Ethical foundations of the left

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Mon Jul 23 07:40:20 PDT 2001


It's because our beliefs are holisitic that simple schema are hard put to capture what is important to us in big philosophical issues. Everyone who has taught philosophy has run into this teaching intro: you crisply put together some argument for or against the existence of God or free will or something in a nice syllogistic form, present it to the class, and receive irritation and anger from people who feel they are being tricked. Obviously you have the dialectical skills to run verbal circles around them, but this only pisses them off because it seems to them that you are playing games with things that are important to them while not addressing their real concerns. If that means that the simple schema of modus ponens/tollens are not in fact much use in real philosophy, so be it. Ken, you are still nitpicking.

Jim, of you are you are right that not all recorganizations of our beliefs are equally acceptance. That is why Rawls insists on a _reflective_ equilibrium, one in which we know the grounds of justification of our considered beliefs and thes tructure of their derivation. This is hard work--it's called thinking_ and most prople don't do much of it about ethics.

I doubt that ethical argument directly changes many people's mind's. I don't think it changed people's mind's about slavery. Manybe a few, but the discrediting of slavery was a big social process that involved a lot of complex factors. In America, even in the North, where slavery was unlawful, the mainstream opponents of slavery (like Lincoln) found it tolerable, until it ended in the war, and then not because it was wrong, but because (a) the slaves fled, emancipating themselves, and (b) Lincoln found a military necessity basis for legal emancipation.

In my own experience teaching and studying, I can recall have my own mind changed by argument only a few times, and likewise only having persuaded a student only a few times.

So what good is ethical argument? Just because it doesn't change minds doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. It's interesting. It organizes one's own thoughts. It illuminates what is at stake even if you aren't persuaded. It contributes indirectly to the general climare that does change minds. I don't see any reason to be apologetic about it just because it's not a reliable way of making people be good. It's rather supposed to help us all know what is good.

Is Posner a pomo? Many pragmatists have noted that there is a consiliance between pomo and antirealistic pragmatism. Rorty used to call himself a pomo. Does it matter?

--jks


>From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Ethical foundations of the left
>Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:35:28 -0400
>
>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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