Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Ethics
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"Facts" and "Values"; "Is" and "Ought"
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Another relevant author for this topic:
Hans-Georg Gadamer
He made this area his life's work and magnum opus:
Truth and Method
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He made this area his life's work and magnum opus:
Truth and Method
"Thank you for the reference. I have read Leo Strauss's attacks on the fact-value distinction but have not read Gadamer. Another book on my "to read" list.
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Recently, I've repeatedly run into the issue of "is's" vs. "oughts." Because I now believe, regardless of the linguists and their narrow western premises, that "oughts" are and must be derived from "is's," I need to learn more about ontology to pursue my "oughts."Does anyone know of good expositions of alternate theories of ontology? I'm particularly interested in writers that cover Eastern as well as Western thought.
Thanks!
Heidegger as well as Hegel are my go-to guys for ontology. Tough reading, though. Henri Bergson and Immanuel Kant in the wings, if still dissatisfied. Eastern: harder to name any. Joseph Campbell for his interpretation of the Upanishads?
Claudia wrote: "Recently, I've repeatedly run into the issue of "is's" vs. "oughts." Because I now believe, regardless of the linguists and their narrow western premises, that "oughts" are and must be derived from..."You probably already know this link but I usually find the Stanford Encyclopedia to be a really good source for grasping philosophical subjects.
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Or more specifically to your request for eastern vs. western ontology see section 3.1 below,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyo...
I find some claims in the original post to be a little over-hasty. I don't think that the fact-value distinction necessarily brings with it the view that values are "subjective" in the sense that they are reducible to personal preferences. For this reason and others, I think very few contemporary philosophers would grant that the fact-value distinction entails cultural relativism. In this context, I assume we mean by cultural relativism the impossibility of deliberating about and justifying values cross-culturally.
Although I won't pursue this, there is already a tension here between "subjectivism" and "cultural relativism"; if values are merely subjective, why draw the line at the level of culture? It would seem that it must be impossible to deliberate and justify not only cross-culturally, but intersubjectively.
The fact-value distinction seems to me to be absolutely incontrovertible, though I admit that I have read many more of its adherents than its supporters. To put it a little glibly, it is fairly obvious to me that statements like "We must conserve our resources for future generations" are different in kind from those like "I am currently sitting near the window at a Starbucks".
To say this, however, is not to say that we cannot deliberate about questions of value and (at least in principle) agree upon them intersubjectively and cross-culturally, but merely that if we are going to do so, it will be by different methods than those which we employ in deliberating upon matters of fact.
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I am not familiar with the current academic jargon and accordingly don't entirely understand what you are trying to say, but I gather that it may be a semantic issue. I used the term "distinction" because that was the term being used when I went to college and graduate school in the 1960s and early 1970s. It is also the term that was used by Leo Strauss, who happened to be one of my professors. Basically, the problem goes back at least to David Hume, who taught that values cannot be evaluated by reason. Indeed, Hume taught that reason should properly be the slave of the passions. If you read Strauss and, more recently, Harris, you will understand what I mean. Harris, a neuroscientist, discusses in depth how he has been attacked by relativists because he holds, contrary to the entire trend of the last century or more of modern science and social science, that values (the "ought") can be derived from facts (the "is"), i.e., that there is such a thing as human nature. This view is similar to that taken by such ancient philosophers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who all taught that virtue, justice, and so forth existed by nature and not merely by convention, though Harris does not discuss (if I recall correctly) any connection between his thinking and the ancients.
There have, of course, been innumerable writings on this subject over the millennia. See, for example, Locke's Questions Concerning the Law of Nature.
See also my review of Michael Shermer's The Moral Arc here. I address several of these issues in my review. The discussions by Harris and Shermer demonstrate that these issues are not just matters of antiquity but are rather the subject of present-day live academic and public debate.
8/30/2016 Correction: Contrary to my first paragraph above, I did not use the word "distinction" in post 1. I used the word "dichotomy." However, Strauss and others have referred to the "fact-value distinction." By this, they meant the view of Weber et al. that facts can be rationally analyzed but that "values" are merely subjective preferences not subject to rational examination. This was a standard academic meme in the decades after World War II and remains so today in certain academic circles.
Alan wrote: "I am not familiar with the current academic jargon and accordingly don't entirely understand what you are trying to say, but I gather that it may be a semantic issue."To which jargon are you referring? I am merely using terms already found in your original post ("fact", "value", "subjective", "cultural relativism"). For the record, everything in my post is drawn from writings of philosophers who addressed this question from roughly 1935-1960.
