Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Ethics
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Human Ethics: Basis, Principles, Applications
Alan wrote: "There are, as I understand it, two somewhat separate strands of ethics or morality: (1) ethics directed toward oneself (again, Aristotle and "virtue ethics"), and (2) ethics or morality regarding one's treatment of other human beings.."Then there is the usage related to professional ethics for instance the courses on Psychological ethics. I'm sure Alan you had some similar training as a lawyer and I know that doctors, nurses, architects etc also get some training in this field. Usually this is presented as falling into your second definition - "ethics or morality regarding one's treatment of other human beings" and that's usually where it started but these days it can look for all the world like a butt covering exercise. You end up protecting the client / patient but as a secondary outcome of protecting the practitioner / business first i.e. good paperwork, record keeping etc which also look a lot like plausible deniability and arms length responsibility.
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Professional ethics is really something considerably different. This is one of the reasons why the provisional title of my forthcoming work on ethics is Reason and Human Ethics. I am concerned with ethics regarding humans as humans as distinguished from humans as lawyers, physicians, and so forth. The rules of professional ethics deal with scenarios unique to each field and not with human beings generally. In fact, some of the rules of professional legal ethics, with which I am most familiar, are counterintuitive to most people, because they are designed for proper representation of clients in an adversary system. This is particularly true of legal ethics rules applicable to criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys, but it is also applicable to civil litigation and to nonlitigation lawyers. Legal ethics rules are often denominated as rules of "professional responsibility," which involve highly complicated considerations that have been worked out over the centuries. I speak of American law; I am not familiar with the legal systems--or rules of ethics--of other countries, especially those outside, as you say, the "Anglosphere."
I think you are a bit too cynical about the purposes of professional ethics rules. At least in the legal field, the rules are designed, first and foremost, to protect the client and, secondarily, to protect the integrity of the legal system (e.g., not permitting lawyers to mislead judges about the law or facts). Lawyers who get disbarred or otherwise disciplined under the rules usually have violated either their duties to the client or to the court or to both. Although I never handled a professional responsibility (legal ethics) case, I did sometimes represent parties in legal malpractice cases, which involve similar principles. One time, I even testified as an expert in a legal malpractice case.
Refreshing my familiarity with logical fallacies tonight. Poking around various web pages of dubious scholarship. Depending on the authorship of the fallacies being written about, I find myself casting a jaundiced eye over some of the interpretations offered.
Certain fallacies (ad hominem, or the Argument from Ignorance) seem much more obvious and basic (and acceptable) than others, which seem more to me like nit-picking and hair-splitting.
Does it seem to anyone else but I, that a few of the classical fallacies seem written as if to advocate a path to logical behavior on some other planet than Earth? This is my reaction to reading some of these.
But then I'm naturally reminded that logic is often said (by its designers) to be intended to serve mankind in whatever environment we may find ourselves. We are admonished to let logic govern our rationality even if for instance, our species had (at any point in time) developed somewhere else in the universe. Even on some other planet.
Well. This leads me to then ask this: what if there ever had been another planet within our experience? What if we had ever stepped someplace where extremely different physical or chemical or biological laws applied? If we were raised with different gravity or different reproduction cycles?
Some formal fallacies seem to take many Earth-centric factors for granted as their basis (for their explanation), and yet at the same time say "don't fall back on nature, because it doesn't apply everywhere".
Example: the average citizen usually believes in a 'principle' like say, 'revenge' or 'retribution' without being able to say exactly why. He just knows it, He has seen it all his life. He lives by it. It's not logical, but it is how the world generally works. Yet, logic tells this man never to use this 'worldliness' to validate his actions.
Its implied that he's allowing too much awareness of concrete everyday life to permeate his thinking. Instead (to be fully circumspect and logical) he should behave as if inhabiting an abstract planet in a theoretical, non-corporeal universe.
But under a different definition of nature and evolution (from which over millennia, our current society developed) wouldn't all logical fallacies themselves, be grossly altered? Wouldn't even the logic from which logical fallacies are drawn, be undercut?
Imagine a world where gravity did not permit a harmful or violent blow to be struck. Or a planet where nothing could 'crash' into anything else, resulting in 'harm'. How many fallacies would have to be re-written?
Just musing. I realize I may have asked this question in a different form, some time previously (this strikes me now as I read what I have written). If so, I ask for indulgence. :D
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Depending on the authorship of the fallacies being written about, I find myself c..."
Feliks, I have responded in post # 126 of the "Reason, Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking" topic.
