I’m convinced we’re all discussing different things here. 
At least we’re staying on topic by doing so 
True! 
What if we do understand everything perfectly, but the process of linguistification [for want of a better term] or making meanings into words and other informations, is itself flawed. …and it is flawed because things cannot be truly represented by language.
What is it you don’t understand about these simple words ~ that you may attribute different meaning, yet you may not, you could understand them perfectly. Same goes for the outside world, you wouldn’t say a computer with a camera cannot ‘see’ the world, you may at most say it has limited resolution, but one day computers wont have. The brain is a vary good computer, at most we may be limited by its instrumentation, but once you have the idea of a box you know it’s a box.
We are talking resolvable limits.
Language of course is an essential component in philosopical discussions. It does not, however, mean it can encomapass as true anything it wishes to. Any more than it can resolve every conflicting understanding of what is alleged to be moral.
Suppose, for example, a Marxist and an Objectivist are discussing the nature of human freedom and moral justice. They all use exactly the same words. Yet they understand the meaning of those words in very different ways.
Or I can say, “the monkey wasn’t hanging from the pig’s entrails until the President shot the purple moose on the holiest Wednesday of the Venusian lunar calendar”. Now, you can go to any dictionary and look those words up. They all exist, right? But, put in that particular sequence they are gibberish.
Or someone can say, “aborting a human fetus is immoral”. You can look all those words up too. It’s not gibberish. But: is it logical? is it an epistemologically sound argument?
iam - the problem you are having here is that you are making a series of mistakes that, taken by themselves, are minor, but that have the cumulative effect of leading you very far astray. While you have made several in your latest post, I will point out only one: “Aborting a human fetus is immoral” is not an argument of any kind. It is not a logical argument because it’s not an argument. It’s not an illogical argument, either. It’s not an argument.
My point however is this: When people make such an assertion sooner or later someone is going to ask them to defend it. Especially in a philosophy venue. And there are many who insist that, using the tools of philosophy, we can construct an argument deemed to be the most logical.
Realists and rationalists for example. And deontologists.
That’s not so. A rationalist does not claim that his argument is the “most” logical, but only that reason itself is the best basis for the positions we take on any philosophical issue. A deductive argument is either valid or it is not. It’s not “more” or “less” valid. And it’s not more or less “logical”. In the main, such an argument is not simply “deemed” anything. It either passes the test of validity or it does not.
Yes, I agree. But my focus is always on those rationalists who insist logic can be used to derive optimal arguments regarding issues that, in my view, can only be articulated as conflicting points of view.
But I think the distinction you make is incorrect, and unfair to rationalists. I have dedicated many words to showing that rationalism is just plain foolhardy, but I think you have mischaracterised rationalism. This is not only unfair to rationalists, but to everyone who uses deductive reasoning. Now, it may be deductive reasoning itself that you are going after, but you don’t say that.
When you say:
you seem to be confusing the argument with the position. Logic is by definition the only way to derive a (deductive) argument. It’s not the exclusive purview of the rationalist. What the rationalist proposes is that his position, because it is derived from reason alone, is optimal.
But further, the rationalist is not unaware that there is disagreement. It is, of course, this disagreement that he seeks to resolve. As a perspectivist, I certainly agree that the different positions taken on moral issues are not resolvable into agreement by logic alone. Where I disagree is in that those positions certainly can be articulated using deductive reasoning, even if they are ultimately mere points of view. That’s what philosophy does, often.
Moral premises are not verifiable empirically, but moral premises can be accepted on other grounds, and it is that acceptance that the logician must in turn accept, as a logician. Here, I think Logical Positivism is incorrect. But LP is of no use to you as an apologist for politics, either.
In all, you seem to deny that it is useful to give reasons for our points of view. But what if our positions on various moral issues contradict each other? I don;t mean when my position contradicts yours, but when several on mine contradict each other. Wouldn’t you find it troublesome if two or more of your moral positions contradict each other? It happens all the time - I would say it is the rule among those who have not taken the time to examine their own moral beliefs. How would we resolve that kind of internal conflict?
Baruch Spinoza, a rationalist, derived from Rene Descartes, another rationalist, the argument that what is true is what can be known clearly, succinctly, seamlessly, wholly. And then, down through the ages, philosophers have argued over what, in fact, we can know and grasp in this manner. For some it included both one’s sense of identity and one’s value judgments. And it is those folks I address my arguments to.
Sure, we can argue [technically] over how one must distinguish an “argument” from a “position”—but how far out into the world we live and interact in will that take us? I’m not one of Durant’s epistemologist, I’m an existentialist. Scold me for not grasping the technical jargon correctly if you must but my interest lies in instantiating the jargon out in the world of conflicting subjectivity and value judgments.