I don't think the issue is semantic at all. To use a somewhat pedantic language, the points I am making are (with each number corresponding to a paragraph in my first post):
1. Even if we grant that no "is" on its own logically entails an "ought", we do not need to grant that "ought"-statements are merely expressions of personal preferences (or "passions")
2. Accordingly, even if we grant that no "is" on its own logically entails an "ought", we do not need to grant that "ought"-statements cannot be justified in such a way that might transcend cultural context.
3. Even if we grant that "ought"-statements are merely expressions of personal preferences, the problem would not be that values cannot be justified in such a way as to transcend cultural context, but that they cannot even be justified from one human being to another.
4. The notion that no "is" on its own logically entails an "ought" seems to me absolutely incontrovertible. "Ought"-statements and "is"-statements are different in kind, to such a degree that it is unclear what sort of logical operation would permit such an entailment.
5. Despite my claim that no "is" on its own logically entails an "ought" [4], because I do not think that this means that "ought"-statements are merely expressions of preferences [1], I do not necessarily need to grant that "ought"-statements are impervious to rational examination. Because of the difference in kind mentioned in [4], the method of rational examination, however, will be different from the method used for the"is"-statements of the natural sciences.
I have heard Harris speak on the subject and found his claims to be conceptually muddled, though to tell you the truth, I don't remember the specifics of his argument. Perhaps I should revisit him in the next few weeks to refresh my memory.
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I agree that the method of rational examination on questions of ethics and political philosophy is different, in important respects, from the scientific method used in the natural sciences. I did not intend to convey anything that was inconsistent with that principle. In fact, my post 1 indicated my adherence to different approaches by observing that Harris's discussion of reason appeared to go beyond "testability" as used in the natural sciences.
I surmise, however, that you are approaching these issues from a somewhat different knowledge base than I. Perhaps it would help if you would identify the "writings of philosophers who addressed this question from roughly 1935-1960" upon whom you rely. It may be that I have read some of these philosophers and thereby might be more able to understand the more detailed context of your remarks if you identified them.
Similarly, you state that "very few contemporary philosophers would grant that the fact-value distinction entails cultural relativism." Who are the "contemporary philosophers" who hold that the fact-value dichotomy does not entail cultural relativism? Is Sam Harris's documentation of the current academic attacks against him on this ground something he made up? Are his opponents ghosts? The topic of cultural relativism is related to the topic of historicism. See my comment on the subject of historicism that I posted earlier today here (post 8).
As for my off-hand remark about "academic jargon," I am not familiar with some of the language and concepts used in your post 9. For example, what does "deliberating about and justifying values cross-culturally" mean? Does it mean that one tries to find the common denominator of all cultural values and pronounce these to be natural law, as did some philosophers of earlier centuries? Locke and others effectively refuted this approach long ago.
The term "intersubjectively" also was unfamiliar to me, though your immediately preceding post clarified it.
The type of fact-value dichotomy that I described in post 1 was of the kind posited by Max Weber and others going back to at least David Hume. See chapter 2 ("Natural Right and the Distinction Between Facts and Values") of Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). It was very much in vogue when I was in college and graduate school during the 1960s and early 1970s. From what Sam Harris wrote in his book, it appears to be still alive and well in significant portions of academia.
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Alan wrote: "Philippe-Antoine wrote: "Because of the difference in kind mentioned in [4], the method of rational examination, however, will be different from the method used for the "is"-statements of the natur..."Most of my background is in early-to-mid 20th century meta-ethics: A.J. Ayer, C.L. Stevenson, R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie. The position toward which I lean (and which I hope to elaborate in my own graduate work) is more or less Kantian in flavour: universalizability is in some sense unavoidable in certain kinds of evaluation, and this gives us a foothold for rational argumentation.
I certainly do not claim that there aren't philosophers who subscribe to some variety of cultural relativism. I just don't think that they do so (or at least that many of them do so) on the basis of fact-value distinction. In fact, the current trend in Anglo-American philosophy, where Hume and the fact-value distinction are most prevalent, seems to be leaning toward the meta-ethical realism championed by D. Parfit and T. Cuneo. As far as I know, there is currently much more interest in refuting the fact-value distinction than in defending it.