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Alan wrote: "Although I disagreed with some of the arguments in Martha Nussbaum's Liberty of Conscience, especially with her account of Roger Williams, I have found her recent essay "The Present and Future Val..."I tried several times to get into that article --because it seems to be about my favorite topic, 'emotion'--but I disagree with the first basic premise I discovered that I've had to repeatedly halt.
It seems to fall into a negative stereotype of 'older' individuals; painting them as being unable to live in any other mode than "reminiscing around the cracker barrel", as it were. I just don't buy this notion. I think its even a little demeaning.
I think anyone of any age --were they to undergo sudden, sweeping, life experiences--might be apt to be influenced by them for a long time afterwards.
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It seems to fall into a negative stereotype of 'older' individuals; painting them as being unable to live in any other mode than "reminiscing around the cracker barrel", as it were. I just don't buy this notion. I think its even a little demeaning."
These are excerpts from a book by Martha Nussbaum and Saul Leymore entitled Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret (Oxford University Press, 2017). To the extent she referenced individuals, Nussbaum was, I believe, referring to actual persons whom she knew or interviewed. Accordingly, they were not stereotypes. What I found interesting were Nussbaum's discussions of ethical matters. I didn't read the Leymore excerpt, and I don't intend to read the book, but I thought that Nussbaum's discussions of certain ethical considerations were thought-provoking. I don't recall the details right now, as I read this a few weeks ago and have been preoccupied with other things in the meantime.
Many younger people seem to have a phobia about aging. Believe it or not, some people (myself included) welcome old age. To enjoy it, one does not have to deny one's mortality or somatic decline. All that just goes with the territory. Nature is nature, and each stage of human life has its advantages and disadvantages. But old age and retirement (if one can afford it) are liberating. After all, I've researched, written, and published two books since I retired in late 2012 (notwithstanding two hospitalizations for medical issues), and I'm now working on my third. These have been the best years of my life. So "don't cry for me," young-uns. I'm having a good time.
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I’m 76 and am working on a number of social/political issues! That is the “secret” of successful elder life! Keeping on with productive work! My current project is the Medicaid spend down rules for long term care at home or in a nursing home. Note: Look up the spend down rules in your state! They are all different and if you are like most people you will be surprised and are not prepared!
'friendship is utilitarian in nature'Light, interesting read
https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/201...
Her pleasant-looking site also has mention of the Overton window in a sidebar, which is a term I think we're going to see increasingly more of
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...New paper, 'The Moral Hazard Of Lifesaving Innovations' concludes that when states promote freer distribution of the opiate-overdose-antidote naloxone, people are more likely to abuse opiates because it’s perceived as safer, and in the end there’s higher crime and no reduction in mortality.
Scenario/Thought experimentImagine that a cruise liner sinks somewhere far out in the Pacific. Everyone perishes except a small mixed group of passengers/crew, who are lucky enough to navigate to a tiny island.
It is surrounded by dangerous coral reefs and hazardous navigation. Only small craft such as theirs are able to land safely.
Once ashore, they find resources scarce. There is fresh water but not in steady supply.
The island in general is unstable. The shoreline can suddenly erode; it needs constant hard labour by the castaways so as not to lose available living space. Everyone is needed to work.
There are only meagre food sources. The sole proteins are rare, high-quality sea-turtle eggs. This fantastic seafood would be a luxury item in any restaurant in the world. But as far as they're concerned, there's just enough to enable them all to survive.
They confer among themselves and make a group decision. All food and water shall be equally rationed in order for everyone to have enough nutrition.
But the island also possesses some tropical diseases (malaria, dengue fever, etc). Soon, two members of the party are stricken. It is expected that every one of the group will --sooner or later--also fall ill, in turn.
One of the intrepid little band is a medic. His diagnosis is that anyone taken ill, needs extra rations of food and water to speed recovery. Everyone is asked to agree to cut a portion of their own intake.
This suggestion is met with equanimity by some; with reluctance by others.
Question: In this simplistic illustration, what kind of ethics (or politics) apply? Is there a better way to behave than how they've chosen so far?
I'm dubious re message #65. Seems like deliberately opting for a half-measure, or ekeing-out-a-space-to-stand-on-the-sideline. And doesn't informal logic already handle situations where there is an unreliable or slow feed of available information?
Alan wrote: "The following is my response to Randal's original Post No. 2, which I accidentally deleted: see current Post No. 2, which copies and pastes his original post from my PDF copy. Since the result lose..."The Big Bang did not cause/create the Universe. It marked the beginning of it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
We don't know what happened in the moments right after the Big Bang
"Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.[21] This singularity indicates that general relativity is not an adequate description of the laws of physics in this regime. Models based on general relativity alone can not extrapolate toward the singularity beyond the end of the Planck epoch."
