Ethical foundations of the left

Kenneth MacKendrick kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca
Thu Jul 26 22:21:33 PDT 2001


At 04:42 PM 7/25/01 -0500, you wrote:


>Well call it a belief if you like. My point would still hold for beliefs.
>Just as with intuitions the belief might not be changed by arguments
>philosophical or otherwise. But the belief wouldnt trump or win and so
>forth.
>
>A belief is a rule of behavior. Why would you want to hold that? What are
>you sayiing other than that people who bellieve x behave as if x were true?
>I would think rules of behavior might be the sort of thing you find in the
>bus or wherever : No swearing etc.

A belief is a worldview, it is the anchor for our orientation in the lifeworld. In this sense, it is the source of knowledge that one draws on for communicative actions. Communicative action, however, dethaws this worldview, by subjecting 'beliefs' to critique, in this sense, the sacred is linguistified through communicative interactions, beliefs become rationalized. But that isn't your point... as a rule of behaviour it might be more helpful for me to say that beliefs provide the susbstance for the norms that guide our activity, on instrumental, strategic and communicative levels.


> So what behavior is implied by my belief that it is raining or it is not
>raining?

Point taken. A belief system is always more complex than a single isolated point. Maybe you'll need to dance now, or perhaps grab raincoat, light a fire, pray, or visit the water closet...


> I understand the term "illiocutionary" as refering to a type of
>linguistic act namely one in which by saying something you are doing
>something. For example, in saying "I promise" in certain circumstances I
>perform the act of promising. According to John Austin a number of verbs
>when used in the first person present tense are performative, and as such
>illocutionary. Other examples would be " I christen" " I forgive" and so
>on.

Right. It is a performative.


> Austin's primary classification of linguistic acts consists of:
>locutionary acts (incorporating three distinct acts); locutionary acts;
>perlocutionary acts. For example if I utter the string "I promise to take
>you camping" then I do at least three linguistic acts. I say that I will
>take you (the kids say) camping. This is the locutionary act. I promise I
>will take them camping. This is the illocutionary act. Let us say they jump
>up and down for joy. I cause them to jump up and down for joy. This is the
>perlocutionary act.
> John Searle's book Speech Acts carries on Austin's work to some degree
>and influenced Habermas as I recall. A more formalistic approach to speech
>acts is found in Jerrold Katz and John Ross.
> A belief is not illocutionary because it is not a linguistic act.
> The term "intuitition" is used in a variety of ways, some technical
>as in Kants forms of intuition. However I understood Justin to be referring
>to pre-philosophical thoughts or feelings. These of course may involve
>propositions. We think or feel that punishing the innocent is not right.
>Strong intuitions of this sort are not waiting to be recognised nor verified
>I should think. In fact as Justin claims often they will not be regarded as
>shown to be false through ordinary argument or philosophical arguments.
>Indeed utilitarianism is sometimes claimed to be inadquate as a moral theory
>because it conflicts with intuitions such as that with regard to punishing
>the innocent. For the utilitarian it would seem legitimate to punish the
>innocent if this act maximised the good. Anyway it seems that a religious
>person could very well feel so strongly that God would take care of him or
>her that the person would jump out of the plane thinking everything would
>be OK.

Habermas transforms Austin and Searle's framework and breaks it into a triad:

propositional, third person, objectivating - having to do with truth regulative, second person, intersubjective - having to do with rightness expressive, first person, subjective - having to do with authenticity or truthfulness

I was going to write up exactly how Habermas does this, but that would involve looking things up... and if you're familiar with A&S then I hope that the distinctions that Habermas makes are somewhat sensicle.

On a side note, Searle stopped reading Habermas's work on page 80 of vol. 1 of TCA (so the rumour goes) because he couldn't understand a word he was saying and remarked, "you can't do that!"

There was some concern about the subjective by Charles and Carrol - I should clarify, these are experience to which the 'I' has privileged access, they aren't necessarily private in an absolute sense since the I can only be an I in the context of an other - but when you stub your toe, you have privileged access to that pain in a way that others don't (this particular formulation won't be found in Habermas, for good reason methinks... but I take create delight in formulating it this way). Now, if I am contradicted on this point, then I submit that we aren't living on the same planet.

ken



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