I am compelled to ask if a tree’s biological structure precludes it’s bleeding when cut, or dying when decapitated?
It sure keeps it from runnin’so fast!
Prolificisticationist wrote:
To which I replied:
Whereupon he responded to his own question thusly:
John,
Again, I’m saying there are no unqualified, sparkling, lint-free, Platonian answers “out there” that we can draw from the Ether, as we do water from a well. Thomas Wolfe remarked:
“Man lives beneath the senseless stars and writes his meanings in them.”
A question exists by virtue of its having been asked. An answer exists by virtue of having been given. It’s well and good to debate ethics until the cows come home, but morality is that part of philosophy that won’t be put off until that mythical day when we’ve a flawless ethical system at-hand. Here we can’t wait for crystalline perfection; as I’ve said; we live and act in real-time.
Not so long ago, I was asked for my advice by someone I dearly love. The question was whether that person should undergo a cardiac catheter procedure. I knew that this person’s trust in me was so great that my answer would rule the day. The procedure is designed to provide the cardiologist with information about the functional condition of the heart. At the same time, there are very real risks involved. The catheter can dislodge an accumulated plaque and send it streaming into the heart. The resulting infarct can easily be fatal.
Imagine yourself in this situation; a situation for which there is no crisp and clean answer. A person that you love more than your own life is looking into your eyes and asking for your answer; and you’ve got to give it by the time the cardiologist returns to the room. You haven’t the option of sending the question to a committee for further study. Neither can you afford to wait for a sign from the heavens: for bushes to burn, black cats to cross your path, for crows to settle on your windowsill. Bearing in mind my Sartrean quote, if a crow were to appear on the window sill, I’d still be left wondering how to interpret the “omen.”
Casting bones, examining goat testicles and consulting ancient oracles are devices people use to escape the responsibility accompanying a difficult moral decision. They’re time-tested ways to avoid having to bear guilt when the consequences can be horrible. That’s an ancient con game we play at. We interpret our “omens” to suit our wants and desires. And should things go badly wrong we have the luxury of looking away from ourselves - towards the omen as the source of our grief. “It wasn’t your fault, it was God’s will.” It’s a beguiling sham.
Conviction, not unlike courage, is an example of the sort of encumbered virtue that never stands unaided on its own legs. Himmler was a man of deep conviction. It’s reported that he became physically ill on the few occasions he witnessed mass executions. Once, splattered with flying brain tissue he had to be helped back to his car. And despite his visceral reaction, his conviction led him to persevere. I recently posted a speech given by him on October 4, 1942. I’ll post it again:
“We can say that we have fulfilled the most difficult duty out of love for our people…You have to know what it is like to see one hundred bodies side by side, or even five hundred or one thousand. To have kept control and at the same time…to have remained decent, that is what has hardened us. This is a glorious page of our history.”
Here was a man of the highest conviction. But don’t we wish he had far less conviction? Don’t we wish his courageous SS were considerably less courageous? Don’t we equally wish that the September 11th hijackers could have put their compassion above their conviction?
Conviction, itself, is no virtue. Conviction importantly lacks the crucial error correction inherent in our sense of compassion. And as a constituent element of virtue, conviction ought to forever be subservient to compassion. If you ever find yourself self-affirming the fact that you must destroy the village in order to save it, then you’re already in deep trouble. If your god should task you to exact blood as his vengeance, then you need another god. If ever your Cause rises above your compassion, try to envision steadfast little Heinrich, with his handkerchief over his mouth as he’s being helped to his car. This was a paragon of Conviction.
I really don’t expect you to, John. I’m content to share this world with people holding a wide variety of beliefs. That some people believe Elvis was beamed-up by aliens in order to entertain them “…neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” or so Thomas Jefferson remarked of religion.
And yet I do think, as Richard Dawkins has said, that religion is “a cultural virus.” I wouldn’t easily abide the outlawing of religion, but neither would I give my life in order to protect it. I think it would be best if religion were to die quietly, of its own accord. Still, I don’t see that happening any time soon. This particular strain of virus is exceptionally virulent. And so I’ll live with it. I’m no more on a crusade to stamp-out religion than I’m on a crusade to stamp-out the common cold. Though I do try to wash my metaphysical hands often; that seems to provide some measure of protection. 