Planck epoch: "In Big Bang cosmology, the Planck epoch or Planck era is the earliest stage of the Big Bang, before the time passed was equal to the Planck time, tP, or approximately 10−43 seconds.[17] There is no currently available physical theory to describe such short times, and it is not clear in what sense the concept of time is meaningful for values smaller than the Planck time. It is generally assumed that quantum effects of gravity dominate physical interactions at this time scale"-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_...
re: #67General relativity is always fun, but I recall Alan posted about this recently. Something about the remoteness of this kind of thing from the everyday, down-to-earth course of human events.
I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before around here but I personally despise outer space, NASA, 'hard science'-fiction, and all that. I feel it is 'playing around' instead of attending to our responsibilities.
"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." --Thomas Carlyle
Alan wrote: "Randal wrote: "The argument seems to go like this: since without the Law of Non-contradiction (LNC - you call it the principle of contradiction), “A cannot not be A,” you say that “rational thought..."Multivalued logics don't necessarily challenge the principle of non contradiction. What they do challenge is the principle of bivalence, which says every statement is either true or false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princip...
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Dalnath, you are going far afield of the scope of this group. Please see the Rules and Housekeeping topic, especially the rules stated in posts 1 and 4 therein.
Please also see posts 1, 13-15, and 24 in the Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking topic. I specifically addressed one of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles you cited in my above-referenced post 13.
I have also addressed these issues elsewhere in this forum, but I don't have time right now to track down all of the references.
Finally, please note that Randal voluntarily withdrew from this group some months ago.
Alan wrote: "I added today the following to my online Updates to First Philosophy and Human Ethics: A Rational Inquiry:Since I published First Philosophy and Human Ethics, I have discovered another work that..."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sp...
Boradicus wrote: "I would also like to make one last re-emphasis. I think that it is hard, ultimately, to go wrong when our guiding principal - from the (two) Great Commandments (but more specifically when referring..."What about if you believe that the best thing you could do for someone in a particular situation happened to be contrary to their wishes?
There seems to be similarity to the Golden Rule
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/re...
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This question was, of course, explicitly discussed in Book 1 of Plato's Republic.
Dear All,Here's a short course in moral philosophy, "Morality and the Human Condition," that's designed to be accessible & from the ground up, hence introductory, but also fairly comprehensive--a primer, really--presented as an online series in weekly installments, & each installment contains links to all the earlier installments, as well as a tab for downloading a .pdf of the complete text of the course.
Like all work that's published by Philosophy Without Borders, it's intended for universal free sharing.
This week's installment, the 9th in the series, deals with the connection between human ethics & God's existence or non-existence--
https://againstprofphil.org/2020/02/2...
I'll continue to post links to new installments under this topic heading, & I hope that you'll find them interesting to read, think about, or also discuss....
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Here's a short course in moral philosophy, "Morality and the Human Condition," that's designed to be accessible & from the ground up, hence introductory, but also fairly comprehensive--a..."
Thanks, Bob. This is exactly the kind of thing that I contemplated for this topic. I'm looking forward to reading your entire course.
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If we abandon the noncontradiction principle, does this not open the city gates to the barbarian hordes of the extreme right and the extreme left? We have enough trouble keeping people rational as it is. Telling them that they don't have to worry about contradicting themselves will only reinforce their preexisting prejudices instead of, like Socrates, challenging them. I guess I think of logic not so much as a theoretical, quasi-mathematical pursuit as a means of thinking clearly and living peaceably in the world.Not to brag or anything, but was I prescient or what?
Actually, when I read criticisms of the social justice left by religious conservatives, one refrain that recurs unceasingly is the idea that leftists are too rational, having followed the radicalism of the French Revolution to its ultimate conclusion. I think this idea is not without merit. Human life is too messy such that when we hold ourselves up to any uncompromising ideal, such as equality, we will inevitably fall short. In practice, however, the exercise of a discourse that holds us accountable to such an ideal can improve the world. But I can easily imagine it completely leveling the basis of civilization. Can you imagine a world so equal where no expertise is respected?
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It is characteristic of modernity to define rationality as being purely instrumental. By this view, it was "rational" for the French Revolution to evolve into a Reign of Terror, as the problem of the aristocrats could be "solved" by sending them to the guillotine. But I reject that view of reason. Reason should not, pace Hume, be merely in service of the passions. Reason should dictate both the ends and means of human endeavor.
