Moral necessity

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

I really have no idea if there is any sense in any of that, at all. But this attempt at deconstruction simply seems wilfully contrary. Deconstruction does not make it difficult (certainly not impossible) to speak a language, it makes it difficult to interpret narrative meaning which is quite simply not the issue here. And I’d argue it makes it difficult only if you choose for it to be. You are using language to turn garden gnomes into mighty dragons. That simply fails, because you are using the same language that you at once denounce, to take for granted, the meaning of your “deconstruction”. Language is perfectly learnable, and its being learnable is a logical necessity. Its meaning is a product of social activity, not of this kind of fuzzy postmodern metaphysics you seem to be selling.

This style of scepticism is really rather dated, and its objectives are self defetating. Objectivity is not a product of choice but of consensus about what counts as being correct. The barber has absolutely no choice in the matter, and no choice to make. And where on earth does might come into it? Your objections are becoming more ridiculous by the minute, and you seem unconcerned about explaining them in any sensible or constructive way.

22

To risk no moral infractions whatsoever, one must jump into an iceburg and freeze yourself. Hmm, no because then by not being around you may actually cause someones death, you were not there to save them.

Well then to cause no moral infraction sit on your porch get totally drunk and obey the voices in your head. If you are not sane you are not responsible.

Go ask your momma what is right?

In retrospect just try to do the least amount of damage possible, that is the morally correct thing to do. After all we are just humans and we can’t be supermeta human all the time.

23

This is really the gist of my argument. But some people have seen fit to Derridarise it :unamused: It’s about the level of responsibility you can reasonably be expected to take for ensuring the expectable satisfaction that people can derive from your conduct. Where might and mohawks come into it, I’m not quite sure.

24

I think we’ve gone a little off track here impenitent. Let me restate the issue for clarity.

The doctor and barber examples were, I acknowledge, simplistic examples, but I wonder if the same principle can be applied to less clear examples. e.g. where somebody is about to build a house. This is what I call a “multi-axis” action. Building the house will not only cause a house to exist, it will also provide shelter, perhaps be a status symbol, it will provide employment for the builders, may desecrate an Indian burial, may abnkrupt the financier, may jeopardise the family’s future by the fact that it is built on an unwise mortgage etc.

The activity of undertaking the building of the house has multiple axes, each of which can be analysed in its own terms; which is to say it will commit the builder to a whole number of other normative undertakings, because the activity projects into various normative realms other than “to build a house”. The standard of success for, say, the “providing shelter” undertaking will rest on things such as, how well that house keeps out the elements, how well the utilities work and how safe it is from intruders. So when he is fulfilling this criterion of his undertaking, he ought to bear these things in mind if he will rightly be said to have built the house “well”.

So, the success of the undertaking “to build a house” is determined primarily by whether the house is built or not. But I could argue he has other contingent undertakings to fulfil, by accepting to build the house, and if each of those can be done “well”, they ought to be done well, because they are more fully done, when they are done well. Now it’s not to say people always do or should do everything to please everyone in any situation. But rather that there are convincing and logical grounds for it to be expected.

25

the question has always been “who is to say.” the mob? nope.

-Imp

26

Which is utterly irrelevant. Because morality isn’t here being presented as a logical choice to be made, but rather that the choices to be made are essentially non-moral. It is not a matter of choice that a barber is somebody who cuts hair. In fact, part of my argument rejects the need to “interpret” any sort of definition preferences into the correctness of a normative transaction.

If consensus is worthless then we shouldn’t be able to be communicating here.

A choice which he has no business making unless he changes the rules in his head without telling anybody. Giving mohawks is not essential to the essence of being a barber - whether he thinks it or not.

Yes you can. This is one of the most abuses philsophical objections. If I want to build an atomic bomb, then I ought to do what one does to build a bomb. Is-ought doesn’t apply here. If I want to speak Spanish then I ought to learn the consensus based rules whose aggregate people call Spanish.

In a sense, yes, the mob. The spanish speaking community are applying tules in speaking Spanish, that are a matter of social convention. If I want to speak Spanish I am logically obliged to learn those rules and no others.