The hard-line cultural relativists, in my experience, are usually associated with the European or Continental school and are often steeped in Heidegerrian, Derridean, and Foucauldian thought. C. Taylor and similar figures inspired by the hermeneutic method also come to mind here. I suspect that these are the people criticizing Harris most prominently.
Their strategy, I think, is not so much to claim that "is"-statements cannot entail "ought"-statements, but rather that there is no such thing as a bare "is". They will usually appeal to a sort of historicized Kantianism whereby the categories or concepts by which we process experience are related not to the human subject as such, but to the cultural milieu. They will then say that these concepts are already invested with cultural value, and so that science can never even arrive at a value-free "is" from which an "ought" could be derived. They would see Harris as claiming ultimate validity for constructions of his own culture. I have some sympathies with this view, but most of its adherents go much too far and end up presenting an incoherent picture.
As for justifying values cross-culturally: Cultural relativism (in the normative sense we have been discussing) is a denial of moral universalism, according to which there are moral values, goods, principles, imperatives, etc. which in some sense hold for all human beings. When I say that granting the fact-value distinction does not force us to grant that values cannot be justified cross-culturally, I mean simply that it does not force us to abandon moral universalism in favour of a view of morality as wholly dependent on culture.
J. Habermas, on whom I am currently working, seems to offer a promising middle-way which upholds a broadly Kantian universalism with respect to a certain class of values (which he calls "moral") which conceding the philosophical inscrutability of another class (which he calls "ethical"). Sadly, I have not yet read enough to be able to judge his success, but it is at least a promising avenue that I will be exploring for the next year or so.
As an interesting corollary: Although much has been made of "Hume's Law" or "Hume's Fork", Hume never actually claimed that "ought"-statements could in no way be derived from "is"-statements, but merely that philosophers who made this move had failed to demonstrate the manner in which they got from one to the other. What he has in mind, I think, is very much compatible with what I have been saying, viz. that while universalism may well hold, the manner in which we justify it cannot be merely to present the facts and "deducing" values from them which are somehow already "inherent" to them (since the conclusion of a valid deduction, of course, never contains anything that was not already contained in the premises).
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Thank you for your explanation, which is quite helpful. I am not much familiar with the post-Kantian philosophers you mention. I think the hardline proponents of the fact-value dichotomy (i.e., the views of Weber and his successors described in my earlier posts) are in the social sciences and the sciences, not in philosophy. I was told that there were daily battles in the political science faculty lounge at the University of Chicago when I was there between the Straussians and the behavioralists/empiricists. The American Political Science Review became page after page of quantitative studies. It makes sense that philosophy departments would not succumb to this type of scientism. When I have time, I'll check out some of the philosophers you mention.
Hey Alan, I'm glad you found my response helpful. Just a quick clarification, though: of the philosophers I mentioned, only R.M. Hare and Jürgen Habermas both admit the fact/value distinction and try to bridge it using some variation of Kantian universalism. If you're interested in the possibility of admitting this gap and bridging it, their works are the place to go. Of course, there is also Kant himself, who does not address the fact/value distinction explicitly (to my knowledge), but who has read Hume and offers a kind of moral "objectivity" that does not need the naive postulate of values "existing" as part of the fabric of the world (as, e.g. we find in Moore's moral realism).
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I have doubts about Kant's approach, but I am admittedly not very well read in his works. "Facts" and "values" are, to my mind, a rather crude disjunctive formulation. When I refer to "facts," I mean the facts regarding human nature, including the human faculty of reason. When I refer to "values," I mean the questions of ethical and political philosophy first thematically treated by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and so on. In this approach, values arise out of facts, because arete (virtue), justice, and so forth arise out of the nature of human beings. Sam Harris and other of our contemporaries take, of course, a more "scientific" approach to this entire subject, though I find it refreshing that they think that values are subject to rational analysis. In contrast, the behavioralists in the social sciences and elsewhere have long taught that only "facts" (they mean primarily quantitative facts) are subject to rational examination and that "values" are merely individual preferences, feelings, or emotions not subject to reasoned analysis. Accordingly, social "science" is, to them, merely a tool. The end ("values") is determined by our feelings. This is a reformulation of Hume's dictum (if I recall it correctly) that reason is a slave of the passions.
I will read the authors you mention and, in fact, have intended to read them for some time. I spent a few decades of my life in a very time-consuming career as a litigation lawyer. It is mostly only now, in my retirement, that I am able to get back to some of these philosophical matters that were the subject of my studies during my twenties. See, however, the following addendum to this post.