As Bob Hanna (who cannot be accused of being a conservative) has demonstrated, some views of the "social justice warriors" are irrational. Extreme political correctness of the leftist variety is often irrational, not to mention extralegal violence sometimes perpetrated by the fringes of the left in democratic republics. Example: the Unabomber, who decades ago, committed violence in the name of environmentalism.
Equality is a totally different issue. You ask: "Can you imagine a world so equal where no expertise is respected?" Ha! Yes, just look at the current president of the United States and his hordes of followers. They are not equal in fact to experts, but they think they are. This gets back to the point of what happens when we (whatever our political ideology) abandon reason and evidence.
I have not "sat with" the idea of ends being conceived rationally that I can trust myself to comment on it thoughtfully. However, I will try. I suspect that what makes the selection of ends rational to rationalists is an act of judgment. And I don't believe that calm, considered acts of judgment are ever fully rational. I will have to consider this question further. But I do elaborate on this issue further below.I don't think that social justice warriors are irrational. Thank you for pointing out that the question of equality is distinct from that of rationality - what I was trying to say is that social justice warriors are actually hyperrational, in that they seek a rational consistency of their views such that it is in line with their commitments to equality. It is here I think that a little inconsistency is far more sensible, and what I mean when I say good judgement is never fully rational. There is always a little bit of fudging. Good judgment involves a consideration of experience and practical outcomes, which is always in some sense conditioned by the particularities of individual situations. And individual situations often elude our attempts to fit them neatly in our abstract categories, meaning that attention to particulars inevitably means a compromise between our sense of rationality and what can be accomplished. This is what I mean when I say good judgment is always a little irrational. If we were completely consistent and rational, the natural outcome would be radicalism. It can, but does not always involve a denial of reality. On occasion, such radicalism can change the world. But to be principled in such a way is not something I could adhere to in my own personal life.
Regarding Trump, I see your point about reason and evidence. However, conversations I have recently had with a Trump supporter make me think that you might be underestimating their respect for rationality. The person who I spoke with has a coherent story about why Trump is exactly what this country needs, and what is different about her is simply what evidence she chooses to believe as credible. That's why fake news is so toxic - it leads people who are otherwise rational to believe things that are completely false.
I think I should clarify what I mean. You might interpret what I say above to be an endorsement of means-based rationality. Actually, what I want to convey is that not even means-based rationality is completely rational. I am not sure I can completely articulate this position, except to provide a sketch of sorts.I think human beings are ultimately neuro-chemical machines, and that the mechanism of our decision-making, while whose parts are based on mathematically coherent physical laws, ultimately amount to a whole that has no inherent commitment to rationality. When I say not even means-based rationality is completely rational, what I mean is that it is often prejudiced by solutions that have worked in the past, and by the arbitrariness of mental association. We can consciously choose among the alternatives that occur to us, but can we really say we consciously choose which alternatives we have available to consider? Where do our thoughts come from? Even the most adamant proponent of free will cannot believe that all aspects of his or her conscious thought are subject to one's own will. Even if one were to argue that human beings have the capacity to be rational, I think this rationality is socially mediated in a fundamental way, so that where human beings have an incentive to be non-rational, they will often choose to obey the incentive structures of the moment.
In addition to what I have said above, I also believe the other things I have only really gestured at in the previous post - that a commitment to ends ignorant of means is impractical. I want to revise what I said above - in fact, I think ignoring means when considering ends is a kind of denial of reality. However, in practice, sometimes denying reality means that reality fits itself to you, rather than the other way around. As someone of a practical bent, I find these occasions so few and far between, that I never bet on the likelihood that things will just work themselves out. And I am certainly not, like Tacitus, one who believes that justice should be done, though the heavens fall.
I think one thing that would be helpful is if I defined what I meant by rationality. With means-based rationality, I mean a concern with optimality. With ends-based rationality, I mean a concern with internal consistency.
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Plato’s Republic shows how reason can be directed to ends as well as means. In this dialogue Socrates demonstrates through rational dialectic why the “advantage of the stronger” and, accordingly, the life of tyranny are irrational. Ditto the life of pleasure or spiritedness emancipated from reason. The argument is somewhat long and complicated, and I cannot set it forth here. I suggest you carefully read the Republic itself. I will address and update the same kind of issues in my forthcoming book Reason and Human Ethics, but that won’t be completed until a few years from now. I have to write my book on free will first.
I am concerned here with practical, not theoretical, reason. That is, I am interested in the kind of reasoning that applies to ethics and politics, not physics and chemistry. See also Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This kind of inquiry involves informal logic (for example, the study of common fallacies) rather than the formal and symbolic logic often applied in science and professional, academic philosophy.
