since you're already assuming that these things are instincts of some sort, it shouldn't matter whether or not they can be explained. Indeed, if I understand your contention, they can't -- or shouldn't -- be explained anyway, since they are instincts and instincts are irrational. If they are irrational, attempts at giving a rational account will necessarily introduce error.
So it sounds like your conclusion is baked into your assumptions. Of course opinions won't track morality, if by opinions you mean rationally explicable accounts. Ideologies especially are rational accounts that help people decide what principles ought to apply to given situations. But just because they are rational, they will be divorced from morality as you assume it to be.
So what you should be trying to prove is not your conclusion, since it follows from your assumptions. (Follows logically, I should say: it's a logical entailment of your assumptions.) What you should be trying to prove is the truth of the assumptions.
"Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection."
Yeah, that's one of the sentences that caused me to decide to comment on the passage.
"Perfect" here isn't meant the way that it is used in contemporary English. To stick with the house example, it means that the house isn't desirable except insofar as it can actually perform the functions of the house. When the rain comes and your house is still just some logs you haven't assembled yet, that potential house isn't very desirable. What is desirable is the perfected house, i.e., the house that can do what the house was wanted to do.
There's a very interesting concept built into this argument, which is relevant to Protagoras and his claims. If the good is what is desired, it is natural to ask, "Desired by whom?" Protagoras had argued that man was the measure of all things, and thus it follows that the good was what men desired.
So if you are going to argue (as Aquinas does) that God is good, that standard isn't enough: you need something more like what Socrates wanted, an independent idea of what "good" (or "justice") might mean.
What Aquinas (following Aristotle) identifies is existence, because it seems to be the motivating factor for the activities of all forms of life. Why does the bird build a nest? To bring more birds into existence. Why does a squirrel hunt for nuts? To sustain itself in existence. Why does the poet craft a poem? To bring an idea into existence. Why does the athlete pursue feats on the field of play? To give his name a glory that will exist after his mortal strength has gone.
So existence is what all things that can desire seem to desire: existence must therefore be the real good. Now that fact tracks to the arguments from Avicenna (which Aquinas knows and references obliquely, rather than crediting Avicenna properly) about the necessity of a first principle whose essence is to exist. So you have two very powerful sets of philosophical arguments that independently point to a first principle of exactly the same kind.
Do Christians understand this? Some!
So, let's explore this last thing. Now, you say that people are good or bad according to their moral instincts, but what you really mean is that they are good or bad according to the degree to which they obey their moral instincts.
No, I don't say that, because I don't believe everyone's moral instincts have the same strength. Someone with a strong sense of guilt is likelier to flee the scourge of the furies...by doing what he thinks is right...than someone whose conscience is sleepy or dead. And I think this not because I assume it, but because the best evidence I know points me that way.
I've already mentioned people who seem to be born without any discernible moral instinct...sociopaths (just as some of us are missing the religious instinct or else have a weak one; others, like William Blake, say, have overwhelmingly strong ones; but most of you are somewhere in between). In the original post I mentioned Phineas Gage...who seemed to have his moral restraints torn out by an iron bar (I suspect his redemption wasn't a matter of someone just explaining to him that truth or industry were good; but by regrowing some feelings he'd lost).
But I've also had some experience with drug addicts, particularly cocaine users...and I consulted with a couple of rehab counselors on the subject. They talked to me about the personality changes that come with prolonged use...one is that the heavy users become very selfish, and another that they become very dishonest. It's as if the wrong chemical action on the brain is damaging or burning out whatever "circuitry" should control them...should make them feel guilty about lying, neglecting their children, or what have you. They know all the words of morality, all right, and could recite back to you the lessons they've had on the subject...but any internal control or desire to act that way just seems to be gone.
And besides, that's how instincts seem to work generally...not everyone has the same amount of aggression or sex drive; why would I expect them to have the same amount of guilt or conscience?
Otherwise, you get trapped in the very problem you yourself identify re: intelligence, i.e., of course the ability of a criminal to explain his reasons will (on average) be less than those of a non-criminal, simply because intelligence negatively tracks criminality to a strong degree.
But if the criminal's moral instincts are weaker...as I believe they are in general...he doesn't need to rationalize very much. Actually low intelligence may be helpful in rationalizing...it might help the person stop thinking before he got to conclusions he didn't like.
(Sort of related...Theodore Dalrymple's article on intelligent children born into English slums...if he's right, too much intelligence becomes a curse when it hasn't got something better to act on.)
Furthermore, since you're already assuming that these things are instincts of some sort, it shouldn't matter whether or not they can be explained. Indeed, if I understand your contention, they can't -- or shouldn't -- be explained anyway, since they are instincts and instincts are irrational. If they are irrational, attempts at giving a rational account will necessarily introduce error...
Oh, no, I don't say that at all. I don't expect instincts, even moral instincts, to fit into neat categories...but they can and should be explained, not ignored. The thing is, though, they don't work like moral reasoning (I certainly think moral reasoning is important and useful...just not good for explaining why one man is more virtuous than another).
An example just popped into my head that I think will clarify -- the resistance to killing other humans described in Dave Grossman's On Killing. You remember his findings that you got the most psychological casualties -- the results of disobeying this directive -- among infantry who had to see the results of their own fire and steel. You might explain to them all day how what they were doing was right -- indeed that was an important part of bringing them back sane -- but something inside was still telling them, this is wrong.
The thing is, there wasn't any increase in psychological casualties among Navy gunners who took part in bombardments. As a matter of moral philosophy and reasoning...they were doing the same kind of thing as the riflemen, and on a larger scale...but apparently it didn't feel the same, because the instincts aren't triggered by the mere knowledge of killing, when you can't see the face or the body.
Something like that may explain why it's easier to be rude in internet arguments than in person...if the instinct that controls politeness is triggered by human faces and voices, rather than by knowledge that the other person is human. The inconsistency people show in this regard -- it has been artistically rendered -- suggest to me that an instinct is involved.
It sounds like the On Killing case is triggering a feeling of horror, which may be one way of knowing that something is wrong; but not the only way. Otherwise, you'd not have cases of drone pilots coming down with PTSD. (Or intelligence officers who come to be disturbed by the knowledge of what they've done, etc.)
Now I said I thought you must mean "obedience," because otherwise you'd have to excuse people like Ariel Castro -- the guy who kidnapped several women, held them in chains in his basement for years and years, and raped them over and over. Here's a guy who had the appropriate moral feelings: he presented no defense at trial, but simply told the judge, "I'm a monster." So feeling bad about it isn't good enough -- you have to have some capacity to act on the feeling.
That capacity is what Socrates and Protagoras are calling sophrosyne, which in this translation is being rendered as "temperance." But the Greek carries a very much stronger sense, not merely of resisting temptations but of being master of one's self such that you do your moral duty regardless of anything else.
Plato, like you, questioned whether this virtue could possibly exist. If you're up for that argument, it's the subject of the Charmides. It's a very amusing dialogue in any event, built around homosexual desire and a search for a cure for hangovers.
I will be off riding for a while. If you want to read the Charmides, that'll give you a few days to work it into your schedule.
Post a Comment