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Although much of my philosophical study was undertaken in my twenties (late 1960s and early 1970s) and then again after my 2012 retirement, I also occasionally found time, during my years of gainful employment, to look into these issues. This was especially so during the years 1995-2000, when I wrote my first book, First Philosophy and Human Ethics: A Rational Inquiry (Philosophia Publications, 2000); see also my updates and revisions to the book here. I wrote that book in blissful ignorance of twentieth-century academic philosophy (of which I am still largely ignorant). Although my book cited and sometimes quoted from ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers, it was largely silent about twentieth-century philosophy. I will probably rewrite my book sometime within the next several years, incorporating my revisions and thinking about and studying more deeply both ancient and modern philosophy, including twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy. I possess several unread books by such contemporary ethicists as Stephen Toulmin (The Place of Reason in Ethics), Rosalind Hursthouse (On Virtue Ethics), Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness), and Simon Blackburn (Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning, and Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy). I will read these and other books before I complete the revision of my First Philosophy and Human Ethics, and I may also change the title of my book in the course of preparing the second edition.
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I received my A.B. in political science at the University of Chicago in 1968. I later received an A.M. in humanities (focusing on philosophy and history) at the same university. But I want to focus right now on the political science department at the University of Chicago during my undergraduate years.
The academic political science discipline throughout the United States at that time was divided between the advocates of behavioralism, led by David Easton, and the advocates of the study of the history of political philosophy, led by Leo Strauss. Both Easton and Strauss were in the political science department of the University of Chicago, and that political science department was "ground zero" of the nationwide academic conflict. I took one course from Strauss before he moved to Claremont (as a result of mandatory retirement policies in effect at that time at the University of Chicago). I took several courses from Joseph Cropsey (Strauss's principal associate in the department) during both my undergraduate and graduate years and also courses taught by Ralph Lerner and Herbert Storing (both of whom were considered to be "Straussians"). I did not take any courses from David Easton or from the behavioralists as such, though I did take courses from some political science professors who were not clearly identified with either camp.
The Wikipedia article on "Behavioralism" is a somewhat adequate explanation of the behavioralist movement in the political science profession at that time. I don't know whether these battles still rage (I've been out of the academic world for decades), though I am aware of the current opposition between the Straussians and the postmodernists.
The Wikipedia article references but does not elaborate on the fact-value distinction that was so emphasized by behavioralists at that time. As I mentioned above, the behavioralists taught that only "facts" (mostly quantitative facts) can be known and that "values" are merely unscientific, untestable feelings—"value judgments" in the jargon of the day. For further information, see, inter alia, Herbert J. Storing, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), especially chapter 5 ("An Epilogue") by Leo Strauss.
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I should add that I spent several months last year studying Kant. My book Free Will and Human Life has a section on Kant's approach to free will, and my forthcoming book Reason and Human Ethics will address his views on ethics.
Alan, you are a marvel. On this subject, Weber is often credited with articulating the fact/value dichotomy. But a century earlier, Hume argued that an “is” can never establish an “ought”.
Care to share your thoughts on Mr. Humes’ observation pre-dating Herr Weber’s?
Mod
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
My book Reason and Human Ethics has now been published in both paperback and Kindle. The Amazon link is at https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E.... A book description and synopsis is posted at https://www.academia.edu/82205975/_Re....
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. These excerpts are from the published book. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
I guess we will all remain on the edge of our seats until then. Kidding aside, thank you for your leadership in this special little corner of GR. Your profundity is inspiring, as is your kindness.
Mod
We discussed David Hume’s is–ought distinction above. This notion is similar to the fact–value dichotomy of modern social science. Biological life is teleological (end-seeking). In considering “facts,” we must consider all the facts, not just the facts recognized by physics. The teleological nature of biological life is simply a fact that is unscientific to ignore. Human beings possess a reasoning faculty by nature. They also possess some degree of free will. This is how so-called “values” arise out of “facts”—or, to use Humean terminology, how the “ought” arises from the “is.” Humans have to exercise their reasoning powers to fulfill their individual, social, and political potentials. This is simply a “fact” of human “life.” It is not a fact of physics or mathematics.I will cite numerous sources for this paragraph, many of which I have already cited in Free Will and Human Life. Needless to say, I may modify this paragraph in one way or another before the book is published.