Best wishes,
Michael
How can you say that about all religion? Some religion actually has some logic to it. To me Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism all make perfect sense, and just describe different aspects of the universe
Hi Alien,
Good point. I really ought to have qualified those statements. I must unconsciously think of Buddhism and Taoism as mystical Eastern-philosophies rather than religions. And yet I know that’s wrong; given that I used to know a Taoist from Taiwan (an older woman). In any case, what I had in mind in my above post were the various “skygod” religions.
Actually, I don’t know very much about Buddhism. What little I do know has come from reading contemporary Western philosophers. Derek Parfit, for example, makes a good case for the Buddhist conception of the self as “a bundle.” Growing up, I used to keep a copy of Tao Te Ching (along with Boccaccio’s Decameron, now that I think of it) under my bed. I saw it as philosophically inspired poetry rather than as religion (the Tao, not Decameron).
Thanks again, Alien. I promise to be more careful in the future - Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
Michael
Was never into the whole “skygod” thing. At times I am unsure of how such medieval religions still exist. The bible is loaded with contradictions. I don’t know about the Quran, as I have never had enough interest in Islam to actually study it, but I am willing to bet that it has quite a few contradictions itself. I have respect for Wicca and Pagan religions, but find it hard to place personal beliefs in a lot of it. Some Wiccan lore seems to fit in with eastern theology, though it all differs by discipline (there are more sects of Wicca then Christianity or any other religion that I know of for that matter).
Whether there is god or not, there is still right and wrong.
If it’s wrong to snuff the life from the approved organism, is it ok to snuff it from the unapproved?
Actually I just referred you back to my opening statement that this is a podium for discussing the arbitrary assignment of value, worth, and importance placed upon life in our society. [or so it started out!]
True, people assigning everything that happens to “God’s will” can be a most irritating thing to watch! I don’t think it is an overtly deceptive practice (sham), however. I think it is more a simple matter of one’s personal beliefs; the filter through which an individual processes their world.
If you must say “high,” then of the highest evil conviction. I see such figures as being possessed of the lowest or most depraved conviction. I still believe you are holding up history’s darkest examples to state than any firmly held moral or religious principle must be a draconian dogma of ultimately malevolent consequence, and I say to you instead that the human animal needs guiding principles off which to base moral conviction at some point. You seem bent for some reason on denying the necessity of benevolent conviction; of a virtuous dogma around which states can be built.
The United States of America is not morally flawless, or certainly without innocent blood on her hands. But her ‘paragon’ of freedom and her history of striving towards improvement is not an accidental thing. Our entire foundation as well as our vision for the future are predicated upon certain moral convictions - the ones that stand for good, Micheal - not the evil ones whose historical figureheads you have cited. Do you deny this? You can have good convictions, you can have bad convictions, but having moral conviction alone oughtn’t be equated with depravity.
Anarchistangel’s statement is one of those golden nuggets of simplicity and fundamental truth.
Whether there is god or not, there is still right and wrong.
I think that a society which refuses to define these values (or indeed, allows them to become meaningless) is destined to self-destruct eventually.
Right and wrong are relative though. What is right to one person is wrong to another. Even if we all agreed on right and wrong, there wouldn’t be right without some wrong doing. In order for you to have conviction, you must think you are doing the right thing. I am sure Himmler thought this, and didn’t look at himself as an evil person. I believe that the separation of virtues and all other antonyms for that matter is due to the polarity of the universe. We want everything to be good, but the nature of the universe is that everything is good and bad. Good and bad are just different aspects of the same thing. Most people seem to have an attraction to good. I often wonder about how many people actually have an attraction to evil. There must be at least a few people out there. Teenagers and such often tend to be attracted to symbols of evil, how many of them are attracted to evil itself though? It’s hard to say, but sadists and such, it seems to me, might look at what they do as evil and still be attracted to it.
The Himmler case actually interests me. He must have justified the murders he had to commit in some way in his mind, while his natural bodily reaction was repulsion. Outwardly, I am sure he demonstrated conviction outwardly, but I am also willing to bet that he had a moral war going on inside his head. If he truly had no problem with the acts, then why would he have a physical repulsion to it? There were SS officers who had no problem killing people, and even enjoyed it. Evidently Himmler was not one of those types.
Thank you for your reply, Prolificisticationist:
Here again is what I wote:
Given that I refer to conviction as, “a constituent element of virtue,” why would you ask me to grant conviction a seat at Virtue’s table? I’ve already granted it.
