Ethical foundations of the left

[Jim Farmelant]

First thing, I would say that as an abstract methodological point,
Justin is correct.  He is merely restating what the late W.V. Quine
liked to call "Duhemian holism."  And Justin is correct in pointing
out that Rawls' method of reflective equilibrium is simply an
extension of Quinean-Duhemian holism to moral and political
philosophy.  Having said that, it must be pointed out that
while we are in principle always free to tinker around with our
premises, so that we can always come up with a belief system
that will accomodate our intuitions, whatever they may be, it
is also the case that not all such tinkerings will prove to be equally
pragmatic for us.  For one thing to accomodate, what most of
us would regard as goofy intuitions or beliefs will tend to
require such tinkering as to render our theoretical system
to be most unparsimonous.  And that, other things being
equal is not likely to prove very useful in practice.  In
moral theory, while strong intiotions may indeed be able to 
trump otherwise sound arguments, such is not always
the case.  For one thing people do not always have the
same moral intuitions, and such intuitions do change
over time.  In our time, most people would take the
immorality of slavery as a strong intuition.  But even
in the 19th century, the wrongness of slavery was not
intuitively evident to many people in the US.  Moral arguments
can sometime trump strong intuitions through the use of
a sufficiently compelling moral reasoning which is able
to convince us that certain otherwise strong moral intuitions
that we may have are inconsistent with other very strong
moral intuitions.  If such was not the case, then moral
argumentation would hardly ever be worth anyone's time 
and energy.  And yet over the centuries, a great many
highly intelligent people have thought it to be a worthwhile
practice to engage in.  Apparently, for them moral argument
was pragmatically successful.

Another point, is that assuming that Justin has represented
Posner's position correctly, then he sounds suspiciously
like a pomo.  Many other pomos have drawn upon views
akin to Duhemian holism to justify a relativist epistemology,
in ways that Quine would most certainly have disapproved.

Jim F.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:03:12 -0500 "Ken Hanly" <khanly at mb.sympatico.ca>
writes:
> If most philosophical arguments are not neatly encapsulated in simple 
> schema and both modus ponens and modus tollens are simple schema 
> then it is difficult to see how your remarks about modus tollens and 
> modus tollens can have any relevance to discussion of most 
> philosophical arguments. But according to you the first conjunct of 
> the antecedent is true and certainly the second is also.
> 
> When you reject a premise I would think you are talking about 
> soundness. You are saying a premise is false so that the argument 
> while valid was not sound.
> 
> So if I have a strong intuition that God or whomever will save me or 
> whatever, then I can jump out of an airplane without a parachute 
> believing that I will land safely unharmed. Now of course someone 
> could. But it seems unpragmatic in the sense of not very practical 
> as a rule of behavior. Also, I fail to see how such intuitions trump 
> ordinary arguments based upon physical characteristics of bodies and 
> laws of gravity etc. 
> If all the pragmatist means is that people may not accept perfectly 
> good arguments if they conflict with strongly held intuitions that 
> is certainly true but there is no trump,the person with the 
> intuition loses and may end up dead  as in our example of the person 
> jumping out of the airplane.
> Making changes by assuming you will be weightless or drift down like 
> a bird, or will land on a huge cushion or whatever will make your 
> beliefs consistent but consistently goofy as well. This is not to 
> deny that goofy things happen but surely that is not a good basis 
> for  belief..
> 
> 
> 
> CHeers, Ken Hanly
> 
> 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Justin Schwartz 
>   To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com 
>   Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 10:37 PM
>   Subject: Re: Ethical foundations of the left
> 
> 
>   No. My point is just that you can run an argumrent either way. If 
> you don't like the conclusion, and it's valid, you can reject a 
> premise. Most arguments in philosophy of any importance are not 
> neatly encapsulated in a simple schema, and, if you don't like the 
> conclusioon, and don;t see a premise you can attack, you can reject 
> on the basis of some arguable invalidity,e,g,, find a false 
> dichotomy somewhere presupposed. 
> 
>   Anyway, this is nitpicking on the side. The main thing is the 
> pragmatic truism that you can hold any belief true (or false) if you 
> arew illingto make enough changes elsewhere. That's why Posner's 
> right that philosophical arguments don't trump strong intuitions. 
> --jks
> 
> 
> 
>   >From: "Ken Hanly" 
>   >Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com 
>   >To: 
>   >Subject: Re: Ethical foundations of the left 
>   >Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 13:43:36 -0500 
>   > 
>   >I dont understand. Both modus ponens and modus tollens are valid. 
> There is no question of testing their validity except aa an exercise 
> for students in constructing truth tables. Are you talking about 
> soundness? 
>   > 
>   >Cheers, Ken Hanly 
>   > I agree with P that in general, a strong intuition trumps an 
> apparantly strong argument for a counterinituitive conclusion. It's 
> a pragmatist platitude taht one man's modus ponens is another man's 
> modus tollens, that if an argument has an unpalatable conclusion, we 
> might do well to reassess the truth of the premises and test the 
> validity of the reasoning. This is also Rawls' view. It is the basic 
> idea that the notion of reflective equilibrium i supposed to 
> capture. 
>   > 
>   > --jks 
>   > 
>   > 
>   > 
>   
>
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