Allen wrote (#87): "I don't think that social justice warriors are irrational. Thank you for pointing out that the question of equality is distinct from that of rationality - what I was trying to say is that social justice warriors are actually hyperrational, in that they seek a rational consistency of their views such that it is in line with their commitments to equality."
See Bob Hanna’s essay “Identity Ad Absurdum: A Critique of the Cultural Appropriation Argument” here. Some of Bob’s other writings also address the irrationality of some notions on the political left.
There is legal (de jure) equality/inequality, and there is equality/inequality of condition (de facto equality/inequality). I am a strong supporter of legal equality, which Plato also advocated in his Seventh Letter. The question of equality of condition is very difficult. First, the biological fact is that people are simply not equal. Individual humans have different aptitudes and abilities, caused in part by different genetic makeups, though some of it is environmental and also (I would argue) a matter of choice and free will. However this may be, I’m not sure what “a rational consistency of their views” means in this context. Insofar as social justice warriors are attempting to make everyone perfectly equal in every way, their project is doomed: it is contrary to nature and accordingly irrational. Insofar as social justice warriors are trying to make everyone perfectly equal in condition, their goal may be impossible except in a regimented totalitarian system. Again, ends and means à la the French Revolution. This also may be irrational, though much depends, as you indicate, on circumstances and practical cogitation. The Democratic primary debates on TV illustrate the kind of practical reasoning needed to evaluate whether a particular political proposal is advisable, though last evening’s debate was a poster child for what a debate should not be.
I don’t have time to address the remainder of your post 87 nor your posts 88 and 89. However, the foregoing will give you an idea of my approach to such matters.
And just to reiterate, I am skeptical as to how much the social justice left is actually committed to postmodernism in its attack on rationality, just as I am skeptical that the left should be conflated with Marxism as mediated through the Frankfurt school or otherwise. The positions of anti-racism, anti-colonialism, feminism, gay and transgender rights, and so on are completely consistent with a commitment to the Enlightenment project of rationality as understood in a liberal framework. To reiterate a commonly made point, one should not assume that political views are monolithic in a society in which they are widely held. In spite of however many times Lyotard is cited in Marxist literary journals, one needn't identify with them to be a leftist.Edit: I did not see your newest post before writing what I did.
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I don't know enough about the social justice left or postmodernism to address your arguments adequately. I am much more familiar with the New Left of the 1960s (which admittedly dates me). And, again, I am out of time for the present.
Alan wrote: "Allen wrote (#87): "I have not "sat with" the idea of ends being conceived rationally that I can trust myself to comment on it thoughtfully. However, I will try. I suspect that what makes the selec..."I understand that the conversation will have to end here, but one thought strikes me as I inspect Robert Hanna's argument on cultural appropriation. (I did not read it in full, I only skimmed it, as I in fact agree with Robert Hanna that cultural appropriation is not something to be concerned about.)
It is this: the fact that the view against cultural appropriation can be articulated coherently means that it is simply unconvincing, not that it is unsound. By saying an argument is unsound, there is one introductory philosophy book written for an undergraduate audience I have read that insists it simply means it is not logically consistent in how the premisses relate to the conclusion. One can reject the argument by rejecting the premisses, but if that is all you are doing, you cannot say the other side is being illogical.
With regards to equality, I agree that it is contrary to nature to expect everyone to be unequal, but I disagree that it is irrational. Impractical, yes. Irrational, no. There is nothing that says that one must conform to reality to be logically consistent. This has to do with how I have defined rationality earlier - I think all that rationality demands in an ends-based sense is that we are consistent in our application of our beliefs to our speech and actions. Practicality does not enter into it.
Since the Republic is rather short, I may devote time to it in the coming future.
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This explains why we are talking past each other. We have totally different concepts/definitions of what reason and rationality is. If reason does not have to conform with reality, then what's the point? One can construct all kinds of syllogisms that are logically valid if and only if one accepts the premise. Critical thinking means, in my view, that one must question and evaluate the premise as well as how well the syllogism proceeds from the premise. This was the great failure of medieval logic: they constructed beautiful logical systems, but their premises were often wrong. Again, what's the point? We are seeking truth, not playing logic games.
Alan wrote: "Allen wrote: "There is nothing that says that one must conform to reality to be logically consistent. This has to do with how I have defined rationality earlier - I think all that rationality deman..."The lecturer who taught me first-order logic once said in a lecture that there is no trivially true claim that some philosopher, somewhere, would not reject as untrue. From that I take it that most philosophers disagree, in both the questions that are fundamentally important as well as their answers. Would it be reasonable to say that most philosophers regard each other as irrational? That seems absurd. They may reject each other's conclusions, and argue about what they take to be premisses they would accept as convincing, but they would not say that their disagreement entailed that others are irrational.
