convictions

My point though is this:

One of the fundamental questions we all have to answer day after day after day is this: how ought I to behave?

And here, the scientist, the philosopher, the poet, the artist, the anthropologist, the sociologist, the psychologist, the politician and the preacher are all equally impotent. None of them have the capacity to describe human behavior objectively. Not in their moral or political calculations.

That’s just not true. All the philosopher should be doing is to figure out how to behave. Why am i not in the best of all positions to decide that - for myself? I am nothing like impotent. I decide how i ought to behave, in the large majority of cases. Being imprisoned and tortured to madness being a notable exception.

But “objectivity” is:

a) a myth

b) not required, and

c) the last thing you’d want when trying to figure out how you ought to behave.

Figuring out what cannot be figured out is more useful, in my view. And impotency is not a description of each individual’s attempt to figure this out but a description of his or her attempt to demonstrate that what they figured out is what every other rational man and woman should have figured out in turn.

Folks who have tried this [and failed] range from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Rand.

There is no rational manner in which to demonstrate a moral duty or an obligation to behave one way rather than another. And if you don’t believe this is the case than so demonstrate it.

I find this ambiguous. Are you saying that we all should come to the same conclusions? That there is some set of behaviors that we all should subscribe to?

But they were all idiots. Maybe not Aristotle, but the others were idiots.

Well, Aristotle was kind of an idiot.

But you must also remember that Plato was a politician and not a moralist in the modern sense. Or even in the Ancient greek sense. He was a political scientist. Kant was just a whore for religion and Rand was a sociopath - and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Maybe you should concentrate on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dewey, even Schopenhauer. These writers had a clue about how to behave. Maybe not so much around women, but they at least understood morality for the philosopher.

That Plato was a great philosopher doesn’t make him a good one.

I won’t demonstrate any such thing. Your premise is horrifying. You really have been reading too much Kant. Read all of Nietzsche and report back to us.

Rational manner? Duty?

Please.

Rational shmational.

Philosophise with your blood. Or your gut.

That’s quite a sweeping statement, and it overlooks a few subtle discrepancies among the professions you listed. I would definitely invest more trust in a psychologist than a politician if I were depressed and seeking advice on how best to live (I’d even trust the poet over the politician, but that’s a personal bias ). But I agree than none of them hold that much weight.

Still, can we avoid the things they have to tell us? Can we honestly decide for ourselves how to live without at least some measure of influence from them? We don’t live in a vacuum, and I know a lot of us like to think of ourselves as totally independent thinkers, but you’d be surprised how influenced we are by what our cultures shove down our throats every day.

This is why I hold out hope for the possibility of a science of sorts of ‘good ideas’. I don’t know how possible such a science is, but it would be one that seeks to determine what are the characteristics that distinguish between ‘good’ ideas (i.e. ideas that, when adopted by a community, lead more readily to positive and healthy outcomes for that community) and ‘bad’ ideas (i.e. ideas that don’t). In the end, I’m sure such a science would find that the characteristic sought after are actually to be found in the relation between the ideas and the community subscribing to them… But that’s all if such a science is possible - ideas may be too unpredictable a beast for any patterns to emerge distinguishing between good and bad ones. At the same time, however, I think such a science may just be as imperative as it is impossible. We’re human. It is in our nature to be influenced by ideas… and there are no filters sifting out the bad ones from the good ones. We need filters - at least better ones. We need to learn how to build and use them - and I’m not even sure if this idea itself is a good or bad one.

“Stupid men are always so sure of themselves, it is intelligent men who doubt.”

GBS

For what is a good man good?

For nothing it seems given history.

The failure of describing human behaviour objectively - is that a bad thing?

I agree with the relevance of asking how one ought to believe but I don’t believe anyone else will have an answer for us, at least, I don’t even care if they do have an answer because it’s something I’d rather find out for myself.

Excuse the irony but, from Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground:

Iambiguous wrote:

Figuring out what cannot be figured out is more useful, in my view. And impotency is not a description of each individual’s attempt to figure this out but a description of his or her attempt to demonstrate that what they figured out is what every other rational man and woman should have figured out in turn.

No, I am saying that many who embrace moral and political convictions insist this is so. My own assessment is quite the opposite: There are no moral or political conclusions we should all embrace in order to be thought of as rational purveyors of human Virtue.