And though you acknowledge the limits of deductive reasoning here, others do not. And my point has always revolved around the understanding that logic can be used syllogistically to make reasonable arguments from all sides of conflicting moral, political and aesthetic stances. My own contribution to the debate has always focused more on the relationship between these contradictory points of view and dasein.
Bryan Magee in Confessions of a Philosopher:
What [Hume] shows is that most of reason’s claims are invalid. We know almost nothing. Our thoughts are connected for the most part not by logic but by association of ideas, and our behavior is guided not by genuine understanding of
reality but by habitual expectation and custom.
Commonsense [situated historically, culturally and experientially]: who cares about logic “philosophically” when we go to work or raise our kids or fall in love or vote?
It will take us into the realm of philosophy. If you don’t know, or don’t acknowledge, the difference between a philosophical position and the argument used to reach it, I’m not sure how well you can understand the thinkers you criticise, or any other thinker, for that matter.
It’s not just vocabulary for its own sake. We tend to talk past each other, you and I, and I think that your choice of words is a factor. It’s not very technical to distinguish between an argument and its conclusion. Again, if you don’t know the difference, its difficult to criticise those who use arguments.
I really can’t think of anyone who thinks that. Even Kant knew the limits. He just wasn’t very good at argument. The difference between a rationalist and, say, an empiricist is not that they believe two different thing s about deductive reasoning, but that they accept different premises as true, or even as important. Deductive reasoning is merely a method. I think your argument is not with logic, but merely with some premises that some philosophers use.
I get that, and i think everyone else does, and has. I don’t think anyone has ever argued with you about that, and that’s not what i am arguing with you about now. Logic is “content neutral” as long as the content doesn’t contradict itself.
One wonders if Magee has actually read Hume. This is a very ignorant thing to say.
Common sense can only be cultural, or historical, or experiential. It’s the common sense - the sense we have in common. it’s learned and widely accepted wisdom. That’s just what the term means. Neither logic nor philosophy imply any abandonment of common sense. Many philosopher do abandon it, but abandoning it is not required to do logic or philosophy.
Iam, seriously, the reason you make these category errors is that you evidently haven’t taken the time to study logic. Your critiques of logic would be much more powerful if you did.
These Existentialists, as they wallow in their misery, have poisoned your mind. Read some Nietzsche - the most commonsensical of all philosophers. he doesn’t use deductive reasoning, but he understands it. And he’s the most cheerful of all philosophers. A good antidote to the European Emotionalists.
Oh come off it Faust.
Hume applies perfectly here, and in exactly the way Iambiguous wants him to. Try this one on for size smarty-pants:
“Reason is, ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” - David Hume
Eventually you are going to get to the end of your deductions and need a sentiment to give you the ought. The whole point of Hume is that a reasoning will get you the facts of the case, but only a sentiment will get you the ought. What does a sentiment look like? It does not look like a rational argument. A sentiment looks like “abortion, yuck!” Hume is clearly saying that moral behavior is guided by our sentiments (which are mostly habituated). This is exactly what Iambiguous is trying to say about the unwashed masses.
This is why contemporary Humean values theorists (i.e. Jessie Prinz) need these things called “grounding norms.” A grounding norm is a psychological placeholder of sorts. Its the word for the point where we stop giving reasonable answers when we are interrogated about our moral sentiments.
i.e.
Joe: Why don’t you vote for that Republican?
Sally: He hates black people.
Joe: What’s wrong with a politician hating black people?
Sally: He will cut affordable healthcare for children from the budget.
Joe: What’s wrong with a lack of affordable healthcare for children?
Sally: Many parents will not be able to afford healthcare for their children.
Joe: What’s wrong with children not being able to afford healthcare?
Sally: Children will not have access to preventive care like checkups.
Joe: What’s wrong with children having no access to preventive care?
Sally: Many innocent children will die.
Joe: What’s wrong with allowing the death of many innocent children?
Sally: You asshole!
Sally has reached what is called a grounding norm. Sally does not have a rational argument for why you shouldn’t allow innocent children to die, she just has a sentiment to that effect, a sentiment which she is passionate about.
If Sally was a philosopher, she might try to find a deeper reason for this passion of hers. Iambiguous and Hume’s point is that we usually don’t continue looking for deeper reasons ad infinitum. Instead, we have grounding norms. Certainly it is possible to come up with deeper reasons, but the fact is, we don’t do this “out there in the real world.”
And the real world is what Iambiguous is interested in.
You come off it, Sean. Nothing you, or Hume said means that reason’s claims are invalid. What you’ve said and Hume has said is that reason isn’t everything we use to get by in life. I’m not denying that. I’m arguing with extremely sloppy language on Magee’s part. if you like being this sloppy, help yourself.