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
Mod
For some reason, people have cavalierly disregarded Hume's explicit requests that his Treatise of Human Nature be ignored. In an “Advertisement” prefaced to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , he called the Treatise a “juvenile work, which the author never acknowledged” (it was published anonymously). He concluded the “Advertisement” by requesting that the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding “alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles” about these matters. Hume expressed similar disparaging sentiments regarding the Treatise in a February 1754 letter to John Stewart.
Hume, like his teacher Francis Hutcheson and his friend Adam Smith, taught that ethics was determined by "sentiment," i.e. what he called the "passions." This was modernity's answer to the classical philosophers. Having disposed of Aristotle's formal and final causes, they thought they needed to base ethics on something, so they picked out sentiment/emotion. Funny thing that what they came up with was the common feeling of the day.
This view of emotion as the basis of ethics was elaborated further by twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy and social science.
We see the result of the modern demotion of reason and the corresponding promotion of emotion in today's politics. I need cite only the events of January 6, 2021.
"Moral sentiments" strikes me as fairly noble-sounding; as opposed to the term "passions". I'll want to understand better sometime, why Hume chose either of these phrases for his idea.Edit: apparently 'sentiment' was the most apt phrase Hume et al could come up with for concepts like 'sympathy toward others'(?) Whether or not this is accurate, I myself would still distinguish 'feelings' like compassion versus a 'feeling' like rage, or destructive rage. According to what I just read, this might signify that I'm short-sighted and concerned with "instrumental means" rather than "logical ends". But, I accept this verdict, until I learn or evolve further.
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I am reading an interesting book on the present-day manifestation of the views of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith: Hanno Sauer, Moral Judgments As Educated Intuitions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). Sauer discusses the prevailing notion in empirical psychology that feelings dictate ethical decisions, with reason serving merely to concoct a later confabulation to justify the decision. Sauer disagrees with this position. Although he acknowledges a role for emotion, he believes that reason is, or should be, ultimately important in ethical decisions. But I’ve oversimplified his argument, which he develops at length. See the book description at the above-linked Goodreads site.
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Hume’s mature position is contained in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1759), which he considered his best work. His Appendix I (titled “Concerning Moral Sentiment”) concludes:
Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery: Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition. From circumstances and relations, known or supposed, the former leads us to the discovery of the concealed and unknown: After all circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter makes us feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or approbation. The standard of the one, being founded on the nature of things, is eternal and inflexible, even by the will of the Supreme Being: The standard of the other, arising from the internal frame and constitution of animals, is ultimately derived from that Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature, and arranged the several classes and orders of existence. (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. J. B. Schneewind [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983], 88.)
Thanks, Alan. That quote seems to express where Hume stands quite clearly. I can see, that it is a more limited position than the one you describe with the support of Aristotle. Yet I still feel myself agreeing with some things Hume articulates. I've long thought that one problem with Reason is that it is no "direct" spur to our actions. We might think we can hold our forefinger over a candle for a moment, but in reality we pull it back after just an instant.
But, I don't concur that it follows necessarily (from recognizing the nature of action), that men only value 'ways', 'means' and 'best utility', over 'causes', 'goals', and 'ends'. I simply admire a helpful, healing impulse like empathy; and I despise the reckless chaos of impulses like fury.
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Yet I still feel ..."
My own view, which is somewhat nuanced, will be developed fully over several chapters of Reason and Human Ethics. The first chapter, which I am now preparing, addresses the basis of ethics. I will then devote an entire chapter to what I mean by reason. Subsequent chapters will elaborate how that concept applies to individual ethics, social ethics, citizen and media ethics, and political ethics. Suffice it to say that by reason I do not mean either medieval Scholasticism or modern formal symbolic logic. Rather, I refer, in part, to informal logic, as discussed in the “Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking” topic of this group. Moreover, feelings such as empathy and sympathy are not expunged from my approach, though they, like all emotions, are ultimately subject to correct reasoning. Since the book is still in its formative stages, it won’t be published until 2022 or 2023. However, the ideas for the book (which are based partly, though not entirely, on my 2000 book on ethics) are firmly in my mind. It will just take time to get it all written in a manner that is satisfactory to me, which includes some additional reading.
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
My book Reason and Human Ethics has now been published in both paperback and Kindle. The Amazon link is at https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E.... A book description and synopsis is posted at https://www.academia.edu/82205975/_Re....