But then, of course, someone can readily suggest that I embrace this as a conviction. But I don’t. It is only the manner in which I view the world around me here and now. I will always concede the possibility that, in having new experiences and new relationships—and in encountering new sources of information—I might easily be persuaded to change my mind.

But, just as you construe Plato, Kant, Rand and [sometimes] Aristotle to be “idiots”, there will always be those who hold the same convictions regarding these folks. And how then do we determine 1] what constitutes being an idiot philosophically and 2] which philosophers then clearly qualify?

How can this ever be but a point of view?

iambiguous wrote:

There is no rational manner in which to demonstrate a moral duty or an obligation to behave one way rather than another. And if you don’t believe this is the case than so demonstrate it.

You won’t demonstrate it because you can’t demonstrate it. Any more than Kant could demonstrate the categorical imperative. Any more than Nietzsche could demonstrate the Ubermensch

Nietzsche once suggested something to the effect that the opposite of a truth was not a lie but a conviction. Yes, but did he hold that as a conviction of his own?

As for philosophizing with your blood and guts, we have, historically, seen a lot of bllod and guts spilled in the name of one or another Uberman.

Yes, but my focus is on any “professional” attempt to differentiate good from bad behavior morally or politically. Here all ethical propositions can be but “personal biases”.

In my own opinion, of course. I could well be wrong. But that would necessitate someone pointing out to me the ethical equivalent of a black swan.

Science tends to steer clear of is/ought distinctions. It is concerned more with either/or relationships. But there are is/ought distinctions raised about science. For example, ought it to be used by the government for research in sustaining the interests of the military industrial complex and the war economy? Ought it to be spending billions of dollars in space exploration when there are so many pressing problems right here at home?

It is if the behavior can be described objectively and needs to be. For example, if you need to perform CPR on someone and don’t know how this is done someone who does can describe step by step what to do over the phone.

Or, in an emergency situation, you might be able to contact someone who can talk you through delivering a baby.

But my contention is that no objective description of human behavior exist with respect to moral and political values. Thus, if you are pregnant and do not want to give birth there is no one you can contact who will be able to tell you objectively if aborting an embryo or fetus is ethical or unethical.

Woody Allen:

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

John Lennon:

Keep them doped with religion and sex and tv
And they think they’re so clever and classless and free
But they’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see

Living above ground nowadays is, more often than not, a lifestyle you can purchase at the local mall. And when you grow tired of it just pick another one to take its place. And, if you’re really lucky, you might be able to peddle it on reality tv.

I understand your point but consider your first two examples - a problem is presented and a solution is provided, the question is about how one should perform CPR and how one should deliver a baby but this is also the case about the third - problem: unwanted pregnancy; solution: abortion. The solution to the problem is not the ethical dilemma because the ethical dilemma exists in the first two too i.e. should I take responsibility for the deliverance of this baby or the resucitation (sp?) of this person. You might conclude that the dilemma of these two is a ‘no brainer,’ an imperitive well, maybe it is for the third example too…

Yep, depressing isn’t it?

I’m not sure I understand your point [or your distinction] but I see them as very, very different. When one performs CPR or delivers a baby there is an actual solution that can be measured empirically. CPR saves someone’s life [if it was able to be saved] and the baby is delivered safely.

There may be different techniques preferred by some over others but they either work or they do not. And there is not exactly an intense debate over whether to perform CPR or deliver babies.

To view abortion as a “solution” however will outrage millions of men and women who view it as anything but a solution. On the contrary, they view it as profoundly unethical; or as premeditated murder; or as a mortal sin against God. An abortion can be measured objectively [empirically] as either successfully or unsucessfully performed but not so one’s moral agenda regarding it.

Well if one had an abotion and was with a clear conscience afterwards, is that not a sufficient measurement of one’s “moral agenda” regarding the op?

It is often the case that convictions exist only as a mask for one’s own self-doubts and uncertainties/anxieties. Likewise with any belief or paradigm. Of course this does not hold for all convictions or beliefs; only those which springs from necessity can be “trusted”, in this sense, to be genuine or at least sufficiently so. That is to say, all mental objects serve psychological functions of utility and one can never fathom fully one’s own depths, but through philosophy (broadly defined) one can purge to a very large extent the extraneous motives, conditionings and false/harmful attachments that confine our consciousness to the surface. When this happens the majority of beliefs and convictions formerly held fall apart almost immediately, revealing themselves to be entirely without substance or merit. What is left is a space of greater authenticity born of a higher self-understanding, from which new ideas and experiences of the self spring, ultimately under new forms as the old forms of conviction, paradigmatic belief, tend to fade away.