27

spanish spanish or mexican spanish?

king’s lisp aside

-Imp

28

And this is where the various “axes” becomes an issue. Who is the best judge of how my hair should be cut? It’s my hair, so I think it’s fair to suggest that it would be of some value to consult me on my criteria for a good hair cut on me. You can’t take what constitutes a my good haircut, out of the context of what I consider is good for my hair to be cut, when it is my hair being cut. In other words, what he thinks is simply irrelevant. It’s an aesthetic judgement, and I am asking him to make manifest aesthetic criteria - that is the nature of the transaction by defnition. How the barber cuts my hair cannot realistically be plucked out of this context.

You taught yourself English in isolation then, I take it?

What “choice”? No more choice than there is in spelling things correctly

Yes, you can. Where the definition of an activity is what you ought to do, you most certainly can. See Searle on this.

You’ve shifted the accent here. The criteria for success, is what defines the “ought” in my argument. Whether you ought to engage in that transaction is another matter altogether.

Depends what you’re trying to achieve in more specific cases, doesn’t it? see my “axes” above.

29

not if there is an “objective” spanish that everyone “ought” to speak.

but thank you for making my point.

-Imp

30

No it’s not. The context is fulfilling my expectations in terms of being a barber. He is not required by the terms of that transaction, to makes a “moral” judgement, to do what a barber does. A doctor can perform the definition of being a doctor, without making any moral judgement. He may think he is, but everybody else - those who sustain the meaning of the term in the first place - will tell him he is quite wrong. The question is, which rules does he make us assume he is abiding by once he agrees to be what WE call a barber?

Thus quoth Wittgenstein. Thanks for making my point. You are implying that the notion that the notion that meaning arises from a social context is “self-evident”, is question begging, on the basis that there is no “objective” criteria to define whether it has been done properly or not; yet you acknowledge that “English doesn’t mean the same everywhere” (itself an absolute statement…I wonder how you verified it without resorting to some sort of standard of meaning) - the context supplies the meaning. You implicitly admit that above, yet at the same time you are holding out for an objective (by which you seem to mean, “removed from the context of human activity”) definition of what a barber ought to do. That’s self-defeating.

And I guess the above shows a choice to type non-English correctly? Welldone. All you have achieved is you have simply not typed English. Your “choice” to cause it to be English, is non-existent because all your calling it English will not make it English. I’m not sure why you think it’s big or clever to trivialise this issue about meaning so facetiously. I suppose by your reasoning, anybody ought to call that English because they personally believe it is. Once more, you prove my point. The success criteria for applying convention-derived rules, is not a matter of “choice”. There is choice in the action to apply it correctly or not, but no amount of willing will make true, the statement “in chess, a rook cannot move by diagonal vectors”. There is simply no “choice” involved in its truth.

Yes you have. You are comparing the “is-ought” situation in “if I wish to make a nuclear bomb, I ought to do whatever nuclear bomb builders do to that end”, to the is-ought situation in “There are nuclear bombs, therefore I should make them”. Your mohawk barber is in the latter class, and thus that objection is based on a misuse of is-ought.

Quite evidently not. Akjajsjhd = not success for typing English. Spiked mohawk = not success for a mullet. Failure to cut my hair as I want it = not success for a good barber. He can think he’s the Queen of England for all I care, he still doesn’t fulfil the criteria of success for that claim.

Oh really. And how do we have a name for it and an activity that corresponds with the name, if there is no “objective” definition of Spanish? Thanks for making a nonsense of your own position.

31

I didn’t read it all, but what is language other than a convention? Unless you mean moral is also a convention, chiron.

32

:smiley: :smiley:

Classic.

33

What indeed is Language other than a convention? That’s why I can’t understand why impenitent is saying such strange things.

Now let me clear up what seems to be a growing misconception here. I did not say that morality is a convention. In fact I am asking you all to banish that idea form your heads. I am arguably saying the very opposite. That there is no such things as a Platonic “moral template”, and that morality is the exercise of doing things well, when they can be done well, or rather not deliberately doing them badly when they can be done well, and the outcome affects others.