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. These excerpts are from the published book. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
'Mercy' is another interesting human capacity. Ostensibly a sentiment, but one occasionally found codified by jurists, into even the best of our legal systems (he said, dryly). Would it be a stretch to say that mercy can be delivered dispassionately, either as an ethic or as a political remedy, or civic boon?
Mod
“Mercy” is a rather vague concept. I think of it in the following contexts:
• The religious tradition in which I was raised taught that, as a result of original sin and our own individual sins, we all deserved to go to hell. To avoid that fate, we had to beg God for mercy. Thus, part of the weekly Sunday ritual was to recite the following language: “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
• In the criminal justice system, a judge can grant “mercy” to a defendant found guilty of an offense by lessening that defendant’s punishment (sentence). However, this is not called “mercy” in the criminal justice system. And the judge is only free to mitigate the sentence within the standards (types of extenuating circumstances) set by law. Similarly, the law establishes legal standards governing paroles, commutations, and pardons.
The ideal judge would dispassionately weigh the legal various factors in mitigating a sentence. In practice, however, judges are sometimes, if not often, motivated by retributory passion. This gets into the issue of the proper basis for criminal punishment: see posts 2–6 in the “Criminal Law” topic.
It’s not clear to me how the concept of mercy would operate in the noncriminal, ethical realm. I suppose that if one acted in self-defense when attacked by another, one might avoid killing the latter if less stringent means of self-defense were practicable. However, criminal law also governs the proportionality of measures taken in self-defense, so, again, it ultimately is more a question of law than of mercy.
re: #35. "It’s not clear to me how the concept of mercy would operate in the noncriminal, ethical realm."Random examples which come to mind: Leopold and Loeb, Sacco and Vanzetti, Starkweather & Fugate, Chester Gillette, Alger Hiss, The Chicago Seven, The Rosenbergs, the Molly Maguires? The IRA, William Joyce, Klaus Fuchs, George Blake, Dreyfus, Nuremberg, Eddie Slovik, Hurricane Carter, Souain Corporals Affair, or PETA [?] Just a rhetorical list of possible cases.
Basically, any case where someone committed a crime for higher (though not necessarily better) motive. Just woolgathering aloud.
addendum to #36. Some of what I just rattled off are certainly criminal cases and ought to be omitted from the question I myself raised. Would probably do better to turn my thoughts to US Supreme Court cases. Or extremes, such as the 'hiding of Jews from the Gestapo'. Still, I reckon you are right Alan, in that most case law rarely draws on the quality of mercy from presiding magistrates.
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Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971) and Richard Albert Loeb (/ˈloʊb/; June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), usually referred to collectively as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who in May 1924 kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago, Illinois. They committed the murder—characterized at the time as "the crime of the century"—as a demonstration of their ostensible intellectual superiority, which they believed enabled and entitled them to carry out a "perfect crime" without consequences.And what was Clarence Darrow’s defense of them? Wikipedia quotes from Darrow’s closing argument: “This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor. Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”
Darrow’s defense of Leopold and Loeb was predicated on two major arguments: (1) that the murderers did not have free will, that they were predetermined to do the crime, and (2) that they were merely acting out the Nietzschean philosophy that they had learned in college. I reject both premises. My book Free Will and Human Life refutes the first, and common sense refutes the second. I don’t know whether Darrow, in his 12-hour speech, tried to argue an insanity defense, but these murderers were clearly not insane within the purview of the law (or otherwise, for that matter).
The Leopold and Loeb case reminds me of the defenses of the January 6 defendants. Their attorneys claim that they were merely following Trump, whom they believed had the right to order them to commit the attack on the Capitol, assault police officers, hang Mike Pence, and kill Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. The foreseeable consequences of their actions included the several deaths that did occur as well as the physical injuries to many police officers. Now, the January 6 “brainwashing” defense has a little more plausibility than the Nietzschean defense of Leopold and Loeb. After all, many (but not all) of the January 6 defendants were ignorant. But there is a concept called “willful ignorance” or “willful blindness” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful...). Chapter 5 of the second edition of my Electoral College book addressed the January 6 situation in depth, as will my chapter on citizen ethics in my forthcoming Reason and Human Ethics. Perhaps some of the defendants could argue that their IQs are so low or their upbringing so distorted that they should be granted mercy on that ground. But, again, that is a matter for judicial determination based on established legal rules.