To take this discussion "down" a little in temperature, I want to say I mean all this in the spirit of respectful discussion.
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I have discussed induction and inductive reasoning as well as informal logic generally in the Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking topic of this Goodreads group. A search for “inductive,” “induction,” and/or “informal logic” will display many relevant comments. I think it is appropriate to reproduce one of these as follows:
My interest in induction has to do with the way people reason inductively, especially the fallacies commonly made in induction. I don’t recall whether Aristotle speaks to that precise issue, and I will need to revisit his logical works when I get back to working on my book on ethics (after I finish my book on free will).
Last year, I read portions of John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, 8th ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900) relating to inductive reasoning, especially his treatment of analogical reasoning and inductive fallacies. I didn’t then—and don’t now—have time to study this work in depth, but I was impressed by what I did read. See also Part 5 (“Inductive Logic”) of David Kelley’s The Art of Reasoning, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998) and, with regard to fallacies generally (including but not limited to inductive fallacies), W. Ward Fearnside and William B. Holther, Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Spectrum, 1959); Hans V. Hansen and Robert C. Pinto, eds., Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, Logical Self-Defense (New York: International Debate Education Ass’n, 2006); Douglas Walton, Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach, Kindle ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Michael C. LaBossiere, 76 Fallacies, Kindle ed. (Amazon Digital Services, 2012); and Marianne Talbot, Critical Reasoning: A Romp Through the Foothills of Logic for Complete Beginners, Kindle ed. (Metafore, 2014). This is the kind of informal logic that interests me, as it relates to critical thinking in public discourse as distinguished from purely theoretical considerations.
Alan wrote (message 1, 6/29/2019 Update): I take it as axiomatic that the question whether human ethics is even possible depends on a preliminary question whether humans have free will to develop and apply ethical principles.I think it depends what you mean by 'human ethics'. I would suggest that while free will is necessary for there to be such a thing as moral responsibility (we can't be held morally responsible for actions where those actions are, for us, unavoidable), free will is not necessary for the development of human ethics as a system or systems of ethical or moral principles: beings lacking free will but possessing intelligence are presumably just as capable of working out ethical systems as they are of working out other systems, e.g. the laws of maths or physics, and this is the case whether or not those beings possess the free will which would enable them to be held morally responsible for performing the actions prescribed or proscribed under those ethical systems.
For what it's worth, I do in fact believe that some actions are morally wrong, and yet that there can be no such thing as moral responsibility for performing those actions, because I believe free will, at least of the kind required for there to be moral responsibility, to be impossible. This view no doubt puts me in a very small minority, but there it is.
Alan wrote: "Thanks, Allen. As a former longtime litigation lawyer and high-school debater, I sometimes get into my argumentative mode, but it's not personal.I have discussed induction and inductive reasoning..."
I think we are reaching an impasse, as you have indicated. I agree with Hume that induction is ultimately fallacious, and is not immune from the charge of question-begging. I think induction is just a cool hack that works in practice, but that it is not constitutive of rationality - at least, not rationality as I conceive it, although I can entertain alternative conceptions, such as yours.
Of course, to play the devil's advocate, one could perhaps defend induction by some appeal to innate probabilistic models all humans have. It seems somewhat plausible and is a reasonable counterargument to what I am saying.
Probably, this is the point where we will have to agree to disagree. Just as well, as I have some work I want to finish before I go home today.
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For an opposing view, see my comments (including links to my book reviews and other writings) in the Free Will topic.
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I gather that you nevertheless believe that syllogistic reasoning is essential to reasoning. If so, then you accept the principles of deductive reasoning but not the principles of inductive reasoning (as developed from philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to the twenty-first century). How, then, do you arrive at the major premise of a syllogism? Is the major premise arrived at through mere intuition?
For example, a famous major premise is “All men [we now say “humans”] are mortal.” How does one arrive at the concept of “humans” without performing induction from knowledge of the many individual humans to the concept “human”? And how would we be able to say that all humans are mortal absent experience that every human we have encountered or know about is mortal?
The books I listed in my post 96 explore the intricacies of inductive logic, including many common fallacies involved in inductive reasoning. Perhaps there is no certainty in induction, but there surely is better and worse inductive logic. Human life, in my view, depends on that distinction.