So to do a particular thing well, is to take into account what is to be expected from that activity, by the person/people who are to be affected, and from those expectations, to ascertain what is to be reasonably expected if it is not already known (much to my disbelief, impenitent doesn’t seem to think any expectation is reasonable. Well, a doctor should not give me a boob job if I came to him to have my tonsils removed, nor should he inject me with a deadly virus). “What is to be expected” in a normative transaction, is by and large a matter of social convention. So a barber is quite clearly in our society, not expected by any convention, to give mohawks without permission.

Wittgenstein spoke of how meaning is understood when we ask not “what do the words ‘mean’”, but “What are we doing with words here?” In a normative transaction, the question is “what are our actions doing here?” I argue that in matters where human interests are at stake, to act whilst paying no regard to the intentional content of human thinking, is to not do any such task well.

34

But utter nonsense. As I said, if I want to build an atom bomb, I ought to do what atom-bomb makers do to that end. Is-ought simply doesn’t apply in this case. It is the case that this IS how chess IS played, therefore, if I wish to play chess, I ought to play it like that. Conventions are thus, not truth apt in that sense. Hardly “classic”.

35

An is…

Why? Why should you do what you want? What you want (is) and what you should do (ought) cannot be logically connected.

Now now, you don’t want to make me Ang Lee.

36

So eating is not a logical solution to being hungry? The question of what I should eat, is logically separate from the fact that eating would solve my hunger problem. Impenitent is conflating the two.

Searle makes a distinction between brute facts and institutional facts. For instance, the fact that a certain piece of paper is money cannot be ascertained outside the institution of money in a given society. And that piece of paper will only be money as long as the members of that society agree to treat it as such. Being money is an institutional fact therefore I ought to call it money.

37

This is my point. There’s no Right in languages and they change all the time. From what I’ve read (sry if I didn’t read it all) I’ve infered you used spelling the language “right” as an example of what you should do.

What is doing something well? I thought that was unarguably relative. If a moral that is not a convention was to come into being, it shouldn’t be relative.

If you don’t want the guy to give you spiked mohawks, you have to admit that doing something “well” is relative. What makes him do it the way you want him to do it isn’t moral, it is money, or friendship, or whatever, depending on the case.

38

No I disagree. There would be no way of knowing if you had applied a linguistic rule successfully if there was no “right” in languages. What constitutes right, changes, but that it is there, does not.

Doing something well, is accounting for reasonable expectations based on the function you are performing in a normative relationship. One way of being a “good” doctor, is to cure illnesses. To take the greatest care to this end, in your duties as a doctor, is to to that job “well”. Nothing at all relative about this. You’re simply stuck in the straight-jacket of the definition.

The barber was an example of what counts as doing something “well” in virtue of the things you are reasonably expected to consider. I never said it was a moral issue. I said that for him to cut my hair badly on purpose turns it into a moral issue, but I definitely never said (knowingly anyway) that a barber’s enterprise is chiefly moral. Impenitent pretty much invented all that.

39

well, it’s pretty much like Art for Art Sake then?

it’s easy.

if you want to perform an action just because you want to, then you need to think of whom the action has an effect on. if it’s just you, that’s fine. but if it’s people around you as well, then you’d better be careful.

waht i’m saying that what you do it depends on where you are, who you are with, when, all the contexts, so to speak. every action has consequences attached to them, but those consequences are really CONSEQUENCES only when it has effects on something else. you know what i mean? and, to the performer of the action, it is consequences of his action only when someone says “hey, your action affects me in some way blah blah blah”. and only then, will the performer have to be responsible (or have to choose to/not to be responsible) for his action.

and this will lead to the principles of rresponsibility for you to choose from, e.g. util, deonto, etc. and there goes another long story.

DIBRINISPOT.BLOGSPOT.COM

40

Nail. Head. This is pretty much what I’ve been saying, but it appears impenitent doesn’t believe in context …oh no, wait, he does but only when it’s for speaking Spanish…no wait, except Spanish has no rules…hang on even though it might…actually but depends on “choice”…but actually like, how do we like know that Spanish like…exists man.