By the way, a true mental “brainwashing” (for example, someone acting in a hypnotic trance as in the movie The Manchurian Candidate) would be handled under well-established legal principles, e.g., whether the defendant had the requisite mens rea (legal intent) to commit the crime. Mercy would have nothing to do with it.
This country has witnessed decades—nay, centuries—of “mercy” shown to police officers (or the lynch mobs and vigilantes of yesteryear) who kill Black people in cold blood, without any legal justification. The uproar from the political Right against the conviction of the police officer who murdered George Floyd is the latest example of such mentality. This is another test case for “mercy.” Such cases convince me that “mercy” often serves as a cover for prejudice and other unacceptable attitudes. In the contest between justice and mercy, I take the side of justice, qualified, of course, by the standard legal criteria for mitigation of justice.
To me, “mercy” implies that the person to whom mercy is extended has done something wrong. Therefore, I would not consider the hiding of Jews from Nazi authorities an example of mercy. It is rather an example of humanity, empathy, and sympathy—a view of what is right rather than what is most prudent.
Plato, Aristotle, and other classical philosophers had no concept of mercy. This was, rather, introduced by Christianity: see the first bullet point in my post #35. (Perhaps it was/is also in some other religions with which I am less familiar.) “Mercy” is, in my view, too ambiguous and amorphous to be treated as an ethical virtue. There are other ethical criteria that more accurately characterize such states of mind.
It appears we have strayed far from the present topic: facts and values, the “is” and the “ought.” However, I suppose our digression has the following relevance. If, as many social scientists and philosophers suggest, “values” are mere personal preferences not subject to rational analysis, if all values are relative or even predetermined, then people can extend mercy to, say, the Nuremberg defendants without committing any violation of justice. The concept of willful ignorance must be thrown out the window along with the entirety of the criminal law. The Holocaust must be excused, because the Nazi perpetrators couldn’t help what they did. This view would, perhaps, satisfy the predeterminist opponents of free will. It is, however, contrary to the order of (human) nature.
Strayed a little ways from the wicket yes, but I am glad you didn't lose that reply in a browser crash. Good stuff.If I might add just a whit more: interesting variations on the insanity defense found in the history of the State of Michigan. Something to kick around some other time, perhaps.
(People v Durfee, People v. Martin, People v Coleman Peterson)
https://law.justia.com/cases/michigan...
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If I might add just a whit more: interesting variations on the insanity defense ..."
Yes, that case presents many of the legal issues with which the courts grapple regarding the insanity defense. It was decided shortly before I went to law school, and it brings back memories of my criminal law and criminal procedure classes.
Feliks, I would appreciate it if you would also post the link to this case in the "Criminal Law" topic of this group. Thanks.
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See Carlos van Hamme’s September 2005 paper “The Is-Ought Category Error: How Life Necessarily Generates Purpose Through Constitutive Normativity,” https://www.academia.edu/144009322/Th.... This essay expresses, in academic terms, some of the same principles and concepts that I discuss in plain language in my books Free Will and Human Life (https://www.academia.edu/108171849/Al...) and Reason and Human Ethics (https://www.academia.edu/107899091/Re...), though he develops and applies them in some ways that had not occurred to me. As I complete the final book, Reason and Human Government, of my philosophical trilogy on free will, ethics, and political philosophy, I don’t have time right now to ascertain whether I disagree with any of his analysis, but I do recommend this paper for those interested in these questions.
Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher, Historian, Political Scientist, and Legal Scholar
Political Philosophy and Ethics
Books mentioned in this topic
Truth and Method (other topics)Truth and Method (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Hans-Georg Gadamer (other topics)Hans-Georg Gadamer (other topics)
I do not necessarily agree with Harris on all issues. For example, he seems to me to contradict himself on the question of free will (we apparently don't have free will except when liberating ourselves from religion), and I'm not too sure about the ease with which he moves back and forth between individual and collective well being (a difficult question involving both ethical and political philosophy, including but not limited to means and ends issues). But I find his rejection of the fact-value dichotomy quite interesting, even though I might have a somewhat different way of approaching the issue.
Harris has been harshly attacked by left-wing academia for rejecting cultural relativism (see his "Afterword" to the paperback and Kindle editions of The Moral Landscape). He has long, of course, been attacked from the right for being a proponent of the "New Atheism." I tend to think that both critiques are misguided, though, again, I don't necessarily agree with the entirety of his analysis.