Inductive reasoning to me is a heuristic. When one's beliefs arrived at through induction are no longer contradicted, the best one can say is that one's ideas "work" in a practical kind of way, but that one cannot be sure if they are true. One can obtain practical results from one's beliefs, but whether they are an accurate description of reality is another matter. That is why I harp on the notion of stories or narratives one uses to explain oneself, others, and the world. Stories may not be true in the most literal sense, but they are often good enough to be practical. And in a sense, civilization is a ceaseless, forward movement of the good enough.Perhaps a machine learning scientist might one day find a mathematical basis for inductive reasoning, based on a solid foundation of probability. That is why for theoretical reasons, not just practical ones, the field arouses my intellectual fascination. Until such a demonstration is forthcoming, however, induction seems to me to be so fallible that it does not qualify for the term "rationality." Ultimately, that is a matter of taste. Induction lacks the certainty of deductive reasoning for arriving at truth. (More on my views of truth follow below, after a brief digression.)
When we encounter another person whose beliefs we do not agree with, what we should rely on is persuasion, not argument, to convince them of our views. And such persuasion should appeal to their irrationality, not their rationality, inductive or deductively based. That is why I am indifferent about the notion of practical rationality: although it is invaluable for how I make sense of the world, I find it to be relatively useless for persuading people of something they do not already believe. You can be sure, however, when I raise my children I will teach them good habits in both inductive and deductive reasoning, at least as I understand them. No doubt, an explicit guide to the question of practical rationality, such as those you have provided, would be useful to me for pedagogical reasons on just such an occasion.
So to answer your question, perhaps somewhat indirectly, I use induction on an everyday basis, including when I have to evaluate the plausibility of premisses in a logical argument. But I don't think arguments that ultimately rely on induction are reliable, even if they are usually good enough, and that is why virtually all arguments to me are ultimately contested. It gives you an idea of why I find skepticism so attractive. However, it is true what you say - if arguments, regardless of their basis, did not have their utility tomorrow that they had today, human life would be uncertain indeed.
Mod
I am highly flattered that you would call me "scientist," as it is in my view a high-status profession. However, the fact that I think so highly of scientists rather aptly makes your point.I had not thought of our differences in that way, but it is an elegant explanation.
There are so many interesting topics being discussed in this thread! that it's hard to know where to start, in following up.But I did want to add one follow-up about this particular exchange between Chris & Alan, but also in the larger context of what Allen is saying about free will & moral responsibility:
Chris wrote (#97): "I believe free will, at least of the kind required for there to be moral responsibility, to be impossible."
For an opposing view, see my comments (including links to my book reviews and other writings) in the Free Will topic.
Now contemporary discussions about the existence or non-existence of free will, & its necessary connection--or lack thereof--with moral responsibility, are made quite confusing & difficult by the fact that there are at least two very different conceptions of free will & moral responsibility out there:
(i) real or deep incompatibilistic free will & moral responsibility, &
(ii) merely psychological or compatibilistic free will & moral responsibility.
As I see it, Chris is denying (i) & Alan is affirming (i) & denying (ii).
And, just for the record, I'd also want to affirm (i) & deny (ii), as I argue in *Deep Freedom and Real Persons,* here--
https://www.academia.edu/35801857/The...
But it's also prima facie possible to deny (i) & accept (ii), as, e.g., a great many contemporary professional academic philosophers who work in these areas, & are impressed by Harry Frankfurt's work, do, while also affirming natural determinism.
Moreover, I think that this is the majority view these days, both inside & outside the professional academy.
So my question to Chris & Allen would be: assuming that you both want to deny (i), & presumably you both also want to assert the truth of some or another version of natural determinism, then are you ALSO both inclined to accept the thesis that there's an *experience* of free will & moral responsibility that's philosophically & pragmatically worth preserving & defending, which would also make you defenders of (ii), aka "soft determinists," like a great many contemporary professional philosophers & other folks outside the professional academy?
Or are you both all-out skeptics about free will & moral responsibility, even in the merely psychological sense of (ii), which in turn would make you all-out free will & moral responsibility "deniers," aka hard determinists or hard incompatibilists?
If it's the latter, while that's indeed a minority view, still some very good professional philosophers have defended it, so you might also find Derk Pereboom's work interesting & compelling, e.g., his 2001 book *Living Without Free Will,* which is reviewed here--
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/living-witho...
& his 2014 book, *Free Will, Agency, & Meaning in Life,* which is reviewed here--
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/free-will-ag...
Mod
You're most welcome!And one follow-up to my follow-up.
Sorting out the different positions in these ways is helpful for avoiding discussions that are at cross-purposes, due to confusing the two different senses of "free will" & "moral responsibility," &/or also confusing the commitments of the three basic positions.