I’ll admit this is not the best way of summing up Hume’s views but the problem with it is a problem of terms. Reason’s claims are invalid if we mean for them to be based on first principles that are absolute and eternal. If “knowing” and “genuine understanding” means grasping at the ultimate laws of nature or God, then Hume would agree with Magee. However, Hume would never state it in those terms. For Hume, association of ideas and habitual expectation and custom is no trifling matter.
Take another Hume quote:
“Skeptical principles may flourish and triumph in the schools, where it is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as soon as they leave the shade, and by the presence of real objects, which actuate our passions and sentiments, are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature, they vanish like smoke, and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals.” (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Pt 2, Sect 12)
What this means here is that skepticism is untenable out there in the real world. Hume says no one outside of the armchair would possibly believe “we know almost nothing.” No one would assert, “my behavior is guided by habituated expectation and custom.” When we posit an effect on the basis of experiencing a cause we are habituated to, we do so for the most part unselfconsciously. This is the problem with what Magee says.
But, this is the problem with what Faust says:
Condescension.
But more to the point:
If It happens all the time that two or more of a person’s moral positions contradict each other, then it seems that one of these is the case:
- It happens all the time that people do not examine their moral positions
- People are comfortable with moral positions being contradictory
- Moral positions are not ultimately rational claims that could be contradictory.
I think (1) is a good candidate, but it also reeks of exactly the kind of philosophical elitism that I’m supposed to be criticizing here. “These unwashed masses do not think about what they say.” “Everyone is too obsessed with buzzwords and slogans to think critically.” Etc.
I do not think (2) is a good candidate. Philosophy is exciting particularly because it is unsettling in precisely this way. You examine your views and occasionally find them to be contradictory. That is a very uncomfortable feeling for anyone.
I think Iambiguous and Magee are shooting for (3), and in my last post I think I successfully argued that we can characterize Hume as holding (3) as well (in the terms of this debate at least).
Hume says Reason should be slave to the Passions. This means that the master-part of a moral position is this grounding norm which gives it the ought, and as I explained, a grounding norm is precisely that sentiment which does not have a reason.
Faust, I fully agree that more people should think logically. The thing is, Iambiguous is not arguing against that. The point of the limitations of language is not that everyone should just quit logic. No one is saying, “Logic! Yuck!”
Instead it’s more like “Limitations! Hmm…”
I don’t think 3 makes much practical sense. If you hold that
1 killing innocent people is wrong
2 personhood is attained at the instant of conception
3 abortion is permissible
these are all moral claims. But they cannot be held concurrently and consistently, regardless of your emotions. Your reason steps in and makes you concede one (or two, but admittedly very rarely three) of these points. If they were non-rational claims, the contradiction couldn’t get a handhold. Philosopher or not, you’d say “well, maybe I haven’t thought this through”.
In your favour, you include “ultimately”. There may be one or two primal moral urges at work in any given person, sufficiently formless that they guide the prioritisation of reasoning without reason getting any look-in. But as soon as they become structured into any conscious formulation, reason gets its teeth in. I think a lack of awareness, discipline, will or training (your first option) is then the cause of explicit inconsistencies, and I don’t see it as elitism to say so. You don’t have to represent your country at athletics in order to take care of your body with exercise, it’s just something that is wise to do.
I don’t want this to turn into a debate about abortion so I’m going to address the abortion stuff first, then get to the more philosophical points.
The fact is, tons of pro-choice activists hold (1) and (3) simultaneously. It’s a leftist phenomena, and more often than not leftists are also anti-war, specifically because “killing innocent people is wrong.” “Abortion is permissible” has reasons, and as such is not a grounding norm, like “killing innocent people is wrong” is a grounding norm. For some, womens’ bodily rights simply trumps (1). But this is not always the motivation for being pro-choice.
Really I think (1) and (2) are post-hoc pro-life slogans. This is a perfect example of reason being enslaved to the passions. The whole debate over whether personhood is attained at the instant of conception is totally ridiculous. It’s an attempt to market one or the other view using Science-Brand Rhetoric. WTF IS PERSONHOOD. If you hold a belief about when personhood is attained, you are clearly NOT thinking philosophically, because WE can’t even prove that personhood is attained in full-grown adults. Whether at conception or at third trimester, the whole question is clearly just a propaganda tool for both sides to scientifically justify their existence!
The “killing innocent people is wrong” part is just the libertarian bent on pro-life rhetoric. You can be an anti-religion Ayn Rand-style conservative and still rant with your conservative friends about how bad abortion is because you believe “murder is just wrong!” Next time some Republican tells you abortion is wrong because it’s wrong to kill innocents, just ask them about arabs, and see whether this is a grounding norm or a slogan.