The op makes a distinction between convictions that can be confirmed empirically “out in the world” and convictions that cannot.

For example, a considerable chasm once existed between astronomers who embraced the “steady state” model of the universe and astronomers who embraced the “big bang” model instead. Today that gap has virtually disappeared. Almost all astronomers/astrophysicists agree the big bang model makes the most sense. By far.

Consider this from Bill Bryson:

[b]Alan Guth’s inflation theory…holds that a fraction of a moment after the dawn of creation, the universe underwent a sudden dramatic expansion. It inflated----in effect ran away with itself, doubling in size every 10 to the minus 34th power seconds. The whole episode may have lasted no more than 10 to the minus 30th power seconds----that’s one million, million, million, million, millionths of a second—but it changed the universe from something you could hold in your hand to something at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, bigger. Inflation theory explain the ripples and eddies that make our universe possible. Without it, there would be no clumps of matter and thus no stars, just drifting gas and everlasting darkness.

According to Guth’s theory, at one ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second gravity emerged. After another ridiculously brief interval it was joined by electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces—the stuff of physics. These were joined an instant later by swarms of elementary particles----the stuff of stuff. From nothing at all, suddenly there were swarms of photons, protons, electrons, neutrons, and much else—between 10 to the 79th power and 10 to the 80th power of each, according to the standard Big Bang theory.[/b]

And this is true, astrophysicists insist, because it is reflects the most reasonable manner in which to explain why the universe exist as it does today.

But suppose instead we consider the moral arguments of those who insist that spending on space exploration should cease until we have solved more pressing problems right here at home. Is this a rational [ethical] point of view? Is there a way for philosophers to establish this? To establish it, in other words, in the manner in which science has established the rationality of big bang theory?

No, in my opinion, there is not.

And even if down the road the big bang theory is modified or shunted aside by a more rational argument still, the rationality will be subject to rigorous peer review and able to be or not to be replicated by others based on hard data.

I’m not one of those peers so those numbers are as convincing for the big bang as they are for the existence of God. Amongst ‘pro-lifers’ (peers) the argument against abortion is as solid as the theory of the big bang, their evidence, their observable date: The Bible. Peers simply mean: people who agree. Thus the eco-warriors have their reason behind an argument against space exploration, their observable data: global warming, pollution, animal extinction etc. I don’t even know if we’re in agreement or disagreement. There’s no obective morality? So what? Would it even make a difference if it were?

I know what you mean. I often feel the same way. I read analysis like that and think: huh? Like most of us, I’m just a “civilian” here. I can only trust that what I read—or hear on programming from channels like science, discovery and history—is substanially true.

But then hypothetically imagine going back in time 300 years and explaining computers, the Internet and smart phones to our ancesters. You think they would buy it?

But this is very, very different from the abortion debate. Science deals with either/or not is/ought. Neither philosophers nor scientists can determine definitively whether women ought to be forced to give birth against their wishes. Personally, I am opposed to it. But I recongnize this is only a point of view. And can only be one.

That’s what makes the “global warming” debate so fascinating. Deciding what we ought to do is in fact predicated in large part on figuring out who is or is not right about the burning of fossil fuels. And then figuring out if, at our current rate of polluting the atmosphere, the planet is indeed in peril.

“Peer” means someone of equal standing.

A young child may agree with a professor of divinity on the existence of God, but they are not peers. Two professors of biology may be peers but disagree on theories of abiogenesis.

The point I’m making is that truth isn’t simply a matter of agreeing with people and forming a consensus - we also intrinsically accord more weight to people who have made studies, demonstrated arguments, developed skills and so on.

There’s a tendency in modern Western philosophy to see truth as contingent on politics, and while that is a factor, it’s not purely an act of will - there is also a technical aspect to belonging to a peer group. A plumber won’t convince his peers that he’s a good plumber by political manoeuvring, as his plumbing is also available for inspection by a group of peers with a tradition, standards of acceptance and pride in their craftsmanship. While that’s somewhat less concrete in academia, there is still an entrance bar that must be passed, and that the peer group themselves maintain in order to keep standards high and justify themselves externally.

I suspect that this is why postmodernism caused (and causes) such a fuss - rather than disagreeing on technical terms within the academic tradition, it challenges the standards of acceptance, the craftsmanship, the tradition itself.