But not only that: the sorting-out also clearly indicates the burdens of proof that have to be borne by the three basic positions, in relation to ethics/morality.
1. The person who holds (i), the metaphysical libertarian, can neatly explain how either non-instrumentally rational & non-egoistic, non-hedonistic (e.g., either virtue ethics or kantian ethics) or instrumentally rational & non-egoistic but perhaps hedonistic (e.g., act-utilitarian or rule-utilitarian) ethics is possible, but has the burden of explaining how real, deep freedom is possible in a fundamentally physical world.
2. The person who holds denies (i) and holds (ii), the soft determinist, can claim to be pro-science via their deterministic worldview, but also has the burden of explaining how anything BUT an *egoistic, hedonistic* instrumentally rational ethics is possible when our experience of free will & moral responsibility are epiphenomenal & have no causal efficacy of their own.
3. And the person who's an all-out skeptic about free will & moral responsibility, the hard determinist or hard incompatibilist, can also claim to be pro-science, but also has the burden of explaining how *any sort of rationality & ethics at all* are possible when our experience of free will & moral responsibility are nothing but illusions & myths.
Mod
Many thanks! for those questions.By "egoistic" I mean "inherently self-interested."
And in that connection I also distinguish egoism from selfishness.
"Egoism" is also the name of a doctrine, which splits into two separate theses: (i) psychological egoism: everybody always actually is inherently self-interested, & (ii) ethical egoism: everybody always ought to be inherently self-interested.
According to the latter view, it's immoral to be altruistic.
Anyhow, I discuss all that fairly briefly here--
https://againstprofphil.org/2020/02/1...
As to Aristotle's "magnanimous man/person," if I remember correctly, the Greek term is something like "megalopsuchos," i.e., great-souled man/person.
And given Aristotle's description of the megalopsuchos, I'd say that s/he isn't an egoist in the above sense at all, but in fact someone who's simply a great & "larger-than-life" person, like Winston Churchill, with all the outstanding virtues & genuine flaws or vices that go along with that...
I got far too little work done yesterday, so I decided to take my time with replying today. I am waiting for an instance to be created on AWS, so I have some time to share my thoughts.In response to Robert, I think if I had the choice of how to outline an account of ethics and morality in light of our determinism, I would choose to do so by avoiding the issue of free will altogether. In articulating a philosophy, I have a choice of what issues I will focus on or not focus on. I would therefore use my opportunity to philosophize by not considering whether we have free will at all. To me, it does not matter. Either we have free will, and are already enjoying it, or else we don't, and there is nothing we could do about that fact.
(Please note that I use the terms ethics and morality interchangeably here without distinguishing between them.)
I choose to portray the human condition in a way that would describe how morality works without free will being necessary. This is an account of morality without a need to posit actual, individual agency. To that end, I want to emphasize that morality and ethics work by compelling our conscious deliberations on moral questions. If we don't have free will, then morality and ethics binds us in a web of interdependence in which we are hopelessly contingent on the influences we encounter in life, and the subsequent (predetermined) reflections by which we arrive at our (predetermined) choice. If free will does exist, then the picture is still accurate - we are faced with moral dilemmas and injunctions for moral compliance, only here we have a choice to assent or deny such compliance.
I think what is crucial to my picture is the following thought experiment. If someone were to grow up in a social vacuum, totally alone from the day they are born, would an ethical life be possible for them? My answer would be in the negative. Ethics is only possible when we are enmeshed in a community, with other people who hold us accountable for our decisions. (Perhaps you might say, how accountable could we be without free will? In that case, let's use a slightly different turn of phrase - that other people "check" our agency whenever we interact with them.) In that sense, I deny that a human being could live ethically in solitude, without being shaped by our encounters with other people. Part of what I am arguing also entails that the moral systems we impose on ourselves, a seeming act of individual autonomy, is in fact contingent on how that system deals with ethical problems in real situations. And these situations always "act on" the individual in ways that constrain our autonomy. Such would still be the case if we had free will - we would still have the ability to choose, but not about the choices we had to make. A certain amount would already be imposed on us by setting the agenda for about what it was we could choose.
I probably don't have enough with this philosophical approach to write a book, although I can easily pad out a term paper with quotes from famous philosophers about what they would think of what I am saying. I don't have any ideas of who I would cite; one idea is Hobbes, due to the anti-religious character of his political philosophy that tries to show how humans are necessarily constrained by nature. That sounds like a promising avenue of investigation.
(I actually harbour an avid dislike/disagreement with this quote and I'm not much a fan of Heinlein either--I merely provide it as punctuation)