My point in attacking your three positions is not to make any declaration about the morality of abortion or conservativism, but instead to show that more often than not, reason is attached to purely emotional sentiments in one way or another for the purposes of creating rhetoric/propaganda.
There is nothing clear and distinct about personhood beginning or not beginning at the point of conception. There is no rationale because we don’t know what personhood is. As Hume says, whichever way you call it, “commit it to the flames.”
Moving on…
But this is the whole point! Iambiguous is a scholar of Wittgenstein, and rightly so in this context. Look at any dilemma (like abortion) and you will find rational arguments being used as propaganda tools. To say “personhood begins at conception” is to play a language game.
The problem is that these games get us nowhere. Have you ever tried to have a rational discussion about abortion with your family at Thanksgiving? It is disgusting when uncle Fred starts trotting out Rational Arguments. It’s the most disgusting thing ever.
“Killing innocent people is wrong” is a truism. “Personhood begins at conception” is a philosophical non-starter. This doesn’t just apply to abortion. Try coming up with a purely rational defense or refutation of capital punishment. The same will apply.
Ultimately people are not convinced by rational arguments. Instead people are convinced by what their friends and family believe. People are convinced by what their people believe.
I hold your three contradictory points about abortion very close. I realize they are contradictory. I still think abortion is permissible because I have a lot of friends who are feminists. Ultimately that will outweigh any rational argument that could possibly be brought to bear. Even if you told me that fetuses had perfect knowledge of the Platonic forms and could teach them to us if they were hooked up to electrodes, I wouldn’t give a damn, because the people that I love say one thing and you say another. This is what the existentialists are all about. Being willing to die for your moral beliefs means holding them even when your world collapses at the hands of a devastating rational argument. I think people do it all the time. That’s why we still believe capitalism will work.
EDIT: So maybe I am saying “Reason? Boooo!” But I only feel that way about reason when it claims to be without sentiment.
Sean -
Look - logic isn’t applicable to everything that we encounter in life. Sure. I am offended that Magee, with his greeting-card poetry, is trying to pass himself off as a philosopher.
Correct. No would anyone say that reason has no limits.
It’s ironic that you bring Wittgy into this later. I think Magee and Wittgy share this - they are usually either stating the painfully obvious or making no sense at all.
I tried to show iam that he’s using sloppy language to state his case. He doesn’t care, You, Sean, don’t care. I guess i don’t, either.
You’re not agreeing with me - i never made that claim and that is not my concern.
Rational arguments are used to express all manner of things. Is there an adult left on the planet who doesn’t already know this? Rationalism has flaws - but they are not effectively attacked this way. Rationalists are not the only thinkers who use deductive reasoning to expose their moral philosophy.
The problem I have had with iam is that he seems to be against propaganda, yet uses what amounts to propaganda against it. It’s a half-truth. he’s using propaganda to promote a political agenda. On a philosophy board.
Faust,
Now that, I agree with.
I just wanted to be sure that Hume goes down the right pipe here.
Also, I thought Iam was a lady. I guess that’s the biguous part. Just goes to show you never can tell.
But, you still don’t like Wittgenstein. I don’t get that? He’s so good. The Tractatus makes stating the obvious into an art-form. I think “Wittgy” was being satirical. If you think that’s too Da-Vinci-Code-conspiracy, he basically refutes his best Tractatus arguments in the Philosophical Investigations. Language games is the best thing that ever happened to rational argument. Russell and the other early analyticals didn’t get that memo, and now look at 'em.
Wittgy FTW 4life.
Wittgy wasn’t setting himself up to knock himself down. he refuted himself because he eventually became more than a dilletante and was exposed to some academic rigor - and saw that he had been full of shit.
Stating the obvious as an art form is for artists. For Andy Warhol (who I also do not care much for). Warhol is hardly ever talked about, unless his subject was someone famous. No one gives a rat’s ass anymore about his Campbell Soup labels. As it should be. Philosophers are a little slower on the uptake, but i think Wittgy will fade away. I don’t think he was being satirical - I think he was being what he was - a trust-fund punk kid wiseguy.
Russell remains a giant. Without Russell, there is no Wittgy - even if it’s not much to be proud of. But you can’t have it both ways.
Wittgy said nothing of value that Nietzsche hadn’t already assumed as fact. Sure - language-games. One of the most misunderstood ideas of philosophy. The deconstructionists unwittingly burlesqued this into utterly irrelevant nonsense.
There’s no private language. The earth must have fuckin’ shook when he let thatcat out of the bag.