Would you kindly indicate where I have equated moral conviction with depravity? As for conviction alone, I’ve said that honoring it with a seat at the head of Virtue’s table is a dreadful mistake. I’ve used Himmler as an example of how badly wrong things can go when conviction is placed above compassion. I make exactly the same argument for courage. A suicide bomber might be far more courageous than I’ll ever be, and yet only a monster would argue that the courage to commit mass murder is a virtue.
In order to oppose my thesis you’ve got to show why the reverse situation obtains. Bearing in mind your own admission, “You can have good convictions, you can have bad convictions…” you need to explain how an unalloyed conviction itself could possibly serve as our moral beacon.
John, that example is fatally, anthropomorphically flawed. The United States is not a moral agent; neither is the Podunk Valley Country Club. Persons are morally culpable but organizations are not. Is Rwanda evil? Is Switzerland kind-hearted? Geology aside, countries don’t invade other countries. It’s people, not countries, who choose to make war or send humanitarian aid to others. It’s people, not countries, who make moral stands.
Regards,
Michael
Alien wrote:
The degree to which there exists a common sense of right and wrong is the degree to which we have a shared sense of what it is (not what it means, but what it is) to be human.
If you happen to be standing near a stranger in an otherwise deserted train station just as he receives the message that his mother has died, would you reach out to congratulate or to console him? Whomsoever advances a doctrine of moral relativity feigns tremendous ignorance; they’re asking us to believe that they haven’t the slightest inclination of how to react to that situation. But the vast majority of us know better. We know how the stranger is going to feel because we know how we would feel.
John Searle remarked that it’s no more plausible to expect that your and my minds function differently than it is to imagine that our kidneys function differently. We all had the same mother. We’re all cut from the same bolt of cloth. We each differ only to a matter of degree, not as a matter of kind. If all I know about you is that you’re human, then I already know a great deal about you. It’s no use pretending that you don’t want me to respect you. And you’ll never convince me that you haven’t the capability to love or the desire to be loved. I know a great deal about you because I know myself; I know what it means to be human.
Our inherent sense of human compassion is by no means perfect, but it’s the most reliable moral compass we have; or probably ever will have. There’s a beautiful passage in a book by the French philosopher, Andre Compte Sponville, that I think is worth quoting and requoting:
“How can we not love, even if only a little, someone who resembles us, who lives and suffers as we do, and who like us will die? Friends and enemies, lovers or rivals, we are all brothers in the face of life, all brothers in the face of death…Charity, then, is like a light of joy and gentleness shining on all men, known and unknown, near and far, in the name of a common humanity, a common life, a common fragility.” – A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues
The great poet, Percy Shelley, said as much:
“The great secret of morals is love.”
Michael
Polemarchus:
You are giving me the toughest intellectual challenge I have had in a long while as I have been bogged down for the past two days unable to formulate what I deem worthy as a finalized version for a reply.
You are giving me headaches. (chuckles)
The long and short of my struggles is that I never thought to separate the term “conviction” from the term “virtues” from the concepts of right and wrong. Let alone consider conviction as a “constituent element of” virtue. I was using them all pretty much interchangeably; now, I cannot. This is vexing and has been bogging me down. GRRRR. 
:evilfun:
Indeed, and thank you, Polemarchus. I apologize for the ungainly length of my name, but alas “John” was already taken! (chuckles)
Sure. I took this- “It’s when we’re cock-sure of our righteousness; when we profess to know, without a doubt, that what we’ve done is beyond moral reproach; that is an unmistakable marker along the road to depravity” -to be a rough equation of the two.
Inasmuch as I am speaking to the historic success or failure of countries as government entities, and those government entities are formed from its people, I do not think it is flawed. Regardless - I think we agree that values, principles, and moral convictions are important to have and to have defined. This necessarily means a clear and simple, recognized difference between up and down, good and bad, right and wrong to guide our social mores.
Michael thank you for the intellectual workout!
Sincerely,
John
I disagree. Best example I can think of off hand, would be the Mafia.
Meaning any organization comprised of individuals who knowingly pursue immoral goals under the aegis of that organization (or even better, the organization itself was created to pursue immoral goals) must make the organization itself immoral. Now, if the Mafia was formed as a way for middle aged men to gather and discuss gardening tips, or something not involving criminal acts including assault, robbery, and murder,(and so on) then I cant really see anyone
having much ground to claim that the mafia itself is immoral.
But the concept of a criminal organization operating on society is immoral in itself, thus the actualization of that concept (the Mafia organization) is immoral as well.
Thats my take.
“Now, if the Mafia was formed as a way for middle aged men to gather and discuss gardening tips…”
lol …